English issue 21

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite their deepening political divide, the United States and Saudi Arabia are quietly expanding defense ties on a vast scale, led by a little-known project to develop an elite force to protect the kingdom’s oil riches and future nuclear sites.The U.S. also is in discussions with Saudi Arabia to create an air and missile defense system with far greater capability against the regional rival the Saudis fear most, Iran. And it is with Iran mainly in mind that the Saudis are pressing ahead with a historic $60 bil-lion arms deal that will provide dozens of new U.S.-built F-15 com-bat aircraft likely to ensure Saudi air superiority over Iran for years. Together these moves amount to a historic expansion of a 66-year-old relationship that is built on America’s oil appetite, sustained by Saudi reliance on U.S. military reach and deepened by a shared worry about the threat of al-Qaida and the ambitions of Iran. The quiet U.S. moves in Saudi Arabia form part of the backdrop to Pres-

ident Barack Obama’s speech Thursday, which is intended to put his imprint on the enormous changes sweeping across the greater Middle East. All of this is happening despite the Saudi govern-ment’s anger at Washington’s response to uprisings across the Arab world, especially its abandonment of Hosni Mubarak, the deposed Egyptian president who was a longtime Saudi and U.S. ally. The Obama administration is eager to ease this tension as it faces the prospect of an escalating confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi Arabia is central to American policy in the Middle East. It is a key player in the Arab-Israeli peace process that Obama has so far failed to advance, and it is vital to U.S. energy security, with Saudi Arabia ranking as the third-largest source of U.S. oil imports. It also figures prominently in U.S. efforts to undercut Is-lamic extremism and promote democracy. Full Story at our website www.almashreqonline.com

US quietly expanding defense ties with Saudis

Prosecutor: Fla. cleric dedicated to Taliban

MIAMI (AP) — Despite a frail and pious appearance, a South Florida Muslim cleric was a dedicated financier of the violent Pakistani Taliban

who disliked the “wretched” U.S. and sought the overthrow of Paki-stan’s government, a federal prose-cutor said in court Monday. Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, 76, di-rected how thousands of dollars were to be distributed to militant fighters “down to the dollar” and maintained at least three bank ac-counts in Pakistan to accept the funds, said Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley. More than $200,000

has been deposited in those accounts since 2005, he added, although not all the money is linked to terrorism. “All it takes to provide the support he provided is a telephone,” Shipley said. “It doesn’t just take somebody to go and blow themselves up.” Shipley laid out more details of the case against Khan, his sons Izhar Khan, 24, and 37-year-old Irfan Khan, and three other suspects at a bail hearing. U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber ordered Hafiz Khan and Izhar Khan held without bail, agreeing with prosecutors that both present a danger to the community and are at risk of fleeing the country. “He is extremely active and has been extremely ac-tive in Taliban matters,” Garber said of the elder Khan. The government’s evidence, Garber added, shows that “his goal was to kill Americans.” Ir-fan Khan was arrested in Los Angeles and also is being held without bail pending his return to Miami. The other three people named in the four-count terrorism support indictment, including two more Khan family members, are in Pakistan. Each charge carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence.

Yamani man accused in plane fight pleads

not guilty SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A 26-year-old Yemeni native ac-cused of trying to barge into the cockpit of a San Francisco-bound flight has pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of in-terfering with a flight crew. The San Francisco Chronicle re-ports that Rageh Al-Murisi was ordered Friday to remain jailed without bail until his next hear-ing on June 23. Al-Murisi could face 20 years in prison and $350,000 in fines and restitu-tion payments for the May 8 incident aboard American Air-lines Flight 1561 from Chica-go. He is accused of trying to open the cockpit door twice

before he was subdued by crew members and passen-gers. Authorities say he re-peatedly yelled “Allahu Ak-bar,” or “God is great” in Arabic. His lawyer says his client was in mental crisis and did not intend to crash the

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CANNES, France (AP) — In a remote village in North Africa, women use the only weapon they have — sex — and go on a “love strike” that challenges traditional gender roles. Director Radu Mihaileanu says he sees the fictional gen-der revolt depicted in his new movie “The Source” as crucial to the success of popular up-risings that have toppled dictators in Tunisia and Egypt this year and still smolder across the Arab world. “The second revolution that’s needed, it seems to me, is one in the home, that will bring about gender equality in the private sphere,” Mi-haileanu told reporters Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, where the movie is competing for the top prize, the Palme d’Or. Mihaileanu said the movie was inspired by a decade-old news story about women from a village in Turkey who, fed up with their arduous traditional task of fetching water from a distant well, started with-

holding sex. “(This story) showed them in such a wonderful light. These women are combative, filled with light and humor,” said Mihaileanu, adding that although he had fallen in love with the story, he didn’t initially plan to make the movie himself. “As I’m neither a woman nor an Arab, I didn’t feel legitimate,” said the Roma-nian-born French director behind the 1997 hit “Train of Life” and 2004’s “Live and Become.” At first, he thought he would produce it and find an Arab woman filmmaker to direct it. “But I didn’t find one, and as I was pitching it, everyone kept telling me, ‘you tell this story so well, why don’t you make it?’ So in the end I did,” he said. Accuracy and believability became his holy grail, in everything from the plot line to the sets and costumes. Cast and crew spent a month in the Moroccan town where the movie was shot, experiencing village life and learning the local

dialect. The cast was chosen from across the Arab world and includes Algerian diva Biyouna, Palestinians Hiam Abbas and Saleh Bakri and rising French star Hafsia Herzi, whose parents are from Tunisia and Algeria. Still, only one of the principal characters is played by a Moroccan, so the cast had to work with coaches to get the accent down. Leila Bekhti, a raven-haired French actress of Algerian origin who plays the film’s main character, said her learning curve was steep. “I used to speak Algerian, but I’d lost nearly ev-erything,” she said. Still, she said the story had touched her deeply. “For me, this film is an ode to love, it’s a film about altruism, about other peo-ple, about our capacity to love one another, to listen to and understand one another,” Bekhti said. “I think that’s one of the biggest problems in the world — we don’t look at one another, we don’t listen to one another.”

3June 2 - 16 /2011Entertainment & Sports

LONDON (AP) — Auction site eBay says a bidder has paid 81,100 pounds ($131,648) for the silk bow hat worn by Princess Beatrice to last month’s royal wedding. The 22-year-old granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II put the Philip Treacy creation on sale to raise money for UNICEF and Children in Crisis. The silk hat caused a stir at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29. Since then, it has been com-pared to antlers and a pretzel, and has been photoshopped into scores of unlike-ly scenarios on the Internet. Forty bidders vied for the prize, but eBay did not reveal the identity of the winner. The auction ended Sunday.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday that it has withdrawn its application to trademark the phrase “SEAL Team 6,” the elite unit that killed Osama bin Laden, after the Navy moved

to protect its rights and the entertainment giant endured a wave of criticism and late-night jibes. Disney sought the trademark rights on May 3, two days after U.S. oper-atives raided a luxury compound in Paki-stan and killed the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Dis-ney’s ABC subsid-

iary wanted to develop a TV show along the lines “NCIS” and “JAG,” which are also real-life Navy units, and would have focused on the drama and heroism of the special forces members. But it drew flak for not only its rapid filing, but also for a trademark application that included items like Christmas stockings and snow globes. Com-edy show host Jon Stewart needled the company on his “Daily Show”: “I can’t wait for the Happy Meal.” Navy spokeswoman Amanda Greenberg said the Navy already had rights to the SEAL trademark but recently submitted two new applications for trade-marks of “Navy SEALs” and “SEAL Team.” “The Navy is fully committed to protecting its trademark rights as it pertains to this mat-ter and is currently examining all legal options,” she said. Disney/ABC spokesman Kevin Brockman said the company pulled the plug on its bid “in deference to the Navy’s application.” Disney is still in-terested in producing a show based on the unit’s operatives although it would likely be produced by a third-party studio.

DEAR-BORN, Mich. (AP) — The Arab American National Mu-seum is plan-ning a travel-ing exhibit to document what had been one of

the earliest settlements of Arabs in America. The museum in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn is holding a benefit Thursday at New York city’s University Club to help pay for creation of the exhibit about “Little Syria.” The neighborhood that’s now the site for the former World Trade Center was home to many Arabs during the first wave of immigration in the early 20th century. The museum says it hopes to resurrect stories of this community on Manhattan’s lower west side that was home to poet Khalil Gibran and some of America’s first Arabic language newspapers. The exhibit is being developed by museum curators and a group of New York residents.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s movie about the Black Ops hunt for Osama Bin Laden is set for release next year.Columbia Pictures, which acquired the domes-tic distribution rights to the film earlier this week, says the untitled movie will come out at the end of 2012. Bigelow and Boal each won a pair of Oscars for producing, directing and writ-ing last year’s best picture, “The Hurt Locker.” The two began developing the film about the Black Ops’ mission to capture Bin Laden in 2008. Co-Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertain-ment Amy Pascal says Bigelow and Boal “have an outstanding perspective on the team that was hunting the most wanted man in the world.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Like Charlie Sheen, Arnold Schwarzenegger was once known as an actor. Granted, not a great ac-tor, but still. He starred in a lot of movies. And, like Sheen, Schwarzenegger is infa-mous these days for his off-camera antics. Revelations that the former California gov-ernor’s 25-year marriage to Maria Shriver is ending and that he fathered a son with a member of his housekeeping staff have put him in the spotlight in a way even he prob-ably never wanted. So, like we did with Sheen, we’re going to go back to a simpler, happier time and reflect on Schwarzeneg-ger’s five best films. And there actually are five: — “True Lies” (1994): Schwarzeneg-ger has always injected an element of hu-mor into his action movies, a tongue-in-cheek recognition of his own outsized ridiculousness, for better and for worse. His puns, for example, can be painful. But this is the best example of his ability to blend laughs and gunfire, sight gags and explo-sions. Teaming up once again with “Termi-nator” director James Cameron in this re-make of a French comedy, Schwarzenegger stars as a spy posing as a mild-mannered computer salesman. When he suspects his wife (a funny and sexy Jamie Lee Curtis) is having an affair, he uses all the gadgets and weapons at his disposal to win her back. A screwball blockbuster. — “The Terminator” (1984): One of the definitive ‘80s action flicks and the movie that truly made Schwar-zenegger a superstar. It features one of his classic and most-quoted lines — “I’ll be back” — and allowed us all to put the suffix “-ator” at the end of any word to describe

him in a corny way. Cameron also put him-self on the map, as director and co-writer, with this sci-fi fable about an unstoppable cyborg sent back from the future to kill Sar-ah Connor (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to ... well, you know what the

“Terminator” series is about. Clever, in-tense and mind-bendy, filled with a dark mythology of biblical proportions and the kind of elaborate action sequences that would become one of Cameron’s trade-marks. — “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991): A rare sequel that is as good as the original, if not better (are you listening, makers of the “Hangover” movies?). “T2” was super high-tech in its day, with seam-less visual effects that allowed Robert Pat-rick’s character, the even deadlier Termina-tor known as the T-1000, to shape-shift and heal itself instantly. Schwarzenegger is back as the original Terminator, who must

now protect Sarah Connor’s son. Of course, “T2” features yet another of his classic lines — “Hasta la vista, baby” — which he would use to cringe-inducing effect in various re-al-world circumstances. — “Total Recall” (1990): Inspired by a Philip K. Dick short story and directed by Paul Verhoeven, this is a brisk, paranoid, violent and darkly fun-ny adventure. Schwarzenegger stars as Doug Quaid, a construction worker living in the future who discovers that his entire existence has been a fabrication. His real identity (which has something to do with Mars) has been erased, but virtual reality trips help him unlock his own mysteries. This vision of an efficient future is meant to be startling in its soullessness, but “Total Recall” also features plenty of sleaze; this is, after all, from the man who would go on to direct “Basic Instinct.” Speaking of which, a young and extremely cute Sharon Stone co-stars as Schwarzenegger’s wife. — “Predator” (1987): OK, I will admit that I am choosing this one in part because my husband loves it, and he has an uncanny knack for finding it on TV at any time of the day or night. (I also enjoy hearing him yell, “Get to the chopper!” in his bad Arnold ac-cent.) An early film from action veteran John McTiernan, this sci-fi thriller is about a group of commandos who are trapped in a Central American jungle and hunted by an extraterrestrial monster. Schwarzenegger, as a special forces bad-ass named Dutch, is sent in to save them but he also must fight this creature with deadly camouflage abili-ties. If anyone could do it, it was Arnold at the height of his powers.

SINGAPORE (AP) — Paula Abdul said Friday her reunion with Simon Cowell on his new talent show is going great, for now. “We’re still in the honeymoon phase, which will probably only last another minute,” the 48-year-old Abdul told re-porters in Singapore. “Simon and I ended up having a wonderful, exquisite, challenging and frightening relationship.” The two famously bickering former “American Idol” judges will be joining forces again to assess would-be singing stars on Fox’s “The X Factor,” which taped its first judging session earlier this month and will debut this fall in the U.S. Abdul is looking to bounce back from “Live to Dance,” a talent com-petition series she starred that premiered on CBS in January and was a ratings disappointment.The tension and teasing between Cowell and Ab-dul helped make “Idol” one of the most popular television shows. She left the show in 2009 over a contract dispute after eight seasons. “This little show is probably going to be ginormous if it’s anything like what Simon is capable of doing,” Abdul said. The American pop singer and dancer is in Singapore to promote a Universal Studios

theme park. Abdul, who was the lead-er of the Los Angeles Lak-ers dance troupe in the 1980s, said watching the basketball team lose in the playoffs earlier this month “hurt like pouring Tabasco sauce in an open wound.” But the L.A. native predicted a swift return to glory for the Lakers, who have won 10 champi-onships since 1980.“The Lakers organization is fantastic,” she said. “I never give up on them, ever.”

LONDON — In northeastern England they say she’s a canny lass — and maybe that’s the prob-lem. British sweetheart Cheryl Cole has report-edly been dumped from U.S. television, and tab-loid media say she lost her big break in part over fears American audiences wouldn’t understand her regional accent or the phrases unique to her corner of Britain. Cole, whose rags-to-riches showbiz story has captivated her country, had been expected to appear as a judge on Simon Cowell’s “The X Factor” due to premiere in the United States later this year. But on Friday Brit-ain’s tabloids announced the 27-year-old had been removed as a judge, and her official status with the program, which has already started shooting, remains unclear. Ann-Marie Thomson, public relations chief for Cowell’s entertainment company, declined comment when called by The Associated Press. But Sinitta Malone, a guest presenter on the British version of “X Factor,” told ITV television that Cowell and Cole were in talks “trying to sort something out.” Whatever happens, Cole’s absence would dent her dreams of graduating to American — and international — celebrity. It’s an ambition that seemed widely

shared by her fans, and indeed by Britain’s tab-loid media, which have treated her with unusual deference over the years. Full story at our web-site: www.almashreqonline.com

Royal Wedding hat sells for over $130,000 on eBay

Disney withdraws Navy SEAL trademark

application

5 best Arnold Schwarzenegger movies

Arab museum devel-oping exhibit about

NY settlement

Film on Bin Laden, Black Ops set for

2012 release

Abdul, Cowell getting along on ‘X Factor,’ for now

The exit factor: Britain’s sweetheart dumped in US

Gender revolution hits Arab world in ‘The Source’

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5ArticlesJune 2 - 16 /2011

On April 11th France banned the wearing of full veils in pub-lic places, be-coming the first country in Eu-rope to impose restrictions on a form of attire that some Mus-lims consider a religious obliga-tion. The new law makes it a

misdemeanor to wear the veils in public, pun-ishable by a $210 fine and /or a civic training to teach the criminal the need to show her face. The French president , Mr. Sarkozy , stated that Muslim women who wear the veils are not wel-come in France.The new draconian law which stigmatize and single out one gender of one re-ligion is a continuation of the French govern-

ment - enforced bigotry against French Mus-lims that have been taken place for the past three decades. Many Muslim girls had been banned and expelled from public schools through out France for wearing the head scarf . France passed a law back in 2004 banning the wear-ing of head scarves in public school, making the head teachers of French schools the head scarf police, where they stand at the gates of their schools every morning ordering Muslim girls to take off their head scarves or else. The ratio-nale the French Prime Minster gave for the veil law is that women who hide their faces wear a badge of inferiority that is “ incompatible with the principles of liberty , equality and human dignity, affirmed by the French Republic “. The Prime Minster seems to think that by forcing a woman to show her face will make her more equal . And, the French government who brags about the liberty and equality of the French re-public has forgotten that a free society does not tell its citizens what to wear. In the debate lead-ing to the implementation of the new law, the

Council of State, France’s top administrative authority warned that such ban on the veil have no “incontestable judicial basis “ and could be thrown out by courts. Senior legal authority in France warned Sarkozy that the law my be un-constitutional. But despite all the warnings Mr. Sarkozy went ahead and introduced the law. He will not let the constitution stands in his way to criminalize Muslim women for what they wear and his cynical attack on Islam that will surely encourage Muslim- bashing through out Europe. Muslims count for about six million , a tenth of the French population, but only very few wear the veil. According to the government there are fewer than 2000 women in France who wear the veil, and many of them are French women who converted to Islam. The french govern-ment claims that women are forced to wear the veil. But a study conducted by the Open Society Foundation, a nongovernmental organization found out that non of the 32 women from across France which they interviewed was forced to wear the veil, and 10 said that they started wear-

ing the veil as a response to the new law. Eight out of the 32 were French women who convert-ed to Islam. The study indicated that contrary to the stereotype of Muslim women who wear the veil, the majority of them are like any French woman with active social lives, working attend-ing classes, seeing friends, eating out and active-ly engaging in local activities. The study reveals that since the debate on the veil law began back in 2010 a large number of the women have ex-perienced verbal and sometimes physical abuse.The French new draconian law banning the wearing of veil in public is nothing more than a government- enforced bigotry against Muslim women. It is a violation of human rights and more specifically women rights that should out-rage women all over the world. The French need to remember that punishing a few women who want to hide their faces in public when their con-duct poses no danger to the public violates the basic tenet of life in a free society.

In educa-tion circles today, there is a big bad thing that an educator should never do, and that’s the M word. Yes, Memo-rization! Somewhere along the road of mod-ern educa-tion, Memo-rization has

become a witch that is to be hunted and burned at the stake. It started -- and probably ends too—in Mathematics. Educators stated that memorizing facts were meaningless if the child did not under-stand them. Instead of just parroting for example,

“6 times 7 is 42”, a child should be able to visual-ize/draw six rows of seven objects. All this makes good sense, and teachers breathed a sigh of re-lief: now they didn’t have to crack the whip and check on their students’ times tables any more. All they had to do was give them manipulatives to play with. However, as the years went by, more and more children failed in Math, and strangely enough, understanding facts did not seem to make students achieve better. Not surprisingly, very few teachers require students to memorize parts of plays or poems any more. Fifty years ago, in France, we were required to memorize a fable or poem every single week, and recite it with expres-sion. Our weekly history “lesson” (meaning home-work) was a little resume of facts that we had to learn then recite by heart, yes, orally, in front of the entire class. Today I can still tell you without miss-ing a beat that Charlemagne was crowned emperor in the year 800 AD. Knowing certain key dates, places and events helps you peg down history and locate in time and place all other events.

In Math, the cracks start showing usually by Grades 2 and 3. Sometimes, especially in the US, the actually deficiencies are not apparent till Grade 6 because of the way Math textbooks are designed. All exercises are confined to the skills taught in that particular chapter without reviewing prior skills (what is knows as “spiraling”). Therefore, most children, when solving word problems, do not learn to really think through the problem. They pick the numbers in the text and either add, sub-tract, multiply or divide according to the topic of the week. Teachers do not realize it because: a) the class size is too large to pay attention to each stu-dent; and b) as long as all answers are correct, all students must be learning the required skills, right? When students start studying fractions, those who were never required to memorize their times tables now start performing poorly. How much is 2/3 + ¼ ? They try to figure that out, and that takes about 20 minutes because they have to add threes and lay them out, then add fours and lay them out, then re-member why they were doing that, now find the

lowest common denominator, then wonder why they were doing that in the first place, then rewrite the fractions with the common denominator. Then try to remember what they were supposed to do with the numerators… and so on. No wonder the poor children tell you, “I hate Math!” Now, if they knew their times tables on the tip of their fingers (in my book, this translates as: giving the answer within 2 seconds), they would immediately see the 12 in their mind and write it down. Their brain is still thinking of the fractions and how to add them, so the rest comes easily. I can see parents and teachers shaking their heads and saying, “yes, but HOW do you make them memorize those tables?” And, by the way, it’s not just the times tables that are important, but also addition and subtraction, as well as division. We cannot assume that knowing 3x5=15 means they know (within 2 seconds) that 15/3 is 5. That needs separate training as well. And that, my friends, will be the topic of this col-umn next week.

(AP) — Imagine filing your tax return and learn-ing that someone else got your refund. With your name and Social Security number, no less. The IRS is grappling with a nearly five-fold increase in taxpayer identity theft between 2008 and 2010, a Government Accountability Office official plans to tell a House hearing Thursday. There were 248,357 incidents in 2010, compared to 51,702 in 2008.The GAO findings, obtained by The Associated Press, don’t begin to describe the pain for a first-time victim, who must wait for a refund while

the IRS sorts out which return is real and which is a fraud. Many identity thieves don’t get pros-ecuted, according James White, director of strate-gic issues for the GAO.. “IRS officials told us that IRS pursues criminal in-vestigations of suspected identity thieves in only a small number of cases,” White says in testimony prepared for a House Oversight and Govern-ment Reform subcom-mittee. He said that in the 2010 fiscal year, the

IRS criminal investigations division initiated just over 4,700 investigations of all types — far less than the identity theft cases alone. “We want to know why this problem is apparently getting much worse,” said Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., chairman of the subcommittee. “By bringing these issues to the public as quickly as possible, the committee hopes to give citizens the necessary information so they can protect themselves from such identity theft.” IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, in his pre-

pared statement, defended the criminal investiga-tion record. He said his criminal division concen-trates on schemes of national scope and added that 95 percent of those prosecuted for refund-related identity theft go to prison. Tax identity thieves typically submit returns for refunds early in the filing season. The legitimate taxpayer usually files later, and only then learns from the IRS that two returns were filed using the same Social Security number. Some thieves steal a name and Social Se-curity number to obtain a job. The employer will report the thief’s wage information to the IRS, as would the legitimate taxpayer’s employer. The vic-tim then would receive an unwelcome IRS notice that he or she failed to report everything that was earned. The victim would then need to work with the tax agency to sort things out. Shulman said the IRS can significantly increase its protection after someone has been victimized the first time. One victim, LaVonda Rae Thompson, 52, of York, Pa., plans to tell the committee about what she calls “my nightmare.” She had to make rounds of calls to the IRS and other government agencies, some-times repeating the same information. She spoke on the phone with an IRS employee she described as “the most rude and discourteous person I have ever spoken with in my life.” She was told her refund would take 16 weeks to six months. She

closed her bank accounts and opened new ones. She ordered new checks. She placed a 90-day alert on her credit reports. She often has to show her IRS identity theft affidavit. “You may not be able to know how stressful this has been,” she said in her statement. “I can’t sleep. I wonder what the person will do next as far as trying to get credit cards or anything in my name.”Tax form 14039, the IRS Identity Theft Affidavit, allows the agency to mark an account to identify future questionable activity. A task force of the IRS and other agencies established a website, STOP-FRAUD.gov, which tells taxpayers what to do if they suspect identity fraud. The main IRS website includes “Ten Things the IRS Wants You to Know About Identity Theft.” If the IRS receives multiple tax returns for the same individuals, the taxpayer usually must substantiate identity with a federal or state-issued identification such as a driver’s license or passport — together with a copy of a police report or the IRS affidavit. This past January, the IRS developed a pilot program designed to lessen delays for victims who deserve a refund. Victims are issued an “identity protection personal identifi-cation number,” which the IRS will use to process future returns. A new PIN will be issued each year the taxpayer’s account has been marked for poten-tial fraud.

The M word

Taxpayer identity theft is soaring

Dr. Fawzia Mai Tung

Larry Margasak

France’s New Draconian Law Mohammed Alzaidi, Esq.

During the Cold War era, evange-lists, led by Billy Graham, provided public support for rearmament to pro-tect the USA from “Godless Commu-nism.” Today’s Neo-Christian churches provide the only significant grassroots support for US serial wars against Muslim countries, not to protect the U.S., but to supposedly pro-

tect Israel. All of us need to know how Christian scripture has been falsely reinterpreted, rewrit-ten, and misapplied, so as to allow support for American Mideast policy. We will take an edu-cated layman’s view of the Christian scripture

that we are told allows church leaders to justify US destruction of smaller and weaker Muslim countries and Israel’s occupation of Gaza and imprisonment of 1.5 million Palestinians. A few years ago leading evangelicals, including the giant Southern ‘Baptist Convention, held to a statement of faith that the Bible was the true and inerrant word of God. Many churches and semi-naries have changed this statement by adding the phrase “IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT.” There are dozens of bibles which differ, and the origi-nal texts are not available as written. Those we have are radically altered by modern men writ-ing their own interpretations of the words and guessing at the contexts of the original writers; these revised interpretations appear in countless pages of footnotes. A case in point is the Scofield Reference Bible, which has been reedited at least four times since the original was published by Oxford University Press in 1908, which has an estimated 500 pages of footnotes, and which played a major role in redirecting Christian fo-cus from Jesus Christ to the State of Israel. Often

we have to guess at the context in which phrases or pages of writing were penned, because the original authors do not always tell us. We may not know when or where they were written, or even, with certainty, by whom. Neo-Christians justify their support of wars in the Middle East in terms of Hebrew Old Testament accounts of God’s wrath and the Israelites’ bloody conquests of the Philistines and Canaanites. Samson is still glorified by both American children and the Israeli army for annihilating the Philistine en-emies of “God’s chosen people,” the Israelites. His story is retold to justify the occupation of today’s Philistines, the Palestinians. Recall that in the story, God strengthened Samson to kill a thousand Philistines with an animal bone. The Genesis account of God’s instructions to Abra-ham to occupy Canaan is as warped as justifi-cation for today’s Zionist Israelis to occupy the entire Middle East. We have unraveled the mis-application of these convenient Old Testament yarns and our work has stood virtually unchal-lenged. Many church writers have engaged in

what writer George Barna calls “proof texting,” sometimes referred to as “Aristotelian logic.” This false logic claims every part of scripture, right down to each individual word and verse, is the word of God and therefore true independent of context. They patch together bits and pieces of text written at different times, often by differ-ent authors, and hold that the resulting homog-enized text is also necessarily true. In this series we will examine several New Testament pas-sages Neo-Christian scholars misapply in order to justify passive acceptance of the acts of our serial warmaking government. For instance most neo-Chistians supported without ques-tion the cold-blooded murder of the Bin Laden family, done to keep us from knowing the truth from live witnesses. In Part II, I will deal with powerful evidence that Jesus’ own words have been contradicted and altered in bibles by Neo-Christian leaders since 1948, when for the first time, Israel became a State by mandate.

www.whtt.org

The Neo-Christians Sorry Excuse for Wars, Part I Charles E. Carlson

6 Arizona & NationalJune 2 - 16 /2011

DETROIT (AP) — A judge on Tuesday ordered a compe-tency hearing for a mentally ill Vietnam War veteran accused of planning to attack a promi-nent Michigan mosque with fireworks. Roger Stockham, a Muslim convert of Imperial Beach, Calif., was to stand trial in Michigan on terrorism and

explosives charges for al-legedly plotting to deto-nate powerful fireworks at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. Wayne County Circuit Judge Bruce Morrow or-dered a competency hear-ing for Stockham after learning that the 63-year-old sent a letter to the center last week. Defense attorney Matthew Evans said Stockham’s letter didn’t threaten physical violence, but he declined to divulge its contents. “It was just a rant — it really

didn’t make sense,” Ev-ans said. The hearing is set for July but could be held sooner. Stockham was arrested Jan. 24 outside the mosque in the De-troit suburb, at the heart of the region’s Arab-American com-munity. He has said he only planned to spray-paint an anti-Iraq war message on the build-

ing, not to set off the fireworks police said they found in his car.Stockham has several prior convictions and suffers from bi-polar and post-traumatic stress disorders. He has spent much of the past three decades in prison or psychiatric hospitals. He’s charged in Michigan with making a false report or threat of terrorism and possessing ex-plosives with unlawful intent. Evans said he faces at least three years in prison if con-victed of both charges. Police said he had 96 fireworks in his car, including M-80 firecrack-ers and smoke bombs. Kassem Allie, the Islamic Center’s ex-ecutive administrator, declined to discuss the letter. But he said Stockham still poses a threat, regardless of his competency. “We are convinced, based on what we understand his history is, that either way public safety should be the first consider-ation,” Allie said.

PHOENIX (AP) — Phoenix schools are out for the summer and that means young children need to be off the street by 10 p.m. The Phoenix Police Department says that goes for children 15 and younger. The city curfew for 16 and 17-year-olds is midnight every day. It’s the parents or legal guardian’s responsibility to know where children are. Parents can be hit with a misdemeanor and so can children who violate curfew laws. Curfew does not apply if a child is accompanied by a par-ent, guardian or other person having care and su-pervision.

PHOENIX (AP) — Attorneys for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office are asking a judge to either deny or postpone his ruling on a request for class-action status in a lawsuit that ac-cuses Arpaio’s office of racially profiling Hispan-ics in immigration patrols.The handful of Latinos who filed the lawsuit are seeking class-action status that their lawyers say would cover thousands of Hispanics who say have been discriminated against by Arpaio’s office. Tim Casey, an attorney representing the sheriff’s office, asks U.S. District Judge Murray Snow to hold off on ruling on the class-action request until other issues are resolved in the case. Casey also suggests that the judge deny the request because he says those who filed the lawsuit haven’t met the criteria for winning class-action status.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Wiretaps obtained under a Pa-triot Act provision aimed at gathering foreign intelligence wrongly helped convict Muslim immigrants in a domestic crimi-

nal case, defense law-yers argued Monday in U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia. The lawyers represent five young men convicted of plotting a deadly strike at a New Jersey military base. Pros-ecutors call evidence in the three-month trial overwhelming and the two wiretaps in question inciden-tal to the conviction. Defense lawyer Mi-chael E. Riley argued otherwise. “We don’t know which of the

nails in the coffin were the final nails in the coffin (for jurors),” he said. A federal jury in Cam-den, N.J., convicted the men — Mohamad Shnewer, Serdar Ta-

tar, and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka — in Decem-ber 2008 of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel at Fort Dix. All but Tatar are serving life terms. Prosecutors charged that the Philadelphia-area resi-dents, inspired by al-Qaida, had taken training trips to the Pocono Mountains and scouted out Fort Dix, an Army base in New Jersey used primarily to train reservists for duty in Iraq, and other sites. “The issue the jury had to decide was, where they serious? Did they mean to attack soldiers, or were they just talking to blow off steam?” As-sistant U.S. Attorney Norman Gross said Monday, summa-rizing the crux of the complex case. Full story at our website www.almashreqonline.com

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A 26-year-old Yemeni native accused of trying to barge into the cockpit of a San Francisco-bound flight has pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of in-terfering with a flight crew.U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Corley on Friday ordered Rageh Al-Murisi to remain in Alameda County jail without bail until his next scheduled hearing on June 23, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Al-Murisi could face 20 years in prison and $350,000 in fines and restitution payments

for the May 8 incident aboard American Airlines Flight 1561 from Chicago. Al-Murisi alleg-edly tried to open the cockpit door twice before he was sub-dued by crew members and several pas-sengers. Au-thorities say he repeatedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” — “God is great” in Arabic.Al-Murisi’s law-

yer, Christopher Morales, says his client was in mental crisis and did not intend to crash the plane.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Con-gress on Thursday passed a four-year extension of post-Sept. 11 powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pur-suit of terrorists. Votes taken in rapid succession in the Senate and House came after lawmakers rejected attempts to temper the law enforcement powers to en-sure that individual liberties are not abused. Following the 250-153 evening vote in the House, the legislation to renew three terrorism-fighting authorities headed for the president’s signa-ture with only hours to go before the provisions expire at midnight.

With Obama cur-rently in France, the White House said the president would use an au-topen machine that holds a pen and signs his ac-tual signature. It is only used with proper authori-

zation of the president. Minutes before the midnight deadline, the White House said Obama had signed the bill. A short-term expiration would not interrupt ongoing operations but would bar the government from seeking warrants for new investigations. Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to

change the bill to diminish the government’s ability to moni-tor individual actions. The bill passed the Senate 72-23.The measure would add four years to the legal life of roving wiretaps — those authorized for a person rather than a communications line or device — of court-ordered searches of business records and of surveillance of non-American “lone wolf” suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups. The roving wiretaps and access to business records are small parts of the USA Patriot Act en-acted after the Sept. 11, 2001, at-tacks. But unlike most of the act, which is permanent law, those provisions must be renewed peri-odically because of concerns that they could be used to violate pri-vacy rights. The same applies to the “lone wolf” provision, which was part of a 2004 intelligence law . Full story at our website www.almashreqonline.com

PHOENIX (AP) — The Su-preme Court on Thursday up-held an Arizona law that pe-nalizes businesses for hiring workers in the country illegally, buoying the hopes of support-ers of state crackdowns on il-legal immigration. They pre-dicted the ruling would lead to many other states passing laws that require employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check that workers aren’t il-legal immigrants. And some said the ruling bodes well for the prospects of a much broader and more controversial immi-

gration law in Arizona, known as SB1070, to be found con-stitutional. The state is appeal-ing a ruling blocking portions of that law from taking effect. But some legal experts said the ruling should not be read as a broad validation of such tactics. While they acknowledge that other states will now pass simi-lar employer sanctions, they cautioned that the court did not make any sweeping endorse-ment of states’ rights to enforce federal immigration laws. “It’s a very careful and narrowly reasoned opinion, so it doesn’t really tip the court’s hand one way or the other with respect to SB1070,” said Peter Spiro, a Temple University law profes-sor who specializes in immigra-tion law. “That being said, the court here is validating a state measure that implicates immi-gration enforcement. The court today has rejected an argument

that the states have no busi-ness in immigration enforce-ment. That’s off the table.” Ari-zona Senate President Russell Pearce, a Republican who was a prime sponsor of the legislation that became the 2007 employer sanctions law, said his reaction to the ruling was “jubilation.”“This is not only good for Ari-zona, it’s good for America,” Pearce told The Associated Press. “Finally, American work-ers are treated the way they ought to be. We’re going to put the profits-before-patriotism crowd in the back seat.” Pearce said the ruling bodes well for an eventual Supreme Court deci-sion on SB1070. “I’m very con-fident we’ll win a 5-4 or pos-sibly a 6-3 decision,” he said. “States have never been pre-empted from enforcing federal law.” Reasd full story at our website: www.almashreqon-line.com

CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago businessman accused of provid-ing cover for a longtime friend who helped lay groundwork for the 2008 Mumbai attacks will likely not testify at his own trial, defense attorneys said Wednes-day as proceedings in the high-profile terrorism case wound down. Attorney Patrick Blegen said Tahawwur Rana’s defense team was still making a final de-cision, but that it was unlikely Rana would take the stand. Rana is accused of allowing his friend David Coleman Headley, a Pak-istani-American, open a branch of his Chicago-based immigra-tion services business in India’s largest city as cover so Headley could conduct video surveillance ahead of the three-day rampage that killed more than 160 people. Headley, who has pleaded guilty to scouting sites in Mumbai, spent five days on the witness stand detailing how he received orders from the Pakistani terror-ist group blamed in the attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the coun-try’s main intelligence agency known as the ISI. The case is be-ing closely watched worldwide,

especially on the heels of the May 2 killing of Osa-ma bin Laden by U.S. forces in Pakistan and amid suspicions that the coun-try’s govern-ment may have known or helped

hide the former al-Qaida leader. Pakistan has denied the allega-tions. Prosecutors called seven witnesses Wednesday, includ-ing five FBI agents who verified email and phone communication between Rana, Headley, and an ISI officer known only as “Ma-jor Iqbal,” who is also charged in the case. One witness was a linguist who talked about the quality control behind translat-ing the numerous recorded phone conversations between the men in Urdu and Punjabi. The pros-ecution’s witnesses were aimed at bolstering what the federal government has tried to prove — that Rana knew and helped his longtime friend Headley conduct surveillance. In one in-stance, an FBI agent showed a 2008 email to Rana from an ad-dress thought to be Iqbal’s. The message read “I wanted to know any progress made on the project, thanks.” Prosecutors have said “project” meant the Mumbai at-tacks and that Rana was in on it. But defense attorneys have said that Rana thought the email was strictly about the immigration business, as Rana was interested

in expanding. Headley testified earlier that Iqbal provided money to open the office. Government attorneys said Wednesday that they had one remaining witness. Defense attorneys said their po-tential witnesses could include a computer expert and an immigra-tion lawyer from Canada. Jurors weren’t expected back in court until Monday because proceed-ings were moving faster than anticipated and attorneys said they had trouble rescheduling the remaining witnesses. The trial runs a four-day schedule with Fridays off. U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber said closing arguments would be tentatively scheduled for Tuesday. Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian, has also pleaded not guilty to assist-ing Headley as he carried out sur-veillance for a planned attack on a Danish newspaper that in 2005 printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that offended many Muslims. That attack never hap-pened. Headley, who met Rana at boarding school when they were teens, has been the government’s star witness. Defense attorneys have tried to paint Headley’s tes-timony as unreliable and have hammered how Headley initially lied to the FBI as he cooperated, lied to a judge and even lied to his own family. They claim he implicated Rana in the plot be-cause he was motivated by the possibility of making a deal with prosecutors. Headley’s coopera-tion means he avoids the death penalty and extradition.

Judge orders hearing for man in Mich. mosque plot

Phoenix enforcing curfew laws

5 Muslim immigrants appeal NJ terror convictions

Arpaio seeks rejection of class-action request

Rageh Al-Murisi the suspect in flight disturbance pleads not guilty

Congress sends terrorism-fighting bill to Obama

High court sustains Ariz. employer sanctions law

Mumbai terror trial in Chicago winding down

7California & IllinoisJune 2 - 16 /2011

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sales of homes in some stage of foreclosure declined in the first three months of the year, but they still account-ed for 28 percent of all home sales — a share nearly six times higher than what it would be in a healthy housing market. Foreclosure sales, which include homes purchased after they re-ceived a notice of default or were repossessed by lenders, hit the highest share of overall sales in a year during the first quarter, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. “It’s an astronomically high number,” said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. “In a normal market, you’re looking at the per-centage of homes sold in foreclosure to be be-low 5 percent.” The pace at which homes are

entering the foreclosure process has slowed in recent months amid bank and court de-lays. But distressed properties remain a fix-ture of a housing market still searching for a sustained recovery. The properties, often in need of repair, typically sell at a discount, weakening prices for other types of homes. As a slice of all home purchases, foreclosure sales peaked two years ago at 37.4 percent. In the first quarter, they rose from 27 percent in prior quarter, but fell from 29 percent a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac. Sales of foreclosure properties didn’t fare much better than other types of homes, however. In all, 158,434 homes in some stage of foreclosure were sold in the first quarter, down 16 percent from the last three months of 2010 and down 36 percent versus a year ago. Sales of all oth-er types of homes also declined sharply, ac-cording to RealtyTrac’s figures, which differ from other home-sales estimates. While the number of bank-owned properties sold de-clined, they grew as a share of all home sales. Bank-owned homes accounted for nearly 19 percent of all sales, up from 17 percent

in the fourth quarter and up from 18 percent a year ago, the firm said. That’s not good news for the housing market. RealtyTrac estimates there are 872,000 homes that have been repos-sessed by lenders, but have yet to be sold. At the first-quarter’s sales pace, it will take three years to clear the inventory of 1.9 million prop-erties already in some stage of foreclosure. For bank-owned properties alone, that amounts to a 2-year supply. “Clearly, the housing market is not out of the woods,” Sharga said. Homebuyers who purchased a bank-owned home in the first quarter saved an average of 35 percent versus the average price of other types of homes, Re-altyTrac said. That discount is unchanged from

the previous quarter, but up from an average of 33 percent a year ago. Buyers who snapped up other homes in the foreclosure process, includ-ing short sales, got an average discount of 9 per-cent, the firm said. That’s down from an average of 13 percent in the fourth quarter and an aver-age of 14 percent a year ago. In a short sale, the seller and their lender agree to sell the home for less than what is owned on the mortgage. The biggest foreclosure discounts were to be had in Ohio, where foreclosure properties sold for an average of 41 percent less than other types of homes, RealtyTrac said. The average sales price of a foreclosure property was $168,321, down 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter and 1.5 per-cent from the first quarter last year, the firm said. At a state level, Nevada led the nation with foreclosure sales accounting for 53 percent of all home sales, RealtyTrac said. That was down from 59 percent the year before. The state has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation and an inventory of nearly 28,000 bank-owned proper-ties on bank’s books. Buyers scooping up fore-closure properties there in the first quarter got an average discount of nearly 18 percent com-pared to the average sales price of other types of homes, RealtyTrac said. In California, foreclo-sure sales accounted for 45 percent of all home sales in the first quarter, down from nearly 48 percent a year earlier. The average foreclosure property sold for nearly 34 percent less than the average sales price of homes not in foreclosure. In Arizona, foreclosure sales represented 45 per-cent of all home sales for the quarter, down from 47 percent a year earlier. Several other states had foreclosure sales that accounted for at least one quarter of all home sales in the first quar-ter: Idaho, Florida, Michigan, Oregon, Virginia, Colorado, Illinois, Georgia and Ohio.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A judge has ruled that grand jury transcripts will remain sealed in the case of 11 Muslim students charged with disrupting a speech given by an Israeli ambassador last year on the University of California, Irvine campus. The Orange County Register reports that Superior Court Judge Peter J. Wilson made the ruling Thursday. Because of a previously issued gag order in the case, neither side could comment. The students have pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor conspiracy to commit a crime and misde-meanor disruption of a meeting. Each stu-dent allegedly stood up and spoke against Oren during a Feb. 8, 2010 speech before being escorted out by police. Each defen-

dant faces a maximum six months in jail if convicted. A jury trial is scheduled to start Aug. 15.

CHICAGO (AP) — An admitted American terrorist who is the government’s star wit-ness in the trial of a Chicago businessman accused in the 2008 attacks in Mumbai said Thursday he knew little about the Pakistani intelligence officer he says helped him in laying the groundwork for the deadly ram-page. David Coleman Headley is testifying in the trial of his longtime friend Tahawwur Rana, who is accused of helping him scope out targets for the three-day siege that killed more than 160 people in India’s largest city. During three days of testimony, Headley has detailed through emails and recorded con-versations how he says Pakistani intelligence and a Pakistani militant group coordinated in planning the attacks. Headley’s testimony comes at a tense time in U.S.-Pakistan rela-tions, especially after Osama bin Laden was discovered hiding in a military garrison town outside Islamabad. His testimony also could add to the increasing questions about Paki-stan’s commitment to catch terrorists. Head-ley, who has pleaded guilty in the Mumbai attacks, has spent much of the week telling jurors about the surveillance he conducted in Mumbai ahead of the attacks and his commu-nications with a Pakistani intelligence officer known only as “Major Iqbal” and his handler from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group that claimed responsibility to the siege. Defense attorneys have tried to discredit Headley’s testimony, saying he was manipulative and a man who had many lives. Under question-ing from defense attorneys, Headley said on Thursday that he didn’t know too much about Iqbal. “In the end though, you can’t prove that anybody higher than Major Iqbal?” asked Rana attorney Charles Swift asked. “That’s

the only person you can give evidence on. You can’t even identify or find him.” “Yes,” Headley said. Rana and Headley, both 50, met years ago at a prestigious boarding school in Pakistan and have stayed in touch. Headley testified Wednesday that he had tried to persuade Rana to join but Rana declined because he said he didn’t espouse the beliefs of the group, which is generally made up of ultraconservative Salafi Muslims. Headley, who said he started working with Lashkar in 2000, has said the group and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as ISI, operate under the same umbrella. Pakistan has repeated what it’s maintained since 2008, that the ISI had no links to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means Army of the Pure in Urdu.Rana is accused of giving Headley cover by allowing him to open a branch of his Chica-go-based immigration services business in Mumbai so he could conduct surveillance. Rana has pleaded not guilty. Headley de-nied on Thursday he had used the immigra-tion services business as a cover while tak-ing video and said instead he was posing a tourist while going around the city during his trips to Mumbai. You never used First World Immigration as a cover, did you, in all your surveillance?” Swift asked Headley. “No,” he said. Defense attorneys also tried to show Thursday that Rana was more concerned with business matters and not as in the loop on Headley’s plotting for the attacks as pros-ecutors have tried to illustrate. Swift showed emails detailing how Rana was concerned with keeping clients they had in Mumbai, had business interests in opening an office in Denmark and even traveled to India close to the attacks to figure out what to do with of-fice They argued that if Rana was in on the plans, he wouldn’t have traveled to India at that time. Prosecutors also showed video sur-veillance that Headley took in Copenhagen for a potential attack in Denmark. Headley admitted to helping plan an attack that never happened on a Danish newspaper that in 2005 printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Rana is also accused in that plot. All devel-opments were communicated with Rana, Mir and Iqbal, Headley testified. Iqbal, Mir and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed are identified by prosecutors as a retired Pakistani military with links to Iqbal. All three, along with three others in Pakistan, are charged in absentia. Rana is the only one on trial.

OAK-LAND, Calif. (AP) — An Al-ameda County jury has recessed for the week in

the trial of a former Oakland group community lead-er accused of ordering the murders of three men, in-cluding a local journalist. Jurors on Thursday did not reach a verdict after a third full day of deliberating the fate of former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and co-defendant Antoine Mackey. The seven-woman, five-man jury are scheduled to resume deliberations on Tuesday. Bey is charged with order-ing the killings. Mackey, a former bakery supervi-sor, is charged with helping kill Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey and another man, Odell Roberson. Mackey is also charged with fatally shooting a third man, Michael Wills in 2007. Bailey’s confessed kill-er, Devaughndre Broussard, testified that Bey ordered Bailey’s death to stop an investigative story on the bakery’s financial woes and he and Mackey were his hit men.

Report: Sales of foreclosed homes fell in 1Q

Docs remain sealed in UC speech disruption case

Jury recesses in Oakland editor murder trial

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California’s attorney gen-eral has formed a new task force to investigate mort-gage fraud in the wake of practices that crushed the state’s housing industry and led to a wave of foreclo-sures. The task force will be made up of 17 lawyers and eight state Department of Justice special agents who will pursue criminal and civil judgments on a broad spectrum of mortgage fraud cases, from preda-tory lending and loan modification scams, to fraud involving mortgage-backed securities, Attorney Gen-eral Kamala Harris said Monday. “We will work to safeguard the homeowner at every step of the process — from origination of a loan to its securitization, and we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who take advantage of trusting California families,” Harris said in a statement. The state’s foreclosure crisis has cost homeowners up to $640 billion in eq-uity, Harris estimates. It also has opened the door for scammers, many of whom have targeted homeown-ers by promising to get their lender to reduce their mortgage payments or even how much they owe on their mortgage altogether. In the last year, the Cali-fornia Department of Justice has received thousands of complaints related to foreclosure scams, mortgage fraud, and mortgage servicing practices. The Mort-gage Fraud Strike Force will operate out of offices in Los Angeles, Fresno, San Francisco and Sacramento and will be made up of teams focusing on consumer enforcement, corporate fraud and criminal en-forcement. The teams will target predatory lending, unfair business practices in mortgage loan origination, de-ceptive marketing and loan modification fraud, among other scams. The corporate fraud unit will focus on violations in-volving investments and securities tied to sub-prime mortgages, and

fraudulent claims related to these securities made to the state or its pension funds. The 2008 financial crisis was triggered by defaults on subprime mort-gages — poor-quality loans that Wall Street financial institutions sold as bundled securities and promoted as safe investments. The task force is distinct from an ongoing investigation into foreclosure practices by the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers. The attorneys general of all 50 states are involved in that probe. California saw home values skyrocket dur-ing the housing boom, then plunge when the housing bubble burst in 2006. As values fell, many homeown-ers couldn’t refinance out of loans with baked-in ad-justments to higher interest rates and began to default on payments, triggering a wave of foreclosures. In recent years, a still-weak housing market and falling prices combined with a slowing economy and ris-ing job losses have led to more foreclosures. Some 32 percent of homes in California with a mortgage were underwater as of Dec. 31, according to Core-Logic. A home loan is considered to be underwater when the borrower owes more on the mortgage than the property is worth. Last month, one in every 240 households in California received a foreclosure-re-lated warning, according to RealtyTrac Inc. The firm tracks notices for defaults, scheduled home auctions and home repossessions — warnings that can lead up to a home eventually being lost to foreclosure.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A proposal to ban the circumcision of male children in San Francisco has been cleared to appear on the November ballot, set-ting the stage for the nation’s first public vote on what has long been considered a private family matter. But even in a city with a long-held reputation for pushing boundaries, the measure is drawing heavy fire. Op-ponents are lining up against it, saying a ban on a religious rite considered sacred by Jews and Muslims is a blatant violation of constitutional rights. Elec-tions officials confirmed Wednesday the initiative had qualified for the ballot with more than 7,700 valid signatures from city residents. Initiatives must have at least 7,168 names to qualify. If the measure pass-es, circumcision would be prohibited among males under the age of 18. The practice would become a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to one year in jail. There would be no religious exemptions. The proposed ban appears to be the first in the country to make it this far, though a larger national debate over the health benefits of cir-cumcision has been going on for many years. Ban-ning circumcision would almost certainly prompt a flurry of legal challenges alleging violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of the freedom to ex-ercise one’s religious beliefs. Supporters of the ban say male circumcision is a form of genital mutilation that is unnecessary, extremely painful and even dan-gerous. They say parents should not be able to force the decision on their young child. “Parents are really guardians, and guardians have to do what’s in the best interest of the child. It’s his body. It’s his choice,” said Lloyd Schofield, the measure’s lead proponent and a longtime San Francisco resident. He added the cutting away of the foreskin from the penis is a more invasive medical procedure than many new parents or childless individuals realize. But opponents say such claims are alarmingly misleading, and call the pro-posal a clear violation of constitutionally protected religious freedoms. “For a city that’s renowned for being progressive and open-minded, to even have to consider such an intolerant proposition ... it sets a dangerous precedent for all cities and states,” said Rabbi Gil Yosef Leeds of Berkeley. Leeds is a certi-fied “mohel,” the person who traditionally performs ritual circumcisions in the Jewish faith.

Calif. creates task force to probe mortgage fraud Mumbai Attacks-Trial.Little known about Pakistan officer, Headley says

Circumcision ban to appear on San Francisco ballot

8 International & BusinessJune 2 - 16 /2011

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military is preparing for the possibili-ty of violent protests along its borders in the coming days, aiming to avoid a repeat of deadly unrest that erupted earlier this month, a senior military official told The Associated Press

on Sunday. Facebook-organized activists have called for demonstrations next weekend in Leba-non, Syria, and Jordan to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Mideast war, in which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip east Jerusalem and Golan Heights. The official said the army also is planning to counter possible unrest in the West Bank in Sep-tember after an expected U.N. vote to recognize Palestinian indepen-dence. The official said the army hopes to avoid civilian casualties but would set “red lines” for the demonstrations. That means Israel will not al-low demonstrators to burst across the borders

during the coming week’s protests — as they did on the Syria-Israel border on May 15 — or to enter Jewish set-tlements in the West Bank in Septem-ber. He said Israel will not react to nonviolent demonstrations, includ-ing large gatherings near the settle-

ments, but that it would be forced to take action in “life-threatening” situ-ations. On May 15, the day on which Palestinians mourn the anniversary of Israel’s founding, hundreds of demonstrators in Syria broke through the frontier and entered the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, while in Lebanon, large crowds converged on the border. Some 14 protesters were killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers, who were caught off guard by the attempts to breach the borders. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, said the army will be much better prepared this time around. Larger numbers of troops will be deployed, he said, and they will be equipped with crowd-control tools such as rub-ber bullets and water cannons. With peace talks frozen, Palestinian activ-ists have begun to talk about holding large, nonviolent protests throughout the West Bank after a U.N. vote in September. The official said Israel is not expecting large-scale violence at that time, but he warned it wouldn’t take much to trigger an outbreak in fighting. “Unfortunately, we have seen lots of demonstrations turn vio-lent,” he said.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expand-ing subterranean city invisible from the streets above. At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a popula-tion that is mainly Arab. Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluo-rescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew. But many Palestinians, who reject Israel’s sovereignty in the city, see them as a threat to their own claims to Jerusalem. And some critics say they put an exaggerated focus on Jewish history. A new underground link is opening within two months, and when it does, there will be more than a mile (two kilometers) of pathways beneath the city. Officials say at least one other major project is in the works. Soon, anyone so inclined will be able to spend much of their time in Jerusa-lem without seeing the sky. On a recent morning, a man carrying surveying equipment walked across a two-millen-nia-old stone road, paused at the edge

of a hole and disappeared underground. In a multi-level maze of rooms and corri-dors beneath the Mus-lim Quar-ter, workers cleared rub-ble and in-stalled steel safety braces to shore up crumbling 700-year-old Mamluk-era arch Above ground, a group of French tour-ists emerged from a dark passage they had entered an hour ear-

lier in the Jewish Quarter and found themselves among Arab shops on the Via Dolorosa, the traditional route Je-sus took to his crucifixion South of the Old City, visitors to Jerusalem can en-ter a tunnel chipped from the bedrock by a Judean king 2,500 years ago and walk through knee-deep water under the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Be-ginning this summer, a new passage will be open nearby: a sewer Jewish rebels are thought to have used to flee the Roman legions who destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D. The sewer leads uphill, passing beneath the Old City walls before expelling visitors into sunlight next to the rectangular en-closure where the temple once stood, now home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gold-capped Dome of the Rock.From there, it’s a short walk to a third passage, the Western Wall tunnel, which continues north from the Jew-ish holy site past stones cut by masons working for King Herod and an ancient water system. Visitors emerge near the entrance to an ancient quarry called Zedekiah’s Cave that descends under the Muslim Quarter. The next major project, according to the Israel Antiq-uities Authority, will follow the course of one of the city’s main Roman-era

streets underneath the prayer plaza at the Western Wall. This route, sched-uled for completion in three years, will link up with the Western Wall tunnel. The excavations and flood of visitors exist against a backdrop of acute dis-trust between Israeli Jews and Pales-tinian Muslims, who are suspicious of any government moves in the Old City and particularly around the Al-Aqsa compound, Islam’s third-holiest shrine Muslim fears have led to violence in the past: The 1996 opening of a new exit to the Western Wall tunnel sparked rumors among Palestinians that Israel meant to damage the mosques, and dozens were killed in the ensuing ri-ots. In recent years, however, work has gone ahead without incident. Despite the Israeli assurances, however, rumors persist that the excavations are under-mining the physical stability of the Is-lamic holy sites. “I believe the Israelis are tunneling under the mosques,” said Najeh Bkerat, an official of the Waqf, the Muslim religious body that runs the compound under Israel’s overall secu-rity control. Samir Abu Leil, another Waqf official, said he had heard ham-mering that very morning underneath the Waqf’s offices, in a Mamluk-era building that sits just outside the holy compound and directly over the route of the Western Wall tunnel, and had filed a complaint with police. The clos-est thing to an excavation on the mount, Israeli archaeologists point out, was done by the Waqf itself: In the 1990s, the Waqf opened a new entrance to a subterranean prayer space and dumped truckloads of rubble outside the Old City, drawing outrage from scholars who said priceless artifacts were be-ing destroyed. This month, an Israeli government watchdog released a re-port saying Waqf construction work in the compound in recent years had been done without supervision and had dam-aged antiquities. The issue is deemed so sensitive that the details of the re-port were kept classified. Some Israeli critics of the tunnels point to what they call an exaggerated emphasis on a Jew-ish narrative. “The tunnels all say: We were here 2,000 years ago, and now we’re back, and here’s proof,” said Yo-nathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeolo-gist. “Living here means recognizing that other stories exist alongside ours.”

Israel braces for border clashes in coming days

Beneath Jerusalem, an underground city takes shape

RABAT, Morocco (AP) — With Shakira and other top international artists perform-ing in open air venues around Morocco’s capital — often for free — the annual Mawazine world music festival doesn’t at first seem like something anyone could dis-like. Activists from Morocco’s pro-reform February 20 movement, however, tried to get it canceled, describing it as a symptom of the country’s corruption and cronyism. In the past, religious conservatives have criticized the eight-day extravaganza for being decadent, and last year they were angered that it featured openly gay per-former Elton John. This year, however, the attacks are coming from Facebook-savvy youth who would normally be found in the audience of such celebrations of inter-national music. “The struggle against the Mawazine is the struggle for democracy,” said Rachid el-Belghiti, a freelance jour-nalist heading the National Campaign to Cancel the Mawazine, a Facebook group with more than 30,000 members. He’s us-ing online organizing much the way pro-test movements in Tunisia and Egypt did in uprisings earlier this year that overthrew longtime authoritarian presidents and

sparked protests around the Arab world. “I love Shakira, I have no problem with Shakira — she gave $400,000 for a school in Haiti — but there are serious education problems here,” he said. Colombian su-perstar Shakira closed the festival Satur-day night. He said the millions of dollars raised for the festival, which come from the public and private sector, should have gone toward education and development — or even other festivals outside the capi-tal. The festival is put on by the nonprofit Maroc-Cultures association and paid for by corporate sponsors. Maroc-Cultures, however, is run by Mounir El Majidi, a close confidant of the king, and many of the sponsors, such as Maroc Telecom and the national airline, are at least partly owned by the state. Critics say the festival underlines how intertwined the royal pal-ace remains in Morocco’s economy. “We just think it’s a waste of money, it could be invested in more constructive projects,” said young activist Zineb Belmkaddem, a teacher at a local American school. “Pre-senting Kanye West and Shakira for free is ridiculous in a country with so much poverty.” According to Abbas Azzouzi, a member of the festival’s organizing com-mittee, the event cost around $7.8 million — a hefty price tag in a country lacking the oil of its North African neighbors and with at least 30 percent unemployment, especially among urban youth. Protesters against the festival gathered last week in downtown Rabat before they were dis-persed by truncheon-wielding policemen. The festival comes at a delicate time for the February 20 movement, which through demonstrations around the country pushed Morocco’s all-powerful king, Moham-med VI, to start a process of constitutional reform. The movement, however, has re-fused to meet with the committee deliber-ating the new constitutional amendments, because that committee was appointed by the king, and now they risk being left out a reform process expected to stretch through the summer.

BAGHDAD (AP) — At least $1.5 mil-lion in cash and assets belonging to Iraq’s national airline in Jor-dan have been frozen in a legal dispute with Kuwait, a government spokesman said Satur-day, although a lawyer said even more money could be frozen later. The long-standing dispute centers on Ku-wait’s accusations that Saddam Hussein’s regime stole 10 air-planes and millions of dollars in equipment and spare parts from

its fleet during the 1990 invasion. Kuwait is seeking $1.2 billion in reparations, but Iraq’s post-Saddam leaders have resisted paying it, leading to lawsuits and threats to eliminate flights. A Jordanian court or-dered Iraqi Airways assets in that country frozen on May 11. The legal action there is a first step to try to claim at least $130 mil-lion in cash and assets the airline reported in that country as recently as last year. A lawyer for Kuwait Airways Corp., Chris Gooding, said Kuwait is pursuing similar legal action in 15 counties where Iraqi Air-ways does business and is prepared to shut down flights if they are not repaid. Iraqi Transportation Ministry spokesman Karim al-Nouri said the government will ask the Jordanian court on Sunday to unfreeze its assets on the basis that Iraqi Airways is

a public entity and therefore cannot have its assets frozen. He called Kuwait’s legal push “a provocative act.” Al-Nouri said Iraqi Airways currently has only $1.5 mil-lion in Jordanian banks, but the Kuwaiti Airways attorney disputes that. “No doubt they’ll be able to explain to the Jordanian courts how they got rid of the other $129 million they used to have there,” Gooding said in a phone interview from London.The court order cited a total sum of $166 million that Iraqi Airways may have in Jordan, including assets in its commerce, finance, industry and trade ministries. No money has actually been handed over to Kuwait yet, and Jordan’s 28 registered banks are expected to report back to the court within days the value of assets that Iraqi Airways holds in Jordan.

YEMEN

Yemen’s president and the country’s most powerful tribal leader agree to end five days of urban gunbattles that killed at least 124 people and threatened to push the country into civil war. The battles began when President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s se-curity forces attacked the home of Sheik Sadeq al-Ahmar, a former ally who aban-doned the president and joined the protest-ers calling for his ouster. Armed tribesmen fought back and seized control of the Has-saba neighborhood of the capital, Sanaa. A tribal mediator says the sides have agreed to withdraw their forces from the neigh-borhood starting Sunday morning. An aid to al-Ahmar confirms the deal.

LIBYANATO warplanes strike Moammar Gadhafi’s compound in Tripoli, as the new rebel administration warns it

is fast running out of money because countries that promised financial aid have not come through. Nearly two dozen Libyan soldiers, including a col-

onel and other officers, have fled their country in two small boats and taken refuge in neighboring Tunisia.

SYRIA

Syrian activists call for renewed protests in honor of a 13-year-old boy who alleg-edly was tortured and killed by security forces. The main Facebook page for the protesters say the boy was “assassinat-ed by treachery.” The image of the child’s body has outraged Syrians since it was shown on YouTube.

EGYPTAn Egyptian judge fines Hosni Mubarak

and two other former officials $90 million for government-imposed telecommunica-tion disruptions during the popular upris-ing earlier this year. Internet and mobile phone services were cut for days when hundreds of thousands took to the streets in January to demand the president’s oust-er.

Moroccan activists slam music festival as corrupt

$1.5M in Iraqi Airways assets frozen in Jordan

Latest developments in Arab world’s unrest

YEMEN

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