Mahdi Bray is at the center of a firestorm on Staten Island. In response, he is falsely accusing the Investigative Project on Terrorism both of fueling it and of misrepresenting a videotape showing him enthusiastically responding to a call for Hamas and Hizballah supporters.

At issue is the proposed sale of a convent to the Muslim American Society (MAS), a group founded by Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States. MAS hopes to turn the building into a mosque. Bray directs the group's political arm, MAS Freedom.

Opponents of the sale have zeroed in on MAS' ties to the Brotherhood and Bray's videotaped gesture supporting Hamas and Hizballah during a 2000 rally outside the White House. The Brotherhood tie is significant because it has designs on restoring a global Caliphate and because it gave birth to Hamas during the 1980s.

It's the IPT's fault, Bray said, calling Executive Director Steven Emerson an "Islamophobe." The IPT, he wrote on his own web blog, "work[s] hard to create religious and ethnic division between people in America. As one case in point, Emerson has flooded the internet with my prior arrest record, even down to my arrest mug shot. In addition, he continues to circulate a ten year old video clip (taken out of context) that seems to give the impression that I, and other persons who attended at a rally in Washington D.C., support Hamas and Hezbollah and thus, we are terrorists."

"For the record, he wrote, "neither I, nor my organization, have ever supported terrorism, or groups associated with terrorism."

If only his deeds matched his words.

As our dossier on MAS shows, Bray was a character witness for convicted terror supporter Sami Al-Arian, and continues to stand by him after evidence showed Al-Arian was on the governing board of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Similarly, Bray defended the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, and continues to do so even after a jury in Dallas found the charity and five former officials guilty of illegally routing more than $12 million to Hamas.

He criticized the conviction of Ali al-Timimi for soliciting followers to wage war against the United States after 9/11.

He supports people with documented ties to terrorism, but insists he is not a terrorist supporter. "The citations by the Investigative Project are not based in fact," he told the Staten Island Advance. But he didn't cite any specific error or inaccuracy.

When pressed to do the same during Wednesday's hearing, a MAS official reportedly failed to do so and said that would come later. The dossier first was published in September 2007, giving Bray and his colleagues more than two years to scour it for mistakes. In February 2009, an investigation into Bray's criminal background exposed his two felony convictions, including one for a fraud in which he kept disability payments sent to his deceased grandfather.

Bray claims that, too, is a misrepresentation.

But it's the videotape that seems to be doing the most damage. Bray calls it "that silly, taken-out-of-context- video clip of the rally in question." The event, he wrote, "was a peaceful rally that called for a US foreign policy vis-a-vis the people of Palestine that was fair and balanced and that rejected violence. The chant for the support of Hezbollah and Hamas was a facetious response to Emerson's mis-characterization of the rally organizers as 'terrorists' or terrorist sympathizers. Why won't Emerson show the rest of the tape?"

Here is Alamoudi's entire speech, with the previous speaker leading up to him to show the full context. Previously, Bray tried to dismiss the controversy by casting Alamoudi's call-out as a joke:

"You saw me pumping my fists. You didn't see me raising my hands. If they had shown the audience, you would have seen people in the audience raising their hands and falling out laughing. For him to come and make these kinds of radical rants, no one took him seriously."

Alamoudi looks pretty serious on the tape. Moments after the Hamas/Hizballah call, he casts Hamas as a proper entity:

"My brothers, this is the message that we have to carry to everybody. It's an occupation and Hamas is fighting to to fight an occupation; it's a legal fight. Allahu Akhbar! [Crowd: Allahu Akhbar]."

Earlier, speaker Mauri Salaakhan contests the U.S. view that Hamas and Hizballah are terrorist groups:

"Consummate with this internationally recognized principle we consider HAMAS in occupied Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon to be legitimate political liberation organization as opposed to western media's consistent depiction of them as terrorist organizations."

Despite all this, Bray says his emphatic gesture in response to Alamoudi is somehow out of context. Writing about the IPT, he said the information is part of an "attempt to create fear and hysteria by means of a well orchestrated- smear campaign that incites fear by linking, lawful Muslim organizations with international terrorism."

Other MAS leaders have similar videotape issues. Then-MAS President Esam Omeish was forced to resign from a Virginia state immigration panel in 2008 after IPT video surfaced of him giving a speech – just months after Bray appeared with Alamoudi – in which he praised Palestinians for learning "the jihad way is the way to liberate your land." He added, "We are telling them that we are with you and we are supporting you and we will do everything that we can, Insh'Allah, to help your cause."

In the Staten Island case, the IPT had no role in opposing the Staten Island land deal and learned about it only when Bray accused us of misrepresenting his record. The reporting on his record, on his support of people tied to terrorist organizations and on his actions during the 2000 rally all are well documented and accurate.

Bray's attempts to divert attention and blame the messenger are transparent.

Related Topics: Mahdi Bray, Muslim American Society (MAS)

Exclusive: Seasick In Gaza
Adrian Morgan

On May 28 we published Steve Emerson's account of the "Freedom Flotilla" which was carrying 750 activists with 10,000 tons of supplies to Gaza. The flotilla of nine ships were intending to break the blockade imposed by Israel to prevent Hamas receiving arms. The Israeli government warned that it was preparing to prevent the flotilla from landing. This morning, the Israeli navy moved to prevent the flotilla from going forward and between 10 and 16 people have been killed.

The flotilla is the latest in a series of blockade-busting stunts by an international coalition of Islamists and their supporters (mainly from the left of the political spectrum). The organizing body behind the flotilla is called the Free Gaza Movement. Last year, activists connected with Viva Palestina, the charity run by George Galloway, were at the Egyptian border with Gaza when violence broke out. Riot police became involved. In the conflict, an Egyptian soldier was killed.

What has happened today is going to be used as propaganda to malign Israel further, but the convoys' political dimensions overshadow their humanitarian ventures. Melanie Phillips has described the current flotilla as an "absurd flotilla of fools". But there are political undertows that should alarm any observer of Middle East activities.

Gabby Levy, Israeli Ambassador at Ankara, Turkey's capital, had warned that: "The sole purpose of these activities is to create provocations that pose security risks to the state of Israel. All parties directly or indirectly involved in these actions shall be held responsible and accountable for violation of the maritime blockade."

The convoy was launched with the full approval of the Turkish government. Six of the nine ships are Turkish, and are controlled by Turkish charity called Humanitarian Relief Foundation. The largest of the Turkish vessels is called the Mavi Marmara, a passenger ship. Serkan Nergis, a spokesperson for the IHH "These ships have the Turkish flag on them. Anything that is going to be done to them is also done to Turkey, and they will have a diplomatic response."

It was on board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara that today's violence broke out and already the Turkish government is blaming the Israelis for the violence.

According to Israeli spokesman Mark Regev on BBC radio, the violence was initiated by the activists on the Turkish boat when it was being examined. He said that 10 Israeli commandos had been injured. The activists were said to have attacked the Israelis inspecting the ship, using axes and knives.

The incident took place in the waters outside Gaza, before daybreak. Turkish television has been broadcasting footage taken by Al Jazeera. Jamal Elshayyal, an Al Jazeera journalist on board the Malvi Marmara was claiming that the ship had run up a white flag and yet shooting could still be heard. The Israeli military claimed that four soldiers had been injured, with two of these receiving moderate wounds.

The Malvi Marmara had left Cyprus on Sunday afternoon. The timing of the departure had been vague, and there had been uncertainty about the time of the flotilla's arrival at Gaza. Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza MOvement had said: "A lot of that confusion is done on purpose because why should we telegraph to the Israeli navy... exactly when it is that we are going to come?"

Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, had declared yesterday that any action to prevent the flotilla arriving will be seen as an "act of piracy".

Relations between Turkey and Israel have been slipping recently, even though as early as 1949, Turkey had officially recognized Israel. For the past year, IAF aircraft which had previously mounted annual joint exercise operations with Turkey had been banned from flying over Turkish soil. In April this year, Turkey mounted joint military exercises with Syria, a nation whose enmity toward Israel is implacable.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, is an Islamist. He heads the Justice and Development Party in Turkey (AKP) which has worked to remove from Turkey the secularism that was initiated by Kemal Ataturk. Under his leadership the first non-secular president (Abdullah Gul of the AKP) was instituted. Even though Turkey's constitution forbids the wearing of Islamic headscarves in government buildings, Ermine Erdogan and other wives of AKP representatives always appear wearing scarves. The military used to stage coups whenever a government showed signs of Islamism. While Turkey was officially trying to join the European Union, the military has stood back and allowed the AKP to roll back the secular state conceived by Ataturk.

In January 2009 Erdogan had stormed out of a TV debate with Israel's president, declaring: "You are killing people."

Turkey is still a member of NATO, but over the last year Erdogan appears to have been looking to the Islamic world, rather than the West, for alliances. With today's incident, diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey will reach an all-time low.

Israel claims that every week it allows 15,000 tons of aid to enter Gaza. Tom Gross, writing in Canada's National Post has claimed that many Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza are living a "middle class (and in some cases an upper class) lifestyle that western journalists refuse to report on."

Turkey and Israel will be facing each other down for some time to come, but today's incident will benefit one group of Palestinians - Hamas. It is precisely because of the activities of Hamas on the Gaza Strip that there is a blockade. Hamas has made no attempt to stop its activists firing Qassam rockets at Israeli civilian targets. The Qassam rockets are primitive devices, but they continue to be fired. Yesterday, Ynet News a strike was made against a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip as a response to continuing Qassam launches from Hamas-controlled territory. The tunnel had been used to smuggle weaponry and activists into Gaza.

Hamas, as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has no intention of making peace with Israel. Its notorious charter urges the destruction of Israel and invokes Hadiths which claim that the Last Hour will not come until the Muslims fight against the Jews. The Charter of 1988, which specifically describes Hamas as a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, has never been altered. It contains a quote from Hassan al-Banna ("of blessed memory"), who founded the Muslim Brotherhood:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

Hamas has carried out numerous deadly terrorist attacks against Israel. Between September 2000 and May 2004, Hamas terror attacks killed 227 Israeli civilians and injured 1,393.

In January 2006 Hamas won elections in the Palestinian territories but violence erupted between Hamas and Fatah (a group closely connected with the Palestinian Authority) loyalists. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah had formed a "Unity Government" under the leadership of Ismail Haniyeh, but three months later, the two factions had split. Haniyeh seized the Gaza Strip forcibly and Fatah activists were thrown off buildings by Hamas members. If this is how the Hamas "leader" of the Gaza Strip treats his own fellow Palestinians, how can he be expected to create peace with Israel? Haniyeh still holds IDF corporal Gilad Shalit as a hostage, even though Shalit had been kidnapped in a raid on Israeli soil, and not engaged in conflict at the time of his abduction.

Supporters of Hamas have been using Turkey as a means of "legitimizing" their political presence. On February 16, 2006 the supreme head of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, visited Ankara with the support of Erdogan and his government. In May this year Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, urged that Middle East peace talks should include Hamas, saying: "Unfortunately Palestinians have been split into two… In order to reunite them, you have to speak to both sides. Hamas won elections in Gaza and cannot be ignored."

Turkey has been a host for numerous Islamist "conferences" and at one of these, held on February 13, 2009, 90 Islamic scholars and religious leaders signed a document known as the "Istanbul Declaration (pdf). This document praised the "muhajidin" in the land of Gaza, and condemns the Palestinian Authority for giving up on Jihad.

It states: "The obligation of the Islamic Nation to restrict itself to dealing only with the legitimate elected Palestinian government (Hamas) in the delivery of aid and reconstruction of dwellings. It is the sole government authorized to do that by reason of its official legitimacy as well as its maintaining the Resistance against the Jewish Zionist occupation, its integrity, and its solidarity with the people in all circumstances. "

Statement 6 of this document states: "The obligation of the Islamic Nation to open the crossings -- all crossings -- in and out of Palestine permanently, in order to allow access to all the needs of the Palestinians -- money, clothing, food, medicine, weapons and other essentials, so that they are able to live and perform the jihad in the way of Allah Almighty. The closure of the crossings or the prevention of the entry of weapons through them should be regarded as high treason in the Islamic Nation, and clear support for the Zionist enemy."

The document encourages armed resistance to any attempt by a navy to stop arms from being smuggled into Gaza. One of those who signed this document was Daud Abdullah, the deputy leader of Britain's "Muslim Council of Britain" a group which had acted in an advisory capacity with the UK Labour government. In January 2009, the UK government had promised to allow its navy to assist in keeping the blockade against weapons entering Gaza by sea. Daud Abdullah's signing of the document caused arguments.

Mohammed Sawalha had also signed the Istanbul Declaration. Sawalha was a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood-related UK group called the Muslim Asociation of Britain (MAB) and now heads the British Muslim Initiative (BMI). According to the BBC's journalist John Ware, Sawalha used to be a Hamas fundraiser, known on the West Bank by the code name Abu Abada.

Sawalha, in his capacity as one of the organizers of the flotilla, gave an interview with Al-Intiqad, the website of Hizbollah. This took place on December 17, 2009 in Beirut, at a conference attended by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, Hizbollah leader Hassan Nazrallah, and also the "spiritual head" of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. In a discussion of the conflict with the Egyptian authorities which took place last year and led to the death of an Egyptian policeman, Sawalha made an ominous statement.

Sawalha said that "the next time the confrontation will be directly with the Zionist enemy itself on the high seas."

That confrontation has now happened.

Who Killed Khalid Khawaja?

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On Friday April 30, it was reported that the body of man in his fifties had been discovered at a roadside in North Waziristan, one of the "Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)" of northern Pakistan. The body belonged to Khalid Khawaja, a controversial figure in Pakistani Islamism, a former intelligence officer who had praised bin Laden. He had been shot in the head and chest and then dumped at Karam Kot in the vicinity of Mir Ali.

On March 26, Khalid Khawaja had been kidnapped with two other individuals in Mir Ali. The BBC report on Khawaja's death described him as a "campaigner": "In recent years Mr Khawaja had campaigned for the release of dozens of people who have allegedly been taken into unofficial custody in Pakistan."

The BBC acknowledged that Khawaja was a former intelligence agent. It neglected to mention that the agency he once worked for - Inter-Services Intelligence or "ISI" - has been regarded, over a period of at least three decades, as integrally involved in many of the "disappearances" and extra-judicial killings that happen within Pakistan. The BBC report also failed to mention Khawaja's long-standing support for Osama bin Laden.

Khawaja had been arrested and imprisoned on January 26, 2007 in Islamabad. He had been charged with distributing "hate material" outside the controversial Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) complex in the city, where a Taliban-inspired rebellion was developing. The hate material was a book called "Fatwa Rasheedia" written by Rasheed Ahmed Gangohi, a founder of the Deobandi strand of Islam followed by Taliban leaders. The book had been amongst several Islamist texts banned in September 2006.

Khawaja was due to be released from jail in April 2007 but was re-arrested on April 26. He was free again at the time that the Red Mosque erupted into three days of violence, starting on July 3, 2007. 100 people had died, with many of the dead being male and female students at the madrassas within the complex.

The mosque had strong connections to the ISI, the agency that had once employed Khawaja. The headquarters of the ISI and the mosque complex were both situated in the Aapara area of the capital. Many ISI leading members had earlier worshipped at the Lal Masjid. Khawaja's involvement as a "negotiator" at the time the situation deteriorated into open violence may have contributed to his murder.

After his experiences in jail under the Musharraf regime, Khawaja carved a role for himself as a defender of the "oppressed", through a group that calls itself "Defence of Human Rights". He has defended individuals accused of terrorism, such as American citizens Ahmad Abdullah Mani (Minni), Waqar Husain Khan, Ramy Zaman (Zamzam), Aman Hassan Yemer (Yamar), Omar Farooq, who were arrested in Sargodha, Pakistan in December 2009. These had left in America a disturbing "farewell video". On March 16, the five pleaded "not guilty" to terrorism charges.

On December 23, 2009 in a court in Lahore, Khawaja had hardly helped the case of the five men when he argued that they had entered Pakistan to commit "Jihad" and urged the court to agree that Jihad against "anti-Muslim forces" could not be considered as "terrorism". In Virginia, a representative of a center connected to the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) claimed that "As far as I know they were wholesome kids. Very goofy. You know, talked about girls. Very wholesome." ICNA has historic connections with the radical Islamist "Jamaat-e-Islami" party of Pakistan.

Once a squadron leader in the Pakistan air force, Khawaja had been recruited to become a leading figure in the ISI during the Islamist military dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq. In 1987, shortly before the dictator was killed in a plane crash (August 1988), ul-Haq ordered that Khawaja be dismissed from the ISI. The reasons stemmed from Khawaja's open criticism of the dictator for not fully implementing sharia law in Pakistan.

Even though he had been officially dismissed from the ISI, there are circumstantial associations that suggest that Khawaja maintained links with leading players within the secretive organization right up until his death. It is possible that these links led to his death.

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Kidnapping

When Khawaja was kidnapped on March 26, the reason for his presence in North Waziristan was never made plain. He was accompanied by another controversial former member of the ISI, Colonel Amin Sultan Tarar, and also a British-based freelance journalist called Asad Qureshi. Tarar's commitment to jihad gave rise to his alternate and better-known name: "Colonel Imam".

Qureshi was apparently working on a documentary film for Britain's Channel 4 TV station. Qureshi's website has been suspended, and I cannot find any cache that could give clues to his mission. Channel 4's website produces no results on a search for his name. Even a search of its news site yields no results.

The news of the kidnap did not become public until nine days later. Relatives of Tarar and Khawaja stated that the former ISI officials had been helping Asad Qureshi to make a documentary on the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The kidnap had apparently taken place after they had had a meeting with Sirajuddin Haqqani and Waliur Rahman Mehsud, leaders of the Pakistan Taliban, and had been returning home. They were last reported as being near Khowat.

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Sirajuddin Haqqani (pictured) an Afghan Pashtun, is an avowed enemy of the USA and the Pakistani military, and is directly linked to Al Qaeda. He was the target of two Predator drone airstrikes this February. Waliur Rahman Mehsud was an assistant to Hakimullah Mehsud who led the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban) from a base in South Waziristan. In January this year Hakimullah was severely injured in a drone strike, and Waliur Rahman took over his role, adopting Hakimullah's family name.

On April 21, about three weeks after the kidnap, a video clip was presented to media outlets. This featured the captives. The kidnappers called themselves the "Asian Tigers" and demanded a ransom of $10 million for the release of Asad Qureshi. They claimed that Khawaja and "Colonel Imam" would be freed only if leaders of the Pakistan Taliban were freed. These were named as Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Mansoor Dadullah and Maulvi Kabir.

Mullah Mansoor was a Taliban commander of Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, who was captured in February 2008 in Balochistan, about six weeks after Mullah Omar, head of the Afghan Taliban, had sacked him.

Maulvi Kabir had been a Taliban governor of Nangahar Province in Afghanistan. He was captured in February 22, 2010, in Nowshera near the Khyber Pass.

Baradar was one of the four men who founded the original Taliban. The original leaders of the Afghan Taliban had been educated at the Haqqania madrassa in Pakistan, run by Sami ul-Haq (Mullah Omar had not failed to complete his course). Baradar also had links to the ISI, according to the BBC. Baradar was believed to be the deputy of Mullah Omar. He was captured in a madrassa in Karachi, Sindh Province, in late January this year. On April 22, the day after the video and ransom terms were released, Pakistan's ISI announced that American investigators were allowed access to Baradar.

The sort video clips apparently did not feature the British journalist Asad Qureshi. Colonel Imam was heard claiming that he had worked for the ISI for 11 years, saying: "I had consulted with Gen Aslam Beg (former army chief) about coming here." Khawaja said "I came here on the prodding of Lt Gen Hameed Gul, General Aslam Beg and ISI’s Colonel Sajjad."

Little is known of Colonel Sajjad as he is a serving ISI official, but Hameed Gul (Hamid Gul) is widely reputed to have engaged in secretive deals between the Taliban and the ISI, discussed below.

Confessions

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Shortly after this, on April 24, Asia Times Online released a series of video clips it had received, apparently from the captors. These clips featured Khalid Khawaja, looking frail and tired, and making a confession. At one point in the recordings, a rooster can be heard crowing, suggesting Khawaja had been kept awake all night. Speaking in Urdu, he "confesses" to crimes. Though probably gained by duress and therefore not "reliable", the revelations made by Khawaja are startling.

He claimed that he had been involved in the events that saw the Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) in Islamabad being overthrown by the Pakistani military. To understand how "shocking" these revelations are, one must look at the mosque history.

During the dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq (1977 - 1988), Pakistan underwent a process of Islamization. Draconian sharia laws against blasphemy and "zina" (illegal intercourse) were introduced. The notorious "Hudood Ordinances" ensured that any woman who reported that she had been raped was herself accused of zina. Unless she could produce four male Muslim witnesses to the event, she could face death by stoning ("haad"). Many were sentenced but none were officially stoned. The Hudood laws were revoked in 2006, but the divisive blasphemy laws remain.

While Zia ul-Haq was in charge, the Lal Masjid was run by Maulana Abdullah, a fundamentalist preacher. Many senior ISI figures were already visiting this mosque when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The CIA then supported the "mujahideen" and funds and fighters were brought from Pakistan by the ISI. During the 1980s in Afghanistan, Khalid Khawaja had met and befriended Osama bin Laden. Maulana Abdullah supported the jihad and gained the patronage of Zia ul-Haq. He developed close links with the Pakistani military and ISI at this time.

The Red Mosque was a center for the ideological movement for armed jihad. Maulana Abdullah forged close links with Mujahideen who acted with the ISI such as Jalaluddin Haqqani (who would later be a Taliban leader in North Waziristan), and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. It was Sayyyaf who brought many Arabs into the Afghan Muhajideen, including Osama bin Laden. Jalaluddin Haqqani is the father of SIrajuddin Haqqani, whom Khawaja had gone to meet before being kidnapped.

In 1998 Maulana Abdullah was shot dead outside the Lal Masjid. His two sons then took over the running of the mosque. Its jihadist mission continued. The sons - Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Gazi - forged close links with the Afghan Taliban and after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 they created an alliance of anti-Western religious leaders. Many of the students at the Lal Masjid's two madrassas came from the FATA regions bordering Afghanistan. In 2003 the mosque had organized Taliban-style riots against "Western" interests in Islamabad. The mosque leaders demanded that Pakistan implement full sharia law. In January 2007 the students became more active, occupying the only children's library in Islamabad, wielding sticks and threatening suicide bombings.

In the July 2007 violence at the Lal Masjid complex, which began after madrassa students attacked government buildings in the capital, the two brothers who ran the mosque were inside the complex. On July 4, 2007, Abdul Aziz put on a burka and tried to escape with some of the female students. He was arrested. His younger brother Rashid Gazi was killed during the siege.

In Khalid Khawaja's "confession" on the video clips sent to Asia Times, he stated: "I am known as a thoroughbred gentleman, but in fact I was an ISI and CIA mole... I remember the burnt bodies of the innocent boys and girls of Lal Masjid... I called Abdul Aziz and forced him to come out of the mosque wearing a burka, and that’s how I got him arrested."

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Khawaja said that he had conspired to bring about the demise of the Lal Masjid movement in Islamabad. He claimed his co-conspirators included the Islamist politician Fazlur Rahman of the JUI-F party and Mufti Rafi Usmani (above) the "Grand Mufti of Pakistan", who leads a Deobandi madrassa, the Darul Uloom in Karachi.

On the reasons for his mission to meet Pakistan Taliban leaders Sirajuddin Haqqani and Waliur Rahman Mehsud, Khawaja said: "I was sent by the Pakistan Army in North Waziristan because it was badly caught in the middle of a conflict. I was sent to get reconciliation between the army and the Taliban so that the terrorists would give safe passage to the military to leave the area."

Khawaja claimed that some leading jihadists were proxies of the ISI, who were given a "free pass" to collect funds for jihad. These figures included Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the founder of Harkatul Muhajideen, and Maulana Masood Azhar, who is the secretary of Harkatul Mujahideen and leads his own terror group, Jaish-e-Mohammad. According to Khawaja's "confession", Abdullah Shah Mazhar (a former leader of Jaish-e-Mohammad) was also working with the ISI.

He said: "I brought here a list of 14 commanders and was aiming to malign them among militant circles ... Abdullah Shah Mazhar, Fazlur Rahman Khalil, Masood Azhar and jihadi organizations like Laskhar-e-Taiba, al-Badr, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Harkatul Mujahideen, Jamiatul Mujahideen etc operate with the financial cooperation of the Pakistani secret services and they are allowed collect their funds inside Pakistan."

ISI Links to Taliban - Truth behind the Allegations?

In 2005, Khalid Khawaja had given an interview to AsiaTimes Online. In this, he mentioned that his letter to General Zia ul-Haq, complaining that full sharia had not been introduced, led to his being sacked from the air force and the ISI in 1986 or 87: "I went to Afghanistan and fought side-by-side with the Afghan mujahideen against Soviet troops. There I developed a friendship with Dr Abdullah Azzam [a mentor of bin Laden], Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Abdul Majeed Zindani [another mentor of bin Laden's]. At the same time, I was still in touch with my former organization, the ISI, and its then DG [director general], retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul."

There have long been rumors that the Taliban has been assisted by at least some leading members of the ISI. For example, in 2006 such allegations were openly discussed. It was believed by some that certain retired ISI members were still involved in assisting the Taliban. At that time, Hamid Gul, who had been director of the ISI from 1987-1989 dismissed the allegations as "bunkum" stating "Nobody from the ISI is involved, retired or not, and to say so is nonsense."

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Hamid Gul had declared his hatred for America in 2003. A that time he was "strategic adviser" for the MMA, a coalition of six Islamist parties that had 65 members sitting in Pakistan's National Assembly. He said: "God will destroy the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever it will try to go from there."

In January 2007 a captured spokesman for the Afghan Taliban claimed that Mullah Omar was in hiding in Quetta, and was protected by the ISI. The spokesman, Abdul Haq Haji Gulroz, aka Muhammad Hanif, also claimed that Hamid Gul was funding and supporting the Taliban. According to the Daily Telegraph of January 19, 2007, Gulroz additionally claimed that the ISI "funds and equips Taliban suicide bombings."

In 2004 Gul had told an interviewer that "I didn't create the Taliban... I am not shy of accepting my link with the Taliban, but it is not true that I created it." In November 2001 Hamid Gul had said: "The Taliban have a policy to engage the US and the allied ground forces for a long time in Afghanistan. This will have an enduring impact on the US economy and it will force it to cut its military budget and pull out its forces from the Middle East, which is their main goal."

Similar views were recently expressed by Colonel Imam (Brig. Sultan Tarar Amir) whose location is still unknown following the March 26 kidnap. He told the New York Times: "The Taliban cannot be forced out, you cannot subjugate them. But they can tire the Americans. In another three to four years, the Americans will be tired."

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Colonel Imam had been trained at Fort Bragg in 1974 and in the 1980s he had worked with the CIA to train people to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. He also had close ties to Mullah Omar. It is widely reported that Colonel Imam was a "founder of the Taliban". In Ahmed Rashid's book on the Taliban (p. 28) it is suggested that in late 1994 Colonel Imam was involved in both funding the emerging Taliban with ISI money and also strategic negotiations to assert Taliban control of Afghanistan.

The rumors of ISI's continued involvement in Taliban activities have persisted. In July 2008 Stephen R. Kappes, a leading CIA official, confronted the civilian government of Pakistan with the suggestions (emanating from Afghanistan) that the ISI was assisting the Taliban. In March 2009, American government officials suggested that the S WIng of the ISI was directly involved in Taliban insurgent actions.

In October 2009 an adviser to Afghan's foreign minister claimed that the ISI were leading Taliban attacks against Western targets. Davood Moradian also claimed that NATO official Gen. Stanley McChrystal had openly affirmed the ISI role in a report published in August 2009.

On May 26, 2010 the Times of India reported further Afghanistan claims that the ISI was linked to Taliban terrorist attacks within its borders. Saeed Ansari of Afghan intelligence claimed: "All the explosions and terrorist attacks by these people were plotted from the other side of the border and most of the explosives and materials were also brought from the other side to Afghanistan. The intelligence service of our neighbouring country [ISI] has definitely had its role in equipping and training of this group [the Taliban]."

In November 2009 US intelligence officials informed the Washington Times that the Pakistani ISI had assisted the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, to relocate from his Pakistani borderland hideout in Quetta to a safer location in Karachi.

Khawaja - an Enigma

Khawaja himself has had his fair share of dubious dealings. According to a South Asia Analysis Group report from 2007: "Khawaja was also in the ISI and used to be in touch with the Taliban after it came into being in 1994 and Osma bin Laden after he shifted to Afghanistan in 1996. After leaving the ISI, he joined the Jamaat-ul-Furqa (JUF) of Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani, which has many followers in the Muslim communities of the US and the West Indies. Daniel Pearl had sought his help for arranging a meeting with Jilani. Pearl wanted to enquire about any links between the JUF and Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. It was Khawaja, who had tipped off the kidnappers of Pearl about his Jewish background and created a suspicion in their mind that Pearl had links with the CIA and Mossad."

In September 2009, Khalid Khawaja had been claiming that Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, had met Osama bin Laden on at least five occasions. According to journalist Simon Reeve, author of the book The New Jackals, an informant had claimed "I met Osama bin Laden with Nawaz Sharif in discussing plots to get rid of you [Benazir Bhuto]." Khawaja was confirming this account. Hamid Gul - who in 1989 was director of ISI allegedly arranged these meetings.

In March 2006, Khawaja had made the same claims. He had said: "I still remember that Osama bin Laden provided me with funds, which I handed over to Nawaz Sharif, then the chief minister of Punjab [and later premier], to dislodge Benazir Bhutto. Nawaz Sharif insisted that I arrange a direct meeting with the "Sheikh", which I did in Saudi Arabia. Nawaz met thrice with Osama in Saudi Arabia. The most historic was the meeting in the Green Palace Hotel in Medina between Nawaz Sharif, Osama and myself, Khayyam Qaiser is the witness for that meeting in which Khayyem, the personal staff officer tried to take a photograph but Osama’s friends there stopped him."

Khawaja was a maverick - who appeared to play off varying factions for his own ends. He even met a leading member of Al-Muhajiroun, a British Islamist group that had set up a base in Lahore, Pakistan in 1999. Khawaja said of this man: "Mr Sajil Shahid was promoting jihad, so it is not only Mr Sajil Shahid, any true Muslim has to promote jihad.  If he doesn’t, he should not call himself a Muslim; he is a hypocrite."

Khawaja has blamed the "Jewish lobby" for 9/11, claiming it was a pretext to take over Afghanistan. He openly supported Osama bin Laden and once referred to him as "an angel". He has supported the

There were many false reports connected with the kidnapping of Khawaja and his two companions. It was reported on April 9, 2010 by a Taliban source that the three men were safe and were in South Waziristan. On May 6 it was reported in several news outlets that Colonel Imam and journalist Asad Qureshi had been freed. Eight days later, a correction was published. The whereabouts and condition of the two men were still unknown. Captives in the FATA tribal regions do not generally last for long. If their captors fail to gain any ransom or political leverage, the victims are disposed of. It is increasingly likely that the two captives could already be dead.

Shortly after the kidnap, the sons of Colonel Imam and Khalid Khawaja made their own efforts to negotiate with Taliban contacts, to secure their release. This has led to the most bizarre issue to arise from this situation. Hamid Mir is a TV anchor man. Khalid Khawaja's son Osama had maintained that an audio of the TV anchor man talking to "Usman", one of the alleged kidnappers, was authentic. Osama Khalid believed that the Indian intelligence agency (RAW) had carried out the kidnapping, calling themselves the "Asian Tigers". Khawaja's son believed that the CIA had paid RAW to carry out the act. Hamid Mir is denying the allegation, and is threatening to sue the Daily Times which published the account. Mir states that his voice has been sampled. Others have called for an independent investigation.

On May 18, the Daily Times published a message which purportedly came from the "Asian Tigers" which dismissed the "Hamid Mir" audio tape as a "fake".

There are no easy conclusions to be made from this series of events. The killing of Khawaja appears to signal that the jihadists of the Pakistan Taliban are no longer prepared to deal with the ISI. If the ISI is genuinely urging Pakistan's military to fight the Taliban on one hand, while encouraging the Taliban in other areas, it is inevitable that tolerance of the group will fail.

Khalid Khawaja may or may not be guilty of tricking Abdul Aziz to leave the Red Mosque and get arrested. If Abdul Aziz had remained within the mosque he would certainly have died like his brother, either at the hands of the military or the suicide bomber who detonated explosives inside the complex. Abdul Aziz is still alive. He was released from prison in April 2009.

When Khalid Khawaja, Asad Qureshi and Colonel Imam were kidnapped, there had been a period of intense targeting of Taliban members. Drone strikes had hit the leadership of the Pakistan Taliban, and military offensives had made gains. After Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar had been captured, he and his comrades had - according to Pakistani officials - given information about Taliban activities and operatives. The kidnappers' request for Baradar's release may have been for punitive reasons.

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The offensives against the Taliban have been severe. Last week, unconfirmed reports stated that Maulana Fazlullah (above), a Taliban leader who had operated a reign of tyranny in Pakistan's scenic Swat Valley, had been killed in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, by border police. Pakistan's military had driven Fazlullah from the Swat Valley in November last year.

It seems that the kidnap and killing of Khalid Khawaja, someone who had been respected by many of Pakistan's jihadists, was a statement, aimed directly to Pakistan's ISI. The message seems to be that the period in which the Taliban could work with the agency is now over. For the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the ISI must come to a decision: either support jihad against Western influences, or become another enemy.

Pakistan already seems to be infected with conspiracy theories. It would be better for all sides in this situation if the ISI stopped playing for both sides and adding to the climate of distrust and suspicion. If any members of the ISI can be proved to have assisted the Taliban, then the civilian government of Pakistan must prove its commitment to honesty and demand punishments. Failure to purge the ISI of its jihadist members will further weaken a government that is already weak.

Relatives of the two other men who were kidnapped still wait and hope. The longer they wait, it seems that the chances of a pleasant outcome grow slimmer.

Election Fever: Big Noise in Little Britain

Debate

Soon Britain will be going to the polls to decide which political party will lead the country. The date for the general election is set for May 6. Elections in Britain are traditionally fought between the two main parties - the Tories (Conservatives, on the right of the political spectrum) and Labour (traditionally left/Socialist in outlook).

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The party that follows behind them is the Liberal Democrat party. Formerly called the Liberal party, this grouping has had no hope of winning a majority in the House of Commons for 88 years. The last "Liberal" prime minister was David Lloyd George. This individual (pictured in a 1920 cartoon) had become Prime Minister in 1916. In 1922, after exposure of his corrupt dealings, Lloyd George and his party representatives were swept away in a landslide Tory win. From that time onwards, the Liberals have never been either as powerful or as prominent.

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Consistently over the past year, opinion polls were placing David Cameron (pictured) and his Conservative party above Gordon Brown. The election was widely considered to be a "two horse race". There were fears that even though Cameron was being seen as more popular than Brown, he would need to have more than a ten point lead to ensure that his party has an overall majority in parliament.

On Thursday April 15, 2010, a national debate was presented on British television. Following the model set in American election campaigns, this was the first of three debates, much as happens in the USA. In America, these have always involved the presidential candidates from two parties - the Republicans and the Democrats.

The British debate on Thursday, broadcast live by ITV, was the first time that leaders of the main parties were invited to set out their policies to the public before an election. The members of the audience, some of whom posed questions, were instructed not to give applause to any statements, and they complied. Joining David Cameron and Gordon Brown was the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, Nick Clegg.

Clegg had only become the leader of his party on December 18, 2007. His predecessor, Menzies Campbell, had resigned two months before. Campbell had come to lead the party after his predecessor, Charles Kennedy, had resigned on January 7, 2006 amid concern about his drinking problems.

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When Nick Clegg (pictured) came to the podium in the televised debate, members of the public had very little idea of what he personally stood for. The full debate can be seen here. It had been widely expected that Gordon Brown would not perform too well. Even Brown's supporters were admitting that Brown lacked in style, though they claimed he makes up for this in substance. David Cameron was expected to display communication skills and to present his party's policies clearly. Cameron did present himself clearly, but no-one expected that Nick Clegg would be a master of communication. Clegg was confident in his presentation, and this confidence and assuredness of style proved popular with viewers.

What ensued after the debate has been unprecedented in British politics. Clegg, the outsider in the election race was suddenly hailed in opinion polls as a new hope for Britain. During the debate, Clegg had positioned himself as a voice of something "new", as opposed to "more of the same tired old policies" represented by the Tories and Labour. The public, if polls were to be trusted, believed that Clegg represented a fresh wind blowing away the cobwebs of the main established parties.

Expenses

Clegg had argued that Labour and Tories had helped to discredit politics with the appalling revelations of the "expenses scandal" that rocked the country last year. Taxpayers had been shocked to find that politicians in the Houses of Commons and the House of Lords had been milking their expenses claims with spurious demands. The worst culprits were Conservatives and Labour politicians. For example, one Tory Member of Parliament (Peter Viggers) had claimed £1,645 for a floating home, styled like 19th century Swedish architecture, for the ducks on his lake. Another Tory (Douglas Hogg, aka Viscount Hailsham) charged taxpayers for the costs of a mole catcher on his ancestral estate, and for the costs of having his moat cleared.

Some MPs' claims were scandalous for their pettiness. Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is Labour MP for Redditch in Worcestershire. She was earning £141,688 from the tax-payer, when she sent in a receipt for a bath plug worth 88 pence. Her miserly insistence on being reimbursed by the public for small bills brought her and the Labour government into disrepute. In March 2009, it was revealed that she had submitted a request for reimbursement for two porn movies. Her husband Richard Timney, who acts as her "assistant" had ordered "Raw Meat" and "By Special Request" on pay-per-view cable TV and put them onto her list of "Additional Costs Allowance" expenses. After Ms Smith apologized, Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended her. Eight weeks later, Smith resigned as Home Secretary.

Smith famously tried to butcher the English language by describing Islamic terrorism as "anti-Islamic activity." She went on to declare that Geert Wilders and Michael Savage were to be banned from entering Britain for "engaging in unacceptable behavior" even though her government was planning to meet Dr Ibrahim Moussawi at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Moussawi is a spokesperson for the terrorist group Hizbollah.

Her political gaffes aside, Jacqui Smith claimed the maximum expenses allowance possible (£116,000 over six years) for having a second home. As MPs have to represent their home constituencies and also appear in the House of Commons, it is not unreasonable for some to require living expenses for a second domicile. Four fifths of MPs do this mostly from necessity, but Smith spent most of her time staying with her sister while in London, rather than spending on rent or a mortgage. Stretching the definition of "honesty" to breaking point, she claimed that her sister's home was her "main home".

Smith is not the only MP to have played fast and loose with expenses for "second homes". Margaret Moran, Labour MP for Luton South, conned the taxpayer by "flipping" the location of the abodes listed in her "second home" expenses between three separate properties. Moran agreed to pay back some of her expenses, and then went on "sick leave". While on sick leave, she was secretly filmed seeking lobbying work. This documentary caused her to be suspended from the Labour Party. As well as Moran, three former Labour Cabinet Ministers were also suspended. Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon had featured in the same documentary "expressing a desire to work for a consultancy firm at a fee of up to £5,000 a day."

It is not only members of Parliament who have manipulated details of their "second homes". Members of the House of Lords such as Labour peer Baroness Uddin have acted similarly. She also blatantly lied by declaring that her "main residence" is a home she visits only once a month, but as rules for members of the upper house are vague, she escaped prosecution.

Lord Hanningfield, a Tory member of the House of Lords, was not so lucky. He had claimed expenses of £174 a day for staying in London, even though he lived in Essex, less than 50 miles from London. In all, he has charged the taxpayer £100,000. In February this year, Lord Hanningfield was indicted on charges of false accounting. However, he is accused of falsifying his travel expenses.

Three Labour MPs, Jim Devine (MP for Livingston), Elliot Morley (MP for Scunthorpe) and David Chaytor (MP for Bury North) were also indicted. In May 2009 it was revealed that Chaytor had been claiming £13,000 reimbursement for a mortgage that had already been paid in full. Chaytor described this act as an "unforgivable error". At the same time, Elliot Morley was accused of claiming £16,000 for a mortgage that had been paid off. In May 2009, Morley was suspended from the Labour Party. Scottish MP Jim Devine had submitted receipts for work at his home that appeared bogus. He has subsequently admitted that the receipts were fake, but claims he had not profited from them.

On April 12 this year, it was announced that the three Labour MPs will get legal aid to help them defend their cases, a decision made by the courts that caused public outrage. Devine had argued that as he was "out of work", he was entitled to legal aid (financial assistance to meet his court costs). Two days before the televised debate between the three main party leaders, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the three Labour MPs would have to pay back their legal aid. New rules on "means-testing" of recipients of legal aid are expected to be in force when the separate trials take place later in the year.

With a catalogue of appalling behavior by certain Labour and Tory Members of Parliament, Nick Clegg gained a few credibility points on the expenses issue. A woman in the audience asked about how the leaders intended to restore political credibility after the expenses scandal. Clegg was the first to answer, stating: "Well I don't think that any politician deserves your trust... deserves any credibility until everybody comes clean about what has gone on. There have been some changes to the rules and all that- the expenses rules, but there are still people who haven't taken full responsibility for some of the biggest abuses of the system, There are MPs who flipped - one property to the next - buying properties paid by you the taxpayer, and then they would do the properties up, paid for by you, and then pocket the difference in personal profit. They got away Scot free. There are MPS who avoided paying Capital Gains Tax, and of course we remember the duck houses and all the rest of it. But it is the people the MPs making the big abuses, some of them making hundreds of pounds, Not a single Liberal Democrat MP did either of those things. Those still haven't been dealt with. We until we're honest about what went wrong in the first place."

The Liberal Democrats' representatives did not feature in the expenses scandal, but when they have only 62 MPs out of the full complement of 650 in the House of Commons (compared to 196 Conservative and 354 Labour MPS) that is no guarantee of universal probity within the party.

It was only after the debate, when popularity polls showed Clegg soaring into pole position in the electoral race, that the Liberal Democrat leader's own expenses came under the spotlight. David Cameron may have looked uneasy during the debate, and Brown may have looked sullen and antagonistic, but neither had run up expenses as high as Clegg. Over the last four years, Clegg has cost the tax-payer a total of £84,000 for his second home. He has defended paying for a gardener to prune his "apple and plum trees". He also ran up £850 on curtains and blinds, which he claimed as expenses.

In May 2009 it was revealed that Clegg had also charged the taxpayer for phone calls to Colombia, Vietnam and Spain. Clegg repaid £80.20 for these phone calls, declared that he had made an "innocent mistake". As well as large expenses, Clegg proved himself to be as stingy as Jacqui Smith, charging the taxpayer for a cake pan costing £2.49 and £1.50 for paper napkins.

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In October 2009 Prime Minister Gordon Brown was ordered by Sir Thomas Legg to repay £12,000 of expenses. Legg, the auditor brought in to examine the MPs expenses scandal, had imposed limits upon what MPs can claim. Brown's expenses, which had been incurred for "cleaning costs" had exceeded the limits imposed by the auditor. Nick Clegg was ordered to repay £910 as his gardening costs had exceeded the annual limit of £1,000 allowed by Sir Thomas Legg.

It should be mentioned that five days after the debate, Gordon Brown grumbled about being forced to repay £12,000 of his expenses. He declared on radio that he would not "employ anybody without paying them a decent wage. I feel my crime was to pay a decent wage to my cleaner, because nobody was saying you can't claim for cleaning your house." No-one cares what he pays his cleaner. Brown's "crime" was to make the taxpayer foot the bill for his cleaner, rather than himself.

Does Britain Need Clegg?

The media has elevated Clegg from a rank outsider into the position of a "contender", but due to the way that electoral groupings are measured in Britain it is unlikely that his party would be able to gain a majority in the House of Commons. The Conservatives would need to have at least 5 per cent more votes than Labour to gain a majority. There will be another televised debate tonight, on the subject of Foreign Policy, and one more before the May 6 election.

The public may initially have swallowed Clegg's claim that his party represented change, but seems to have forgotten one of Clegg's claims on the first debate, concerning immigration. Clegg argued that there should be no "cap" on immigration. Labour is widely perceived as being responsible for the uncontrolled immigration that has taken place in Britain since 1997. David Cameron scored some popularity points during the first debate by declaring that he would impose a limit on numbers arriving on UK soil.

Nick Clegg, despite being treated as a wunderkind by the media, not only has no plans to set a fixed number upon migrants, but thinks that the public will accept the notion of granting citizenship to illegal migrants who have managed to beat the system for 10 years. Logically, such a policy is absurd. Why have immigration policies, if those who openly flaunt them are to be rewarded? Yesterday, Clegg appeared on radio and this particular policy was roundly attacked by listeners. Clegg attempted to defend this policy by stating: "Better to have them out of the hands of nasty criminal gangs and into the hands of the taxpayer."

The naivete and lack of logic in Clegg's policies on legalizing illegal immigration was proved by a caller who pointed out that there was no way that an illegal immigrant could "prove" he had been living in Britain for 10 years as he would have had no entry papers. When pressured to be more realistic in his responses, Clegg began to display signs of anger.

Clegg wants closer cooperation with Europe, even though the more the EU strengthens, Britain's autonomy weakens. He is opposed to the renewal of the Trident nuclear missile-carrying submarines. When a listener on Radio 4 yesterday asked what would Britain do if it suffered a nuclear attack, Clegg, prevaricated and tried to ridicule the scenario as too "apocalyptic" to be treated seriously. The fact that North Korea has already detonated two nuclear weapons and Iran intends to create its own seems to have escaped Clegg's narrow view of the world.

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After the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Liberal Democrats were behind many of the antiwar protests. However, the antiwar movement has made common cause with Islamists and antisemites. There are members of Clegg's party who have taken dislike of Israel's policies to levels that have been seen by some as "antisemitism". Jenny Tonge was a former MP for Richmond until 2005. She sits in the House of Lords and was the Liberal Democrat's spokesperson on health.

She had once been on the front bench in the House of Commons, but on January 21 2004, Tonge had said to a rally that with "killings and the bulldozings and all the other horrible things" going on in occupied Palestinian areas that if she lived there, she would consider being a suicide bomber. She told the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign: "This particular brand of terrorism, the suicide bomber, is truly born out of desperation. Many many people criticize, many many people say it is just another form of terrorism, but I can understand and I am a fairly emotional person and I am a mother and a grand mother, I think if I had to live in that situation, and I say this advisedly, I might just consider becoming one myself. And that is a terrible thing to say." Charles Kennedy, who was then leader of the Liberal Democrat party, sacked her from her position as children's spokesperson for the party.

In March 2009 while in Syria, she met Khaled Meshaal, the leader of terrorist group Hamas. She also met Ramadan Shalah, head of Islamic Jihad, which also carries out terrorist murders against Israeli civilians. Tonge said that Meshaal was "shrewd, plausible and actually very likeable."
In 2006, when Menzies Campbell led the Liberal Democrats, she was reprimanded for stating that "The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the Western world, its financial grips. I think they have probably got a certain grip on our party." The leader claimed that her comments had "clear antisemitic connotations".
Baroness Tonge is a patron of the Palestine Telegraph, an online source of propaganda and "news". This website also seems to support a revived version of the ancient "blood libels" used to demonize Jewish people.

In August 2009, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet had published an article stating that Isiraeli soldiers had killed Palestinians to harvest their organs. This story had no basis in fact. On February 1, 2010 the Palestine Telegraph published a story by an American (Stephen Lendman) that alleged Israeli IDF medical staff in Haiti were harvesting the organs of people in Haiti. Lendman wrote that "The Israeli government acts as facilitator, providing subsidies of up to $80,000 for 'transplant holidays'," and "Its medical teams apparently are doing it in Haiti, exploiting fresh corpses and the living." Lendman's sources included Manar TV - an organ (no pun intended) of terrorist group Hizbollah.

With no evidence other than hearsay to support the claims of organ-harvesting, Tonge demanded that the IDF should be investigated for "organ-harvesting". She admitted that the IDF had done a fine job in Haiti, but stated that "the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti."

Finally, On February 13, 2010, Clegg told Baroness Tonge that she could no longer be the Lib Dem spokesperson on Health in the Lords. He called her comments "wrong, distasteful and provocative". The Palestine Telegraph portrayed Tonge as a martyr.

Clegg stated that: "While I do not believe that Jenny Tonge is anti-semitic or racist, I regard her comments as wholly unacceptable. Jenny Tonge apologises unreservedly for the offence she has caused." Though firing her as spokesperson, he has not removed the whip. She can still proclaim herself as a "Liberal Democrat" peer.

Clegg is a leader of a political party. He has had ample time to notice that Tonge, with previous record for comments that appeared antisemitic, and also that she is a patron for an online site that criticises Israel but seems to offer little comparable criticism of groups like Hamas or Hizbollah. The blog "Harry's Place" has highlighted that another Liberal Democrat peer has defended Tonge, and attacked the Likud party. As described in the Jewish Chronicle, Lord Wallace of Saltaire was addressing members of the Board of Deputies, but used language that caused certain Deputies to walk out in disgust.

No Change

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The worst aspect of Clegg's rise to importance is not really connected to his policies (even though these need to be seriously questioned by both the media and the electorate) but in the manner that his "presentation skills" are being used to propel him to a position of political prominence that his track record does not merit. Should his current popularity be translated into a surge of votes, it is highly likely that Britain would have to experience a hung parliament (where there is no practical majority). Votes which would have gone to David Cameron's party could go to Liberal Democrats and create a disastrous scenario - where a public already fed up with 13 years of Labour mismanagement of the country and the economy could see Labour continuing for a further five years.

The Liberals have made pacts with parties in the past, usually to bolster up Labour's command of the Commons against the Conservatives. In 1916, the last elected Liberal government of Britain had been led by Lloyd George, in a coalition with the Conservatives. Lloyd George was popular but divisive, having alienated the previous Liberal leader (Lord Asquith). His coalition soon dissolved in 1922 after Lloyd George was shown to have sold peerages and knighthoods and at the close of the year, Bonar Law, a Tory, was in power. He died six months later, ushering in an era of political instability. The Liberals have never recovered as a party from the era of Lloyd George and Asquith, and have generally settled for deals with Labour, known colloquially as "Lib-Lab pacts".

In January 1924, under Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour government came to power with no real a hung parliament The Liberals supported Labour but by the end of the year the Tories were back in power. In 1929 Labour won most seats, but it was still a hung parliament, and Ramsay MacDonald did not have a practical working majority. The Liberals agreed not to align themselves with the Tories, but after two years the government collapsed and Ramsay MacDonald (expelled from the Labour party) continued until 1935 as a leader of a coalition of parties.

In early 1977, when the Labour government of James Callaghan was struggling with no real majority, the Liberal Party under David Steel stepped in to support the government in the most famous "Lib-Lab pact". This pact ended in July 1978 and at the end of the year Britain was riven by strikes and unrest, in the "Winter of Discontent". In the spring of 1979, the public voted in Margaret Thatcher and for almost two decades Labour and the Liberals existed in a wasteland, with Labour rebels splitting off in 1981 to form a party called the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In 1983 and 1987, the Liberal party campaigned for election in alliances with the SDP. This splitting of the electorate was used by the Tories to remain in power, and in 1988 the Liberals and the SDP merged to become the "Liberal Democratic Party".

With a long history of cozying up to some governments and parties, and cheering on the demise of other parties, the Liberal Democrats have never had any monopoly on policies. For most of the British public, they represent something somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum, with socialists assuming that the party is "left of center" and supporters on the right assuming they are a "soft" version of Conservatism.

There is a saying - that a week is a long time in politics. This week has seemed longer than most, with endless hysteria about Nick Clegg's alleged virtues, while we all were told that the atmosphere above Britain was filled with ash from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. For the first time in living memory, no commercial planes were allowed to fly in or out of Britain. While the skies were quiet over Britain, media noise increased.

American readers may have heard of our political dramas. Nick Clegg is currently being hailed as a new phenomenon in Britain, but he is not really presenting policies that are - of themselves - popular. For a public that is now accustomed to shows like the X-Factor and other talent contests hosted by Simon Cowell, Nick Clegg is seen as a "star in the making". He may have delivered his lines with confidence, but the public should look closely at what the words mean. Being comparatively young (at 43) and being confident is not of itself a guarantee of a good leader.

David Cameron has tried to woo voters by presenting himself as a "normal" person, but people do not want "normal" or "ordinary" leaders; they want someone extraordinary. Cameron seems almost embarrassed by his privileged background. Leaders like Winston Churchill (born in a palace) did not bother to excuse the circumstances of his birth, and was loved by rich and poor alike. In the Sunday Times, Nick Clegg's post-debate poll results were used to compare his popularity to that of Churchill, but Clegg is no Churchill.

Cameron has seen his poll lead slipping as Clegg is fêted as an object of hope and change. For the Tories to have stayed ahead, they should have been presenting policies that the public can clearly understand. Clegg may show skills at delivering speeches, but when he is questioned about his questionable policies, he is as tetchy and evasive as any other politician. Hopefully, in the next two debates, people will start to see Clegg for what he is and see how far Liberal Democrat policies do not mesh with the wishes expressed by respondents to recent opinion polls.

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David Cameron should stop trying to be "nice" to Clegg, hoping that he can create a "pact" in the event of a hung parliament. If Cameron wants to win, he needs to expose Clegg and his policies. Yesterday as Cameron campaigned in Cornwall, someone threw an egg (pictured) at him, hitting him on the head. Maybe that experience will wake him up and make him realize that politics is an ugly business, and if he wants to win over the public, he needs to be more prepared to engage in no-holds combat. Perhaps he could also present some policies........

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Is the "Special Relationship" With Britain Really Over?

Origins of the name

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The "special relationship" between Britain and America was first popularized in 1946 by Winston Churchill (pictured above with President Harry S. Truman). Three years earlier, Churchill had used the term in a private communication. According to the first edition of John Dumbrell's book "A Special Relationship" (2001, page 7), the notion that something "special" existed between Britain and America was first put on paper in July 1940. Edward F. L. Wood, first Lord Halifax, had been Britain's Foreign Secretary from 1938 until 1940, when he wrote of "the possibility of some sort of special relationship" between the two nations. Wood became Britain's Ambassador in Washington from 1940 until 1946.

There was considerable difference of between Churchill and Lord Halifax, with the latter associated with Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement towards the Nazi war machine. Despite this, the notion of a "special association" was taken seriously by Churchill, himself the son of an American mother. On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered a speech at Fulton, Missouri, which he called "The Sinews of Peace". It is popularly referred to as "The Iron Curtain Speech" as it was within this address that he declared that an "iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe."

It was within this speech that the term "special relationship" first came to the attention of the world at large. Churchill said: "....I come to the crux of what I have travelled here to say. Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States."

The "special relationship" was born out of a mutual suspicion of the intentions of the Soviets. It has suffered fluctuations over its history. The Suez Crisis of 1956, when President Gamel Nasser of Egypt, armed by the Soviets, appeared prepared to increase Russian influence in the Middle East. This development strengthened the "special relationship", and under president Kennedy the bond was strong. In the late 1960s, after Soviet-supported Arab nations attempted unsuccessfully to overthrow Israel in 1967, the United States of America embarked upon a new "special relationship" with Israel. Initially this led to a cooling of relationships with Britain, which maintained its previous links with Arab nations.

The special relationship seemed to be more intense while there were threats of Soviet expansionism. Though British soldiers fought in the Korean War, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson offered verbal (but not practical) support for the Vietnam War, China did not pose a direct threat to Western European interests. During the 1960s, Britain ceded many of its former colonies, and with its diminished territorial influence, its political and military influence waned. Britain was influential within NATO more on account of its intelligence, rather than its military power. Shared intelligence began during World War II and around 1947 (the year the CIA was formed), SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) agreements had been made between Britain and the US, formalizing intelligence-gathering.

In the 1970s, the special relationship between Britain and America seemed to be losing its importance, but at the start of the 1980s, the close bonds between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan ensured a revival of the association. In the 1990s, the rise of the Asian economies and the demise of the Soviet Empire eroded Britain's strategic importance.

Since the end of WWII, many UK air bases have been used by the US Air Force. During the 1980s, plans were made for some of these to house ground-launched Cruise Missiles. Among these, sites such as RAF Greenham Common, RAF Upper Heyford, and RAF Molesworth are now hardly used for flying. These sites are still remembered for the protests, but with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the fall of the "Iron Curtain", their strategic importance is secondary to other American Strategic Air Command sites in Britain and Europe. At Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, F111E aircraft once thundered above the Cherwell valley, and American airmen mixed well with the local community. In 1994, American occupancy at Upper Heyford finally came to an end.

Bill Clinton took an interest in British affairs, assisting Tony Blair in his attempts to achieve peace in Northern Ireland (where earlier Ted Kennedy had involved himself in divisive factionalism). It was under George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003 that the "special relationship" came once again under the spotlight. The common enemy was no longer the USSR but violent Islamism.

Blair retired from British politics in May 2007. He gave his position to Gordon Brown, who officially became prime minister 12 weeks late. Neither the general public nor his own party voted for Gordon Brown to be premier. On July 31, 2007, when Mr Brown went to Camp David to meet George W. Bush, I wondered on the pages of Family Security Matters if Gordon Brown would maintain the "special relationship" between America and Britain. In August 2007 I wondered if Gordon Brown's almost appeasing approach to homegrown Islamist terrorism, so at odds with that of the Bush administration, signaled the "first crack" in the relationship.

This past weekend, on Sunday, March 28, a report was published in Britain. Compiled by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, a panel of Members of Parliament from all major political parties, the message of the report was stark and depressing. According to the report, the "special relationship" between America and Britain, at least in the manner in which it is understood, is now dead.


The Report

The entire report, entitled "Global Security: UK-US Relations" can be read in either pdf format or via subject-related HTML links. In the official press notice Mike Gapes (Labour MP for Ilford South) stated: "The UK needs to adopt a more hard-headed political approach towards our relationship with the US with a realistic sense of our own limits and our national interests."

He added: "Certainly the UK must continue to position itself closely alongside the US but there is a need to be less deferential and more willing to say no where our interests diverge. In a sense, the UK foreign policy approach this Committee is advocating is in many ways similar to the more pragmatic tone which President Obama has adopted towards the UK."
Gapes admitted that a "close and valuable" relationship still existed but warned that the actual term "special relationship" is "misleading and we recommend that its use should be avoided."

It is argued that any special relationship that exists must also be shared with other countries, but the report suggests (section 6, para 210) that the Obama Administration itself is behind much of the cooling of the special relationship.

Heather Conley and Reginald Dale, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, were called to give evidence. They are quoted as saying: "There is clear evidence that Europe (and thus Britain) is much less important to the Obama administration than it was to previous US administrations, and the Obama administration appears to be more interested in what it can get out of the special relationship than in the relationship itself."

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When Gordon Brown went to the United States in 2009, many organs of the British press grumbled that President Obama appeared to be making snubs toward the British prime minister. Certainly there seemed an imbalance in the exchange of gifts. Obama gave the UK premier a boxed set of 25 DVDs of classic movies, movies that could be bought off Amazon or in a video store. Brown gave Obama a pen-holder carved from timbers of HMS Gannett ship built in 1878 to protect trade and combat slavery.

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The Daily Mail stated that "oak from the Gannet's sister ship, HMS Resolute, was carved to make a desk that has sat in the Oval Office in the White House since 1880. Mr Brown also handed over a framed commission for HMS Resolute and a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert."

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During George W. Bush's tenure of the White House, a bust of Winston Churchill, carved by American-born sculptor Jacob Epstein, had been displayed in the Oval Office. Worth a mint on the art market, it had been on long-term loan since 2001. The fact that Obama formally handed back the bust, despite being encouraged to keep the object for four years, was perceived as the biggest snub of all. As noted by Newsweek, the London Times newspaper assumed Obama associated the bust with Churchill's 1952 order to crack down on the Mau Mau rebellion. Hussein Onyango Obama, grandfather of the president, had been interned as a subversive for two years. Whether Hussein Onyango Obama deserved jail or not is debatable - but Churchill could not be held personally responsible. H.O. Obama was jailed in 1949, three years before Churchill ordered a crackdown.

The returning of the bust of Churchill - first proponent of the "special relationship" was seen in Britain as an insult to that relationship. Toby Harnden of the Telegraph newspaper, reporting on the recent Foreign Affairs Committee report, sees the Obama Administration as indifferent to the special relationship: "Ask an official in the Obama administration about the "special relationship" between the United States and the United Kingdom and the response will be at best a roll of the eyes and at worst an unprintable epithet."

Justin Webb. a BBC correspondent in Washington, sees little American enthusiasm for the special relationship. In March 2009 he wrote that "the truth is that the special relationship or special partnership or whatever we call it now is not that important to the modern Americans who will shape the future of this nation and whose families hail from Mexico or China or Sudan or wherever else."

Webb, who in January 2010 gave a lecture on the subject of the special relationship, also evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee. He told the committee: "I think there genuinely is a sort of carelessness in the (Obama) Administration about this special relationship, indeed almost a neuralgia about the term, which co-exists with the fact that a lot of them are Brit-educated and very knowledgeable about the UK. Phil Gordon, the Assistant Secretary for Europe at the State Department, couldn't be more knowledgeable or linked into the UK, so these things can coincide..."

"...In preparation for coming to see you, I asked someone in the White House to take a minute or so with a senior Administration official the other day and have a quick word on the current feeling. He said that he had 30 seconds: the Administration official said, "Get out of my room. I'm sick of that subject. You're all mad". There is a sense in the Obama press office that we obsess about this. I was speaking to another Administration official about the bust of Churchill and the way in which it was rather unceremoniously taken in a taxi to the British Embassy, and the fallout, particularly in the British press. He said, "We thought it was Eisenhower. They all look the same to us". They like and admire us in many ways, but they don't want to be dealing with this kind of moaning—not from you and certainly not from Downing Street or from the Leader of the Opposition's office, but from the press."

Robert E. Hunter of the Rand Corporation, a former US Ambassador to NATO, wrote (page 172 of the report) that the “special relationship” still exists as between the United States and the United Kingdom, and is regularly honored by US leaders, but it has changed—and diminished—significantly over time..."

President Obama and members of his administration may seem to be aloof towards Britain, but Britain has done little to assert its importance either economically or politically. For the entire duration of Mr Obama's presidency Gordon Brown, a man regarded even by his own supporters as lacking in charisma and communication skills, has been the British premier. The Labour Party, which Brown heads, has been at the forefront of diminishing Britain's influence. Labour created regional "parliaments" for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Some embarrassment ensued when the Scottish government decided to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi from custody. Megrahi, who had been convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people, had been suffering from prostate cancer. His release on compassionate grounds on August 20, 2009 enraged many in America (the plane carried many US civilians).

Robert Mueller, head of the FBI condemned the Scottish government's decision. In a letter addressed to Kenny MacAskill, Scottish Justice Secretary, he stated: "Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law. Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world.". Brown's powerlessness to intervene showed how small his political stature, even within the "United" Kingdom", had become.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator, had declared that Megrahi's release had been part of a trade deal, a claim denied by Lord Mandelson, Britain's Business Secretary. In January this year Alex Salmond, head of the Scottish parliament, claimed that in May 2007, Tony Blair had included Megrahi's release in trade discussions with Gaddafi. This deal, made in Libya, had taken place while Blair was still prime minister. Alex Salmond asserted that Blair had kept close colleagues in the dark about the inclusion of Megrahi. The Libyan trade deal was confirmed in December 2007, when Brown was prime minister.

On December 13 2007, Brown signed the Lisbon Treaty (pdf document), which was designed to make administration of the expanded European Union (EU) easier. The EU now has 27 member states. In 2004, European Parliament and Council Directive 2004/38/EC (pdf) was introduced, allowing free movement of EU nationals between states, and also restricting rights to deport individuals from EU nations. That came into law in 2006. The Lisbon treaty (see pdf document) is regarded by some as a "constitution" and Brown had promised a referendum before any European "constitutions" were signed. No time was given in parliament to fully discuss the treaty before Brown committed Britain to its aims. The Lisbon Treaty introduced another tier of legislation that further diminishes EU member states' autonomy. The consequences of the rushed legislation of the Lisbon treaty are still being felt; in March 2010

While British politicians have signed away Britain's rights to decide its own destiny, it cannot be seen to have the same importance that it may have had in the past. The recent report by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee suggests that on issues of global affairs, the US and Britain share similar goals. The report suggests that there is concern that funds for Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) may be cut.


The Future

When Churchill first publicly employed the term "special relationship" Britain was one political entity, with one seat of democratically elected power. Since 1997, Britain has been split with Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales having national assemblies, with only England lacking regional representation. This division of the country has gone hand-in-hand with Labour policies of encouraging multiculturalism. Instead of forging one unified and multiracial society, Labour's support for multiculturalism has encouraged the ghettoization of society.

In October 2009 a former government adviser claimed that Labour had relaxed immigration rules. Andrew Neather claimed that "mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural. I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn't its main purpose – to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."

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In 1946, there was virtually no drug problem. Nowadays, most people in Britain are concerned that neighborhoods have become swamped with illegal drug use. Strains of cannabis that used to be smoked recreationally by people like Jacqui Smith (former Home Secretary) have been replaced by far stronger varieties such as "skunk", grown illicitly in greenhouses. Though cannabis is one of the few drugs that appears to be dropping in popularity, use of other substances such as cocaine have risen dramatically. Britain is now viewed as the "drugs capital" of Europe. Where Britannia once "ruled the waves", she now waives the rules.

While illegal drugs use increases, alcohol usage has worsened to the degree that is referred to as a "crisis", costing the nation £20 billion a year ($30.6 billion). Alcohol causes more than 30,000 deaths a year, with 31 per cent of men and 21 per cent of women drinking in manners considered hazardous or harmful. Much of the increased use of alcohol has happened under Labour. Between 1987 and 202, annual rates of cirrhosis doubled. In 2005, Labour dropped strict licensing hours and opened the door to 24-hour drinking. During 2008 an average of 1,230 people were taken to hospital because of alcohol-related incidents.

Britain is set to have a general election within a matter of weeks. Despite the current unpopularity of the Labour party, the opposition in the form of David Cameron and the Conservative (Tory) party has been lackluster. Since the current Labour administration came to power on May 27, 1997, it has been busy creating new laws, to the degree that most citizens no longer know what is legal and what is not. Labour has introduced 4,300 new laws since 1997, a rate of one new law a day. Some of these laws are superfluous or imbecilic: the Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition and Inspections) Act 1998 makes it illegal to cause nuclear explosions (seriously!). It is now an offense, under the Polish Potatoes (Notification) (England) Order 2004, to import potatoes, where a person knows or suspects that these potatoes originated in Poland. What is disturbing and undemocratic is the manner in which these laws were introduced. Less than half of these were debated in the Houses of Parliament.

Certain laws erode basic rights to freedom and privacy. The Ripa Act 2000 (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) was introduced to deal with terrorism and serious crime. Initially it allowed only nine public agencies to share data - now 795 bodies can share personal data and carry out surveillance upon individuals, for offenses as trivial as dogs fouling the sidewalk. Many of these bodies that can have access to personal data and permission to carry out surveillance upon individuals are unelected. Annually, half a million requests are made to spy on individuals.

Laws that erode rights to privacy, when Britain has no single document that sets out its citizen's constitutional rights, destroy democracy and undermine trust in government. The current government has presided over the loss of assets that it inherited when it came to power. It is now in debt at levels not experienced since the 1960s. For the very first time ever, government spending makes up more than half of Britain's economy.

Labour has allowed immigration to rise threefold while unemployment has risen. Only now, faced with an imminent election, is it attempting to address public fears about immigration. After 13 years in power, such measures are mere window-dressing to gain votes, and are not based upon substance. On the matter of immigration, Brown cannot even get his figures right. Britain has a growing population of elderly people, and Brown's government cannot address how their future care needs will be financed. Nor do Labour policies address the future care needs of the immigrants it has added to the population.

The "special relationship" is certainly not what it once was. In the past, the relationship thrived when British and American leaders had some semblance of trust and friendship, as with Blair and Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Harold MacMillan. President Obama seems unconcerned about affairs in Britain and Europe, and Gordon Brown has little personal charm to win him over. Should Brown continue as prime minister after the election, the special relationship will diminish even further.

Britain will always be an ally of America, but is becoming increasing like a poor relative. When he was chancellor, he did not increase spending on the military sufficient to its needs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soldiers have died as a result of having inadequate body armor.

Maybe Britain is facing that period that all former empires face - when the barbarians are at the door and there is no national will to fight back and assert its strength. Shakespeare wrote of England (Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1) as "this sceptered isle". Comic writer Mike Barfield has renamed it "This Septic Isle". Maybe Britain will never regain what it has lost but one thing is certain. On its current course, led by Labour's Wise Men of Gotham, its strength as a nation will shrink further. It will become a small province of Europe, a brackish backwater beside the main flow of history. Though I condemn Labour for the current mess that Britain is in, I do not expect the Conservatives to be much better.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee is perhaps right to declare that the special relationship is virtually dead. Britain's political life is moribund, its identity obscured, and even a change of leadership will not instill much vigor into the body politic. There will always be a relationship with the United States of America, but it is a sad fact that under Britain's current political leadership, that relationship is getting progressively less special.