Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

MacGuffin said:
Actually that's Swedish for "Damn, I forgot to activate my key lock".

You have no idea, guys, how often it happens, that you receive a customer call from their jacket pocket ;)
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My first name begins with the letters A and C. I think I know more about that problem than most other people ever will. :mrgreen:
 
Locked and Loaded: Pentagon Contractor Helped Write Its Own Armored-Truck Deal

How badly did the Pentagon want special trucks that could protect against insurgent bombs? So badly that it let the contractors responsible for providing them essentially write their own contracts.

That?s one of the conclusions from a Pentagon inspector general?s report released late Monday (.pdf) into a contract to provide logistics and maintenance work on Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs) worth nearly half a billion dollars. The line between contractor and government vendor became so porous that officials ?increased the risk for potential waste or abuse on the contract,? the inspector general wrote.

Getting the resilient MRAPs into Iraq and Afghanistan was a top priority for former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. That urgency led some officials at the Army?s Contracting Command and the Joint Program Office-MRAP into a too-cozy relationship with Jacobs Technology and its subcontractor SAIC, which won a $193.4 million award for logistics services on the MRAPs in November 2007.

In a reversal of how contracting is supposed to work, the inspector general finds that Jacobs/SAIC employees ?directed Government personnel in Iraq,? ordering them to report to the contractor team and not government officials. In another case, a battalion commander with the 402nd Army Field Support Brigade allowed a contractor employee to assist in reprimanding an unnamed Defense Department official for an unspecified infraction, another no-no. ?[C]ontractor employees appeared to be directing the day-to-day operations of DoD personnel,? the inspector general finds.

But the coup de grace came in 2009, ahead of the re-up of the contract. The contractors? Army partners and the Joint Program Office ?worked together to prepare the contract requirement? for the successor to the MRAP bid, a deal worth $285.5 million that ended in May. Shockingly, that contract went to SAIC, too.

?The contractor?s performance of these functions violates the two underlying principles in the acquisition process: preventing unfair competitive advantage and preventing the existence of conflicting roles that might bias a contractor?s judgment,? the inspector general writes.

Yet the report doesn?t assess how much cash, if any, was wasted as a result. Nor does the inspector general recommend any punishment more punitive than sending contracting officials back to training on ?inherently governmental functions and organizational conflicts of interest requirements.?

Government watchdogs were stunned at the MRAP audit results. ?We were allowing a company to help write contract requirements for a contract that it was bidding on ? and it ended up winning the contract!? says Nick Schwellenbach, lead investigator for the Project on Government Oversight. ?The contractor could have stacked the deck in its favor, steering the contract towards a worse deal for the taxpayer.?
How could this have happened? In order to get the MRAPs into the warzones swiftly, the inspector general finds that JPO MRAP made SAIC employees middlemen between the overall head of the MRAP program and its deputies in Iraq and Kuwait. ?This structure gave the contractor authority over DoD employees, which enabled the contractor to perform inherently governmental functions and allowed organizational conflicts of interest,? the inspector general writes.

It?s not been the greatest moment for oversight in military contracting. Late last year, the Defense Department restricted its own ability to review conflicts of interest on big contracts after an industry freakout. And this is right as the Pentagon?s top gear-buyer bangs the table about making contractors pay if their programs go over budget.

Of course, if the contractor is really the one in charge, the government doesn?t have much leverage. ?The buyer-seller relationship is turned on its head when the company that is working for the government can discipline the government?s own employees,? Schwellenbach says, after reminding that ?the government hires contractors to work for it.? How old-fashioned.
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And the MRAPs break down all the time and shipped to theater with no logistical support for parts, maintenance manuals, or training for maintenance or combat crews.
 
CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden's family DNA
Senior Pakistani doctor who organised vaccine programme in Abbottabad arrested by ISI for working with US agents

CIA organised fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad to try and find Osama bin Laden. Photograph: Md Nadeem/EPA
The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader's family, a Guardian investigation has found.

As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the "project" in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.

The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents.

Relations between Washington and Islamabad, already severely strained by the Bin Laden operation, have deteriorated considerably since then. The doctor's arrest has exacerbated these tensions. The US is understood to be concerned for the doctor's safety, and is thought to have intervened on his behalf.

The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country.

DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present.

So agents approached Afridi, the health official in charge of Khyber, part of the tribal area that runs along the Afghan border.

The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services, he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children.

Afridi had posters for the vaccination programme put up around Abbottabad, featuring a vaccine made by Amson, a medicine manufacturer based on the outskirts of Islamabad.

In March health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher. The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But in April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, the doctor returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived.

It is not known exactly how the doctor hoped to get DNA from the vaccinations, although nurses could have been trained to withdraw some blood in the needle after administrating the drug.

"The whole thing was totally irregular," said one Pakistani official. "Bilal Town is a well-to-do area. Why would you choose that place to give free vaccines? And what is the official surgeon of Khyber doing working in Abbottabad?"

A nurse known as Bakhto, whose full name is Mukhtar Bibi, managed to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines. According to several sources, the doctor, who waited outside, told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device. It is not clear what the device was, or whether she left it behind. It is also not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, although one source suggested the operation did not succeed.

Mukhtar Bibi, who was unaware of the real purpose of the vaccination campaign, would not comment on the programme.

Pakistani intelligence became aware of the doctor's activities during the investigation into the US raid in which Bin Laden was killed on the top floor of the Abbottabad house. Islamabad refused to comment officially on Afridi's arrest, but one senior official said: "Wouldn't any country detain people for working for a foreign spy service?"

The doctor is one of several people suspected of helping the CIA to have been arrested by the ISI, but he is thought to be the only one still in custody.

Pakistan is furious over being kept in the dark about the raid, and the US is angry that the Pakistani investigation appears more focused on finding out how the CIA was able to track down the al-Qaida leader than on how Bin Laden was able to live in Abbottabad for five years.

Over the weekend, relations were pummelled further when the US announced that it would cut $800m (?500m) worth of military aid as punishment for Pakistan's perceived lack of co-operation in the anti-terror fight. William Daley, the White House chief of staff, went on US television on Sunday to say: "Obviously, there's still a lot of pain that the political system in Pakistan is feeling by virtue of the raid that we did to get Osama bin Laden, something the president felt strongly about and we have no regrets over."

The CIA refused to comment on the vaccination plot.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna

They could have really vaccinated the area to do some good, would have given some good publicity as well.
 
Pakistan is really taking this poorly.
 
Sometimes, I just don't even want to know this shit any more. I just want to turn a blind eye to what is going on and live in ingnorant bliss.

As a Watchdog Starves, Wall Street Is Tossed a Bone

The economy is still suffering from the worst financial crisis since the Depression, and widespread anger persists that financial institutions that caused it received bailouts of billions of taxpayer dollars and haven?t been held accountable for any wrongdoing. Yet the House Appropriations Committee has responded by starving the agency responsible for bringing financial wrongdoers to justice ? while putting over $200 million that could otherwise have been spent on investigations and enforcement actions back into the pockets of Wall Street.

A few weeks ago, the Republican-controlled appropriations committee cut the Securities and Exchange Commission?s fiscal 2012 budget request by $222.5 million, to $1.19 billion (the same as this year?s), even though the S.E.C.?s responsibilities were vastly expanded under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Charged with protecting investors and policing markets, the S.E.C. is the nation?s front-line defense against financial fraud. The committee?s accompanying report referred to the agency?s ?troubled past? and ?lack of ability to manage funds,? and said the committee ?remains concerned with the S.E.C.?s track record in dealing with Ponzi schemes.? The report stressed, ?With the federal debt exceeding $14 trillion, the committee is committed to reducing the cost and size of government.?

But cutting the S.E.C.?s budget will have no effect on the budget deficit, won?t save taxpayers a dime and could cost the Treasury millions in lost fees and penalties. That?s because the S.E.C. isn?t financed by tax revenue, but rather by fees levied on those it regulates, which include all the big securities firms.

A little-noticed provision in Dodd-Frank mandates that those fees can?t exceed the S.E.C.?s budget. So cutting its requested budget by $222.5 million saves Wall Street the same amount, and means regulated firms will pay $136 million less in fiscal 2012 than they did the previous year, the S.E.C. projects.

Moreover, enforcement actions generate billions of dollars in revenue in the form of fines, disgorgements and other penalties. Last year the S.E.C. turned over $2.2 billion to victims of financial wrongdoing and paid hundreds of millions more to the Treasury, helping to reduce the deficit.

But the S.E.C. has become a favorite whipping boy of those hostile to market reforms. Admittedly the agency has given them plenty of fodder: revelations that a few staff members were looking at pornography on their office computers; a questionable $557 million lease for new office space, subsequently unwound; and the agency?s notorious failure to catch Bernard Madoff. Nonetheless, in the wake of the recent Ponzi schemes, evidence of growing insider-trading rings involving the Galleon Group and others, potential market manipulation in the still-mystifying flash crash, not to mention myriad unanswered questions about wrongdoing during the financial crisis, the need for vigorous securities law enforcement seems both self-evident and compelling.

A bribery scandal at Tyson Foods ? a scheme that Tyson itself admitted ? resulted in charges against the company earlier this year. But no individuals were charged. While the S.E.C. wouldn?t disclose its reasons, the case involved foreign witnesses and was therefore expensive to investigate and prosecute. The decision not to pursue charges may have involved many factors, but one disturbing possibility was that the agency simply couldn?t afford to, given its limited resources.

Robert Khuzami, the S.E.C.?s head of enforcement, told me his division was underfunded even before Dodd-Frank expanded its responsibilities and that the proposed appropriation would leave his division in dire straits. The S.E.C. oversees more than 35,000 publicly traded companies and regulated institutions, not counting the hedge fund advisers that would be added under the new legislation. While he wouldn?t comment on Tyson, he noted that with fixed costs like salaries accounting for nearly 70 percent of the agency?s budget, ?you have to squeeze the savings out of what?s left, like travel, and especially foreign travel, at a time we see more globalization, more insider trading through offshore accounts. It?s highly cost-intensive.?

An S.E.C. memo on the committee?s proposed budget warns: ?We may be forced to decline to prosecute certain persons who violate the law; settle cases on terms we might otherwise not prefer; name fewer defendants in a given action; restrict the types of investigative techniques employed; or conclude investigations earlier than we otherwise would.?

It?s not just that cases aren?t being adequately investigated and filed. Under Mr. Khuzami and the S.E.C.?s chairwoman, Mary L. Schapiro, the enforcement division has tried to be more proactive, detecting complex frauds before they cost investors billions. Mr. Khuzami stressed that analyzing trading patterns involves a staggering amount of data, especially the high-frequency trading that crippled markets during last year?s flash crash, and requires investment in state-of-the-art information technology the S.E.C. lacks. Sorting through the wreckage of the mortgage crisis, with its complex derivatives and millions of mortgages bundled into esoteric trading vehicles, is highly labor-intensive.

By way of comparison, in 2009 Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, two institutions the S.E.C. regulates, spent $4.6 billion each ? four times the S.E.C.?s entire annual budget ? on information technology alone. Under the House?s proposed budget, the S.E.C.?s resources for technology would be cut by $10 million and a $50 million reserve fund earmarked for technology would be eliminated.

If anything, the agency?s failure to detect the Madoff scheme despite four ineffectual investigations would argue in favor of more, not less, enforcement spending. One investigation foundered when the Madoff team was abruptly shifted to mutual fund market timing, since the S.E.C. lacked the manpower to do both. An important tip got lost in the system because of inadequate tracking mechanisms. Another Madoff investigation didn?t get logged into the computer system, so one office didn?t know what the other was doing. And the most glaring problem identified by the S.E.C.?s inspector general was that investigators lacked the expertise to ask the right questions.

Mr. Khuzami said the agency had addressed all the Madoff issues that didn?t involve additional funding. But ?at some point you have to develop the expertise. We?ve done some hiring, but that is threatened now.? One consequence of the proposed appropriation is ?to essentially freeze hiring for 2012,? according to the S.E.C. memo.

It?s hard to believe that enforcing the securities laws ? most of which long predate the recent Dodd-Frank reforms ? would be a partisan issue. Yet it has sparked a fierce ideological clash, with Republicans lining up to criticize the agency and withhold funds. ?Republicans are falsely invoking the deficit to effectively repeal Dodd-Frank,? Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said. ?These people are ideologues.? My requests for comment to two vocal critics of the S.E.C. in Congress ?Representatives Spencer Bachus, the appropriations committee chairman from Alabama, and Scott Garrett of New Jersey, both Republicans ? went unanswered.

Given the magnitude of the S.E.C.?s task, Congress could make Wall Street firms pay more and not less to police the mess they helped create. A government that wants to hold wrongdoers? feet to the fire and prevent future abuses could finance an S.E.C. enforcement surge analogous to the military?s strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress could fully finance the S.E.C.?s requested $1.4 billion ? and add another $100 million for technology spending. The $1.5 billion would be paid entirely through fees. Financing the S.E.C. adds nothing to the federal deficit and, on the contrary, will help reduce it. It is an investment that would most likely generate increased fines and penalties that could be returned to defrauded investors and taxpayers.

?People say we aren?t charging enough individuals,? Mr. Khuzami said. ?But we have a strong enforcement record. We aren?t acting recklessly, or operating in the gray areas, but rather bringing cases involving real frauds and misconduct and returning funds to victims. We need funding to continue those efforts, efforts that even Milton Friedman? ? the noted free market economist ? ?conceded were an appropriate role for government.?
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Could a robbery attempt help re-elect a Congressman?

Iowa Congressman, Family Fend Off Intruder

Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) "scuffled with an armed intruder at his southern Iowa farmhouse late Saturday night before his grandson pointed a gun at the intruder, who then fled," The Des Moines Register writes, citing aides to the congressman and the local sheriff's office.

The newspaper adds that "no arrests had been reported by Sunday evening."

No one in Boswell's family suffered serious injuries. But Des Moines' WHO-TV reports that Boswell's chief of staff, "Grant Woodard, says even though every family member is unharmed, except for a few scrapes and bruises, it was a very difficult night for them. 'This has made national headlines; they have friends from all over the country. They've been fielding calls from all over the country from friends and family making sure they are all right,' said Woodard."

Boswell, the Register says, is 77. He's in his eighth term. The incident reportedly began when his adult daughter answered a knock at the door late Saturday evening. An assailant with a gun demanded money. That's when Boswell, and then his 22-year-old grandson, intervened.

The congressman is one of 10 "vulnerable House Democrats" who are the subject of TV ads being run in their districts by the conservative group Crossroads GPS, The Associated Press adds
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And a link to the local story http://www.whotv.com/news/who-story-boswell-breakin-20110717,0,1229067.story


BTW: These Super PACs are bullshit and need to be legislated out of existance.
 
If the silliness is parody of a method of thinking that dates to the Iron Age, I have no problem with it.
 
Heck, here in Norway the thing about making women walk around in head scarfs dates back for several centuries decades.

I agree the hijab is silly. There's a lot of sillyness. Doesn't mean we should outlaw it.
 
Pakistan?s Military Plotted to Tilt U.S. Policy, F.B.I. Says

WASHINGTON ? Pakistan?s military, including its powerful spy agency, has spent $4 million over two decades in a covert attempt to tilt American policy against India?s control of much of Kashmir ? including funneling campaign donations to members of Congress and presidential candidates, the F.B.I. claimed in court papers unsealed Tuesday.

The allegations of a long-running plan to influence American elections and foreign policy come at a time of deep tensions between the United States and Pakistan ? and in particular its spy agency ? amid the fallout over the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden at a compound deep inside Pakistan on May 2.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation made the allegations in a 43-page affidavit filed in connection with the indictment of two United States citizens on charges that they failed to register with the Justice Department as agents of Pakistan, as required by law. One of the men, Zaheer Ahmad, is in Pakistan, but the other, Syed Fai, lives in Virginia and was arrested on Tuesday.

Mr. Fai is the director of the Kashmiri American Council, a Washington-based group that lobbies for and holds conferences and media events to promote the cause of self-determination for Kashmir. According to the affidavit, the activities by the group, also called the Kashmiri Center, are largely financed by Pakistan?s spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, along with as much as $100,000 a year in related donations to political campaigns in the United States. Foreign governments are prohibited from making donations to American political candidates.

?Mr. Fai is accused of a decades-long scheme with one purpose ? to hide Pakistan?s involvement behind his efforts to influence the U.S. government?s position on Kashmir,? Neil MacBride, the United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, said. ?His handlers in Pakistan allegedly funneled millions through the Kashmir Center to contribute to U.S. elected officials, fund high-profile conferences and pay for other efforts that promoted the Kashmiri cause to decision-makers in Washington.?

A spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy denied any connection to matter, saying, ?Mr. Fai is not a Pakistani citizen, and the government and embassy of Pakistan have no knowledge of the case.?

Law enforcement officials said Pakistan used a network of at least 10 unnamed straw contributors, which Mr. Ahmad helped organize, to make the campaign contributions and donate the bulk of the Kashmiri Center?s annual operating budget. The ISI would reimburse them ? or their families in Pakistan ? for the donations, the officials said.

Most of the straw donors who made contributions to the Kashmiri Center and to politicians in the United States were identified only by code in the court document, though the investigation was continuing and eight F.B.I. field offices executed 17 or 18 search warrants related to other suspected donors on Tuesday, an official said.

The goal of the group, according to internal documents cited by the F.B.I., was to persuade the United States government that it was in its interest to push India to allow a vote in Kashmir to decide its future. The group?s strategy was to offset the Indian lobby by targeting members of the Congressional committees that focus on foreign affairs with private briefings and events, staging activities that would draw media attention and otherwise to elevate the issue of Kashmir ? the disputed region between India and Pakistan that each country controls in part but claims entirely ? in Washington.

The F.B.I. said that there was no evidence that any of the lawmakers who received campaign funds from Pakistan were aware of its origins, and it did not name any of the recipients.

However, a search in Federal Elections Commission databases for contributions by Mr. Fai showed that he has made more than $20,000 in campaign contributions over the past two decades. The bulk of his donations went to two recipients: the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Representative Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana.

Mr. Fai made numerous ? though smaller ? contributions to Democrats as well, including to Representatives James P. Moran of Virginia, Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio and Gregory W. Meeks of New York, and $250 donations to the 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns of Al Gore and Barack Obama.

Mr. Ahmad also donated to Mr. Burton, records show. For at least 15 years, Mr. Burton has been a champion for Kashmiri causes in Congress, appealing to Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama to get more involved in attempting to mediate a settlement between India and Pakistan over the border region. He has also endorsed allowing the Kashmiri people to vote on their own fate.

Mr. Burton said he was ?deeply shocked? by the arrest of Mr. Fai, because he had known him for 20 years and ?in that time I had no inkling of his involvement with any foreign intelligence operation and had presumed our correspondence was legitimate.? He said he would donate the funds provided to his campaign to the Boy Scouts of America.

Both Mr. Fai and Mr. Ahmad also donated to Representative Joe Pitts, a Pennsylvania Republican who visited the region in 2001 and 2004, meeting with Pakistani and Indian leaders and calling for a cease-fire. He also introduced a resolution in 2004 calling for President George W. Bush to appoint a special envoy to help negotiate peace.

A spokesman for Mr. Pitts said he had donated $4,000 ? an amount equal to the donations his campaign received from the two defendants ? to local charities in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

Among the evidence that Mr. Fai was working for Pakistan, the affidavit said, are annual budget requests he allegedly submitted to his handlers along with lists of accomplishments and strategic-planning documents. Other documents and intercepts showed that they sometimes quarreled over reimbursing him for the costs of trips or about contracts for which he had not gotten advance approval.

The board of the Kashmiri American Council comprises mostly physicians and lawyers from across the United States, and election records show that several board members have made significant donations to lawmakers who have championed peace in Kashmir.

Gulam Hassan Butt, a retired California physician and member of the council?s board whose name does not appear in the donor database, said in a phone interview that the council carried out a ?regular, honest, open campaign? with lawmakers and the State Department to get the United States to help resolve the Kashmir issue.

He also said he was unaware of any money that Pakistan?s government might have provided to the Kashmiri American Council, but Mr. Fai did not inform board members about all the sources of the council?s revenue: ?Where does he get the money?? Mr. Butt said. ?I don?t know. Who gives him the money? I don?t know.?
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How They Teach About Terrorism in Ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio (CN) - Ohio Homeland Security fired its Muslim liaison officer because he objected to its use of tax dollars to create programs "asserting that all Central Ohio Muslims and Arabs were terrorists or terrorism sympathizers ... [and] included a picture of plaintiff as an example of a terrorist sympathizer," the man says in Federal Court.
Omar Alomari was born in Jordan in 1950 and immigrated to the United States in 1978. He is Muslim and speaks seven languages, he says in his discrimination complaint against the Ohio Department of Public Safety, and three top officials or former officials.
He was hired on a contract basis in November 2005 as its "multicultural relations officer," Alomari says.
His problems apparently began when OHS and ODPS began receiving public criticism about his work - or the fact that they had hired someone to do such a job at all. Alomari says letters and phone calls attacked a pamphlet he had written, called "Culture Guide to Arabic and Islamic Cultures," "including one caller comparing the guide to Nazi propaganda and another caller questioning when a guide about Christianity would be produced."
The complaint continues: "In November 2008, plaintiff conducted two presentations for OHS's Terrorism Liaison Officers. After plaintiff's presentation, another presented made blanket accusations that Central Ohio Muslims were linked with terrorist groups."
OHS and ODPS used federal money for this training, Alomari says. He complained to OHS director William Vedra Jr., a defendant, about the inaccurate information being disseminated, and said such misrepresentations "undermined OHS's outreach efforts to Ohio's diverse communities."
In 2009, Alomari says, "A member of the Central Ohio Terrorism Early Warning Group (TWEG) stated that, 'No one knows what Omar does when he goes out and meets with the communities. He could be passing classified information to these people.'
"Central Ohio TWEG is responsible for information sharing and intelligence fusion and serves as the focal point for analyzing the strategic and operations information needed to respond to terrorism in Central Ohio. Central Ohio TWEG receives U.S. Department of Homeland Security funds through grants distributed by OHS," according to the complaint.
It continues: "Beginning in 2009, U.S. Department of Homeland Security funds were being used to provide counterterrorism trainings that contained inaccurate and nonfactual information asserting that all Central Ohio Muslims and Arabs were terrorists or terrorism sympathizers that should be treated as suspects. In addition, the trainings included a picture of plaintiff as an example of a terrorist sympathizer."
Alomari says he "regularly complained" to Vedra about this, and added that the "training" was undermining the work it was intended to do. He says he also contacted the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to discuss his concerns.
To no avail, apparently. He says that when the Columbus Police Academy conducted three days of "anti-terrorist training" in early 2010, "the presenters attacked plaintiff and OHS, labeling plaintiff as a terrorist sympathizer. The presenters accused plaintiff of being a 'suspect,' alleged that plaintiff used his position within OHS to 'connect with terrorists,' and promised to 'keep digging' into plaintiff's background to 'expose' him as a terrorist or terrorism sympathizer."
After this, Alomari says, he requested a meeting with Vedra and the ODPS legal director, during which he complained again about the misrepresentations and the harm the "training" sessions were doing. Alomari adds that he "complained that the presenters at the trainings had perpetrated a two-year campaign to harass and destroy plaintiff's reputation and character based on the simple reason that he is an Arab Muslim. Plaintiff again stressed that U.S. Department of Homeland Security funds should not be used for trainings that advocated for and attempted to legitimize ethnic, racial and religious profiling of Muslims and Arabs. Plaintiff requested that defendants stop these biased and inflammatory 'counterterrorism' trainings, as well as the personal attacks on plaintiff resulting therefrom.
"During the two-year campaign, the individuals involved with the 'counterterrorism' trainings of Ohio's law enforcement personnel sought information from plaintiff's personnel file and office via numerous public records requests to Defendant ODPS. Information obtained through the public records requests was published online and used to harass plaintiff and pressure defendants to terminate plaintiff's employment."
Alomari says Ohio fired him in late June 2010, to rid itself of the "perceived bad press that defendants received as a result of plaintiff's race, national origin/ethnicity and religion."
Alomari claims the reason Ohio gave for firing him was "that plaintiff purposefully omitted Columbus State Community College ('CSSC') and, therefore, lied on his employment application."
Alomari claims that the defendants knew he had worked as a professor as CSSC from 1990 to 1996, that his work there was part of his background check, and that when he applied for a full-time position in 2006, for the job with OHS/ODPS, which he already had been doing as a consultant, "The HR representative advised plaintiff that he did not need to list every prior employment experience because the application was a 'formality' since he already held the position."
Alomari says he filed a discrimination complaint with the EEOC in September 2010 and received a right-to-sue letter in April.
He seeks punitive damages for religious and racial discrimination, retaliation, and civil rights and constitutional violations.
Defendants include the Ohio Department of Public Safety, its Director Thomas Charles, its former Director Thomas Stickrath and former Director of Ohio Homeland Security William Vedra.
Alomari is represented by Laren Knoll of Columbus
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Are they fucking joking? IS THAT FUCKING SERIOUS?
 
I feel this deserve its own post, sorry for the double post.

Rais Bhuiyan, Victim of Post-9/11 Shooting Spree, Pleads To Spare Attacker Mark Stroman's Life

Huffingtonpost.com said:
Just weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, a masked man stormed into the Dallas convenience store where Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh, worked as a cashier. He asked where Bhuiyan was from -- then shot him in the face at point-blank range before he could reply.

His attacker was Mark Stroman, an avowed white supremacist and methamphetamine addict, who was caught and confessed to the shooting as well as two other attacks on South Asian convenience store workers. Those men died, while Bhuiyan survived, although he was blinded in one eye and still carries 35 shotgun pellets embedded in his face.

In less than 48 hours, Stroman is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the Texas death chamber at Huntsville for the crimes. A last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court for a stay of execution was rejected without comment in June.

But even as the clock runs down on Stroman's time on death row, an unlikely advocate is trying to spare his life: Bhuiyan, the man he casually shot and left for dead nearly a decade ago.

Over the past several months, Bhuiyan, a devout Muslim, has mounted an aggressive campaign to convince Texas authorities to commute Stroman's sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He has asked the state board of pardons and paroles to make a positive recommendation for clemency to Gov. Rick Perry, and has asked Texas prison administrators for permission to meet face-to-face with Stroman for a victim-offender reconciliation process.

After those efforts were met with no response from Texas officials, Bhuiyan filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that his rights as a crime victim to meet with his attacker had been unjustly denied. That lawsuit was moved from state to federal court on Monday and remains unresolved.

In an interview with HuffPost, Bhuiyan said his efforts on behalf of Stroman were motivated by his Muslim faith. The Koran teaches that those who forsake retribution and forgive those who have wronged them become closer to God, he said.
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"My faith teaches me that saving a life is like saving the entire human race," he said.

Bhuiyan is not alone in his efforts to save Stroman's life. He has support from family members of the other victims, including the widows of the two murdered men, Waqar Husan and Vasudev Patel, he said.

"We decided to forgive him and want to give him a chance to be a better person," Nadeem Akhtar, Husan's brother-in-law, said in an interview.

Akhtar said that his sister, Husan's widow, had written a letter requesting that the Dallas district attorney's office support the effort to obtain clemency for Stroman. The district attorney's office declined to support the petition, however.

According to those close to Stroman, the efforts by Bhuiyan on his behalf have contributed to a change of heart in a man who called his crimes "patriotic" before his trial and who prosecutors once described as a cold-blooded killer.

In an interview last week, Stroman told Ilan Ziv, a documentary filmmaker, that he was remorseful for the crimes and was deeply moved by Bhuiyan's attempts to save his life.

"I received a message that Rais loved me and that is powerful," said Stroman, who suffered extreme abuse and neglect as a child at the hands of his alcoholic parents, according to court records.

"I want to thank him in person for his inspiring act of compassion. He has forgiven the unforgiveable and I want to tell him that I have a lot of love and respect him," he added.

Ziv, who met with Stroman for several hours on Monday, said the condemned man had little hope that Bhuiyan's efforts would succeed in sparing his life.

"He's very realistic," Ziv said. "He knows he's got no chance."

Stroman's last bid for a reprieve will come in less than 48 hours, as the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles weighs his petition for clemency or a stay of execution. The board has voted for clemency just once in the last 10 years, a period when the state carried out a record 231 executions. A spokeswoman for Perry's office said the governor has not expressed an opinion on the petition to the board.

Bhuiyan's request to meet face-to-face with Stroman before the execution -- a meeting that Stroman has enthusiastically agreed to -- is also unlikely to occur. Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said that both victims and offenders must go through months of counseling and complete other preparatory work before such a meeting can take place.

"There just is not enough time to prepare the victim and the inmate for a meeting," Lyons said.

Bhuiyan said he would have begun the mediation process long ago, but was not informed of his rights to such a meeting by the Dallas district attorney. That complaint was the basis for his lawsuit attempting to force the state to postpone Stroman's execution until the mediation meeting could take place; a state judge in Austin ruled Monday that the suit belonged in federal court.

If the suit is dismissed and Stroman's bid for clemency is denied, the execution will almost certainly go ahead as scheduled at 6 p.m. Wednesday evening.

For Bhuiyan, such an outcome would be a tragedy. "If he's given a chance, it's very likely that he can contribute to society," he said. "If he can educate one person who is full of hate, that is an achievement."

Yet at least one mind has been changed by Bhuiyan's outreach -- his attacker's.

"It is due to Rais' message of forgiveness that I am more content now than I have ever been," Stroman said in the interview with the documentary filmmaker. "If I don't make it I want Rais to carry on his work teaching people not to be prejudiced."

"We need to make sure there is not another Mark Stroman," he concluded.
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This man is officially my new hero. He represents what it is to be human and compassionate. He is a model for us all to follow. At least in this respect.
 
They are among us, they vote, and they are breeding.
 
Who? The terrorists?
 
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