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WASHINGTON (AP) — An attorney who volunteered to help Barack Obama improve his relationship with Muslim and Arab-Americans has resigned from the campaign amid questions about his connection to a fundamentalist imam.

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

On New Year's Day, Patricia Said stood at the door of a small house in a Hispanic neighborhood of Lewisville, pleading with her daughter Amina to come home. The girl cried and clung to her boyfriend, Eddie, a college student who lived in the house with his mother and sister. For a week, Amina, an 18-year-old senior at Lewisville High School, had been living a nightmare. Her father, Yaser Said, had pulled a gun on Christmas Eve and threatened to kill her because of her relationship with Eddie.

Rashid Khalidi is a 'respected' Palestinian' terrorist: a member of the PLO since the days it was officially lebeled a terrorist organization, he is now a professor at Columbia University (where else?), holding the Edward Said chair in Arab Studies. Said was also a member of the PLO. As it turns out, Khalidi and his wife are also good friends of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama. The company he keeps says alot about Barack Hussein Obama. But it says nothing positive to Israel's supporters.

Sheik Jamal Said stood before the packed mosque and worked the crowd like an auctioneer. Speaking Arabic, the prayer leader asked for a donation of $10,000. No one responded. He asked for $5,000, and three men raised their hands. < SNIP> The recipient of the worshipers' generosity was Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist accused by the U.S. government of aiding terrorists. And the prayer leader's passionate appeal is a reflection of the ascendancy of Muslim hard-liners at the mosque, one of the most outspoken and embattled in the U.S. The mosque did not become this way without a struggle. Relying...

What struck Jim Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president's office, was the seating area for visitors. "It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples." The vice president's office was furnished with a folding lawn chair and a chaise lounge. And so Wier, the CEO of lawn-equipment maker Simplicity, dressed in a suit, took a seat on the chaise lounge. "I sat forward, of course, with my legs off to the side. If you've ever sat in a lawn chair, well, they are lower than regular chairs. And I was on...

Christopher Hitchens is one of America's and the English speaking world's leading public intellectuals. He is the author of more than ten books, including, most recently, A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq (2003), Why Orwell Matters (2002), The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001), and Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001). He writes for leading American and British publications, including The London Review of Books, The New Left Review, Slate, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek International, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Washington Post. He is also a regular television and radio commentator. For many years,...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A U.N. report condemned Zimbabwe's government for destroying urban slums in a "disastrous venture" that has left 700,000 people without homes or jobs, and demanded that those responsible be punished, according to excerpts obtained late Thursday. The report, to be released Friday morning, said a further 2.4 million people have been affected in varying degrees by the countrywide campaign in which thousands of shantytowns, ramshackle markets and makeshift homes have been demolished. Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, has been "carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering," said the report's...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi scientist killed in the U.S. invasion and now linked by arms hunter David Kay to possible nuclear weapons research was working on an advanced gun, not atomic bombs, fellow physicists say. They and eyewitnesses also say Khalid Ibrahim Sa'id was killed not when he tried to "run a roadblock," as asserted by Kay, but when a U.S. tank crew blasted his civilian car without warning on an open street. These accounts of the physicist's research and death, provided by 10 Iraqis and supported on key points by U.N. arms inspectors, challenge a core element of...

SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands Mar 29, 2005 — Researchers want to excavate an old Japanese jail where aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator were rumored to have been detained before they vanished in 1937. The Historic Preservation Office of the Northern Mariana Islands has applied for a grant with the National Park Service to fund the excavation, hoping to solve the 67-year-old mystery of what became of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan. The Northern Mariana Islands, about 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii, were administered by Japan from 1914 to 1944 and are now a U.S. commonwealth. "In the past,...

Al-Zarqawi Said to Declare 'Fierce War' 13 minutes ago BAGHDAD, Iraq - A speaker purporting to be Iraq's most feared terror leader declared a "fierce war" on democracy and said in an audiotape posted Sunday on the Web that the Americans were using next weekend's Iraqi elections to install the Shiites in power. "We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," said the speaker, who identified himself as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of the al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq. "Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part...

More signs of Syria turn up in Iraq The Iraqi ambassador to Syria tells the Monitor that photos of high-ranking Syrian officials were found in Fallujah. By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor DAMASCUS, SYRIA - When US troops stormed the rebel-held city of Fallujah last month, they uncovered photos of senior Syrian officials that have further strained the already tense relations between Syria and Iraq, according to the Iraqi ambassador to Syria.Several captured insurgents were found in possession of the photographs, confirmation, according to Iraqi officials, that some elements in the Syrian regime - perhaps...

Kan. Woman Said to Show Off Stolen Baby 24 minutes ago By JOHN MILBURN, Associated Press Writer MELVERN, Kan. - A woman charged with killing an expectant mother and cutting the baby from her womb was showing the child off to people at a cafe and to her pastor hours before she was arrested, residents said Saturday. Lisa M. Montgomery, 36, was charged Friday with kidnapping resulting in murder and was expected to appear in federal court Monday. The baby, whose mother had been eight months pregnant, was in good condition. Hours before her arrest, Montgomery and her husband showed...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq (news - web sites)'s defense minister on Wednesday accused neighboring Iran and Syria of supporting terrorists in his country and charged that a senior Iraqi Shiite was leading a "pro-Iranian" coalition into next month's national elections. Concerns have been raised over rising Iranian influence in the political future of Iraq, where the majority Shiites are expected to dominate elections scheduled for Jan. 30. Campaigning for the vote began Wednesday. Hazem Shaalann, who has previously accused Tehran of interfering in Iraq's affairs, said that Iranian and Syrian intelligence agents, plus former operatives from Saddam Hussein (news...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Secrets, Donors and the Edward Said Chair Columbia University’s newly established Edward Said Chair in Middle East Studies is noteworthy for several reasons. The position is named for the recently deceased professor best known for his defense of Palestinian “resistence.” And Rashid Khalidi, an overt supporter of Palestinian violence and – according to a just-published biography of Yasir Arafat from Oxford University Press – a former PLO press spokesman[i], has joined Columbia to fill the post. But there is something even more objectionable about this chair: It is anonymously endowed and Columbia University – perhaps against the law – refuses...

BESLAN, Russia (AP) - Commandos stormed a school Friday in southern Russia and overcame separatist rebels holding hundreds of hostages as crying children, some naked and covered in blood, fled the building through explosions and gunfire. Health officials said more than 200 people died, the Interfax news agency reported. Ninety-five victims were identified - many of them children whose shattered, bloodied bodies were placed on lines of stretchers - and Interfax quoted unnamed sources in the regional Health Ministry as saying more than 200 people were killed by fire from the militants or died from their wounds. Hundreds of hostages...

Wednesday, August 11, 2004 The Last Night Alive In the 50s sci-fi horror movie Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a Professor Thurgood Elson is sent down in a diving bell to investigate the approach of a prehistoric rhedosaurus on the East Coast of the United States so that the Armed Forces can prepare for its defense. Momentarily forgetting his military mission, Professor Elson succumbs to his academic curiousity and delays having himself hoisted to safety while he continues to describe the morphological wonders of the monster until a break in the transmission informs the audience that he has left it too...

When Rashid Khalidi took over the newly established Edward Said Chair of Middle East Studies at Columbia University last fall, the appointment was generally viewed as an academic coup for the school, which had succeeded in wooing away a prominent Middle East expert from the University of Chicago, a longtime rival. But Khalidi soon became the target of an Internet campaign that questioned his patriotism. Conservative critics zeroed in on his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq and his public expressions of sympathy for the Palestinian cause. "Columbia vs. America," declared a story on Campus Watch, a Web site...

<p>THE HAGUE - Dutch mariniers in Iraq has found grenades of which the cargo is not clear. The ministry of defence in The Hague does not exclude that possibly talk is of grenades with a chemical or biological cargo.</p> <p>If that proves be this way, it the first time would be that has been found there in Iraq such weapons. It concerns ten artillery grenades which were discovered on 8 October in the province ash Samawah, the area where operate the mariniers. According to the zegsman the projectiles saw?anders there? from then normal and it concerns grenades?waarvan the cargo unclear is.</p>

NEW YORK -- Edward W. Said, a Columbia University professor, literary critic and leading spokesman in the United States for the Palestinian cause, has died, his editor at Knopf publishers said Thursday. He was 67. Said died at a New York hospital, said editor Shelly Wanger. He had suffered from leukemia at least since the early 1990s.

J. P. Morgan Chase has dismissed two investment bankers, one of whom was a managing director, after a fellow banker complained that they had sexually accosted a woman who worked with them, current and former employees at the company said this week. The two bankers who were dismissed, Palden Gyuimed Namgyal and Norman Gretzinger, made unwanted and inappropriate advances toward the woman in a bar, these people said. When the woman, a less-senior investment banker at J. P. Morgan, protested, another high-ranking investment banker who was there intervened, they said. He later reported the incident to the firm's personnel department,...

“A symbolic gesture of joy" What follows is the defense, the apology, by Edward Said, who went to Lebanon and threw a rock at an Israeli guard building over the boarder. He was roundly condemned for this act. This is the leading intellectual of MESA, advisers to the Clintons Administration, policy makers for 8 years?! MESA is still extorting funds from the government. CASTING A STONE: University Professor Edward Said aroused controversy in July when, during a visit to Lebanon, he was portrayed in a photograph hurling a stone toward the Israeli border. The photograph was distributed by the French...

Palestinians have seldom faced a worse, or a more seminal, moment, writes Edward Said. How, then, might it be grasped? Six distinct calls for Palestinian reform and elections are being uttered now: five of them are, for Palestinian purposes, both useless and irrelevant. Sharon wants reform as a way of further disabling Palestinian national life, that is, as an extension of his failed policy of constant intervention and destruction. He wants to be rid of Yasser Arafat, cut up the West Bank into fenced-in cantons, re-install an occupation authority -- preferably with some Palestinians helping out -- carry on with...

        Ed Said throwing rocks at IDF Few years ago     What Israel has doneby Edward Said Despite Israel's effort to restrict coverage of its extraordinarily destructive invasion of the West Bank's Palestinian towns and refugee camps, information and images have nevertheless seeped through. The Internet has provided hundreds of verbal as well as pictorial eyewitness reports, as has Arab and European TV coverage, most of it unavailable or blocked or spun out of existence from the mainstream US media. That evidence provides stunning proof of what Israel's campaign has actually (has always) been about: the...