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US judge orders Chinese Muslims at Guantanamo freed 07 Oct 2008 16:40:00 GMT Source: Reuters WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the release in the United States of 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, a landmark ruling that dealt a major setback to the Bush administration. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina read his ruling from the bench at a hearing to consider the appeals by the members of the Uighur ethnic group, who are seeking their release from the military prison and and asking to come...

BEIJING, Nov. 28 -- China on Friday executed a man convicted of passing sensitive military and political information to Taiwan a day after notifying his relatives through diplomatic channels that they would have a second chance to visit him, his daughter said. Austrian Deputy Ambassador Stefan Scholz relayed the news of the execution late Friday afternoon to the family of Wo Weihan, 60, according to Wo's daughter Ran Chen. Chen is an Austrian citizen and had been appealing for clemency through diplomatic channels since arriving in Beijing on Monday. She said she had been told her father was executed by...

A New York Times reporter has escaped from his Taliban captors after being held for seven months in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the newspaper reported on its website on Saturday. David Rohde, together with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal, were abducted on November 10 outside Kabul.

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban, escaped Friday night and made his way to freedom after more than seven months of captivity in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until now, the kidnapping has been kept quiet by The Times and other media organizations out of concern for the men’s safety.

Edra Denise Blixseth, age 55, is tiny, barely 5 feet 3, but she is at the center of a huge financial mess. According to personal bankruptcy papers her lawyer filed in March, she owes $500 million to $1 billion and has assets of barely half that, almost none of them liquid. Earlier this month, the court approved the sale of one of her most prized possessions - the private ski resort in Big Sky, Mont., known as the Yellowstone Club - to the private-equity firm of one of its members for $115 million. Just a year ago, that same buyer,...

BILLINGS, Mont. – Bankruptcy Court documents show Montana's exclusive Yellowstone Club resort for the ultra-rich owes more than $343 million to creditors ranging from banks to local contractors. The residential club, which includes a members-only ski hill on 13,400 acres in the Gallatin Mountains, filed for federal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday, along with three related companies. The move followed what critics described as a spending spree in recent years by the club's founders, Tim and Edra Blixseth, even as the luxury real estate market stagnated. That included the purchase of at least four foreign estates and fleets of...

As is now well known, Barack Obama’s new Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, told a Wall Street Journal conference last week that, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” He added, his eye on the worsening financial environment, that “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” President-elect Obama appears to be taking the crisis strategy to heart. Announcing his economic team yesterday, Mr. Obama spoke of an economic crisis of “historic proportions” that requires immediate response: “If we do not act swiftly and boldly, most experts believe we...

[Subtitle: “I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes.]The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways,...

...During NATO's 2008 summit in Bucharest, Romania, the issue was discussed and, after opposition from France and Germany, a decision was made to offer neither Ukraine nor Georgia a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) — essentially a path for Ukraine to receive membership — at that moment. Vague promises of NATO membership in the future were made, but the United States later appeared to drop its support for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Russia's brief war with Georgia in August 2008 helped underscore the decision's importance, but NATO and Ukraine held further talks in December. Again, however, no specific...

Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials. Craig is intimately familiar with the president-elect’s record because he played the role of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in debate preparations. The officials said Obama has settled on Craig but were not sure when the appointment would be announced. The choice gives the president-elect both experience and loyalty. During the primaries, Craig was an early Clinton alumni defector to Obama. Columnist Robert D. Novak reported back in the winter of 2007 that...

From the Investigative Project on Terrorism:Previously on the IPT blog we stressed the need for the Defense Department's Islamic Chaplaincy program to adopt a stricter vetting process, citing historically radical imams who have served in the program. Now the same can be said for the chaplaincy program for the Illinois State Police. The Mosque Foundation website reports that Sheikh Kifah Mustapha recently completed a four day training session in Springfield, Illinois to become the first certified Muslim chaplain for the Illinois State Police. Mustapha's name appears on a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Hamas financing...

NOTE: Excerpting does not do the article justice. Read the whole thing. # SNIPPET: "He was a fundraiser for a group convicted of providing material support to Hamas, yet Kifah Mustapha recently received tours of secure FBI facilities in and around Washington. Mustapha's two-day trip earlier this month was arranged by the FBI's Chicago office, whose officials escorted Mustapha and about two dozen others on tours of the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI facility in Quantico, Virginia and FBI headquarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. A news report noted that Mustapha "asked some of the most pointed questions" during...

Watching Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s erratic behavior administering the federal “Troubled Asset Relief Program” (TARP) is a dizzying, if not sickening, proposition for consumers, taxpayers, and investors alike. -- In a press conference last Wednesday, Hank Paulson announced a change in the TARP, saying that the plan would now center around capital injections into banks rather than the purchase of distressed assets (bad mortgages or securities which the market is pricing below a “fair” value), which was the fundamental purpose of the TARP at its creation. -- On October 27, White House Spokesman Dana Perino said, “It's possible that some...

Oct 13,2008 The Nation -- The elections in Iran are nearly a year away, but it's encouraging to see the emerging possibility of a new bid for the presidency by former President Mohammad Khatami. Last week, he hinted that he's considering running against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the nutball whose support lies mainly in the paramilitary Basij force and elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Can Khatami ju-jitsu the all-powerful Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei and his election-rigging Guardian Council? Can Khatami loom so large that even Khamenei might choose to support him over Ahmadinejad? Might Khamenei decide to back Khatami as...

Mike Allen reported over the weekend that "Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton's impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by resident-elect Barack Obama". Believe it or not, the time Craig spent shilling for Clinton may have been his most honorable days of work ... In the early 1980s, [Craig] was an attorney for John Hinckley, the man who shot President Reagan and three others. Craig helped put together an insanity defense that led to Hinckley's acquittal. Nine years later, he advised Ted Kennedy in the Palm Beach rape case involving the senator...

Only days before signing an agreement with President-elect Barack Obama in 2008, Clinton Foundation, officials got a blistering internal review saying the controversial charity “must act immediately to bring the foundation into compliance with the law and standards that govern not-for-profits …” The review pointed to a high-ranking but unnamed foundation executive who was “being paid by [fomer President Clinton], the government and the foundation” who “allowed the foundation to host what may have been (or may have been viewed as) a political event, apparently without official pre-approval from the foundation’s legal department and without regard, before the fact, to...

From:john.podesta@gmail.com To: r_m_gates@att.net Date: 2008-11-16 18:51 Subject: Re: Contact Information Thx. ------Original Message------ From: Bob Gates To: John.Podesta@gmail.com Sent: Nov 16, 2008 3:42 PM Subject: Contact Information John, If you or anyone needs to contact me or talk with me privately during business hours, you can reach me through my personal e-mail at r_m_gates@att.net (there is an underscore -- r_m_ -- after the r and m in place of a period. I offer that because you indicated you had tried unsuccessfully to reach me by e-mail: the underscores in the address may not have come through in my initial e-mail...

November 2, 2008 To: Senator Obama From: Transition Economic Team Subject: Participation in G20 Meeting Under pressure from President Sarkozy and some other European leaders, President Bush has called the leaders of the G20 countries to Washington for a meeting on November 15 to discuss the international financial crisis. There has been speculation that the President-elect will be invited, though the White House official who informed the campaign of Bush’s intention to convene the meeting did not say such an invitation would be extended. Because an invitation, should one be forthcoming, would presumably be made soon after the election, we...

An email released by WikiLeaks on Thursday provides new insight into Hillary Clinton’s carelessness with sensitive information in her emails and shows she was warned by close confidants to be more cautious — even long after leaving the State Department. WikiLeaks released a 2014 email conversation between Clinton and her current campaign Chairman John Podesta about the tactical situation in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. In what until today was the latest available email in the chain, Clinton stated that "there may be opportunities as the Iraqi piece improves." She also asked Podesta if he had "any idea...

Oh the shame of it all. Last month, 1,300 pro-Palestinian activists from the US and Europe came to the region in the name of peace and social justice to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. Led by the self-declared feminist, antiwar group Code Pink, the demonstrators' plan was to enter Gaza from the Egyptian border at Rafah and deliver "humanitarian aid" to the Hamas terrorist organization. But it was not to be. Led by Code Pink founder and California Democratic fund-raiser Jodie Evans, the demonstrators were not welcomed by Egyptian authorities. Many were surrounded by riot police and...