Tim Brown

9/11, Cordoba House, Ground Zero, Imam Rauf, ISNA, Michael Bloomberg, mosque, Muslim Brotherhood, Sarah Palin, Tim Brown

Ground Zero imam tied to ‘un-indicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial’

by  • 

The New York Daily News reports that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended his aide’s response to former governor Sarah Palin weighing in on the proposed Ground Zero mosque:

Andrea Batista Schlesinger, a former head of the left-leaning Drum Major Institute who is now a policy aide to Bloomberg, fired back on her Twitter page. “Mind your business,” Schlesinger wrote, followed a moment later with, “Whose hearts? Racist hearts?” She later deleted the tweets, saying she regretted her “curt response,” but stuck up for the proposed Islamic cultural center — just like her boss. Bloomberg said he didn’t agree with Batista Schlesinger that Palin was baiting racists, “But I certainly agree that freedom of speech is just as important as freedom of religion,” he added.

When Mayor Bloomberg is right, he’s right.

Last night, on Fox 5 TV in New York City, retired FDNY firefighter and 9/11 survivor Tim Brown of theBravest.com and 64th District Leader Paul Newell discussed the Cordoba House * mosque:

In case you did not fully catch Paul Newell’s filibuster, he asked, “You are calling Imam Rauf a Muslim terrorist?”

Tim Brown replied, “I did not.”

Mr. Brown added:

“Today, we tied Imam Rauf to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Society of North America … the ISNA is an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial.”

Yet instead of taking Mayor Bloomberg’s sage advice to allow freedom of speech, Mr. Newell tried to drown Mr. Brown out with Islamophobe-baiting. You would think Mr. Newell would be at least curious about how Rauf is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and the ISNA.

Are you curious?

If so, stay tuned for the answer.

——

* Note — While it has been announced the proposed Cordoba House mosque and Islamic Cultural Center has changed its name to ’51 Park Place’, they have yet to figure out what to rename the 7-year old Cordoba Initiative.

9/11, Barack Obama, Congress, Debra Burlingame, detainees, Guantanamo, indefinite detention, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Military Commissions, National Security, Thompson prison, Tim Brown

Moving danger? So what if Obama is reconsidering moving 9/11 trials

by  • 

“In what communities in the United States of America are children required to walk by military conveys and snipers on a daily basis on their way to school?” — unidentified lower Manhattan resident, addressing New York City’s Community Board 1 meeting, January 27, 2010, just before the Board voted 42 to 0 to ask the Obama administration to move the 9/11 trials.

Be very skeptical of reports saying the Obama administration is “strongly” considering moving the 9/11 trials out of lower Manhattan. Otherwise, this CBS report fairly describes what is going on. (My fellow co-founders of the 9/11 Never Forget Coalition, Debra Burlingame in cameo and Tim Brown briefly interviewed, appear within it):

Taking on the task of hosting the 9/11 terror trials and housing indefinitely detained terrorists in Newburgh, NY and Thomson, IL, respectively, outwardly appear as economic boons to those desperate economies. Why should the danger just be shifted from Chinatown and lower Manhattan to somewhere else? It would not solve the national security risks of a federal trial. It moves the danger to ill-equipped rural civilian populaces. It does nothing to lower the billion dollar cost for both the trial and detention. (The annual operating cost of the detention facility at Gitmo is $100 million.)

Congress must fix the law. It must restore national security solely to the elected branches, remove judges from the conduct of war, prosecute war criminals while protecting our secrets, detain captured enemies for as long as necessary, and isolate detainees from any civilian populace. Those are the things an overwhelming majority of Americans want done.

Barring those steps being codified in statute, terror trials and detentions should remain at Guantanamo. This is not a pipe dream yet it will not get done if America is lolled back to sleep thinking “we won” because the Obama administration is reportedly “strongly” considering moving the trials. To put it another way, I’ll remind you of an old Army axiom to troops: Stay alert; stay alive.