THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Do You Swear To Tell The PC Truth, The Censored Truth And Nothing But The Truth That Will Set The Defendant Free?: Dritan Duka, who will be tried on terrorism charges has filed a motion asking a federal judge to drop references to al-Qaida and other “inflammatory” language from the indictment and to dismiss a several charges because he was not properly advised of his Miranda rights before being questioned by the FBI, reports The Associated Press. His four co-defendants are expected to file similar pre-trial motions:
Dritan Duka's filing objected to allegations that the defendants were inspired by al-Qaida, saying they are "irrelevant, inflammatory and are placed into the indictment in order to incite prejudice and bias against the defendants and deprive them of a fair trial."
The five men facing trial in U.S. District Court in Camden in late September were arrested in May 2007. Federal authorities said the arrests prevented an attack on Fort Dix, a New Jersey Army installation used primarily to train reservists and members of the National Guard for deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The men are charged with attempted murder of military personnel, conspiracy to murder military personnel and weapons offenses. If convicted, they could face life in prison.
All five are foreign-born Muslims in their 20s who grew up in south Jersey. Duka and his brothers Eljvir and Shain are ethnic Albanians born in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia whose family entered the U.S. as illegal aliens; Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, Dritan Duka's brother-in-law, is a Palestinian born in Jordan; and Serdar Tatar is a Turk.
A sixth co-defendant Agron Abdullahu, a Muslim Albanian from Kosovo, is serving 20-months in prison after pleading guilty to providing weapons to illegal immigrants.
† The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws: Terence Jeffrey, editor-at-large of Human Events magazine, writes a chilling column about an incident that occurred on Halloween 2006 at the U.S.-Canadian border in broad daylight:
[A] covert agent of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) pulled to the side of a Canadian highway that runs along the U.S. border. …
He started walking south, holding a red duffel bag that carried simulated radioactive material. People on both sides of the border saw what he was doing. Someone on the American side called the Border Patrol. …
[He] load[ed] multiple canisters of simulated radioactive material into a conspicuous red duffel bag … carr[ied] the duffel bag away from an SUV … and mov[ed] into some brush on the U.S. side. …
[T]he Border Patrol did not catch the intruder.
In two other dirty-bomb smuggling simulations, no one notified the Border Patrol and the covert agent was not intercepted.
The GAO then repeated the experiment at the Mexican Border, writes Jeffrey:
[A] covert GAO agent - wearing a Hawaiian shirt and white shorts – walk[s] along a "fence" on the Mexican border. The fence appears to have posts that are alternately about 4- and 6-feet high that stand about 5 or 6 feet apart.
The “fence” otherwise appears completely open. …
[T]his is a type of fence the Border Patrol uses to stop vehicles from crossing the border. …
[I]t would not stop dogs, cats, trail bikers, or a backpacking emissary from Osama bin Laden.
A GAO report that summarizes the results of tests like these conducted between 2003 and 2007 was presented to Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) a month ago. The GAO has also posted a video of several of these cross-border infiltrations on its Web site (there is no sound).
† Global Warming Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: Scientific misconduct has become so rampant that research findings may not be completely reliable. A survey conducted in 2006 reveals that nine percent of scientists in the U.S. have personally witnessed fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in conducting research, reporting findings or seeking grants, reports Reuters:
The findings indicate that more than 2,300 cases of misconduct may be occurring each year at U.S. research sites.
Examples of misconduct reported by the survey respondents include changing data to "improve" findings, submitting false data to win a grant and misrepresenting findings. …
[T]he HHS research integrity office receives only about two dozen reports of research misconduct a year, a mere “tip of the iceberg.”
Nearly four out of 10 of suspected incidents of misconduct (37 percent) went unreported, according to the survey of 2,212 scientists at 605 universities and research institutions published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
Comments