Safar 5, 1425/March 27, 2004 #40
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THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

1. An opportunist is one who goes to the group which has the largest gathering. A Muslim is one who follows the Truth and seeks reward from the Creator alone.

2. Mel Gibson's movie on the "Passion" of Jesus, pbuh, has become a body slam for the Jewish power structure in America. In a majority Christian country, the Jews had become so powerful that they made the blunder of opposing the basic text of the New Testament. For THREE WEEKS STRAIGHT, the movie ran number ONE, and is still number 2.
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Announcement
JAMAAT al-MUSLIMEEN SHOORA will meet in GREENSBORO, North Carolina, on April 10, inshallah.
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Announcement
Distribution of Jamaat al-Muslimeen's new brochure on BOYCOTT of BUSINESSES which support ISRAEL began in Baltimore, Maryland on March 26. Inshallah, Chicago will be next followed by other cities.
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FOLLOW the EXAMPLE of IMAM WARITHUDDIN 'UMAR:

At a Juma' khutba on March 26, Br. Kaukab Siddique cited Imam 'Umar's $5 million suit against the Wall Street Journal as an excellent example for America's Muslims. He urged Muslims to join Jamaat al-Muslimeen's support groups for Muslim political prisoners like Prof. Sami al-Arian, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, Imam Jamil al-Amin and Shaikh Omar 'Abdel Rahman.
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Letter:
Br. Siddique:
I enjoy your postings immensly and must say that your objectivity and courage is commendable. Keep up the great work. May Allah accept you as a Mujahid and bless your efforts, always.

Sincerely,
Musaddeque Hossein
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Letter:
Dr. Kaukab Siddique: Assalamo-Alaikum

Many thanks for your realism and timely comments to put the CNN under check. The Zionist propoganda war and terrorism is planned and organized to misinform and deceive the humanity. I do not know when other educated Muslims will wake up to THINK of their identity and role-play as Muslims with the relationship of Islam and nothing else.

Mahboob Khawaja
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Press Release
Issued by Islamic Center of the Triad
Greensboro, North Carolina
Shaikh Ahmed Yassin was and is the the symbol of Palestinian resistance. He opposed the occupation of Palestinian lands and inspired the Palestinians to stand up for their rights.
In a situation where the unarmed Palestinian people are resisting the Israeli military juggernaut, the most powerful tool of violence in the middle east, Yassin was a voice of truth and integrity.
He was compassionate towards widows, orphans, the oppressed and the downtrodden, but he was fearless and firm against the oppressors. Owing to his influence, the Palestinians endorsed a principle which is fundmental to civilization, that people who do not want to be enslaved must stand up and resist even if in the process they have to offer the ultimate sacrifice.
The Palestinian people loved him because they could see that in spite of being quadripalegic, old, weak and seemingly helpless, he put the needs of his people above those of himself.
Above all, he was a man of God. In his last hour, he went to offer his pre-sunrise prayers [fajr] in the mosque. He was assassinated by an Israeli helicopter as he came out of the mosque after worshiping the Creator of all mankind.
Israel has set the grounds for its own downfall in the murder it has committed against the Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and African nations. Israel has exposed itself as the cowardly, terrorist entity it is.
For more information contact: Badi Ali at badi323@aol.com
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PAKISTAN : From our special correspondent Setback for General Musharraf: Challenged by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Hated by the People, He has U.S. & Indian Support

General Musharraf's hammer blow in South Waziristan which was supposed to bring the body of Ayman al-Zawahiri to President Bush has proved disastrous for the General. Ayman al-Zawahiri, second only to Osama bin Laden in the armed International Islamic Movement, not only escaped but now feels secure enough to have sent out a taped message.

The Pakistanis are tough soldiers, who will fight for anyone who will pay them. They went into the Islamic villages 17 km from Wana firing missiles from helicopters and advancing under cover of a barrage of heavy artillery. Intelligence and targetting was provided by the U.S. Reports indicate that U.S. special forces were involved along with the Pakistanis.

The offensive was so powerful that FOX TV's Islam hunter Ijaz Mansoor declared with great confidence that Ayman Al-Zawahiri had probably been killed in the attack and his body had been taken to Kabul by U.S. special forces for DNA testing.

Numerous Pakistani civilians who were hosting Afghan and Chechen refugees were killed in the assault by Musharraf's troops. However, the mujahideen put up a memorable defense which will go down in the history of Islam as truly outstanding. It was 7000 trained and tough Pakistani mercenaries, armed with American weaponry, against 200 Chechen mujahideen and 200 Islamic tribal Pakistani fighters. The Pakistani offensive failed and Ayman al-Zawahiri broke out of the encirclement killing dozens of Pakistani troops in the process.

Then on March 25, horror of horrors for Musharraf, Ayman al-Zawahiri's audio tape appeared on Al-Jazeera TV denouncing General Musharraf as a TRAITOR and urging the Pakistani people to overthrow him. He also called on the Pakistani army not to fight on behalf of the enemies of Islam. It is a stunning development. Musharraf thought he was hunting the Islamic leader: instead now he finds himself hunted, having to hide himself lest an Islamic zealot decide to follow Al-Zawahiri's advice.
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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS in the 'WANA OPERATION' [South Waziristan]
Pakistani forces have DEMOLISHED the homes of 40 Pakistani tribesmen who had given refuge to Islamic refugees from Sinkiang, Chechnia and Kirghizistan. [There are indications that Musharref is BEING ADVISED BY THE ISRAELIS. The demolition of homes is the EXACT process carried out by the Jewish forces in occupied Palestine.]
The Pakistani government is also reportedly stirring up inter-tribal rivalry to turn some tribes against the ZaliKhel who are accused of harboring Al-Qaida. The Mahsud tribe has been recruited to search for the raiders who ambushed reinforcements going to the Pakistani forces in the battlefield. It turns out the raiders had assembled at the home of a MAHSUD notable. His home has been set on fire.
Looks like tribal hatred against the Pakistanis is growing. The bodies of 6 Pakistani troops and 2 officers have been found after they were captured and executed by tribesmen.
[Source: Daily Ausaf, Daily Frontier Post and other papers from Pakistan]
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PAKISTAN ARMY DEMANDS REJECTED BY ISLAMIC Pakistani TRIBE

The Zali Khel [branch of the Ahmad Zai] which was hosting Ayman al-Zawahiri and other Islamic refugees has REJECTED both demands of the Pakistani government: 1. To hand over the remaining Al-Qaida elements in the area surrounded by the Pakistan army. 2. To return the 13 Pakistani troops and two officials captured by the tribesmen.
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PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATIONS ACROSS PAKISTAN: March 26

Thousands of people across Pakistan demonstrated against Musharraf's military operation in the Wana area. Jamaate Islami had urged people to demonstrate peacefully and they were peaceful. Every city, from Karachi to Lahore witnessed demonstrations condemning the U.S.-inspired operation in which numerous Pakistani tribesmen were killed.
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HAFIZ SAEED LEADS PRAYERS for SHAIKH YASSIN: SAYS MUSHARRAF HAS SURRENDERED PAKISTAN TO THE U.S.

At a call from Hafiz Saeed, leader of the Jihad movement known as Jamaat ad-Da'wa, funeral prayers in absentia were held for the martyred Palestinian leader Shaikh Ahmed Yassin in hundreds of mosques across the provinces of Punjab and Sind.

Speaking to a large Juma' gathering in Lahore [March 26], Hafiz Saeed said that from the blood of Shaikh Yassin and from the spirit of Jihad will come the victory of Islam, be it in Palestine or in Kashmir.

Hafiz Saeed deplored the Pakistani army's operation against Pakistan's own people in the tribal areas. He said the Wana operation showed that Musharraf has surrendered Pakistan to the Americans.
[Courtesy: Nawai-Waqt]
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Syed Munawar criticizes operation in Wana: Says It was Directed by the FBI
[Courtesy: JI Net]

Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan : The residents of South Waziristan suffered heavy casualties in the Wana operation, Jamaat-e-Islami general secretary Syed Munawar Hasan said.

"As many as 99 per cent causalties are of the local innocent people," he said at a press conference after attending a seminar arranged by JI workers at the party office here.

"American troops and FBI agents are also present in South Waziristan. The operation is being carried out on the direction of FBI agents," he alleged. The Jamaat leader said the rulers were out to appease their American masters. "Our army is fighting against its own people."

He demanded that new army chief should be appointed. He said the present regime had failed to solve the basic problems of the people. "Poverty rate in 1990 was 10 percent which has now increased to 36 percent."

To a question about the status granted to Pakistan by the US, he said it would spoil the sovereignty of the country. "Now the US would use us against our neighbours."
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? HAITI: GENOCIDE of INDIANS, SLAVERY, UPRISINGS, ENDLESS EXPLOITATION by the U.S. and EUROPE
[The history by the Recent U.S. Coup in Haiti]
By Edward Miller, M.D., San Rafael California
[New Trend's veteran correspondent brings an in-depth report which should be required reading for those who want to understand America.]

" Bush II planners are … dedicated to undermining democracy and independence, and despise Aristide and the popular organizations that swept him into power."
Noam Chomsky

To understand what is happening to Jean Bertrand-Aristide one needs only to look back at Haiti’s troubled history. Haiti has for centuries served as a convenient doormat in the Caribbean archipelago, crushed again and again under the brutal colonial feet of first the Europeans and then America. The original Haitians, whose ethnicity has long been lost in the course of these tramplings, barely survived the early foreign incursions. Columbus, who arrived on the Island in 1492 noted in his log that natives of Hispanola were : "loveable, tractable, peaceable, gentle, decorous Indians" * However, they were treated by the Spanish with brutal oppression and as a result, "sickened and died and their original number, estimated at 8 million, by 1510 numbered less than 50,000 *." The French chronicler, Moreau de Saint-Mery would note that late in the 17th century "there remained not a single Indian when the French came to wrest the island from the Spanish" . As the Indians died off, from both brutal suppression plus diseases brought by the white man, manpower to work the developing Spanish plantations lead to the importing of Africans as slaves.

A mercantile triangle developed as European goods were traded in Africa for slaves , who were then shipped to the New World to be sold in Hispanola (as Haiti was then called) and the sugar and tobacco their labor produced, shipped to Europe.

" By 1540 some 30,000 Africans has been brought to Hispanola."* Haiti was divided in 1697 . The western half, ceded to France as "Sainte-Domingue", became the center of the slave trade. At the time of the American Revolution, Sainte-Dominique was generating more revenue that all thirteen American colonies.*

The French Revolution, which weakened France’s hold on Hispamola, set the stage in 1791, first, for a revolt by the wealthy mulattos, which was severely repressed. Then, in August of that year a massive rebellion by Haiti’s slaves took place as "armed with picks, machetes, clubs and torches, they razed approximately 180 sugar plantations, and perhaps 900 plantations of coffee, cotton and indigo. At least a thousand white lives were lost; well over 10,000 slaves were killed outright, and up to 25,000 were thought to have taken to the hills."* Though the nascent United States, protecting their investments in Hispanola, sent both troops and cash, the successful leader of the rebellion, ex-slave, Toussant Louverture, named himself " Lieutenant-Governor of a Colonial State within the French Empire. Napoleon, fresh from victories in Europe sent a force of 28,000 , under his brother-in-law General Leclerc to restore French rule. Though Toussant was captured and died in prison, the ex-slaves under Jean Jacques Dessalines eventually whipped the French, who lost over 20,000 soldiers, from both war and yellow-fever, before LeClerc himself succombed to the fever.
On January 1st 1804 victorious Dessalines proclaimed: " I have given the French cannibals blood for blood, I have avenged America,"*

The slaves’ victory was a Pyrrhic one for " Haitians would never heal the wounds of colonialism, racism and inequality."* Much of the plantation infrastructure was destroyed in the rebellion and plantation owners in neighboring Caribbean Islands, as well as the owners of slaves in the United States , fearful their own slaves might also rebel, did their best to isolate this nascent republic.

Two years after his victory, Desalines was murdered. The US and European countries, coming to France’s rescue , arranged diplomatic quarantines against Haiti, while merchants in North America developed their Haitian trade to compete with the French and British.

Though trade picked up and the plantations were reorganized, racial divisions remained between wealthy white or mulatto owners, traders, small manufacturers, and the peasant class. These feudal structures are present even today. Though no longer slaves, the Africans remain at the bottom of the economic ladder, as merchants and other middlemen divide the spoils, and previously self-sustaining black farmers are forced to grow exportable crops. Cotton as an export was joined by coffee, mahogany, and other woods, as well as indigo.

After Spain’s empire collapsed in 1810, Haiti’s then President, Jean-Pierre Boyer, united Haitian and Dominique factions, but in 1844 the Dominican Republic again declared its independence from Haiti.

American and European worlds had always feared racial unrest would threaten their commercial interests and as early as 1827, " France and Britain had taken to sending uninvited gunboats into Haitian waters, to produce in the minds of the natives a favorable impression towards the whites."* The Geffrard government, facing unrest , appealed to the British , who brought in three ships to bombard the port fortifications.
Such military threats were copied by foreign merchants who, proclaiming that debts were owed them by Haitians, extended this so-called "gunboat diplomacy".
In 1888 American Marines supported a revolt against the Legitime government, and in 1914 American, British and German forces entered Haiti "to protect their citizens". By 1902 over $2,500,000 had been extorted from Haiti by such "gunboat diplomacy". Between 1849 and 1915 the US had sent warships into Haitian waters 26 times to protect its cititizens. With an unpayable national debt of over $40,000,000 by 1904, and increasing political instability from multiple coups, the US intervened and on July 28th 1915 American marines landed near Port-au-Prince, and not only took over Haiti but abolished Dessalines’ "most famous law: that forbidding foreign ownership of land."* As a result some 266,000 acres of Haitian land were leased to North American firms by 1929 with the displacement of "50,000 peasants in the North alone."* Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo after the US Marines left his Dominican Republic butchered between 18,000 and 35,000 Haitian peasants who had settled on his borders. Under US pressure Trujillo paid Haiti’s government an indemnity of $522,000, or $29.00/head. *

After WWII amateur anthropologist, Francois Duvalier was elected president by an army-organized vote and with his own police , ruled with a vicious hand, murdering his opponents at will while collecting millions from an uncaring Washington, which, in the 1960’s even sent a US Marine contingent to keep "Papa Doc" in power. Employing the "communist scare" as a tool , Duvalier even managed the Holy See, expelling uncooperative Catholic orders from the country and appointing his own Archbishop. Before he passed away in 1971, Duvalier, in negotiations with Nelson Rockefeller, the Nixon Administration arranged for his son, "Baby Doc" to succeed him. Baby Doc, though he hired a public-relations firm to soften his image was as vicious as "Papa" and with Washington’s assistance set up offshore assembly lines or re-exportation industries more worker-repressive even than Mexico’s "maquiladoras".

"With such incentives as no customs taxes, a minimum wage kept very low, the suppression of labor unions, and the right of American companies to repatriate their products" * the economic and humane life blood of Haiti was so drained that "from 1973 to 1980 Haiti’s external debt rose from $53 to $366 million.*

Increasing public unrest from this impoverishment was viciously controlled by gangs of thugs (Macoutes) and as the army and FRAPH, (our CIA’s paramilitary), imprisoned, tortured and murdered , thousands sought refuge in the United States, overwhelming the INS, especially in Florida. The Reagan Administration in 1983 withdrew support from "Baby Doc" and escorted him out of Haiti in a US Air force jet.

It was into this cesspool of poverty in the "poorest country in the world" that in 1982, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, returning from his studies in Israel, was assigned by the Archbishop to an impoverished parish in Port-au-Prince where he encouraged Haiti’s younger generation to use their political muscle. In Haiti’s first free elections in 1990 Aristide came to power with 67% of the vote, preaching economic and political views at odds with Haiti’s elite and Washington: Aristide said:

"Haiti workers earn the lowest wages in the hemisphere. We are encouraged to exploit and maintain this so-called advantage..to attract foreign companies. Because our economy is weak we depend on loans and aid from foreign countries…This makes us extremely vulnerable to international institutions that control the money."

In 1991, after less than a year in office, Aristide was overthrown in a military coup, taking refuge in the United States. In the following three years the financial debacle and killing in Haiti threatened its international industries , while thousands of refugees overwhelmed Florida’s welfare system. Clinton , criticised by the Black Caucus for failure to support democracy, faced with anger from Florida’s electorate, and to draw public attention from his debacle in Somolia, our president in 1994 sent a US Marine contingent, to return Aristide to his presidency, but not until , as this courageous priest made public in 2000:
"In order to restore democracy we were asked to agree to an economic plan which could once again mortgage the future of the country."
(http://pimr.com/report. 3/18/2004).

Previous military coup leaders, went underground or fled with their weaponry to join anti-Aristide forces in the Dominican Republic and neither the US nor Aristide indicted these murderers. The CIA’s criminal agent, Emmanuel Constant, was given safe haven in Florida, and though Aristide disbanded the corrupt army, these restless, and now indigent fighters, were never disarmed.

This courageous priest’s social programs angered Haiti’s elite as well as international business . His demands for a minimal wage and medical care , plus his unwillingness to sell Haiti out to the IMF and World Bank upset the Bush II regieme. Aristide irritatewd France’s Chirac by demanding reimbursement with interest, of reparations France had extracted in the 18th century for damage to Napoleon’s army and loss of French plantations.

In the 2000 Elections, an Anti-Aristide group "The Democratic Platform" marched through the streets of Port-au-Prince, creating violent response, boycotting the elections which the Priests’ Lavalas Family Party easily won. After Aristide’s victory, the US placed a near total embargo on the country and even blocked loans from the Inter-American Development Bank, curtailing Aristide’s efforts to improve roads, health care and education.

But the handwriting was on the wall. The second coup against Aristide began in the hinterlands as guerilla attacks on peripheral towns and as early as 2001 a commando-style assault on the presidential palace was driven off.

Not trusting his dangerously-under equipped police to protect him, Aristide hired a professional security firm (Steele Foundation) headquartered in San Francisco as his bodyguard .

By 2004 the Democratic Platform launched successful work strikes, while groups lead by previously-loyal officers from the Haitian Army moved as guerillas from one Haitian city to another, burning police stations and finally capturing Haiti’s second largest city: Cap-Haitian.

The Bush II government presented a Caribbean Community (Caricom) proposal which Aristide accepted but the Democratic Platform rejected outright. After the Platform’s refusal the Bush administration tacitly approved the opposition’s plan of fostering a coup which would remove Aristide from power by placing the blame for the turmoil squarely on Aristide’s shoulders. Releasing a statement on February 28th, the White House argued: " This long-simmering crisis is largely of Aristide’s making…His own actions have called into question his fitness to continue to govern Haiti."
(pinr.com/report.php 3/18/2004)

On February 28th, 2004 Hatian president Jean Bertrand-Aristide was taken involuntarily to the Central African Republic following a US coup d’etat.

* quotations from Paul Farmer’s book THE USES OF HAITI
published by Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine
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2004-03-31 Wed 18:03ct