Good News NYC, GZM Funding Problem Solved

After it was revealed that the folks that want to build the Islamic Victory Tower in the shadow of the Ground Zero crater only had about $18,000 on hand questions started to arise about the funding. Good news, New Yorkers. Your Democrat governor and comptroller, John Liu, have come up with an idea to make you pay for it.

The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.

The Democratic comptroller's spokesman, Scott Sieber, said Liu supported the project. The center has sparked an intense debate over U.S. religious freedoms and the sanctity of the Trade Center site, where nearly 3,000 perished in the September 11, 2001 attack.

"If it turns out to be financially feasible and if they can demonstrate an ability to pay off the bonds and comply with the laws concerning tax-exempt financing, we'd certainly consider it," Sieber told Reuters.

I remember during the Cold War that there was quote attributed to some Soviet big wig saying they would beat America with it's own freedoms and it certainly seems we have plenty of people nowadays willing to make that become a reality.

But I also remember a Supreme Court Justice saying that the Constitution wasn't a suicide pact.

Some people ask how far away from Ground Zero is appropriate to build a Muslim Center. My answer is anywhere outside of the radius of where that dust settled.

WTC Mega-Mosque Site Could Get Landmark Protection

Whatever it takes to stop this abomination is fine by me.

A controversial plan to build a $100 million mosque and community center just two blocks north of Ground Zero could be undone by history.

The 152-year-old building at 45 Park Place that would be torn down for the mosque is under the protection of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which has had a pending application on its books since 1989 to grant it landmark status.

A Landmarks spokeswoman said that the application had been on hold for more than two decades but that a hearing would be scheduled and a vote would follow on the designation.

The landmarking issue is a potentially big obstacle for a project that both the city and the mosque's backers had said could be built "as of right," with no interference from city land use laws.

If the commission approves landmark designation, it would be highly unlikely that the building could be torn down to make way for Cordoba House, a proposed 13-story mosque and community center.

And until a vote is taken, the building has temporary landmark protection.

Naturally, the schmuck mayor is all for this in-your-face outrage being built. He was quick to claim the Times Square bomber was likely an ObamaCare opponent, but has no problem with rubbing salt in the wounds of families and survivors of 9/11.

Mayor Bloomberg yesterday continued to support the project, despite the latest wrinkle.

"Anybody who wants to build a house of worship in this city, we'd love to do it," he said. "They have to comply with the zoning laws. In this case, I think the community board's already been consulted and they overwhelmingly like the idea."

The 11 members of the landmarks commission are appointed by the mayor.

In other words, Bloomberg will probably muscle it through, just so he can claim he's all for diversity or some such nonsense.

Good Grief: Plans For Second Mosque Near Ground Zero?

Considering plans for the mega-mosque near the World Trade Center site have hit financial stumbling blocks, it seems to me this is little more than some trashtalk by some Islamic psychopaths intent on milking the current controversy. But given the craven pandering by local community boards, would it surprise anyone if the entire neighborhood isn't soon overrun by scores of mosques.

Another mosque could be built in the shadow of the World Trade Center.

Officials of Masjid Manhattan, with 1,500 members, clearly want to be near the site of the worst terror attack on US soil.

"Build the 'House of Allah' next to the World Trade Center! Help us raise the flag of La Illaha Illa Allah in downtown Manhattan," reads a banner on its Web site.

The mosque, on nearby Warren Street since 1970, says it's raised $8.5 million of the needed $11 million.

More here.

Unlike the massive $100 million Cordoba House mosque, the Masjid Mosque is small – and it is no stranger to the neighborhood. Since 1970 it had been located at 12 Warren Street, about four blocks north of the World Trade Center, in a neat but nondescript industrial space that once housed a printing shop. It lost its lease in 2008 when the building was sold, and it was evicted from its second-floor prayer space on May 25 of that year. Since then it has been operating out a cramped basement space in a nearby building at 20 Warren Street.

On Friday evenings the mosque, which is popular with street vendors and taxi drivers, becomes so crowded that worshipers spill onto nearby sidewalks to pray in what has come to be a community event.

A press representative for Daisy Kahn, executive director of the Cordoba Initiative, said neither she nor anyone in her group had been aware of the Masjid’s efforts. “They have no connection to us,” she said. “We didn't even know they were there.”

Masjid mosque leaders claim on their website that they are deeply involved in converting people to Islam and run a special program to convert those who are interested.

Efforts to reach mosque leaders were not successful. Calls left with Naheem Mohammed, the mosque’s treasurer, were not returned. Calls to the mosque itself were not answered. And efforts to reach Abdullah El-Khory, the president of the mosque's board, were not successful.

Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1, also declined to return several calls. The board, which monitors and approves all development in the financial district surrounding Ground Zero and has been stung by criticism from the families of 9/11 victims, is permitted to assess the impact of building a mosque at the site.

Seems like nobody wants to talk, but when people complain, nobody wants to listen, either. Before long criticism of these abominations will probably be criminalized as hate speech.

'We Should Waterboard Them a Little More'

Needless to say, Barack Obama and Eric Holder's decision to bring the 9/11 monsters to New York for trial isn't exactly going over well locally. Seems they have the folks in this very blue state seeing red.

Outraged New Yorkers said yesterday that admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other terrorists deserve to be put to death -- and some even volunteered for the job.

"Kill them without a trial. Just a bullet in the head and say goodbye. Why waste taxpayer money?" said Thomas Pland, 70, a truck driver from Astoria, Queens.

"If they want me to do it," he added, "I will."

Mike Keane, owner of O'Hara's Restaurant & Pub a block from Ground Zero, said: "They should have taken care of them in Guantanamo Bay. Hang them there. It would have been quicker and easier."

But first, he added, "we should waterboard them a little more."

Families of 9/11 victims slammed the White House for affording the mass murderers the same legal rights as Americans, instead of prosecuting them as foreign enemies in military tribunals.

"I'm a hundred thousand percent against this move. They're war criminals!" said retired firefighter Joe Holland, whose son, Joseph III, a commodities trader, died in the World Trade Center's north tower.

"This is crazy. This is insane. They're going to make a mockery of the whole court system 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center. They're going to scream for holy war in America."

Peter Gadiel, head of 9/11 Families for a Secure America, fumed, "I never thought we could have gotten a worse president than George Bush. But we got one.

"The president wants a circus? He should hold the trial in Lafayette Park at the White House. That makes as much sense," added Gadiel, whose son, James, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee, died on 9/11.

Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was piloting one of the hijacked jets, called the upcoming trials in the city a "travesty."

"This is going to make us look like fools in the Muslim world," she said.
...
"I will believe until the day I die that Sept. 11 was an act of war and not just another criminal act," former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said. "This confirms my worst expectations for the Obama administration, that they would be in denial with regard to the danger of Islamic terrorism."

Rep. Peter King (R-LI) said, "This is as bad of a decision as any president has ever made."

The president, who conveniently left the country before this idiocy was announced, apparently doesn't realize we're in a war. Of course the only war he's interested in fighting is his petty feud with Fox News.

More opinion here and here.

Perhaps President Obama knew how insulting and unpopular his decision to welcome terrorists to America would be. News of the decision came from Attorney General Eric Holder on a Friday (the day folks in Washington always dump their "bad" news) while the president himself was in Japan -- 14 time zones from Ground Zero and the families who still mourn lost loved ones.

As a man who promised transparency and integrity during his campaign, President Obama should have personally announced his decision. That was the least he could have done for the families of the 9/11 victims, New Yorkers and all Americans who will never forget the day al Qaeda attacked our nation.

He's not man enough, frankly.

Hot Air links. Thanks!

'If We Can't Say the Word Freedom Out Loud, God Help Us'

Sad to say, but freedom is on the way out. As in the absurd decision to rename the Freedom Tower. But considering terrorism is now a man-caused disaster and the War on Terror is now an overseas contingency operation, this is only the logical next step.

Freedom is out of fashion at Ground Zero.

Once hailed as a beacon of rebirth in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the Freedom Tower has been stripped of its patriotic name -- which has been swapped out for the more marketable "One World Trade Center," Port Authority officials conceded yesterday.

More than seven years after the terror attacks and amid an effort to market the tower to international tenants, sentiment gave way to practicality.

"As we market the building we will ensure that the building is presented in the best possible way," said PA Chairman Anthony Coscia.

"One World Trade Center is its address. It's the address that we're using. It's the one that's easiest for people to identify with, and, frankly, we've gotten a very interested and warm reception to it."

Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was the pilot aboard American Airlines Flight 77 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon, said the renaming of the tower is one more example that the nation is forgetting 9/11.

"If we can't say the word freedom out loud, God help us," she said.

"I understand the decision from a marketing point of view. But it saddens me that it's no longer economically viable to declare who we are."

The issue of the name change -- toward which the PA has been shifting for more than a year -- came up at a news conference after the agency signed a lease with its first major tenant.

A Chinese firm, Vantone Industrial Co., will lease six floors. A four-page press release for the lease signing included the name "Freedom Tower" twice -- only in parentheses.

The only other tenants so far are the federal and state governments.

"Freedom Tower" was coined by then-Gov. George Pataki, who oversaw the initial designs for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center and wanted a tower to rise a symbolic 1,776 feet at a time of heightened patriotism.

Pataki yesterday bristled at the name change.

"The Freedom Tower is not simply another piece of real estate and not just a name for marketing purposes. In design and name, it is symbolic of our commitment to rise above the attacks of Sept. 11," he said.

"Where One and Two World Trade Center once stood, there will be a memorial with two voids to honor the heroes we lost. In my view, those addresses should never be used again.

Next thing you know we'll be having Club Gitmo guests living on the dole on American soil.

Oh wait...

On This Day in 1993...

War was declared on America. Problem is we didn't fight back until it was too late, eight years later.

You do remember what happened that day, right?

A shame little if anything was done to fight back.

If you want an idea how clueless people were about what were were up against, check out this report. We had an inept, neophyte president at the time (sound familiar) who never even visited the site afterward.

Let's see if anyone in the media or government even acknowledge this today.

Very few, I suspect.

1993 WTC Bomber Whines He Can't Get Supreme Court Hearing

Aw, the poor thing can't get himself a date with the Supremes. Heartbreaking, isn't it?

On the upside, he's rotting away at Supermax.

A shame he hasn't been executed.

Fifteen years after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a Palestinian sentenced to more than 100 years in prison in the attack claims that a vengeful U.S. government has blocked him from appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ahmad Mohammed Ajaj, who remains in extreme isolation in the nation's most secure prison, filed a lawsuit last year in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against more than a dozen judges, federal court employees, Bureau of Prisons officials and his former defense lawyer Maranda Fritz.

He said they failed to notify him of appeals court rulings and blocked his access to what he would need for a Supreme Court appeal of his conviction on conspiracy charges in the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others.

In court documents filed last week, government lawyers said Ajaj has no right to bring the claims against court personnel.

Fritz, the defense lawyer, said in an interview that she worked on the case for seven years, collected evidence from around the globe and has not worked on the case in five or six years.

"I was terribly disappointed when the Supreme Court would not accept the case," she said. "I believe the results were wrong. I argued it in every way that I knew how. I think the issues were substantial and novel enough."

In his lawsuit, Ajaj claimed the U.S. judicial system denied him access to the courts in retaliation against him and Arab and Muslim prisoners for the "9-11-2001 tragedy" and for his complaints about the government's conduct.

Looks like the lawyer Fritz has a thing for Barack Obama. Maybe she can plead her case to The Messiah after he's sworn in.

Of course it will largely be ignored, but today is the 15th anniversary of the attack.

It's a shame Bill Clinton didn't take terrorism so seriously at the time. In fact, he never even visited the site afterward.

Update: Lawhawk and Michelle Malkin look back 15 years.

How Creepy Is This?

Chalk this one up as one of the creepiest ads ever, from back in 1979.

Found here.

Click on the image to enlarge.

H/T: Elder_of_Ziyon on the LGF spinoff links.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Cops to 9/11 Attacks

This just broke on Fox a short time ago, and the first online report is here, with more to come.

New transcripts released by the Pentagon show that the man considered to be the chief mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has admitted he is responsible for the terrorist attacks from "a to z".

Mohammed has also acknowledged being responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as well as other attempted terrorist attacks around the world in the years since.

The confessions come from a transcript of a hearing held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Saturday in which the Al Qaeda terrorist also acknowledged a plot to assassinate Bill Clinton while the former president was visiting the Philippines in 1994. The transcripts also show Mohammed admitted to plotting the October 2002 terrorist attack in Bali, Indonesia.

The admissions came during what was the first military hearing for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other major detainees since they were transferred last September from a secret CIA prison overseas into military custody at Guantanamo Bay.

The redacted report also noted anthrax attacks, dirty bombs, a Sears Towers plot, other plots in Los Angeles and Washington state, the assassination of Jimmy Carter, and the shoe bomb attempt involving Richard Reid.

UPDATE: More at LGF and Hot Air.

UPDATE II: An AP report has details on some other residents of Club Gitmo:

The Pentagon also released transcripts of the hearings of Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi Binalshibh.

Binalshibh is suspected of helping Mohammed with the Sept. 11, 2001, attack plan and is also linked to a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport. Al-Libi is a Libyan who reportedly masterminded two bombings 11 days apart in Pakistan in December 2003 that targeted President Pervez Musharraf for his support of the U.S.-led war on terror.

UPDATE III: Right Voices checks in. And sure enough, the crazy people question the timing (h/t Killgore Trout).

UPDATE IV: Unclassified transcript. See pp. 17-20 in particular.

UPDATE V: More insane people weigh in.

This guy is a Sunni and part of the Muslim Brotherhood out of Kuwait and Egypt aka Mujahideen. The mujahideen were significantly financed, armed, and trained by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Carter and Reagan administrations, Saudi Arabia, the People's Republic of China, several European countries and Pakistan (during the Zia-ul-Haq military regime). The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was the interagent used in the majority of these activities to disguise the sources of support for the resistance in Afghanistan.

This is very bad news for the Bush/Cheney swine herd and the current leadership in Pakistan.

Are the 9/11 Conspiracy nuts not so insane after all?

By: getoffmedz on March 14, 2007 at 08:19pm
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