Bombings @ MindSay 
london
I have been reading the news and reading blogs all day today. My prayers and blessings to the families down in VA who lost loved ones in today's shootings.
Now to anyone who wants to think or believe April is a "cursed" month can kiss my ass. I was born in April and personally love the month! (No comments from the peanut gallery:P) Sure bad things have happened in April. The school shooting everyone likes to blame other school shootings on, other shootings, today's shootings, Hitler's birthday and many other "bad things".
But if you want to get technical, every month in history has a "bad thing or things" that have happened and April is no different. Take September 11th for one instance. The bombing of Peral Harbor happened December 7th 1941. Waco actually started Febuary 28th 1993 NOT in April when it ended. On October 3rd of 2006 the Amish School shooting happened. The list goes on and on.
So before anybody starts bad mouthing MY BIRTH MONTH or any other month because they see events happening in the month, they need to use their mind that their God gave them and go look into history and see that April is no different then any other month! April has good things and bad things that happen through out its days just like December has good things and bad things. As does September.
So instead of living in fear of April and spreading fear of how April is "cursed" use your head and do a little research!
By Carmen L. Gleason
American Forces Press Service
April 13, 2007 – An alleged al Qaeda leader being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, denied involvement in bombings in both Indonesia and Singapore, according to a transcript of his hearing released yesterday. Riduan bin Isomuddin, known as "Hambali," either declined to answer or said he had no involvement with the operations brought forth during his April 4 combatant status review tribunal hearing at the detention facility.
The tribunal was an administrative hearing to determine only if the detainee could be designated as an enemy combatant.
Hambali said that while he was a member of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian militant Islamic organization, he had no interaction with al Qaeda.
Evidence presented during the hearing showed that he had been the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiyah and served as its main contact for al Qaeda in Southeast Asia. He also helped recruit members for al Ghuraba, the foreign student organization that helped develop Jemaah Islamiyah organization in Pakistan.
He also had served as the leader of the Malaysia Mujahedin group, according to U.S. government information presented in the hearing. That group's mission is to topple the Indonesian government. During the hearing, a Federal Bureau of Investigation source was cited as having contact with Hambali when he orchestrated and funded the December 2000 bombing of a church in Indonesia that killed 18 people.
An FBI source also stated that in January 2002 the detainee discussed carrying out attacks in bars, cafes and night clubs frequented by westerners in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia. The source said the detainee claimed to have 1 ton of explosives within Indonesia.
After Hambali allegedly discussed bombing such places and having large amounts of explosives, at least 187 people were killed and more than 300 foreign tourists were injured in October 2002 when an explosion destroyed a nightclub on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
In his hearing, Hambali denied having supervised the plan to bomb the U.S., Australian and British embassies in Singapore. However, an FBI source stated that the detainee served as the point man between al Qaeda operatives and the mastermind in this plan, which government officials called the "Singapore plot."
Other evidence presented during the hearing showed that a document seized during Hambali's arrest provided instructions for manufacturing vest bombs used by suicide bombers. However, Hambali said he had "no answer" when he was asking during the hearing what his involvement was in making explosives.
The hearing came to a close when the hearing president said an assessment would be made as to whether the detainee continued to pose a threat to the United States or coalition partners in the ongoing conflict against terrorist organizations. The detainee was told that he would have the opportunity to be heard and to present relevant information later to an administrative review board.
The government implemented the CSRTs in July 2004 in response to a June 28, 2004, Supreme Court ruling in the case of Rasul v. Bush. The court ruled that enemy combatants held by the U.S. government had the right to contest their status before a judge or other neutral decision maker.
Between July 2004 and March 2005, DoD conducted 558 CSRTs at Guantanamo Bay. At the time, 38 detainees were determined to no longer meet the definition of enemy combatant, and 520 detainees were found to be enemy combatants.
Article sponsored by Criminal Justice online leadership as well as police and military personnel who have authored books.
London mayor says West fueled Islamic radicalism
By Andrew Gray Wed Jul 20, 8:53 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Western foreign policy has fueled the Islamist radicalism behind the bomb attacks which killed more than 50 people in London, the British capital's mayor Ken Livingstone said on Wednesday.
Livingstone, who earned the nickname "Red Ken" for his left-wing views, won widespread praise for a defiant response which helped unite London after the bombings. But he has revived his reputation for courting controversy in recent days.
Asked on Wednesday what he thought had motivated the four suspected suicide bombers, Livingstone cited Western policy in the Middle East and early American backing for
"A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in (U.S. detention camp) Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy," he said.
Police say they believe there is a clear link between bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the four British Muslims who blew up three underground trains and a double-decker bus on July 7.
"You've just had 80 years of Western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of a Western need for oil. We've propped up unsavory governments, we've overthrown ones that we didn't consider sympathetic," Livingstone said.
"I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s ... the Americans recruited and trained Osama bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians to drive them out of
"They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that, he might turn on his creators," he told BBC radio.
ANGER OVER IRAQ
Prime Minister
Tony Blair's government has insisted the bombings have no link to its foreign policy, particularly its decision to invade alongside the United States.
But an opinion poll this week showed two-thirds of Britons see a connection between the Iraq war and the bombings. A top think tank and a leaked intelligence memo have also suggested the war has made Britain more of a target for terrorists.
That did not stop the right-wing Daily Telegraph castigating Livingstone, a maverick member of Blair's Labour party who was celebrating London's selection as host of the 2012 Olympics just hours before the bombers struck.
Wednesday's edition of the paper featured a picture of the mayor between photographs of two radical Muslim clerics under the headline: "The men who blame Britain."
Livingstone has made clear he condemns all killing, including suicide bombing. But is also a long-standing critic of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
"If you have been under foreign occupation, and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work, for three generations, I suspect if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves," he said on Wednesday.
Israel's ambassador to London Zvi Heifetz accused the mayor of expressing sympathy for Palestinian militants.
"It is outrageous that the same mayor who rightfully condemned the suicide bombing in London as perverted faith', defends those who, under the same extremist banner, kill Israelis," he said in a statement.
[Obviously if the majority of the Brits shared this sense of fairness of the Sunni council of Britain in brandishing the London bombings as characteristically similar to the slaughtering of Iraqis and Palestinians, they would be on the streets demanding the head of PM Blair and his supporters this very second and that every last ounce of support for the immoral state of Israel be ended .
Yet I would hasten to point out a glaring difference between the two examples: the muslim world has never initiated a major offensive against the west. September 11th and the other so-called "terrorist acts against freedom and democracy" were a response to a lenghthy list of western acts of aggression against the Muslim world, including the versions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The sooner the British public realizes this, the sooner they can repair their image, thus sparing themselves from future 'extremist' acts.]
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050718/ap_on_re_eu/britain_bombings
By BRIAN MURPHY, AP Religion Writer Sun Jul 17,10:08 PM ET
BIRMINGHAM, England - Ten days after Islamic radicals carried out deadly attacks on the London transport system, Britain's largest Sunni Muslim group on Sunday issued a binding religious edict, a fatwa, condemning the July 7 suicide bombings as the work of a "perverted ideology."
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The Sunni Council denounced the bombings as anti-Islamic and said the Quran, the Muslim holy book, forbade suicide attacks.
"Who has given anyone the right to kill others? It is a sin. Anyone who commits suicide will be sent to Hell," said Mufti Muhammad Gul Rehman Qadri, the council chairman. "What happened in London can be seen as a sacrilege. It is a sin to take your life or the life of others."
The council said Muslims should not use "atrocities being committed in Palestine and
Iraq" to justify attacks such as those in London that killed 55 when suicide bombers struck in three Underground trains and a double-decker bus, the fatwa declared.
"We equally condemn those who may have been behind the masterminding of these acts, those who incited these youths in order to further their own perverted ideology," Qadri said.
More than 2,000 Sunni clerics, scholars and community leaders attended Sunday's meeting, which was scheduled before the bombings.
Also Sunday, government officials dismissed claims that lax attitudes allowed homegrown suicide bombers to develop. The Sunday Times reported that one suspected bomber, 30-year-old Mohammad Sidique Khan, was investigated last year by MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service, but was not regarded as a threat to national security or subsequently put under surveillance.
MI5 began evaluating Khan, a Briton of Pakistani ancestry, during an inquiry that focused on an alleged plot to explode a large truck bomb outside a target in London thought to be a nightclub in Soho, the newspaper said. The private inquiry reportedly evaluated hundreds of potential suspects.
The Metropolitan Police and a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair declined comment.
The bombings have prompted the government to propose new legislation outlawing "indirect incitement" of terrorism — including public praise for those who carry out attacks.
Nevertheless, Charles Falconer, the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor, denied that the government had not been diligent in screening political refugees from Muslim countries, making Britain a fertile recruiting ground for Islamic terrorism.
"In terms of asylum, our policy is: If you are in fear of persecution, you are entitled to come here," the minister said on BBC television. "Obviously, if you then seek to attack the very state that you come to, that gives rise to different questions.
"But I don't think we have been ultraliberal. ... What we have got to do now is unify all the forces in our society, in particular in the Muslim community, against those people who are fundamentally at odds with our values."
The fatwa was issued as investigators in the northern city of Leeds continued to focus on an Islamic bookshop and a house near the home of one of the four alleged bombers, 22-year-old Shahzad Tanweer.
Tanweer, born in Britain to Pakistani parents, was believed to be one of the Underground train bombers and reportedly visited two religious schools on a trip to Pakistan.
Pakistani intelligence agents have questioned students, teachers and administrators at the school in central Lahore, and at least two other al-Qaida-linked radical Islamic centers, showing pictures and a dossier on Tanweer.
In an interview with CNN's "Late Edition," British Defense Secretary John Reid expressed concern about Pakistan's religious schools, saying the madrassas "are a major source of international instability and contribute largely toward the growth of terrorist activity."
Police said Sunday night that six men were arrested in Leeds under Britain's anti-terrorism act, but later retracted the claim and said they were arrested on immigration offenses. There is no connection between the July 7 London bombings and the arrests Sunday night, police said.
"There was a mistake earlier in that entry ," a spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity according to government policy.
Tanweer, Khan and 18-year-old Hasib Hussain, who were all from the Leeds area. Hussain was also a Briton whose parents were from Pakistan. The fourth suspect, Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, 19, who came to Britain as an infant, lived in Luton, a city north of London.
Police on Saturday released an image captured by surveillance cameras showing all four bombers with backpacks entering the Luton train station on the morning of the attacks. Investigators say the four took a train from Luton to London's King's Cross station, where they split up to carry out the bombings.
Officers have also been searching the Leeds home of an Egyptian biochemist for more evidence after investigators reportedly found traces of explosives in the man's bathtub. Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar is being interrogated by Egyptian authorities, who say the biochemist denies having any connection to the attacks. He was arrested at the Cairo airport in the days after the bombing.
Egypt is not prepared to hand el-Nashar over to Britain, Egyptian security officials said. British investigators are in Cairo to take observe the questioning. The two countries have no extradition treaty.
[The U.S. media's latest pinnups in the "War on Terror", fortunate to have survived the
London subway bombings. A hospital interview of the sisiters was aired yesterday on Fox
News. Not suprisingly both are attractive and of course White
(synonomous in the age of sex as a commodity with good looks). Both also miss the plot entirely,
in viewing it as incumbent upon citizens of the most despicable, immoral country on the planet to lecture their victims about morality.
In the words of one:
"It just kills me that somebody is that misled and that misinformed and could
possibly think that that kind of senseless violence does anything positive
whatsoever."…"I just feel empowered and feel like God's prepared us, both of us,
our whole lives for this day," she said. "And he has given us this opportunity I
think to just reach out to others and to encourage others who are sick or hurt
and just to make a stand against terrorism."
Yes, I'm sure G-d delibaretely spares us Western mortals from suicide bombers while those Third World sinners are daily left to their
own devises (i.e., to starve to death, perish of aids,
be killed at the hands of the machine guns toting, F-15 bomb dropping democracy spreading
armies of the west).
Needless to say, what better force to turn to in such trying times for the Western world than such a loving G-d. As (I imagine) the brighter of the two sisters reminds us,
"There's no better way to fight terrorism than to turn
what they meant for evil into good and the Lord is certainly capable of that,"
Posted 7/22/2005 12:04 PM
Tennessee sisters injured in London attacks not deterred
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — The sisters from Tennessee sightseeing in London had no idea if they had found the right subway line. But they had a pass to ride the "tube" all day, so Katie and Emily Benton figured they'd get to Tower of London eventually.
Then the bomb went off.
"There was no fireball — it was just so not Hollywood," Kathleen "Katie" Benton, 21, remembers. "They really have no idea what a bomb is like."
Exploding only 10 feet to their right, the blast from the terrorist's bomb tore apart the subway car, flinging the Benton sisters to the floor in a haze of shattered glass, smoke and blood. The woman just one seat to their right was killed.
"I honestly thought I was going to die during the explosion," Emily Benton, 20, said. "Just the sensations that I was feeling — I thought I was on fire. I could feel my skin like peeling off. Just the fact that my eyes opened and I was alive was incredible."
In their first interview since the July 7 bombings in London that killed 56 people and injured some 700 others, the Benton sisters recounted to The Associated Press their memories of the blast, the days that followed and their resolve to recover. They're both bewildered by the attention their experience has garnered and thankful for the efforts of others assisting in their recovery.
"I'm still trying to adjust to this media thing," Katie Benton said. "People know who I am — it's just so really bizarre to me, honestly. It's bizarre to me to think that like Emily and I are a part of history now."
The sisters' trip to London was the culmination of a summer abroad for Katie Benton, who arrived in Kenya in early June to work with a group helping locals learn to protect their crops from wildlife. Emily Benton joined her sister the day before the attacks in London, and the pair planned to vacation for a week before returning to Tennessee.
On the morning of the bombings, Katie Benton said she remembers sitting with Londoners on their way to work. Everyone, it seemed, had a briefcase or a bag for a laptop, although there were a few families mixed in the crowd.
"Honestly, I was more focused on my coffee than if we were on the right train," she said. "I really was not looking around and like, 'Hmmm, that person looks like they're about to blow up a train.'"
After the bomb went off, Katie Benton remembers holding her sister as they sat on the floor in front of their seats on the darkened train.
"It was about 10 minutes of checking out Emily before I actually looked down and realized I was bleeding all over the place," she said. "Just intense pain. Just so incredibly deafening."
Emily Benton suffered the most severe injuries: broken bones and lost skin on her left foot and a fractured right hand. Katie Benton suffered shrapnel wounds in her right foot that exposed tendons and bones. Both suffered some hearing damage from the blast.
"My foot looks like it got attacked by a shark," Emily Benton said. "I don't know, I'm so happy to have my foot that I don't really mind. I have a nasty scar on my arm. It's like a souvenir, you know. Every time I look at that ... it's a part of your life."
Their mother flew to London — a reunion Emily Benton calls the most exciting moment of her life — and watched over their transfer to Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, where the sisters later underwent reconstructive surgery. In their silent hours at Duke, they refused to relive the blasts or be overwhelmed by the nightmarish memories. They don't watch TV news coverage about the attacks.
"It hasn't interested me at all to watch," Emily Benton said. "I was there and I know what happened and I don't really want to relive it again."
Their doctors say they are progressing well, and Katie Benton said at a Friday news conference they planned to leave for their home in Knoxville later in the day on a corporate jet loaned to the family. On Thursday, bombers again struck in London. Katie Benton, who said she has been strengthened by Britain's strong resolve after the initial bombings, said she prays their reaction to the most recent explosions is no different.
"It just seems so relentless and our heart really goes out to that city," she said. "It just kills me that somebody is that misled and that misinformed and could possibly think that that kind of senseless violence does anything positive whatsoever."
Both said they've yet to awaken with self-pity or hatred for the attackers. They see their wounds as "souvenirs" and believe the experience has only served to strengthen their Christian faith and their appreciation for what they have.
"There's no better way to fight terrorism than to turn what they meant for evil into good and the Lord is certainly capable of that," Katie Benton said.
Emily Benton said she expects questions of "why" will come eventually, but for now she believes a divine plan for their lives is unfolding.
"I just feel empowered and feel like God's prepared us, both of us, our whole lives for this day," she said. "And he has given us this opportunity I think to just reach out to others and to encourage others who are sick or hurt and just to make a stand against terrorism."
They'll return to Duke for more treatments in the following weeks. Katie Benton said Friday she will need surgeries on both ears in the coming weeks and might have some permanent hearing loss. Emily Benton said she will need a bone graft in her left foot, where a spacer now fills the gap of a bone blown out by the blast.
Both say they'll return to someday England to complete their trip. When back in London, Katie Benton said she won't hesitate to again venture into the Underground. Emily, meanwhile, said, "I don't think I'll ever ride a subway again."
For now, the sisters are focused on returning to college this fall and seeing their friends and family. Katie Benton is a rising senior at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she's studying veterinary medicine. Emily Benton planned to attend Pellissippi State Technical Community College, also in Knoxville, but expects to take online classes until she heals more.
"I count the days until I'll have everything back," she said.
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