Underpublicized threat deep in White House

FBI: Penetration by radical agents worse than thought

Infiltration of the federal government by members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood is worse than some have warned recently, says a former FBI special agent in Washington.

The agent confirmed that at least three operatives of the Egypt-based Brotherhood – whose credo is “Jihad is our way and death in the cause of Allah is our dream” – have penetrated the Obama administration.

The shocking charge was first leveled by Muslim reformer Tarek Fatah during a recent speech in Toronto.

“When someone says that there is penetration of jihadi Islamists within society, do not dismiss it as some right-wing, xenophobic, racist rant,” warned Fatah, a Canadian journalist.

“Today in the White House, there are three members of the Muslim Brotherhood that influence Obama’s policy,” he told the audience gathered for an IdeaCity conference. “One is Rashad Hassan, who is the American ambassador to the 52-nation Organization of Islamic (Conference).”

Fatah also named “Dalia Mogahed, who writes (Obama’s) speeches, who comes from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; and another woman, an academic, (who) was appointed in that circle.”

Former FBI special agent John Guandolo says Obama’s ties to agents for the Muslim Brotherhood are even more extensive.

“The level of penetration in the last three administrations is deep,” he said. “For this president, it even goes back to his campaign with Muslim Brotherhood folks working with him then.”

Equally alarming, the Brotherhood also has placed several operatives and sympathizers within key positions in Homeland Security and the U.S. military, notes Guandolo, a former Marine Corps officer.

The veteran federal agent says such infiltration threatens national security, because the U.S. leadership of the international Brotherhood has outlined a secret plan to “destroy” the U.S. and other Western governments “from within.”

After the 9/11 attacks, he says the FBI discovered the plan written in Arabic among documents seized from the basement of a prominent Brotherhood leader living in a Washington suburb.

Guandolo says the stated Muslim Brotherhood strategy for change “from within” includes the installation of loyal Brothers into political office.

President Obama’s top Muslim ambassador, Rashad Hussain, has raised suspicions. He is U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a powerful international group headquartered in Saudi Arabia and closely aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Before first joining the White House as a lawyer, Hussain regularly spoke to Brotherhood front groups and defended Brotherhood leaders like Sami al-Arian. Hussain at first denied defending the convicted terrorist, claiming he was misquoted, but then recanted after Politico.com produced a tape-recording of his remarks.

Recently, he has been overseas encouraging devotion to Islam, including in terror hotspots like Afghanistan.

In fact, Hussain has told Afghans the antidote to Islamic violence “is Islam itself.”

“I am of the opinion that one of the strongest tools that you can use to counter radicalization and violent extremism is Islam itself, because Islam rejects violent extremism,” he said during a recent speech in Kabul.

Hussain, a devout Muslim, says promotion of the Muslim faith is “key” to the administration’s strategy to turn Muslims away from violence.

“We see that as one of the key elements of a strategy to address this type of violence,” he said.

The strategy is at odds with what the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission recently recommended in their follow-up report on homegrown terror, “Assessing the Terrorist Threat: A Report of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Preparedness Group.”

The study found that Islam was motivating terrorists not just abroad, but inside America’s Muslim community. And it scolded U.S. leaders for pretending religion is not a factor in growing violence.

Still, Hussain insists: “When it comes to the problem of violent extremism, Islam is not the problem.”

Hussain helped draft Obama’s conciliatory Cairo speech to Muslims. Also helping with the president’s speeches and policies toward Muslims is Mogahed, whose pro-Islamist statements have been posted on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website, ikhwanweb.com.

Obama appointed the hijab-wearing Mogahed to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. On a British television program, Islam Channel, Mogahed defended Shariah law, the barbaric Islamic legal code that treats women as second-class citizens.

Muslim women actually “associate gender justice or justice for women with Shariah compliance,” she argued. “It is ‘only a small fraction’ that associate Shariah with ‘oppression of women.'”

She added that Muslims should work to integrate Islamic law into public law.

Another Brotherhood-tied figure influencing the White House is Azizah al-Hibri.

Obama this June appointed her to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. A Muslim professor, al-Hibri is also the granddaughter of a sheik, who claims the Saudi criminal justice system is more moral than the American one because it accepts blood money from murderers.

Al-Hibri herself has proclaimed: “Islamic fiqh (law) is deeper and better than Western codes of law.”

She served on the advisory board of the American Muslim Council and made joint appearances with its leader Abdurahman Alamoudi. Now defunct, the AMC was a front group for the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, and Alamoudi was the Brotherhood’s top leader in America. He is now behind bars as one of al-Qaida’s top fundraisers in America.

Al-Hibri has also made appearances at Islamic Society of North America conferences. The Justice Department says ISNA is a Brotherhood front and recently named the group an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to provide material support to Hamas terrorists.

Guandolo identified several other Brotherhood-connected agents of influence – all of whom are just as politically savvy and moderate sounding – who have worked their way into government positions, including:

• Arif Alikhan, who was assistant Homeland Security secretary for policy development and is now a distinguished visiting professor of homeland security and counterterrorism at the National Defense University.
• Syrian-born Kareem Shora, who is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s senior policy adviser.
• Navy Cmdr. Youssef Aboul-Enein and Jocelyne Cesari, a Muslim convert who previously worked with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, both of whom teach at colleges within the National Defense University.

Guandolo blames the advances Brotherhood figures on political correctness and lax vetting at government agencies.

Even at the FBI, he notes, an Iranian-born Muslim has taken over the agency’s weapons of mass destruction program.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad shakes hands with intern Chris Gaubatz, aka David Marshall, at CAIR’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 2008

Stung by workplace discrimination lawsuits by Arab and Muslim employees, the FBI has come under pressure to hire more Arab and Muslim agents and language specialists and promote existing ones, while clearing them for higher security levels, according the best-selling book “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America.”

The book cites internal FBI records showing the agency has been sued by no fewer than 14 Arab and Muslim employees since 9/11. Some of the lawsuits have been solicited or aided by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, another Muslim Brotherhood front group. The FBI in 2008 cut off formal outreach with CAIR and its branch offices.

“This is happening as we remain silent. And I say that as a liberal Democrat who worked and campaigned for Barack Obama,” said Fatah, a Pakistan-born journalist and activist who founded the moderate Muslim Canadian Congress to fight the spread of “Islamofascism.”

“Muslim Mafia” also has prompted a lawsuit from CAIR over the acquisition by the authors of CAIR documents.

In the lawsuit, CAIR, a self-described Muslim civil-rights group, does not defend itself against the book’s claims, and the FBI has seized the CAIR material from the Washington law office of one of the attorneys for the authors. A previous filing in the case revealed a federal grand jury is investigating CAIR for possible violation of laws that ban financial dealings with terrorist groups or countries under U.S. sanctions.

As WND reported, CAIR’s complaint seeks to expunge all copies of “Muslim Mafia” in an attempt, according to defense lawyers, to eliminate evidence that could lead to criminal prosecution.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The CAIR legal attack on WND’s author is far from over. WND needs your help in supporting the defense of “Muslim Mafia” co-author P. David Gaubatz, as well as his investigator son Chris, against CAIR’s lawsuit. The book’s revelations have led to formal congressional demands for three different federal investigations of CAIR. In the meantime, however, someone has to defend these two courageous investigators who have, at great personal risk, revealed so much about this dangerous group. Although WND has procured the best First Amendment attorneys in the country for their defense, we can’t do it without your help. Please donate to WND’s Legal Defense Fund now.

Original Article

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The Public Has Rejected the Democratic Agenda

By Victor Davis Hanson

Suddenly, liberal op-ed writers are trashing — even lampooning — Barack Obama as a one-term president (“one and done”). Centrist Democrats up for reelection in 2012 openly worry about inviting a kindred president into their districts, lest the new pariah lose them votes.

Left-wing think tanks, environmentalists, and academics vent their anger against Obama for supposedly being too soft on Republicans and too ready to compromise with right-wingers. But what really has caused the left-wing falling-out, less than three years after the hope-and-change crush on Barack Obama?

For now, it’s the polls.

Obama’s popularity has plummeted to little more than 40 percent approval. Suddenly, Democrats worry that the public anger could be contagious. It might infect them as well — in the way a sinking George W. Bush hurt congressional Republicans up for reelection in 2006.

Yet the Left cannot fairly blame Obama. After all, he rammed through on a strictly partisan vote the century-old liberal dream of a federal takeover of health care — something that Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton never could do. Keynesians never dreamed that a president could actually borrow $5 trillion for domestic spending in less than three years.

The Obama administration even tried to shut down a brand-new Boeing aircraft plant on the shaky argument that the company might thereby be hiring fewer union workers somewhere else. For environmentalists, Obama kept oil producers out of new fields in Alaska, the American West, the Gulf, and other offshore sites. Hundreds of billions in borrowed federal money went to failed “wind and solar” plants in an effort to jump-start “millions of green jobs.”

The Obama revolution that occurred under the radar was even more insidious. Open-borders activists were promised that the government would not bother illegal aliens unless they were wanted for felonies. Never before has the United States joined a foreign government in suing one of its own states — in the way that the Justice Department and Mexico have either filed or joined suits seeking to overturn Arizona’s immigration law.

From January 2009 through 2010, Obama advanced the liberal dream with a passion not seen since the New Deal days of Franklin Roosevelt. He bulldozed all opposition and rammed through most of what he wanted with the help of a Democratic Congress: Obamacare, record borrowing, record spending, and hundreds of hard-left presidential appointees and judges.

Far from being namby-pamby, Obama has gone after opponents like no president since Richard Nixon. He urged Hispanics to “punish our enemies.” He called his political opponents “hostage takers.” The affluent were lumped together with the super-rich and derided as “millionaires and billionaires,” “corporate-jet owners,” and “fat cat” bankers. His supporters in unions and the Congressional Black Caucus freely blasted the Tea Party with slurs — with the unspoken assurance that the president’s constant calls for civility certainly did not apply to them.

Critics may lampoon Obama’s use of a teleprompter, but he still uses it to good effect in his near-daily speeches. Obama is a far better megaphone for left-wing policies than was the lackluster Jimmy Carter, the pompous Al Gore, or the condescending John Kerry. He easily outshines the wooden Harry Reid and the polarizing Nancy Pelosi. Compared with Obama and his smoothness, an often gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden can seem a liability. Obama is as charismatic as “I feel your pain” Bill Clinton — as we saw in 2008, when Obama destroyed the primary challenge of Hillary Clinton.

So the Left cannot really complain that Obama either betrayed the cause or proved particularly inept in advancing it. Instead, what Obama’s supporters are mad about is that the public is boiling over chronic 9 percent unemployment, a comatose housing market, escalating food and fuel prices, near-nonexistent economic growth, a gyrating stock market, record deficits, $16 trillion in aggregate debt, and a historic credit downgrading. And voters are not just mad, but are blaming these hard times on the liberal Obama agenda of more regulations, more federal spending, more borrowing, more talk of taxes, and more “stimulus” programs.

A mostly moderate-to-conservative public has concluded that it does not like the new liberal agenda. After three years, it believes that the big government/big borrowing medicine made the inherited illness far worse. Voters may or may not like Obama, but they surely do not like what he is still trying to do.

In response, the Left needs a sacrificial lamb. So it has nonsensically turned with a fury on Obama as if he were culpable for pushing through the Left’s own agenda. If Democrats do not blame the public’s anger on their once-beloved messenger, then they are left only with their message itself. And that is something they simply cannot accept.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of “A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.” You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

© 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

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Croatia: Viktor Lenac to Convert SHCV Sampson into Crane and Pipelay Vessel

Viktor Lenac Shipyard has been recently awarded a contract for the conversion of the vessel SHCV “SAMPSON” (managed by Cyprus’s „VShips“ and Great Britain’s „Zafiro Marine“) by “CARVAL INVESTORS”, a leading global alternative investment manager.

The existing vessel is an offshore gas and oil field installation vessel, built in 2010. She is 180 m long and 32 m wide, carrying a crane of 1.600 ton capacity. “SAMPSON” will be converted into a crane and pipelay vessel, one more conversion on Viktor Lenac’s respectable reference list of complex projects in conversion and offshore among which Helix Producer I, Seminole, Kommandor 3000 and others, establishing its position as one of the few specialized shipyards for ship conversions and gas platform construction in the entire region of the Mediterranean.

Six new Diesel generators (2200 kW each) will be installed in two independent engine rooms. New ship systems will be installed with more than 40 tons of piping. Two new thrusters will be installed i.w.o. existing fresh water tanks. HiPAP for dynamic positioning will be relocated in newly built structural trunks. New A&R winch room will be built and outfitted i.w.o. existing hold no.1.

Complete pipe laying equipment (tensioners, track supports, conveyors, pipe loader etc.) will be installed with hydraulic systems on main deck. A new pipe lay tunnel (300 t) and A-frame structure (276 t) will be built and installed. A new stinger structure (390 t) for laying offshore pipelines will be built.

The existing ship systems will be modified to accommodate new equipment, propulsion and power generation.

Two engine rooms, two switchboard rooms and two thruster rooms will be outfitted and HVAC system will be installed in new ship spaces.

More than 150 km of cables will be installed in total.

The superstructure will undergo considerable modification including gym, sauna, swimming pool etc.

Original Article

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Russia: Putin Becomes Guardian of Seismic Vessel Vyacheslav Tikhonov

Polarcus Limited announced that the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, has assumed the role of Guardian to the seismic vessel Vyacheslav Tikhonov, formerly POLARCUS SELMA, during a naming ceremony held last week in the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi.

The ultra-modern seismic vessel Vyacheslav Tikhonov is on a five year Bareboat Charter to OAO Sovcomflot (SCF) of Russia, announced by Polarcus on 11 August 2011.

Vyacheslav Tikhonov is the same class of vessel as POLARCUS SAMUR, an ultra-modern and Arctic-ready 3D seismic vessel of the ULSTEIN SX133 X-BOW design capable of towing both conventional and wide tow spreads. The vessel has an overall length of 84.2m and a beam of 17m. Vyacheslav Tikhonov has a maximum speed of 17 knots and will be capable of deploying up to 8 streamers each of 6,000m length, or 6 streamers each of 8,000m length, with lateral streamer separations of between 25 and 200 meters.

Original Article