Officials lambast NJ corruption after 44 arrested/U.S. man says aided al Qaeda plan NY railroad attack/Ayman al-Zawahiri, right, with Osama bin Laden

Officials lambast NJ corruption after 44 arrested


By DAVID PORTER, Associated Press Writer David Porter, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 28 mins ago
NEWARK, N.J. – Officials are decrying political corruption in New Jersey after more than 40 people, among them rabbis and elected officeholders, were arrested in an investigation in which some were accused of laundering tens of millions of dollars and of black-market trafficking of kidneys and fake Gucci handbags.
The 44 arrests Thursday were a remarkable number even for New Jersey, where more than 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or have been convicted of corruption since 2001.
"New Jersey's corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation," said Ed Kahrer, who heads the FBI's white-collar and public corruption division. "Corruption is a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state."
Gov. Jon Corzine said: "The scale of corruption we're seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated."
The arrests were headline news in Israel on Friday morning, with the front pages of all three of the country's mass-circulation dailies featuring pictures of bearded ultra-Orthodox Jews being led away by law enforcement officials.
Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Israel's national police force, said Friday that Israeli police were not involved in the investigation. He would not comment further.
Federal prosecutors in the U.S. said the investigation focused on a money laundering network that operated between Brooklyn, N.Y.; Deal, N.J.; and Israel. The network is alleged to have laundered tens of millions of dollars through Jewish charities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey.
Prosecutors then used an informant in that investigation to help them go after corrupt politicians. The informant — a real estate developer charged with bank fraud three years ago — posed as a crooked businessman and paid a string of public officials tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to get approvals for buildings and other projects in New Jersey, authorities said.
Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City's deputy mayor, and two state assemblymen. A member of the governor's cabinet resigned after agents searched his home, though he was not arrested. All but one of the officeholders are Democrats.
Also, five rabbis from New York and New Jersey — two of whom lead congregations in Deal — were accused of laundering millions of dollars, some of it from the sale of counterfeit goods and bankruptcy fraud, authorities said.
Others arrested included building and fire inspectors, city planning officials and utilities officials, all of them accused of using their positions to further the corruption.
The politicians arrested were not accused of any involvement in the money laundering or the trafficking in human organs and counterfeit handbags.
Hours after FBI agents seized documents from his home and office, New Jersey Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria resigned. Federal officials would not say whether he would be charged. Doria did not return calls for comment.
Authorities did not identify the informant, described in court papers as a person "charged in a federal criminal complaint with bank fraud in or about May 2006." But the date matches up with an investigation that led to charges against Solomon Dwek, the son of a Deal rabbi.
The younger Dwek was charged at the time in connection with a bounced $25 million check he deposited in a bank's drive-through window. He has denied the charges. Dwek's lawyer did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday.
Most of the defendants facing corruption charges were released on bail. The money laundering defendants faced bail between $300,000 and $3 million, and most were ordered to submit to electronic monitoring.
Among those ensnared by the informant was Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, prosecutors said. The 32-year-old Cammarano, who won a runoff election last month, was accused of accepting money from the developer at a Hoboken diner.
"There's the people who were with us, and that's you guys," the complaint quotes Cammarano saying. "There's the people who climbed on board in the runoff. They can get in line. ... And then there are the people who were against us the whole way. ... They get ground into powder."
Cammarano was accused of accepting $25,000 in cash bribes. His attorney Joseph Hayden said his client is "innocent of these charges. He intends to fight them with all his strength until he proves his innocence."
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Associated Press Writers Angela Delli Santi and Beth DeFalco in Trenton, N.J.; Wayne Parry in Deal, N.J.; Samantha Henry and Victor Epstein in Newark, N.J.; Larry Neumeister in New York and Matti Friedman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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U.S. man says aided al Qaeda plan NY railroad attack


Thu Jul 23, 7:27 pm ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. man has pleaded guilty to helping al Qaeda plan an attack on New York's Long Island Rail Road and to firing rockets at U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a court transcript unsealed on Thursday showed.
Bryant Neal Vinas, 26, from Long Island, also admitted at a Brooklyn federal court hearing on January 28 that he trained with the Islamist extremist group, according to the transcript, which was unsealed after a media request.
Vinas faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. A date for sentencing has not been set, a court official said.
"I consulted with a senior al Qaeda leader and provided detailed information about the operation of the Long Island Rail Road system which I knew because I had ridden the railroad on many occasions," Vinas told the court.
"The purpose of providing this information was to help plan an ... attack on the Long Island Rail Road system," he said.
Vinas told Judge Nicholas Garaufis that he left Long Island late in 2007 and traveled to Pakistan with the intention of joining a jihadist group to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
"I made contact with and was accepted into al Qaeda," he said. "As a member of al Qaeda, I received training in courses in general combat and explosives.
"I took part in firing rockets at an American military base. Although we intended to hit the military base and kill American soldiers, I was informed that the rockets missed and the attack failed," Vinas said.
New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the Long Island Rail Road, said it had been in constant contact with authorities as the investigation developed and that there "was never an imminent threat to the system."
The Long Island Rail Road describes itself as the busiest commuter railroad in North America, carrying more than 300,000 passengers every weekday.
(Reporting by Grant McCool, Writing by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Xavier Briand)
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Bryant Neal Vinas: An American in Al Qaeda


By CLAIRE SUDDATH Claire Suddath – 2 hrs 11 mins ago
Bryant Neal Vinas, a 26-year-old from Long Island, N.Y., has been charged with attacking a U.S. military base and providing information to the Al-Qaeda terror network. Although Vinas pled guilty to the charges in January, court documents remained classified because their publication could have compromised other ongoing investigations. They were unsealed on July 22, providing insight into one of the few Americans known to have joined or trained with Al-Qaeda. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable border with Afghanistan.)
Fast Facts:
• A onetime Boy Scout who grew up in Medford, Long Island, Vinas was raised Catholic and is said to have liked football, baseball and video games.
• Vinas' Peruvian-born father and Argentinean-born mother divorced when he was a teenager. Instead of going to college, Vinas joined the U.S. army at age 18.
• He started attending Islamic services three or four years ago and eventually converted. He joined the the Islamic Association of Long Island, a mosque where most attendees are from Pakistan. While there, he went by the name Ibrahim.
• Vinas became a licensed truck driver but quit his job and left home in 2007, saying he wanted to study Islam and Arabic. His parents had no idea where he went.
• His confiscated computer revealed that prior to leaving home, Vinas had visited jihadist websites.
• Because the young American had no previous criminal record and no connection with any other terrorist groups, he was able to travel freely through foreign countries.
• Traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in late 2007 or early 2008, where he went by a number of names, including Ben Yameen al-Kanadee and Bashir al-Amriki (Bashir the American).
• After a truck bomb killed more than 50 people at the Islamabad Marriott hotel in September 2008, the FBI interviewed the Vinas family about their son. According to Vinas' father, they indicated that it was just routine. (Read "Islamabad After the Marriott Bombing: The Baghdad Effect.")
• Vinas was in Peshwar, Pakistan in November 2008, supposedly to buy supplies and use the Internet, when he was arrested by Pakistani authorities. Authorities have not revealed how they located him.
• He has been linked to a Belgian-French terror cell and also to Moez Garsallaoui, a Tunisian Islamist militant whom he may have met while in Pakistan.
• Vinas was charged with conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens, providing information to a terrorist organization, and receiving "military-type training" from a Al-Qaeda. He originally pled not guilty but switched on Jan 28 and pled guilty to all charges.
• According to court documents, he admitted to firing rockets on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan in September 2008.
• Vinas informed U.S. officials of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up a Long Island Rail Road commuter train in New York's Penn Station, saying that he had provided them with details of the New York transit system. This revelation lead authorities to issue a Nov. 25 2008 terror alert.
• He is expected to be a key witness in the cases of other Al Qaeda members, including that of Malika El Aroud, a Morrocan-born Belgian woman accused of recruiting Al Qaeda members over the Internet.
• Vinas is currently in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in an undisclosed location somewhere in New York.
Quotes about:
"[He was] very quiet, very smiley."
- Nayyar Imam of the Islamic Association of Long Island, where Vinas worshiped (New York Times, July 23, 2009)
"If he is Al-Qaeda, he should be arrested. He's a terrorist."
- Abdul Razzak Aziz of the Islamic Association of Long Island (Newsday, July 23, 2009)
"I don't think he would be in trouble with, like, terrorists. I think he was in Pakistan because he was excited about the religion."
- Juan Vinas, 63, Bryant Vinas' father (Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2009)
"There was never an imminent threat to the system."
- New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesperson, noting that the Penn Station plot was never fully developed (Newsday, July 23, 2009)
"I love him as a son, but I don't know nothing about him."
- Maria Vinas, on her son's Al Qaeda ties (New York Post, July 23, 2009)
Read "What a Top Terror Tracker Learned About Osama bin Laden"
View this article on Time.com
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Ayman al-Zawahiri, right, with Osama bin Laden in one of al-Qaida's own propaganda videos. Photograph: AP
Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has attempted to halt al-Qaida's plunging popularity in Pakistan by exploiting widely held fears that the US is plotting to seize the country's nuclear bombs.
In an audio message released today Zawahiri warned Pakistanis that the US was striving to "break up this nuclear-capable country and transform it into tiny fragments, loyal to and dependent on the neo-crusaders".
"The only hope to save Pakistan from this disastrous fate is jihad," said Zawahiri who, along with Bin Laden, is believed to be sheltering in the tribal belt along the Afghan border. He called on Pakistanis to band together and form a "citadel of Islam" on the subcontinent.
The message echoes a widely believed conspiracy theory in Pakistan that Washington is orchestrating violent chaos so US troops can storm in and disable the country's nuclear arsenal, estimated to number between 60 and 100 warheads.
"Zawahiri has cleverly read the situation and hit a very sensitive point," said Amir Rana, a militancy analyst.
The message comes amid crumbling public support for al-Qaida. A poll conducted in May found that 82% of Pakistanis considered the group posed a "critical threat" to their country, up from 41% in late 2007.
Although the survey was commissioned by a US organisation, WorldPublicOpinion.org, most analysts agree that support for al-Qaida's brand of extremism is sliding in Pakistan.
Many Pakistanis once lauded Bin Laden as a Robin Hood-style figure who defied America. But growing numbers are repulsed by al-Qaida claims of responsibility for suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of people, such as attacks on the Marriott hotel and the Danish embassy in Islamabad last year.
Al-Qaida has also been hit by a swing in public opinion against their local allies and protectors, the Taliban, after a video was broadcast showing a young woman being flogged by a turbaned fighter, and an army operation in the Swat valley and surrounding districts that displaced more than 2 million people, some of whom have started to return home this week. Al-Qaida's room for manoeuvre in Pakistan has also been pinched by US drone attacks that have killed 10 senior militants, according to US officials. That success, however, has been mitigated by hundreds of civilian deaths and a Pakistani backlash.
Analysts agreed that Zawahiri had hit a sensitive spot by mentioning US designs on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
"It's a very subtle move," said Talat Masood, a retired army general and defence analyst. "They are saying, 'The Americans are coming after your nuclear weapons and we can protect them.'"
Such theories were "very pervasive and deep rooted" in Pakistani society and were often fuelled by rightwing commentators in the Urdu-language press and sections of the powerful security establishment, Masood said.
"I've heard senior people saying this, including retired diplomats and generals. It's a cause for concern, because it shows the low levels of trust [between Pakistan and America]," he said.
Rana said the statement would have a limited impact on public opinion, but would "raise the morale of militant groups fighting with the Taliban".

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Eye on South Africa

Over the last few weeks, South Africa has faced major challenges
ranging from stadium strikes and now, violence in major townships. In
this week’s special, we focus on South Africa, a country which now
seems to be having an uncertain future with under a year left before
the country hosts the world cup gala in which millions of tourists are
expected to influx the country in what could prove to be a stern test
on infrastructure in the country. Will the Rainbow nation under the
leadership of Jacob Zuma pull through the tough and rough times?

An Uncertain Future

- Features - The world sporting arena will be moving to South Africa
next year to witness a world sporting spectacle, the 2010 FIFA World
Cup. But before the event, the Rainbow nation has to address many
uncertainties and challenges ranging from lack of basic services,
infrastructure upgrade and the devouring global credit crunch.

Social Justice Rally in Cape Town

- Just before the South African elections, approximately 600 people,
representing South Africa’s diverse communities turned out in
downtown Cape Town’s Thibault Square to show their frustration at
the South African government’s lack of accountability and poor
governance since the 1994 elections. Nobody took note, but now, the
situation is worsening as strikes and violence erupt ahead of a very
important event; the 2010 World Cup.

Jacob Zuma

- As violence spreads in South Africa’s major townships, all eyes
are on the man who loves to dance on stage. Will he be able to hold
the country together in times of economic downturn and ahead of a
world gala event?

Countdown to 2010

- Sports - With the first African soil World Cup set to be played
out in 2010, South Africa is racing ahead to build its stadiums and
infrastructure; all in the hope of adding up to $7 billion to its
economy at the end. The world is watching.

Eco-Friendly 2010

- Sports - More pollution! More waste! More harmful effects! If this
doesn't sound like the 2010 FiFA World Cup, then you are probably one
of many South Africans who aren't aware of the negative impacts this
event will bring.



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Live Webcast: The Adaptation Imperative—Food Security and Climate Change

Live Webcast: The Adaptation Imperative—Food Security and Climate Change
Location:
OSI-New York
Event Date:
July 22, 2009
Event Time:
5:30 p.m.
Speakers:
Mark Hertsgaard, Sara Scherr, Ross Gelbspan
Scientists calculate that temperatures will keep rising for the next 50 years, no matter how drastically we cut greenhouse gas emissions. Open Society Fellow Mark Hertsgaard and Sara Scherr, founder of Ecoagriculture Partners, will discuss the implications of this somber reality for food production and global hunger.
The panelists will assess the severity of the problem, which is worsened by widespread soil erosion and dwindling rainfall in crop-growing regions. But they will also identify cause for hope. New farming techniques can boost crop yields while enabling plants to store carbon.
The event will be moderated by Ross Gelbspan, author of two acclaimed books on climate change: Boiling Point and The Heat is On.
Live Webcast
Video of this event will be webcast live at http://fora.tv/live/osi.
Photo: A bull kicks dust onto its back in a dry field south of Bakersfield, California.

Memo to the Media: "Puerto Rican" Is Not a Race/Ecuador's president criticizes press as a "de facto power" of Latin America

Memo to the Media: "Puerto Rican" Is Not a Race
By Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's Blog. Posted July 16, 2009.

There is no more a Puerto Rican race than there is an American one.


Time magazine said it. So did CNN. The New York Times said it, too.
In fact, without exception, every major United States media outlet has, in one way or another, reported on Republican (and other) fears of Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor's potential for "racial bias," given her Puerto Rican ethnicity and her now infamous comments about a "wise Latina" making better choices than a "white man."
I've watched it all as I watch so much of what passes for journalism in my beloved, forgetful country - which is to say with a mixture of concern, annoyance, and indigestion.
Astoundingly, not one media outlet has bothered to report what, to me, is a glaringly obvious omission in the discussion about Sotomayor and race: Puerto Ricans, like all other Hispanics/Latinos, can be of any race, and are. Latinos/Hispanics are not a racial group, according to our own Census Bureau, which, incidentally, created the amorphous (and many might argue, false) category in the 1970s.
The term Hispanic can be applied to anyone with any ancestry of any "race" in any place in the world where people either once spoke Spanish (like the state of Colorado) or currently speak Spanish. Latino encompasses all of that, and also adds to the mix anyone else in Latin America, where there are nations that speak Portuguese, Dutch, English, French and dozens of Native American tongues.
In Sotomayor's case, this unfounded fear of reverse racism is patently absurd when one considers the history of Puerto Rico, the land of her ancestry. Cheek swabs from the local population reflect what history illustrates, which is that Puerto Rico is one of the most racially diverse places on earth. Just as there is no single Hispanic/Latino race, there is no Puerto Rican race, either; there are many.
When Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus to some of us) landed on the island that is now known as Puerto Rico in 1492, he "discovered" at least 60,000 Arawak or Taino Indians already living there. According to Columbus's own diaries, he and his European cohorts were mortified by the nakedness of the Indians, and by their generosity and unwillingness to understand the concept of, you know, owning stuff. Their lack of Catholicism proved problematic, too. In short order, nearly all of the Indians in Puerto Rico were enslaved and slaughtered in the name of Jesus; most died.
The European settlers (aka white men) then imported slaves to the island from West Africa, though to a lesser extent than in Haiti and Jamaica, where as much as 90 percent of the population by the 19th century were of African descent. The census in Puerto Rico in 1834 showed that 11% of the population were African or Indian slaves, 35% were colored freemen and 54% were white.
The subsequent history of Puerto Rico was, therefore, not all that different from the history of, say, Louisiana, or Alabama, except that the genocide and slave-owning happened in the European language of Spanish rather than the European language of English or French. Spanish, contrary to the pontificating of Lou Dobbs and Michael Savage, is not native to Latin America.

But somehow, in the magical world of American identity politics, all of this history is conveniently forgotten - or worse, never learned - in the discussion of Puerto Rico, Sotomayor, and race. Suddenly, in the scary America inhabited by most Republicans and worried white men, we have a Latino/Hispanic "race" that, in addition to being hot, spicy and, oh, I don't know, passionate and volatile (keywords often employed by the media in discussing us), is magically removed from the white, black and Indian races that make up the history of all of the Americas. Suddenly, white male Republican types fear that a Puerto Rican woman is going to be racist against white men, even though white men were the very people who colonized Puerto Rico, and even though it would be difficult to find a racially whiter man than, say, Ricky Martin, and even though Puerto Rico is full of white men, and black men, and brown men, etc.
Sotomayor's own ignorant comments - and I am pleased to see she recanted this week for the idiot statement about "a wise Latina" - seem to have been steeped in the myth of a single Latino/Hispanic race or, for that matter, ethnicity. I can only assume that one as educated and wise as Sotomayor makes such remarks to appease ignorant masses of Americans, Latino and otherwise, who simply don't know better and wouldn't understand it if you explained it all to them. For every American who is terrified by the mythological notion of a Latino/Hispanic race, there is another American who is proud of it. In America, as elsewhere, erroneous perceptions, repeated enough times, can unfortunately become the dominant understanding of a misunderstood reality, in spite of history and all the ghosts who wish to tell us their stories.
Puerto Rico, like the rest of the Americas, is a complex, multiracial, multicultural place. The people there have a complex and fascinating history, including a difficult relationship with the United States that, if anything, should be the one issue giving any Republican true pause.
That Sotomayor might harbor some bias based upon her Puerto Rican-ness is not an unreasonable thought; we all harbor some biases based upon our backgrounds - it is just that certain people's biases get to be called "truth" while others' get to be called "militancy". But a Puerto Rican bias would not necessarily be a racial one. Colonial? Perhaps. Economic? Maybe. Nationalistic? Perchance. But not racial.
There is no more a Puerto Rican race than there is an American one.

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JOURNALISM IN THE AMERICAS
A News Blog


Ecuador's president criticizes press as a "de facto power" of Latin America
In a new offensive against what he considers the opposition media, Rafael Correa insists he is willing to give up his job if necessary to "free the country of its corrupt and mediocre press," AFP reports.
The president says he is "more convinced than ever" that the press is one of the de facto powers of Latin America, a conception that, he says, he shares with "many presidents" from the region, EFE adds.
Declarations like those are frequent in President Correa's discourse and are often criticized by the local press as attacks on freedom of expression, the story says. However, according to the AFP story, the president also insists that in Ecuador “there is total press freedom," despite cases in which the media have wanted to cause "a popular uprising to destabilize" the government.

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JOURNALISM IN THE AMERICAS
A News Blog
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Earth Journalism Awards will send winners to UN Climate Summit in Denmark



Journalists from all media, and bloggers from around the world can submit their stories on climate change to the Earth Journalism Awards and win an expenses-paid trip to cover the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December in Copenhagen.
The 15 prizes are:
*Seven regional awards on current affairs and news reporting on climate change.
*Seven thematic awards for negotiation, human voices, energy, forests, climate change and nature, climate change adaptation, and The MTV Positive Change Award.
*The Global Public Award, which will be selected online by the public from the the winners of the other 14 prizes.
Read more about the awards and rules, and apply here.