A migraine headache is a form of vascular headache. Migraine headache is caused by vasodilatation (enlargement of blood vessels) that causes the release of chemicals from nerve fibers that coil around the large arteries of the brain. Enlargement of these blood vessels stretches the nerves that coil around them and causes the nerves to release chemicals. The chemicals cause inflammation, pain, and further enlargement of the artery. The increasing enlargement of the arteries magnifies the pain.

Migraine attacks commonly activate the sympathetic nervous system in the body. The sympathetic nervous system is often thought of as the part of the nervous system that controls primitive responses to stress and pain, the so-called “fight or flight” response, and this activation causes many of the symptoms associated with migraine attacks; for example, the increased sympathetic nervous activity in the intestine causes nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

•    Sympathetic activity also delays emptying of the stomach into the small intestine and thereby prevents oral medications from entering the intestine and being absorbed.
•    The impaired absorption of oral medications is a common reason for the ineffectiveness of medications taken to treat migraine headaches.
•    The increased sympathetic activity also decreases the circulation of blood, and this leads to pallor of the skin as well as cold hands and feet.
•    The increased sympathetic activity also contributes to the sensitivity to light and sound sensitivity as well as blurred vision.

Migraine afflicts 28 million Americans, with females suffering more frequently (17%) than males (6%). Missed work and lost productivity from migraine create a significant public burden. Nevertheless, migraine still remains largely underdiagnosed and undertreated. Less than half of individuals with migraine are diagnosed by their doctors.

Migraine is a chronic condition with recurrent attacks. Most (but not all) migraine attacks are associated with headaches.

•    Migraine headaches usually are described as an intense, throbbing or pounding pain that involves one temple. (Sometimes the pain is located in the forehead, around the eye, or at the back of the head).
•    The pain usually is unilateral (on one side of the head), although about a third of the time the pain is bilateral (on both sides of the head).
•    The unilateral headaches typically change sides from one attack to the next. (In fact, unilateral headaches that always occur on the same side should alert the doctor to consider a secondary headache, for example, one caused by a brain tumor).
•    A migraine headache usually is aggravated by daily activities such as walking upstairs.
•    Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, facial pallor, cold hands, cold feet, and sensitivity to light and sound commonly accompany migraine headaches. As a result of this sensitivity to light and sound, migraine sufferers usually prefer to lie in a quiet, dark room during an attack. A typical attack lasts between 4 and 72 hours.

An estimated 40%-60% of migraine attacks are preceded by premonitory (warning) symptoms lasting hours to days. The symptoms may include:

•    sleepiness,
•    irritability,
•    fatigue,
•    depression or euphoria,
•    yawning, and
•    cravings for sweet or salty foods.

Patients and their family members usually know that when they observe these warning symptoms that a migraine attack is beginning.

Migraine aura

An estimated 20% of migraine headaches are associated with an aura. Usually, the aura precedes the headache, although occasionally it may occur simultaneously with the headache. The most common auras are:

1.    flashing, brightly colored lights in a zigzag pattern (referred to as fortification spectra), usually starting in the middle of the visual field and progressing outward; and
2.    a hole (scotoma) in the visual field, also known as a blind spot.

Some elderly migraine sufferers may experience only the visual aura without the headache. A less common aura consists of pins-and-needles sensations in the hand and the arm on one side of the body or pins-and-needles sensations around the mouth and the nose on the same side. Other auras include auditory (hearing) hallucinations and abnormal tastes and smells.

For approximately 24 hours after a migraine attack, the migraine sufferer may feel drained of energy and may experience a low-grade headache along with sensitivity to light and sound. Unfortunately, some sufferers may have recurrences of the headache during this period.

Complicated migraines are migraines that are accompanied by neurological dysfunction. The part of the body that is affected by the dysfunction is determined by the part of the brain that is responsible for the headache.

Vertebrobasilar migraines are characterized by dysfunction of the brainstem (the lower part of the brain that is responsible for automatic activities like consciousness and balance).
The symptoms of vertebrobasilar migraines include:

•    fainting as an aura,
•    vertigo (dizziness in which the environment seems to be spinning), and
•    double vision.

Hemiplegic migraines are characterized by:

•    paralysis or weakness of one side of the body,
•    mimicking a stroke.

The paralysis or weakness is usually temporary, but sometimes it can last for days.

Retinal, or ocular, migraines are rare attacks characterized by repeated instances of scotomata (blind spots) or blindness on one side, lasting less than an hour, that can be associated with headache. Irreversible vision loss can be a complication of this rare form of migraine.

How is a migraine headache diagnosed?

Migraine headaches are usually diagnosed when the symptoms described previously are present. Migraine generally begins in childhood to early adulthood. While migraines can first occur in an individual beyond the age of fifty, advancing age makes other types of headaches more likely. A family history usually is present, suggesting a genetic predisposition in migraine sufferers. The examination of individuals with migraine attacks usually is normal.

Patients with the first headache ever, worst headache ever, a significant change in the characteristics of headache or an association of the headache with nervous system symptoms, like visual or hearing or sensory loss, may require additional tests to exclude diseases other than migraine. The tests may include blood testing, brain scanning (either CT or MRI), and a spinal tap.

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From the Phoenix Program to Predator Drones

By Doug Noble

“A broad-gauged program of targeted assassination has now displaced counterinsurgency as the prevailing expression of the American way of war.”

–Andrew Bacevich

This spring the US drone killing program has come out of the closet. Attorney General Eric Holder publicly defended the drone killing of an American citizen , while Obama’s counter terrorism czar John Brennan publicly explained and justified the target killing program . And a New York Times article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane chronicled Obama’s personal role in vetting a secret “Kill List.”

This striking new transparency, the official acknowledgment for the first time of a broad-based US assassination and targeted killing program, has resulted from the unprecedented and controversial visibility of drone warfare. Drones now make news every day, and those of us who have been protesting their use for years have heightened their visibility in the public eye, forcing official acknowledgment and fostering worldwide scrutiny.  This new scrutiny focuses not only on drone use but also, and perhaps more importantly, on the targeted killing itself – and the “kill lists” that make them possible.

This new exposure has set off a firestorm of reaction around the globe. Chris Woods of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism told Democracy Now! “The kill list got really heavy coverage … newspapers have all expressed significant concern about the existence of the kill list, the idea of this level of executive power.”   A Washington Post editorial noted that “No president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.” Becker and Shane of the Times pronounced Obama’s role “without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war …”  And former president Jimmy Carter insisted,  in a recent editorial in The New York Times, “We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.”

Really?

In fact, US assassination and targeted killing, with presidential approval, has been going on covertly for at least half a century. Ironically, all this drone killing now offers us a  new opportunity: to pry open the Pandora’s box hiding long-held secrets of covert US assassination and targeted killing, and to expose them to the light of day. What we would find is that the only things new in the latest, more publicized revelations about kill lists and assassinations are the use of drones, the president’s hands-on approach in vetting targets, and the global scope of the drone killing.

Those of us in the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones, Code Pink and other groups protesting US drones for years have correctly focused on the use of drones as illegal, immoral and strategically counterproductive. We have abhorred the schizophrenic ease of remote killing, the uniquely frightening horror of a drone strike, and the unavoidable (even intentional) killing of countless civilian “terrorist suspects” in “signature strikes.” We have also warned of the proliferation of drones in countries around the globe and of their procurement by US police forces and border patrols, for surveillance and “non-lethal” targeting.

But drones are not the only, or even the most important, concern. It’s the targeted killing itself, past and present. In this article I start to unravel what the latest demands for transparency should lead us to investigate fully: the fifty year history of US assassination and targeted killing that has resulted, quite directly, in the present moment. Those who are mortified by the latest revelations of Obama’s kill list have much to learn from a more comprehensive, historical perspective on US killing around the globe.  Who knows: Perhaps someone in Congress might even be prodded to do what Senators Fulbright and Church did in years past: hold hearings on this continuing execration taking place in our name. Until then, what follows is an introduction to this ongoing horror story.

Section 1 of this article briefly reviews the lethal history of the US Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the original source of subsequent US counter terrorist tactics and strategies.  Section 2 revisits briefly the well-worn history of US kill lists and assassinations in Latin American countries, followed by the somewhat less-well-known history of US kill lists and assassinations in countries on other continents. Section 3 traces the direct legacy of Phoenix, even its explicit resurrection by the key architects of the US targeted killing programs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a growing number of “countries we are not at war with.”

One point of clarification and definition. It is well known that in recent history the US has orchestrated assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, on major world leaders. Examples include: Lumumba under Eisenhower, Castro and Diem under Kennedy, Gaddhafi under Reagan, Saddam Hussein under Bush, and Allende under Nixon.  The term “assassination” is typically restricted to such killings of political leaders, and President Ford’s executive order banning assassination applies only to the assassination of foreign heads of state. The focus of this article is different. Here we discuss the US-generated kill lists used over the last half century, under direct presidential authority, for the targeted killing of thousands of civilians suspected of being or harboring terrorists/ insurgents, from Vietnam to Guatemala, from Indonesia to Iraq, right up to the present day.

The Phoenix Program

The US Phoenix Program was a secret, large scale counter terrorist effort in Vietnam. Developed in 1967 by the CIA, the Phoenix Program, called Phung Hoang by the Vietnamese, aimed a concerted effort to “neutralize” the Vietcong Infrastructure (VCI) consisting of South Vietnamese civilians suspected of supporting North Vietnamese or Viet Cong soldiers. The euphemism “neutralize” meant to kill or detain indefinitely. Then CIA Director William Colby, while insisting in 1971 Congressional hearings that “the Phoenix program is not a program of assassination,” nonetheless conceded that Phoenix operations killed over 20,000 people between 1967 and 1972.

Phoenix targeted civilians, not soldiers. Operations were carried out by “hunter-killer teams” consisting both of US Green Berets and Navy Seals and by South Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), units of mercenaries set up for assassination and “counter terror.” A Newsweek article in January 1970 described Phoenix as “a highly secret and unconventional operation that counters VC terror with terror of its own.”  Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post reported Phoenix being called “an instrument of mass political murder…sort of Vietnamese Murder Inc.,” designed to terrorize the civilian population into submission.”

Until 1970 the computerized VCI blacklist was a unilateral American operation. After the devastating 1968 Tet offensive, South Vietnamese President Thieu declared: “The VCI must be eliminated…and will be defeated by the Phoenix program.” Phoenix became a ruthless “bounty hunting” program to eliminate the opposition. The US and South Vietnamese created a list of tens of thousands of suspects for assassination. These names were centralized and distributed to Phoenix coordinators. From 1965-68 U.S. and Saigon intelligence services maintained an active list of Viet Cong cadre marked for assassination. The program for 1969 called for “neutralizing” 1800 a month.

The VCI blacklist became corrupted by officers inserting their personal enemies’ names to get even. Due process was nonexistent.  Names supplied by anonymous informers showed up on blacklists. CIA Director Colby admitted in 1971 that the blacklists had been “inaccurate.” Few senior VCI leaders were caught in the Phoenix net. Instead its victims were typically innocent civilians. A Pentagon-contract study found that, between 1970 and 1971, ninety-seven per cent of the Vietcong targeted by the Phoenix Program were of negligible importance. By 1973, Phoenix generated 300,000 political prisoners in South Vietnam. Military operations such as My Lai used Phoenix intelligence; in fact, the My Lai massacre, hardly an isolated incident, was itself a Phoenix operation.

Apologists  have offered rationales for Phoenix that sound eerily similar to those used to defend current drone attacks. Phoenix was typically referred to as a “scalpel” replacing the “bludgeon” of search and destroy, aerial bombardment or artillery barrages. Alternatively, it was called a precision “rifle shot rather than a shotgun approach to target key political leaders … and activists in VCI.” Military historian Dale Andrade explains, “Both SEALS and PRUs killed many VCI guerrillas – that was war. They also inevitably killed innocent civilians – that was regrettable….but operations were much more discerning than the massive affairs launched by conventional …forces. That fact was often lost in the rhetoric of assassination and murder …”

Phoenix was created, organized, and funded by the CIA. Quotas were set by Americans. Informers were paid with US funds. The national system of identifying suspects, the elaboration of numerical goals and their use as measures of merit, was designed and funded by Americans. One former US Phoenix soldier conceded, “It was “heinous,” far worse than the things attributed to it.”

Kill Lists from Phoenix to Latin America

The US intelligence community formalized the lessons of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam by commissioning Project X, the Army’s top-secret program for transmitting Vietnam’s lessons to South America. By the mid-1970s, the Project X materials were going to armies all over the world. These were textbooks for global counterinsurgency and terror warfare. These included a murder manual, “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare,” which openly instructed in the assassination of public officials, and was distributed to the Nicaraguan Contras. Another manual, “Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual,” was used widely in Honduran counterterrorism efforts.

Use of the Project X material was temporarily suspended by Congress and the Carter administration for probable human rights violations, but the program was restored by the Reagan administration in 1982. By the mid-1980s, according to one detailed history, “counterguerrilla operations in Colombia and Central America would thus bear an eerie but explicable resemblance to South Vietnam.”

What follows is a brief sketch of the widespread application of  US-promulgated Phoenix-derived  reigns of terror, kill lists, and death squads throughout Latin America and beyond. Much of this is familiar territory to many activists and scholars, and is merely the tip of the iceberg, but it merits review as a backdrop for the current context of kill lists and targeted assassination.

US Kill Lists and Assassination in Latin America

The U.S. Army’s School of Americas (SOA), started in 1946, trained mass murderers and orchestrated coups in Peru, Panama, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. The SOA trained more than 61,000 Latin American officers implicated in widespread slaughter of civilian populations across Latin America. From 1966-1976 the SOA trained hundreds of Latin American officers in Phoenix-derived methods. Between 1989-1991 the SOA issued almost 700 copies of Project X handbooks to at least ten Latin American countries, including Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras. In 2001, SOA was renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), but peace activists know it as School of Assassins.

The CIA trained assassination groups such as Halcones in Mexico, the Mano Blanca in Guatemala, and the Escuadron de la Muerte in Brazil. In South America, in 1970-79, Operation Condor, the code-name for collection, exchange and storage of intelligence, was established among intelligence services in South America to eradicate Marxist activities. Operation Condor promoted joint operations including assassination against targets in member countries. In Central America, the CIA-supported death toll under the Reagan presidency alone exceeded 150,000. The CIA set up Ansesal and other networks of terror in El Salvador, Guatemala (Ansegat) and pre-Sandinista Nicaragua (Ansenic).

Honduran death squads were active through the 1980s, the most infamous of which was Battalion 3–16, which assassinated hundreds of people, including teachers, politicians, and union leaders. Battalion 316 received substantial CIA support and training, and at least 19 members graduated from the School of the Americas.

In Colombia, about 20,000 people were killed since 1986 and much of U.S. aid for counternarcotics was diverted to what Amnesty International labeled “one of the worst killing fields.” The US State Department also supported the Colombian army in creating a database of subversives, terrorists and drug dealers.

In Bolivia, Amnesty International reported that from 1966-68 between 3,000 and 8,000 people were killed by death squads. The CIA supplied names of U.S. and other foreign missionaries and progressive priests.

In Ecuador, the CIA maintained what was called the lynx list, aka the subversive control watch list of the most important left-wing activists to arrest. In Uruguay. Every CIA station maintained a subversive control watch list of most important left wing activists. From 1970-72 the CIA helped set up the Department of Information and Intelligence (DII), which served as a cover for death squads, and also co-ordinated meetings between Brazilian and Uruguayan death squads.

In Nicaragua, the US provided illegal funds to the Contras, and Marine intelligence helped maintain a list of civilians marked for assassination when Contra forces entered the country.

In Chile, 1970-73, CIA-created unions organized CIA-financed strikes leading to Allende’s overthrow and subsequent suicide. By late 1971 the CIA was involved in the preparation of lists of nearly 20,000 middle-level leaders of people’s organizations, scheduled to be assassinated after the Pinochet coup.

In Haiti, U.S. officials with CIA backgrounds in Phoenix-like program activities coordinated with the Ton-Ton Macoute, “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s private death squad, responsible for killing at least 3,000 people.

For over thirty years the US military and the CIA  helped organize, train, and fund death squad activity in El Salvador. From 1980-93, at least 63,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed, mostly by the government directly supported by the U.S. The CIA routinely supplied ANSESAL, the security forces, and the general staff with electronic, photographic, and personal surveillance of suspected dissidents and Salvadorans abroad who were later assassinated by death squads. US militray involvement in El Salvador allowed “the lessons learned in Vietnam to be put into practice … assisting an allied country in counterinsurgency operations.”

In Guatemala, as early as 1954, the U.S. Ambassador, after the CIA-orchestrated  overthrow of the Arbenz government, gave to the new Armas government lists of radical opponents to be assassinated. Years later, throughout Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, Washington continuously to supported the Guatemalan military’s excesses against civilians, which killed 200,000 people.

US Assassination Programs Exported to Other Countries

In Indonesia, 1965-66, the US embassy and the CIA provided the Indonesian military with lists of the names of PKI militants, which were used by Suharto to crush the PKI regime.  This resulted in “one of the worst episodes of mass murder of the twentieth century,” with estimates as high as one million deaths.

In Thailand, in 1976, the new junta used CIA-trained forces to crush student demonstrators during coup; two right-wing terrorist squads suspected for assassinations tied directly to CIA operations.

In Iran, the CIA launched a coup installing the shah in power and helped establish the lethal secret police unit SAVAK. The CIA and SAVAK then exchanged intelligence, including information and arrest lists on the communist Tudeh party. Years later, in 1983, the CIA gave the Khomeni government a list of USSR KGB agents and collaborators operating in Iran, which the Khomeni regime used to execute 200 suspects and close down the communist Tudeh party.

In the Philippines, in 1986, Reagan increased CIA involvement in Philippine counterinsurgency operations, carried out by more than 50 death squads. In 2001, before 9/11, the Bush administration sent a unit of SOF to the Philippines “to help train Philippine counter terrorist forces fighting against Muslim separatists” within groups like Abu Sayyaf. After 9/11 US-Filipino cooperation was stepped up and the ongoing separatist conflict was cast, to the benefit of both sides, as “the second front in the war on terror.” In Feb, 2012, a US drone strike targeting leaders of Abu Sayyaf and other separatist groups killed 15 people, the first use of killer drones in Southeast Asia.

A “global Phoenix Program”: drone targets worldwide

“A global Phoenix program … would provide a useful start point” for “a new strategic approach to the Global War on Terrorism.”

–David Kilcullen

Iraq

Despite the US-perpetrated counter terrorist slaughter in Latin America and elsewhere in the 1970s-1990s, the US Special Forces debacle in Mogadishu in 1993, popularized in the film Black Hawk Down, severely impacted US willingness to use Special Forces in counter terrorist missions for the next decade. But then, after 9/11, things changed drastically. On September 17, 2001, President Bush signed a secret Presidential finding authorizing the C.I.A. to create paramilitary teams to hunt, capture, detain, or kill designated terrorists almost anywhere in the world. The pressure from the White House, in particular from Vice-President Dick Cheney, was intense, and in the scramble, a search of the C.I.A.’s archives turned up – the Phoenix Program.

In July , 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent an order for a plan to make sure that special forces  could be authorized to use lethal force ‘in minutes and hours, not days and weeks.’” Rumsfeld prompted Bush to authorize the military to “find and finish” terrorist targets. Here he was referring to “the F3EA targeting cycle” used in anti-infrastructure operations by Special Operations Forces. F3EA, an abbreviation of find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, utilizes comprehensive intelligence to “find a target amidst civilian clutter and fix his exact location . . . . enabling surgical finish operations … to catch a fleeting target.”

Lt General William (Jerry) Boykin, Delta commander in Mogadishu, deputy undersecretary for Defense for Intelligence and a key planner of the Special Forces offensive in Iraq, announced, “We’re going after these people. Killing or capturing them … doing what the Phoenix program was designed to do, without all the secrecy.”

Back in 1963, the CIA had supplied lists of communists to the Baath party coup so that communists could be rounded up and eliminated. Now, forty years later, it was the Baathists’ turn to be rounded up by Special Forces and CIA and executed. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military notoriously developed a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein‘s government, mostly high-ranking Baath Party members. Less well-known was the secret targeted killing of thousands of Baathist civilians by US Special Forces.

Seymour Hersh wrote in 2003 that “The Bush Administration authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. … Its highest priority the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination. A former C.I.A. station chief described the strategy: “The only way we can win is to go unconventional. We’re going to have to play their game. Guerrilla versus guerrilla. Terrorism versus terrorism. We’ve got to scare the Iraqis into submission.” The US even hired thousands of contract killers previously responsible for US-sponsored extra-judicial killings and death squad activity in Latin America.  The operation—called “preëmptive manhunting” by one Pentagon adviser—had, according to Hersh, “the potential to turn into another Phoenix Program.”

Global Phoenix

In 2009, the Office of the Secretary of Defense sponsored a paper by the National Defense Research Institute entitled “The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency.” The paper notes, “The persistent insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have generated fresh interest among military officers, policymakers, and civilian analysts in the history of counterinsurgency. The Phoenix Program in Vietnam—the U.S. effort to improve intelligence coordination and operations aimed at identifying and dismantling the communist underground—is the subject of much renewed attention.”

The paper continues, “As the United States and its allies shift their focus to Afghanistan and weigh counterinsurgency alternatives for that country, decisionmakers would be wise to consider how Phoenix-style approaches might serve to pry open Taliban and Al-Qaeda black boxes.”

Two key architects of the current Phoenix-style global counterinsurgency efforts by the US are David Kilcullen and Michael Vickers.  David Kilcullen has been counterinsurgency advisor to two former Middle East commanders, General Stanley McChrystal (formerly head of Special Operations) and General David Petraeus, now CIA Director. Michael G. Vickers, made famous in the book and film Charlie Wilson’s War about the CIA’s anti-Soviet Afghan campaign of the 1980s, is currently Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, wielding such vast authority over the US war on terror that, according to a Washington Post profile, Pentagon colleagues refer to as his “take-over-the-world-plan.”

Kilcullen wrote in a much-quoted 2004 paper entitled “Countering Global Insurgency” that “Counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have reawakened official and analytical interest in the Phoenix Program.” He proposed that “a global Phoenix program … would provide a useful start point” for “a new strategic approach to the Global War on Terrorism,” one which would focus on “interdicting links … between jihad theatres, denying sanctuary areas, … isolating Islamists from local populations and … disrupting inputs” from others.

Vickers issued a Phoenix-style directive in December 2008 to “develop capabilities for extending U.S. reach into denied areas and uncertain environments by operating with and through indigenous foreign forces or by conducting low visibility operations.” “It’s not just the Middle East. It’s not just the developing world. It’s not just non-democratic countries – it’s a global problem. Threats can emanate from Denmark, the United Kingdom, you name it.” According to a Washington Post profile, “the most critical aspect of Vicker’s plan targeting al-Qaeda-affiliated networks around the world involves US Special Forces working through foreign partners to uproot and fight terrorism.” US military and Special Operations forces would “pay indigenous fighters and paramilitaries who work with them in gathering intelligence, hunting terrorists, fomenting guerrilla warfare or putting down an insurgency.”

Pentagon colleagues have said of Vickers, “he tends to think like a gangster.” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell revealed that getting Bin Laden in Pakistan was Vicker’s “baby,” and “more than anyone else in the department, he drove the issue.” 2011 New York Times Vickers summarizes his strategy this: “You make a deal with the devil to defeat another devil.” “I just want to kill those guys.”   A 2011 Such is the megalomaniacal mission underlying the US global war on terror, its kill lists and worldwide program of targeted assassination.

Killer Drones Revisited

“Engaging in any assassination blurs the line between the good guys and the bad.” It is also “a proclamation of weakness and an admission of failure.”

–John Jacob Nutter, The CIA’s Black Ops

The purpose of this article is to reframe the current attention on killer drones and Obama’s “kill list” within an historical perspective. The goal here is not to discourage the escalating protest against killer drones or against Obama’s targeted assassination program around the globe. As stated at the outset, the unprecedented visibility of these nefarious activities and of the outraged public response to them  is precisely what is needed at this time. This heightened awareness also affords a perfect opportunity to revisit the extraordinary history of US assassination and targeted killing that has led directly and explicitly to these activities.

Focus on the drones alone will not be sufficient. For even the major counter terrorist mastermind David Kilcullen himself, an avid proponent of the global targeted killing program, has argued against the use of drones. In a 2009 New York Times editorial he argues that “The goal should be to isolate extremists from their communities; must be defeated by indigenous forces…Drone strikes make this harder, not easier.” He adds, “The use of drones displays every characteristic of a tactic – or, more accurately, a piece of technology – substituting for a strategy, of the tribal dynamics of the local population. This creates public outrage and a desire for revenge.”

Scholar Maria Ryan, in a 2011 article entitled “War in Countries We Are Not at War With,” writes: “In 2006 the Pentagon announced that it had sent small teams of Special Operations troops to US embassies to gather intelligence on terrorism in  Africa, South East Asia and South America…There is, then, a covert side to the Global War on Terrorism  that is not visible and not currently knowable in the absence of whistleblowers, leaks, or things gone wrong.”

The heightened public attention paid to drone killing might very well, in time, lead to some welcome success in curtailing their use. But too narrow a focus on the US deployment of Predator and Reaper drones might also distract us from other forms of Phoenix-derived targeted killing still being perpetrated globally – and covertly – by our Assassination Nation.

Doug Noble is an activist with Occupy Rochester NY and Rochester Against War.

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Study says federal budget cuts in January could devastate states.

File:  Air traffic controllers.

Texas may lose as many as 160,000 jobs, defense losses could be catastrophic.

Texas could lose as many as 160,000 jobs, third most in the nation, if the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration don’t come to terms on the federal budget. If the two don’t act before Jan. 2 of next year, the Budget Control Act’s sequestration mandate will go into effect and budget cuts of $1.2 trillion over 10 years will begin. And projected defense cuts are claiming the most attention.

A study on the effects of the cuts was recently conducted on behalf of the Aerospace Industries Association, one industry that would be hit particularly hard by Defense Department cuts that are part of the trillion-dollar automatic budget cuts.

The 160,000 Texas jobs would represent about 7 percent of the total 2.13 million jobs lost throughout the nation if the budget cuts are put in place. Texas would rank second only to California, which could lose 225,000 jobs, and Virginia, which could lose as many as 207,000.

House Armed Services Committee Vice Chair Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas said that he does not think money should be spent on defense just to create jobs, “But you also need to have your eyes wide open about the economic impact of huge cuts to defense and the effect it would have on jobs, as well as the even more important effect it would have on our national security.”

Dr. Stephen Fuller from George Mason University, one of the authors of the analysis, said those types of cuts nationwide could push the unemployment rate above 9 percent nationwide and move the country toward a recession. “An already weak economy will be undercut as the paychecks of thousands of workers across the economy will be affected from teachers, nurses, construction workers to key federal employees such as border patrol and FBI agents, food inspectors and others,” he said. At risk, according to the report, are more than 48,000 health care jobs, more than 98,000 in construction, approximately 473,000 in manufacturing and more than 615,000 federal jobs in both defense and non-defense.

In Texas, heavy defense cuts could be crippling. Nationwide, the Department of Defense would suffer most of the cuts, $492 billion, while the remaining $708 billion in cuts would be shared by other federal agencies.

There are 14 military bases in Texas and more than 270,000 service members stationed here. One of the nation’s largest defense contractors, Lockheed Martin, has a plant in Fort Worth and a joint operation with another company in San Antonio to provide engine maintenance, repair and overhaul to the military. Lockheed Martin Chief Executive Robert Stevens testified before a recent congressional committee hearing saying his company could have to let 10,000 employees go if the automatic spending cuts go into effect in January. He said he has never been so concerned about the health of his industry. But he also warned that the budget cuts will result in reductions in the number of FBI agents on the job as well, and the number of Border Patrol officers available, the number of people processing social security claims, the number of air traffic controllers, Coast Guardsmen and “so many more people whose jobs will be cut back.” He predicted that sequestration would have “extremely adverse impacts on our U.S. economy at a critical time.”

In Texas, state officials have estimated the economic impact of the U.S. military payroll for active duty, reserves and civilians tops $77 billion. Military contracts in the state total more than $60 billion. The State Comptroller’s Office even notes that federal military spending helped Texas replace more than 430,000 jobs lost during the Great Recession. In 2008 and 2009, Texas was the top recipient of Department of Defense spending, with $65 billion spent in the state in 2008 and another $42 billion in 2009.

The magnitude of the cutbacks that could go into effect next January could take a devastating toll on the State.

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On Friday, July 13, 2012, the program of community blood drives promoted by Community Builders Chicago (CBC), this summer came to a conclusion.

Over 210 area Muslims volunteered at different mosques and Islamic Schools to donate and give the Gift of Life, so some sick or injured person in their neighborhood could benefit from their act of selfless generosity. The final drive was scheduled at ICCI on Belmont Ave, and the Potter Road Mosque in Des Plaines.

Explaining the program, Munir Chaudry, President of CBC said “It was a simple idea that inspired the project:Firstly, to provide some help during the lean months of summer when supplies of blood are low and demands for blood are high. Second, to honor the nation’s brave ones whose sacrifices are remembered on Memorial Day, by offering our own blood as a gesture of solidarity with them”.

The donors who participated were both young and old, both men and women, and from every ethnic background. There were some who donated for the very first time. There were others who were card carrying donors, who give with regularity. Some eagerly came forward but could not qualify due to the stringent criteria that the blood banks mandate. Others wanted to donate but could not wait due to the constraints on their time. Better logistical arrangements will have to be made to accommodate them in the future.

All this was accomplished with little fanfare and without the blinding glare of the media getting anyone uncomfortable.  “It is just as well that we practice such acts of charity with solemn grace and dignity in the quiet privacy of our personal convictions”, remarked Azher Quader, Executive Director of CBC. “The rewards of such giving not seeking the adoration of the public are indeed higher as the Quran reminds us” he explained.

CBC wishes to thank all who donated and all who participated.

A total of 213 pints of blood were donated exceeding the  target of 200 initially set for this year. “This potentially will benefit over 600 patients”, said Quader “for many of whom this generous gift will be lifesaving”.He concluded,”As we commence a month of prayer and fasting this Ramadan, let us also pray for the health and recovery of those of our neighbors who are sick and ailing and for Allah’s blessings and reward on those who gave the Gift of Life so others may live.”  

Mr. Chaudry added  “We wish to thank Life Source, American Red Cross and Heartland for their tremendous support in providing the technical services and the staff to make these drives possible”.
The following  Centers  participated in the drives:

Chicago

Downtown Islamic Center (DIC), 231 S. State St, Chicago, IL 60603
Muslim Community Center (MCC), 4380 N. Elston Ave, Chicago, IL 60641
Islamic Community Center of Illinois (ICCI), 6435 W. Belmont Ave, Chicago, IL 60634
Bridgeview
Aqsa School, 7361 W. 92nd St, Bridgeview, IL60455

Orland Park

the Prayer Center of Orland Park, 16530 104th Ave, Orland Park, IL60467

Frankfort

American Islamic Association (AIA), 8860 W. St. Francis Rd, Frankfort, IL 60423

Waukegan

Islamic Foundation North (IFN), 1751 O’Plaine Rd, Waukegan, IL 60048

Morton Grove

Muslim Education Center (MEC), 8601 N. Menard St, Morton Grove, IL 60053

Des Plaines

Islamic Community Center of DesPlaines, 480 Potter Rd, DesPlaines, IL 60016

Community Builders Chicago is a grass root community organization whose mission is the empowerment of people thru education and networking. For more info visit www.mycomunitybuilders.com.

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By Adil James, TMO

A contestant recites Qur`an for ICA judges.

Franklin–The revelation of Holy Qur`an began in Ramadan, and Ramadan is a time when Muslims focus on reciting Qur`an.  So the Islamic Cultural Association (ICA) wisely chose Ramadan as the time to bring to culmination their Qur`an competition.

The ICA is a mosque or Islamic organization whose geographical focal point is the Huda School in Franklin, although in fact Huda and ICA are entirely distinct entities.

The ICA has conducted the competition for 10 years, but the competition has gradually taken on more importance.  The event used to take place only during Ramadan, but this year’s competition began 3 months before Ramadan. 

Next year ICA plans to conduct the competition over an even longer period of time.

The event has this year about 40 competitors, in seven different groups, one through seven.  Groups one and two are open to all age groups–the amount of Qur`an over which the contestants are tested is much larger, for group one it is the first 15 ajzaa (thirtieths) of Qur`an, for group two it is ajzaa 16 – 25 (10 thirtieths).

Group three is for adults, and the subject area of testing is a single juz, juz 26 this year.

Group 7 is juz 30 and is limited to children 10 and under.

Group 6 is 11-13 (juz 29), Group 5 is 14-17 (juz 28), and Group 4 is ages 18-21 (juz 27).

The students have weighted grades, 60% memorization, 15% tashkeel, 15% tajweed, and 5% mukharij.  5% is for fluency.  Mukharij is similar to pronunciation.  Tashkeel has to do with variations in word choices by varying vowels.  Tajweed is the beauty of the recitation.

Boys and girls entered into the competition, and the judges’ panel consisted of three women and three men.

Some of the contestants at the event had truly remarkable voices.

Prizes will be announced August 15th at the ICA ‘Eid dinner, and significant prizes, which are as yet to be determined, will be awarded to the winners.

It is too late to sign up this year, but contact ICA if you are interested in competing next year.

Islamic Cultural Association (ICA), (248) 737-7001.

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By Aslam Abdullah, TMO Editor in Chief

Islam is simple. Its life style is simple. Its message is simple. Its practices are simple. Its rules are simple. Its commandments are simple and easy to follow. Thus simplicity is its essence as it promotes it in every aspect of life.

In simple terms, it invites people to believe in the oneness of God who alone can give guidance to all. It invites people to explore and subdue the material resources created by God for the betterment of all human beings. It invites people to conduct their personal and mutual affairs in all aspects of life according to the guidance given through the messengers of Allah culminating in the finalization of the message known as the Qur`an.

It asks people to regard all human beings as part of a single family ensuring that the dignity of each and every one is secured and it exhorts people to respect everything that exists in the universe. There is no complication and no ambiguity in this simplicity of Islam. Whatever culture, region, ethnic or racial group one belongs to, one can live his or her commitment to God. What we know as five pillars of Islam, i.e. declaration of faith (Shahada), prayer (Salat), fasting (Siyam), alms giving (Zakat) and pilgrimage (Hajj) reinforce the simplicity to constantly remind people of the ultimate reality of the existence of a higher, neutral and objective authority whose powers are beyond the comprehension of human beings. As the last and best of the messengers and prophets, the Prophet Muhammad (s) and all other prophets are role models for all human beings as they lived the divine message in its fullest sense in their times and situations. The Qur`an is a living testimony of the narratives of their lives.

Of Prophet Muhammad (s) Qur`an said: “He liberated them from their heavy burdens and from the yokes that are upon them. (7:157) Today, the religion has been turned into a complex institution of rules and regulations without whose practice one’s commitment to Allah is considered invalid. Even these rules and regulations are not standardized as scores of sects and schools of thoughts and factions have their own versions of these rules and regulations to dictate the behavior of their followers.  Sometimes now the focus has shifted to the rules and regulations themselves rather than the simplicity of Islam and its essential message.

We must however focus on a fundamental aspect of faith, the exploration and the universalization of the divinely created material resources for the well being of each and every human being on the basis of the divine guidance.

Few are talking about the essence of the Quran. Consequently, everything is in mess. Each individual must devote time and energy to reading the Divine message time and time again to develop a unique personal connection with Allah.

To do that, it is not essential to know the Arabic language. The Divine message can be understood in any language without any difficulty provided we are willing to invest time. Let us return to the simplicity of Islam. God can found in all situations even in the den of sins. This is the simplicity of Islam.

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By Jonathan Kay

Left to right, foreground: Secretary of State Clinton, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates attended a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels in 2010.     (Georges Gobet, AFP/Getty Images)

Earlier this month, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) appeared on the FOX Business show Money Rocks to make the case for depriving the children of immigrants of their 14th Amendment rights. Gohmert claimed that on a recent airplane trip to the Middle East, one of his traveling companions had struck up a conversation with a grandmother who described her family’s involvement in a Hamas plot to send pregnant women to the United States. Gohmert summarized the lesson for viewers this way: “We’re bringing them over here on tourist visas, some illegally, letting them be born here and saying, ‘This is an American citizen. So come back in 20, 25 years when you’re ready to blow us up.’”

It’s a bizarre story. But the fact that he’s prepared to cite it as a basis for American immigration reform supplies some useful context for what happened two weeks later, when Gohmert joined four other Republican members of Congress, including Michele Bachmann, in asking the Department of Defense, the State Department, and other departments to investigate whether the U.S. government is being infiltrated by Muslim extremists.

In particular, the five Republicans singled out Huma Abedin, a long-time aide to Hillary Clinton, in their letter to the State Department. Abedin, the letter noted, “has three family members—her late father, her mother, and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Her position provides her with routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making.”
In this odd age, partisan hysteria and conspiracy theories have become a common feature of the American political landscape. But the anti-Abedin attack was too much even for fellow Republicans. To his credit, Sen. John McCain publicly declared that the letter constituted “an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American, and a loyal public servant.” (He also debunked its factual claims.) Ed Rollins, Bachmann’s former campaign chief, wrote an op-ed for FOX calling his old boss’ attack on Abedin “extreme,” “dishonest,” and “vicious.”
The backlash against the Bachmann Five reassures us that there is some residual spirit of decency and fair play remaining in Washington politics. Still, many observers are left to wonder at the sheer ludicrousness of the implicit accusation against Abedin. Aside from random airplane encounters with Arab grandmothers, where did the accusers get the idea that some sort of Islamist “stealth jihad” is taking control of Washington from within? And how many other Americans share this belief?

As I discovered during the research for my 2011 book on conspiracy theories, Among The Truthers, such ideas have become quite common on the right-wing side of the American political spectrum. At Tea Party events, I often heard speakers argue—usually on the basis of scattered anecdotes, like the one Gohmert related on FOX—that sharia is taking over the United States; and that the White House itself already has become a fifth column in this insidious campaign.

One large right-wing event that I attended in late 2011—held in Nashville, Tenn., under the auspices of the Sharia Awareness Action Network—was dedicated entirely to this theme. The controversy over the Bachmann Five prompted me to revisit my notes and recordings from that day. As it turns out, one of the keynote speakers was the very activist whose 2010 book, Sharia: The Threat to America, has become the de facto bible for Bachmann and like-minded neo-McCarthyites: Washington activist Frank Gaffney.

***

The conference, entitled “The Constitution or Sharia: Preserving Freedom,” took place at the Cornerstone Church in suburban Nashville, a mega-church with a history of hyperpatriotic stunts. (In honor of July 4, 2010, dirt had been spread over the floor of the church sanctuary, and a professional rodeo with live bulls was held—followed by an indoor fireworks display and then a sermon called “No More Bull.”) Not all the speakers at the conference were religious Christians, but the entire event had a decidedly Evangelical tone to it. “We’ve got to put on the whole armor of God because we are in a spiritual battle for the soul of our country,” declared Bishop E. W. Jackson in a blistering invocation. “I don’t care whether you’re talking about Wall Street Occupiers or White House Occupiers, we’ve got to do the same thing for all of them … We’re going to win this battle because the favor of God is on the United States of America. This country is not an accident. This country is a providential nation ordained by almighty God.”

Barack Obama, claims Washington activist Frank Gaffney, is “sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood supremacist agenda—I think that’s now beyond dispute.”

Quoting Isaiah 40:31, he declared that “those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint”—and then went on: “That’s the fate of America. That’s who we are. That’s what we’re founded on. And all the devils in hell—all the sharia law you pit against us—will not defeat us. We will emerge victorious! God bless you! And God bless the United States of America!”

Following Jackson’s invocation, a former FBI agent named John Guandolo laid out the scale of the sharia threat: The Muslim Brotherhood, with its agenda for world domination, had spread its tentacles everywhere in Washington. “The primary Islamic advisers to the leadership of the White House, the State Department, the CIA, the DHS, are Muslim Brothers … and thereby, we’ve surrendered our national-security decision-making process to the enemy.” Other speakers suggested that Barack Obama himself had become a stooge of the Islamists, or possibly even a closet Muslim. Rep. Rick Womick of Tennessee got a standing ovation when he declared: “We cannot have Muslims in our military, because we cannot trust them.” He also predicted that America would be a majority-Muslim country by 2050, because Muslim men have four wives and each produces an average of nine children, yielding 36 children per Muslim household.

Then came Gaffney, the 59-year-old bearded avuncular founder and president of the hawkish American Center for Security Policy think tank in Washington. From 1983 till 1987, Gaffney was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan administration. And he remained a respected security-policy commentator on through the 1990s. But after 9/11, for reasons described below, something in Gaffney snapped. And he has been obsessed with the hunt for Muslim fifth columnists in Washington’s halls of power ever since.

In this capacity, he has become a strong influence with Bachmann and other sharia-sniffing Republicans. In the Abedin-related paragraph of the June 13, 2012 letter that the Bachmann Five sent to the State Department, for instance, the authors specifically source their claims to a website entitled The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within, which functions as a 10-part educational “course” offered by the Center for Security Policy, presented by Gaffney himself.

“It is fair to say that in addition to the very considerable amount of research [Bachmann] has been doing herself, that they used our material as part of their documentation for what prompted them to write for these investigations,” Gaffney told the US News & World Report website. “I’ve known her for probably eight years or so and … we’ve continued to communicate with frequency.”

During his turn at the podium, the former Cold Warrior told the crowd that they were naive if they thought the Muslim Brotherhood threat could be expunged merely by voting Obama out of office. In fact, Gaffney believes the Brotherhood has penetrated the full range of Washington’s political spectrum—including the Conservative Political Action Conference, the American Conservative Union, and even the Republican Party itself. To illustrate his point, Gaffney put up a long, rapid-fire sequence of slides showing photos of George W. Bush and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist posing with American Muslims, whom Gaffney invariably identified as “Muslim Brotherhood operatives.”

Gaffney’s performance seemed like something out of the McCarthy era—and he himself seemed to embrace the historical comparison. Like many speakers at the conference, he is a middle-aged man with strong memories of the Cold War. While critics of the anti-sharia movement are quick to brand these figures as Islamophobes, my own take is that they also suffer from a strong dose of Warsaw Pact-era nostalgia—and seek to reclaim the moral certainty that characterized an era in which the world could be divided clearly between good and evil. (This Manichean mentality also helps explain why anti-sharia radicalism has such a strong presence in evangelical mega-churches such as Cornerstone, and on Christian conspiracist websites such as WorldNetDaily: the narrative of Christians locked in a life-or-death struggle for America’s religious soul taps into Book of Revelation-inspired End Times mythology, with the Muslim Brotherhood playing the role of the Antichrist.)

On the closing slide from Gaffney’s presentation, he put up an image showing Ronald Reagan testifying before the House Un-American Activities Commission in 1947—and told the crowd that we now face a threat even worse than the Soviet menace: “Communism with a God is even more dangerous than it is without it.”

***

Four weeks after the Nashville event, I visited Gaffney’s American Center for Security Policy offices in Washington to ask Gaffney about the sharia threat in more detail. Gaffney and I had been acquaintances in the 1990s, when he wrote columns about the nuts and bolts of Western military policy for the op-ed pages of my newspaper. Back then, I rarely heard him talk about Islam. And I wanted to know what (besides the obvious cataclysm of 9/11) had turned him into such a radical voice on the subject.

In our interview, Gaffney described for me a Washington that few Americans would recognize—a place crawling with Muslim Brotherhood spooks about to seize power at a moment he refers to as “zero hour.” Barack Obama, he claims, is not necessarily Muslim himself—but he is “sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood supremacist agenda—I think that is now beyond dispute.” Gaffney then ticked off a long list of foreign-policy decisions he disagreed with, and cited them as evidence for what he’s previously called an “obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call sharia.”

The fact that there is no overt Islamist agitation within the American government, he says, is irrelevant—because the whole point of “stealth jihad” is to spring sharia domination on a non-Muslim society without the citizenship knowing. “Mohammed, the perfect Muslim, established the preferred form of jihad as violent, terrifying jihad,” he told me. “But if [a Muslim] cannot do that, he is required to do it through other means. You can do anything. You can say anything. You can marry anybody. You can violate any of the [nominal] precepts of Islam, as long as it serves the purpose of stealth jihad.”

Gaffney’s current and former friends will recognize the significance of the “you can marry anybody” line thrown into that laundry list. The four words capture the odd, and very personal nature of Gaffney’s transformation into anti-sharia warrior. It’s a story widely known to Washington’s conservative insiders. But it’s the first time I’ve heard it told from Gaffney’s own lips, and it’s surprising to hear him tell it with so little concern about its McCarthyite overtones.

The tale of Gaffney’s transformation begins many years ago, when he shared an L Street office with aforementioned anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who, as President of Americans for Tax Reform, would become known as the small-government disciplinarian of the GOP ranks. “About a month after we moved in together, [a friend] came to me and told me, ‘Did you know that there is an Islamist influence operation taking place on the other side of that Xerox room?’” Gaffney told me. “And I began to learn what the hell was going on—and challenging [Norquist]. I realized that this was a serious problem, certainly for conservatives.”

Whatever it was that prompted Gaffney to buy into a conspiracy, he embraced it wholeheartedly. In short order, he developed an elaborate theory that Norquist was involved in a “trifecta” power play involving a conservative group called the Islamic Free Market Institute, Karl Rove’s desire to open up a new GOP constituency, and Norquist’s own fund-raising imperatives. At first, Gaffney suspects, Norquist’s motives were cynical. But then, over time, he began to drink the Islamist kool-aid.

When I asked Gaffney whether he thought Norquist (who, in real life, is a Methodist) was a “closet Muslim,” he thought for a moment, and replied: “I don’t know … But I have had Muslim people tell me that when they see [Norquist] in a Muslim-only setting, he acts like a Muslim. He is married to a Muslim woman.”

That woman—a Muslim and a former Islamic Free Market Institute director named Samah Alrayyes—pops up repeatedly in Gaffney’s anti-sharia mythology, and he seems to imagine her as a sort of Rasputin figure within Washington’s conservative establishment, turning its members into Islamists one by one through her husband’s influence. The fact that neither Gaffney nor anyone else can point to any explicitly “Islamist” U.S. government policy engineered by Alrayyes or her husband does not pose a problem for Gaffney (nor does the fact that Alrayyes, like Abedin, dresses as an elegant, modern American woman, the furthest thing from a Burka-clad Islamist): by the logic of “stealth jihad,” an absence of evidence merely indicates that the Islamist enemy is biding its time till the “zero hour.”

Putting aside the dark overtones of the anti-sharia witch-hunt engineered by Gaffney and the Bachmann Five, there is an amusing irony at play here. Norquist is not just any conservative activist: his Taxpayer Protection Pledge has been signed by 95 percent of Republican congressmen (as well as Mitt Romney)—including every one of the five members of Congress who put their name on the Abedin letter.

By the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend logic of McCarthyism—the same logic employed to associate Ms. Abedin with global Islamism through her relatives— does this not mean that the Bachmann Five, too, are in on the conspiracy? After all, they have pledged themselves, in writing, to the legislative goals of Grover Norquist, that infamous Muslim Brotherhood fifth columnist. Should we not be keeping an eye on them—and perhaps even urge the Defense and State departments to investigate their associations with the Muslim Brotherhood?

As with all witch hunts, the daisy chain of accusations never ends.

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Dr. Farhan Asrar, chief resident for McMaster University’s Public Health and Preventive Medicine Program, will receive the national Resident Leadership Award from the Royal College of Physician and Surgeons of Canada in Ottawa on Oct. 20 during the International Conference on Residency.

The award is given to a resident medical doctor that “has demonstrated outstanding leadership skills during their residency training, has encouraged the development of future leaders in medicine and has shown strong role modelling and mentorship ability among his peers.”

Asrar will receive the award at the college’s upcoming annual conference and awards dinner.He was also a recipient of McMaster University’s 2012 Quality Assurance Award.

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NOW HIRING

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Tawheed Center of Detroit School

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www.school.masjidtawheed.org

Tawheed Center of Detroit School is a K-8 program comprised of about 200 students and 20 professional staff. It is part of a multiple K-8 building complex. We seek an inspiring educational leader who has a broad repertoire of instructional, assessment and supervision skills.
Requirements: MI Certified or Certifiable as a K-8 School Principal with at least 5 years experience in teaching and/or administration. Masters Degree, or equivalent, in Educational Leadership or Curriculum.
Starting Date: September 2012
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Application Deadline Date: Open Until Filled
Send Application (http://www.school.masjidtawheed.org), Typed Resume, Letter of Interest, Licensure Documentation, Original Transcripts, & 3 Current Letters of Reference to:
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Detroit MI 48228
(313) 271-0731
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