Free Republic

He's an underdog candidate for President who needs all the help he can get against bigger-named, better-financed rivals. For former U.S. Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), that has meant embracing the leader of a the American Muslim Council (AMC), an organization with a history of defending Palestinian terrorists and whose founder is in prison after pleading guilty to violating anti-terror legislation. M. Ali Khan, a Chicago investment banker, has been the AMC's national director since 2003. Khan has helped organize at least two fundraisers for Edwards and, in a series of internet postings, described how he has reached the inner...

Former Sen. John Edward has been embracing the leader of the American Muslim Council (AMC), an organization with a history of defending Palestinian terrorists and whose founder is in prison after pleading guilty to violating anti-terror legislation. M. Ali Khan has helped organize at least two fundraisers for Edwards and, in a series of internet postings, described how he reached the inner sanctum of the former senator's campaign adviseors. Khan is listed by the Edwards campaign as a fundraising solicitor and he helped host at least two campaign fundraisers. AMC was founded in 1990 by Abdurahman Alamoudi. Alamoudi was arrested...

Movie Theatre Chain, AMC, gives student discounts, but none to our military members.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Three relatives of a man accused of belonging to an al-Qaida terror cell in the Buffalo suburb of Lackawanna were arrested Tuesday and charged with illegally operating a money transferring business. Investigators have been unable to trace any of the money to terrorist activities, said U.S. Attorney Michael Battle. Mohamed Albanna, 51, a leader in the area's Yemeni community and an uncle of a man still being hunted by U.S. authorities, was seized by Customs and Drug Enforcement Administration agents in the doorway of his Buffalo store, the Queen City Cigarettes and Candy Co. His younger brother,...

Sought-after al-Qaida suspect leaves traces in Lackawanna By LOU MICHEL and JERRY ZREMSKI News Staff Reporters 9/22/2002 Kamal Derwish cut a mysterious figure on his travels through Lackawanna. People remember little about the plump, pious visitor from the Middle East who prayed with young people in the local mosque. And he's more mysterious than ever, now that he's believed to be on the run in Yemen, a fugitive from U.S. justice and alleged to be the ringleader of what federal officials describe as al-Qaida's "Buffalo cell." Derwish, a 29-year-old Buffalo native of Yemeni descent, served as the link between the...

Queen City Cigarettes & Candy, a Clinton Street warehouse owned by food broker Mohamed T. Albanna, is one element of investigators' picture of a money-transmitting business that sent large sums to Yemen. A leader of Lackawanna's Yemeni-American community and two other men were in custody today on charges they operated an illegal money-transmitting business that sent funds from Western New York to Yemen. Mohamed T. Albanna, vice president of the American Muslim Council of Western New York and a frequent spokesman for the defendants known as the "Lackawanna Six," appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Hugh B. Scott on Tuesday after...

Man of the people - arrested By SANDRA TAN News Staff Reporter 12/18/2002 Mohamed T. Albanna, photographed in his Clinton Street store last July, is considered outspoken on issues crucial to Lackawanna. Business owner Andrea Haxton saw Mohamed T. Albanna several days a week. He was her main cigarette distributor and regularly dropped off boxes at her A&E Goods store on Ridge Road and Ingham Avenue on his way home from work. "He delivers them, we pay him, chit-chat, and he goes home," the Lackawanna business owner said. "We talk about politics all the time." Albanna came by Monday night...

Alec "the Bloviator" Baldwin has a new bosom buddy: Beltway Republican strategist Grover Norquist. The Bush-bashing actor-turned-activist and the Muslim vote-courting political organizer joined together at a Washington, D.C.-area conference last weekend to perpetuate bald lies about the Patriot Act and to oppose the "repressive" War on Terror (repressing terrorist suspects apparently being a bad thing). Baldwin and Norquist's panel, titled "Strange Bedfellows," was sponsored by the ultraliberal group People For the American Way. When PFAW head and panel participant Ralph Neas ranted about the lack of judicial and congressional oversight of the Justice Department's terror investigations, the audience...

Here is the schedule: Wed., Jun. 6 at 8:00 PM / EST Red Dawn Thu., Jun. 7 at 12:15 AM / EST Red Dawn Thu., Jun. 7 at 5:30 PM / EST Red Dawn Sat., Jun. 16 at 3:30 PM / EST

In a story unusual even for a soap opera and believed to be a television first, ABC's "All My Children" this week will introduce a transgender character who is beginning to make the transition from a man into a woman. The character, a flamboyant rock star known as Zarf, kisses the lesbian character Bianca and much drama ensues. The storyline begins with Thursday's episode of the daytime drama. There have been a handful of post-surgical transgender characters in television shows, including a college professor in the 2001 prime-time CBS series "The Education of Max Bickford" and a model in the...

Country music superstar Toby Keith greets Capt. Scott Leifker, a wounded warrior recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center, during a private pre-concert "meet and greet" at the AT&T Center in San Antonio Nov. 19. Leifker was one of 500 Soldiers who received tickets to the free concert for 14,000 Texas Ford truck owners. Photo by Cheryl Harrison More Images SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Army News Service, Nov. 21, 2006) - Country music superstar Toby Keith rocked the stage, and a few Soldiers' world, at a private concert Sunday for 14,000 Texas Ford truck owners and about 500 servicemembers at the...

An elite group of correction officers, cops and federal agents is closely monitoring suspected radicals at city jails to prevent them from recruiting angry and isolated prisoners into their fold. Authorities believe the jails, along with prisons across the nation, could become fertile recruiting grounds for homegrown jihadists who follow the teachings of Osama Bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists. Aware of the great risk, city correction bosses created the specialized intelligence unit on Rikers Island to stop fanatics before they can indoctrinate others. "We aggressively monitor all security risk groups," Martin Horn, who runs the city's Department of Correction,...

8/10/2006 - PHOENIX (AFPN) -- Nearly 90 Air Mobility Command Airmen participated in the 35th Annual Tuskegee Airmen National Convention here July 31 to Aug. 4, celebrating the history of the nation's first black combat pilots. The event was particularly memorable for one participant attending his first convention. "I found out after speaking to Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson that my great uncle, Lt. Vincent Mitchell, was a pilot with the 99th Pursuit Squadron," said Maj. Alex Cole, an Air Force Two pilot assigned to the 1st Airlift Squadron. Colonel Jefferson not only knew Lieutenant Mitchell, but also shared...

SAMI AL-ARIAN ADMITS CONSPIRACY IN PLEA AGREEMENT " There is no conspiracy to support terrorism ."  - Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for Tampa chapter of Council on American Islamic Relations From what I’ve been able to gather, there seems to be enough evidence to prove a web of conspiracy . Let’s have a look and see if that’s true! American Muslim Council (AMC)1. Former Spokesman: Faisal Gill.2. Founder: Abdurahman Muhammad Alamoudi.3. Former Director: Erik Vickers 1. Faisal Gill Former spokesman for the American Muslim Council (AMC) Former director of government affairs for the Islamic Free Market Institute (Islamic Institute) in Washington, D.C.,...

AMC: What makes a movie a 'classic'? You can actually sue a TV channel for sucking -- and win. That's the lesson of today's legal victory against AMC, in a breach of contract suit filed by Time Warner Cable (like EW.com, a division of Time Warner). Like some viewers who remember when AMC stood for ''American Movie Classics,'' the cable operator complained that AMC doesn't show classic movies much anymore. (These days, the channel just goes by the abbreviation ''AMC,'' as if to gloss over the word ''Classics,'' much like KFC, which doesn't want to remind anyone in our calorie-conscious...

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (AFPN) -- In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Air Mobility Command has moved thousands of military support people, civilian emergency responders and evacuees, and has delivered tons of emergency equipment and supplies supporting relief operations. To handle the increased air mobility operations into and out of the hurricane relief area, AMC has deployed three contingency response group elements to the region, each tailored to meet the needs of air mobility operations at several airfields in the Southern United States. CRGs are able to rapidly assess, open and sustain air mobility operations. Forty-six Airmen from the...

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (AFPN) -- The Tanker Airlift Control Center here started generating missions Air Mobility Command aircrews will fly supporting Hurricane Katrina relief operations in Louisiana and Mississippi. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, through Northern Command and U.S. Transportation Command, asked for airlift support to fly relief supplies to the stricken region, said Col. Jeff Franklin, the center controller working hurricane relief mission taskings. “We’ve already tasked two aeromedical evacuation airlift missions to fly from Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss., to (Lackland AFB) in San Antonio,” he said. “In addition, AMC has been tasked to...

The judge has ruled: "Look Who's Talking, Too," starring John Travolta and Kirstie Alley, just isn't a classic. After it changed its programming in 2002 to include more contemporary films, including movies like "Staying Alive" and the "Look Who's Talking" movies, the American Movie Classics channel was sued by Time Warner Cable for veering too far from its original format of classic movies. A ruling on July 8 by Judge Bernard J. Fried of New York State Supreme Court gives the Time Warner unit, which has 11 million subscribers, the green light to drop the station. A spokesman for Time...

The American Movie Classics channel runs too many films that are not classic enough, violating its contract with Time Warner Cable, a State Supreme Court justice has ruled. As a result, Justice Bernard Fried of State Supreme Court in Manhattan said Time Warner Cable, the second-biggest cable operator in the nation with 11 million subscribers, has the right to cancel its contract to carry AMC, which is owned by Cablevision Systems Corp. Under that 1993 contract, extended in 2000, AMC is largely limited to running films from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. But in 2000 AMC announced it was adding...

One year ago, I wrote a piece exposing radical Islam within Florida Atlantic University (FAU). My goal was twofold: [1] to bring awareness concerning a growing problem within FAU [2] to push the university to take action so that this problem ceases to exist. Unfortunately, only the first part of my goal was accomplished, as FAU is continuing to allow radicals on its campus, the latest being this Saturday'S (Jan.22, 2005) return engagement of potential co-conspirator to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Siraj Wahhaj. The Enemy Thrives at FAU In recent times, a fairly large list of...