DANIEL HOTZCLAW'S REIGN OF TERROR ENDS: BLACK WOMEN MATTER IN 2016

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DANIEL HOTZCLAW'S REIGN OF TERROR ENDS:

BLACK WOMEN MATTER IN 2016.

WHAT TOOK SO LONG??

~ Victims describe assaults by convicted ex-Oklahoma City cop Daniel Holtzclaw

One of the women assaulted by former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw said she feared for her life when he pulled her over last year and forced her to perform a sex act on him.

"In my mind, all I could think of was he was going to shoot me, he was going to kill me," Jannie Ligons told reporters at a news conference Friday. "I kept begging, 'Sir, don't make me do this, don't make me do this, sir. Please. You're going to shoot me.'

"All I could see was my life flashing before my eyes and the holster on his right side," said Ligons, a grandmother whose daughters stood beside her.

Holtzclaw told her he wasn't going to shoot her, but he made her perform oral sodomy in June 2014, Ligons said.

"All I can say is I was a victim, I was traumatized, I went to therapy, I had a stroke behind this," she said.
"I was innocent, and he just picked the wrong lady to stop that night," she added.

Ligons later went to police and media outlets with the first complaint against Holtzclaw, she said. Investigators later found a total of 13 alleged victims, all African-American.

She was also one of two victims who addressed the media a day after a jury found Holtzclaw guilty of 18 of the 36 charges he faced, including four counts of rape in the first degree and four counts of forced oral sodomy.

Ligons has a pending federal civil lawsuit against Holtzclaw and the city of Oklahoma City, filed on behalf of several victims.

She accused Holtzclaw of sexual assault and violating her state constitutional rights, and accused the city of negligence.

Raped while handcuffed to bed

Shandegreon "Sade" Hill told reporters that Holtzclaw pulled her over in December 2013, and she was later taken to a hospital on the other side of town. Once there, Holtzclaw raped her while she was handcuffed to a hospital bed.

"No nurses, nobody came to check on me," Hill said. "Me being in the room with the police, not expecting to get violated the way I did, the way I was done, I just couldn't even believe it. I was speechless. I was scared.

"I felt like I was in survivor mode, so I had to do what he was making me do," Hill added, with her parents beside her.

Hill has filed a state civil lawsuit against Holtzclaw and Oklahoma City. She came forward as a victim after reading a news item about Holtzclaw on Facebook last year, she said.

'Where is the national outcry for their justice?'

The jury deliberated for more than 40 hours before reaching its verdict late Thursday.

For about six months, Holtzclaw preyed on women -- all African-American -- in one of Oklahoma's poorest neighborhoods, exploiting his police badge to intimidate them into keeping quiet.

Prosecutors say the Oklahoma City officer selected his victims based on their criminal histories, figuring their drug or prostitution records would undermine any claims they might make against him.

Then, he would subject them to assaults that escalated from groping to oral sodomy and rape.

On Thursday, his 29th birthday, Holtzclaw rocked back and forth in his chair, sobbing, as the judge read the verdict.

On Friday, Holtzclaw was under suicide watch in the Oklahoma County jail, and a sheriff's deputy or detention officer was sitting outside his cell to monitor him, Sheriff John Whetsel told CNN affiliate KFOR.

Attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing some of the victims in civil litigation against the city, criticized the national media for not covering the trial in which the victims were "poor, black women."

"Where is the national outcry for their justice?" asked Crump, who has also represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Martin, a black teenager, was fatally shot by George Zimmerman in Florida. Zimmerman was acquitted of murder charges in 2013.

Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

Crump said other women had earlier called police about Holtzclaw, so "we need to find out how aggressive they (police) were" in their investigation.

Oklahoma City NAACP President Garland Pruitt said is waiting until Holtzclaw's sentencing in January to see if justice will be served. He said "the system has a reputation of not being fair."

"Don't let this be the only time that you come forward when people of color confront you with a situation that is not always favorable to your so-called dialect," Pruitt told the media.

More than 250 years of prison recommended

The jurors recommended a total of 263 years of prison time for Holtzclaw's crimes. Formal sentencing is set for next month.

"We're going to ask the judge to make sure that this defendant never sees the light of day," District Attorney David Prater said. "And we're going to ask him to run consecutive, every count."

Holtzclaw was a former star linebacker on the Eastern Michigan University football team with a degree in criminal justice.

His ruthless scheme started to unravel after one woman told authorities he had assaulted her during a traffic stop in June 2014.

In the months that followed, investigators pieced together the horrifying scale of his pattern of abuse.

He was fired from the force in January after an internal investigation.

"Your offenses committed against women in our community constitute the greatest abuse of police authority I have witnessed in my 37 years as a member of this agency," Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty wrote in the termination letter, according to CNN affiliate KFOR.

Holtzclaw's trial began in early November and was criticized by activists after an all-white jury was chosen to decide on crimes committed against black women. Protesters repeatedly gathered outside.

Holtzclaw, whose father is white and mother is Japanese, is identified as "Asian or Pacific Islander" by court records.

17-year-old raped on mother's porch

Thirteen women accusing him of sexual assault testified in the trial.

"I didn't think anyone would believe me. I'm a black female," one accuser said in court, according to The Oklahoman newspaper. Another said Holtzclaw told her would get rid of a drug charge against her if she cooperated with him.

The assaults took place in range of places, including in his police car. One young woman, only 17 at the time, was raped on her mother's front porch.

"He didn't choose CEOs or soccer moms; he chose women he could count on not telling what he was doing," the prosecution said in its closing statement this week.

The defense questioned the credibility of Holtzclaw's accusers, arguing some of them were high when the purported assaults took place. It also challenged the validity of DNA evidence.

Prater, the district attorney, said that the jurors' decision not to convict the former police officer on half of the counts against him didn't necessarily mean they didn't believe some of the women.

"It may mean that we didn't meet our burden (of proof) in those counts," he said.

Police department: 'Justice was served'

Holtzclaw, whose father is a police lieutenant on another force, waived his right to testify.

The Oklahoma City Police Department welcomed the verdict against its former employee.

"We are satisfied with the jury's decision and firmly believe justice was served," it said.

Some women gathered outside the Oklahoma County Courthouse celebrated Holtzclaw's conviction by mockingly singing "Happy Birthday," KFOR reported.

But others, including one of the victims' mothers, said they were waiting for the formal sentencing before deciding whether justice had been done.

Post Sources: CNN, LA Times, YouTube

Pres. Obama Unveils Southern Portion Of Keystone Pipeline Permit To Oklahoma Audience

Obama defends his policy on oil pipeline


President Barack Obama took on critics of his energy policies Thursday, saying in carefully coordinated speeches that they weren't paying attention to increased oil production at home and were misleading the public about the cause of rising gas prices.

"Anyone who says that we're somehow suppressing domestic oil production isn't paying attention," Obama said in Cushing, Oklahoma, on the second day of a four-state tour to tout his policies.

"And anyone who says that just drilling more will bring gas prices down just isn't playing it straight," the president continued. " We are drilling more.

We are producing more. But the fact is, producing more oil at home isn't enough to bring gas prices down overnight."

In Cushing and a later speech at The Ohio State University, Obama repeated his call for a diversified policy that increases production of traditional energy sources such as oil and natural gas while increasing investment in alternative sources such as solar, wind and hydrogen power to compete in growing global clean energy markets.

In particular, he rejected Republican claims that U.S. oil reserves alone offer a solution to higher gas prices and long-term supplies.

"Even if we drilled every little bit of this great country of ours, we'd still have to buy enough from the rest of the world to meet our needs," Obama said in Cushing.
He added that "the price of oil is set by the global market, and that means every time tensions rise in the Middle East, so will gas prices at home."

In particular, Obama said, rising tension involving Iran was causing the current spike in global oil prices.

At Ohio State, Obama emphasized to a cheering student crowd that since he took office in 2009, "America's dependence on foreign oil has gone down every single year."

"Even as the economy was growing, we've made progress in reducing the amount of oil we have to import because we're being smarter, we're doing things better," the president said.

Romney turns up heat on Obama energy policies

The whirlwind trip over two days followed weeks of criticism of his approach to gas price increases by Republicans on Capitol Hill and the presidential campaign trail.

"He has an energy policy that is very simple," Rick Santorum said of the president during a campaign stop Monday in Illinois. "You can sum it up in two letters, N-O.

He is against everything that will create economic incentives to drill."

Newt Gingrich has made reducing prices at the pump a central promise of his campaign, telling voters at a recent event in Birmingham, Alabama, that "an American president who believed in energy and an American president who believed in science and technology would drive the price of gasoline below $2."

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl sounded a similar refrain after a Republican caucus meeting in early March, agreeing with the president's all-of-the-above approach, but adding, "We need it in action, not just words."

A focus of Republican attacks has been the delay in administration approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada's tar sands production in northern Alberta to the Gulf Coast.

Keystone pipeline: Separating rhetoric from reality

Last year, the administration put off a decision until 2013 after protests by environmentalists concerned about high carbon emissions from tar sands oil production and objections by Nebraska officials to a route near a vital aquifer.

Republicans in Congress, accusing Obama of avoiding the issue until after the November election, tried to speed the process by tacking a measure requiring an immediate decision to the temporary payroll tax cut bill last December.

The Obama administration then rejected the pipeline permit in January, saying an alternate route from Nebraska had yet to be decided. Since then, Republicans have persisted in attacking Obama for rejecting the permit.

The president announced Thursday in Cushing that he was using his executive authority to order federal agencies to expedite the approval process for large-scale infrastructure projects like oil pipelines.

More specifically, he ordered the portion of the Keystone XL pipeline running from Cushing to the Gulf to be placed at the top of the list.

"We're making this new pipeline from Cushing to the Gulf a priority," Obama said to cheers, later adding that "as long as I'm president, we're going to keep encouraging oil development and infrastructure and we're going to do it in a way that protects the health and safety of the American people.

We don't have to choose between one or the other. We can do both."

Many private companies -- including TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL project -- are working to build pipelines that relieve the bottleneck of oil in Cushing, a major hub for crude oil storage and trade.

While federal agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of the Interior have some involvement in the approval process for the domestic portion of the pipeline, the federal government has relatively little control when compared to the absolute say it holds over the portion that crosses the international border with Canada.

The ultimate decision-making authority for the pipeline's domestic route lies mainly with the states it crosses, prompting Republicans to question whether the president can actually claim any credit for speeding the project along.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Thursday that Obama was claiming credit he didn't deserve on the southern leg of the Keystone pipeline while continuing to prevent construction on the northern leg from Canada.

"It's already gotten its approvals and this idea that the president is going to expedite this will have no impact on the construction of this pipeline," Boehner said of the Cushing-Gulf Coast portion. "The president has continued to block development of oil and gas reserves, big reserves, on federal lands.

And he can go out and make all the noise that he wants, but the facts are there."

Poll: Majority say build Keystone pipeline

On Wednesday, Obama kicked off his energy tour with stops in Boulder City, Nevada, and Maljamar, New Mexico, to focus on work on alternative energy sources.

The visit to Boulder City was designed to tout the success of solar technology at the largest photovoltaic solar facility in the nation. Photovoltaic solar panels create energy directly from sunlight without the need for any water or moving parts.

Obama acknowledged the high prices at the pump, but used the problem as a reason to abandon federal "subsidies" to oil and gas companies.

"We want to encourage production of oil and gas, and make sure that wherever we've got American resources, we are tapping into them," the president said. "But they don't need an additional incentive when gas is $3.75 a gallon, when oil is $120 a barrel, $125 a barrel. They don't need additional incentives. They're doing fine."

What the president calls subsidies, the petroleum industry calls the same tax breaks afforded those in many other industries.

The push to end what Obama deems to be preferential treatment to a petroleum industry that's never been more profitable was central to his two-day tour, but the president also used the trip to push back against those who call federal aid to the renewable energy industry a waste of money.

"Some of these folks want to dismiss the promise of solar power and wind power and fuel-efficient cars," Obama said in Boulder City. "In fact, they make jokes about it.

One member of Congress who shall remain unnamed called these jobs 'phony' -- called them phony jobs. I mean, think about that mindset, that attitude that says because something is new, it must not be real. If these guys were around when Columbus set sail, they'd be charter members of the Flat Earth Society."

With nearly a million solar panels spread across 450 acres, Copper Mountain 1 in Boulder City provides power for roughly 17,000 homes, but employs just 10 full-time employees.

The solar plant's owner, Sempra U.S. Gas & Power, is in the process of building a second facility nearby that's set to more than triple the output of Copper Mountain 1.

Construction of the second facility -- Copper Mountain 2 -- has created 175 temporary jobs but, according to Sempra's own projections, the final solar plant will result in just five full-time positions.


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Sources: CNN, Google Maps

Obama To Approve Southern Portion Of Keystone; He's Preparing For GOP-Controlled Congress

On Thursday Pres. Obama will announce plans to approve the Southern portion of the Keystone XL Oil Pipeline.

This announcement comes just 2 months after he said his administration needed at least 6 months to review plans of the pipeline for Environmental Safety purposes.

So why the sudden rush?

Politics! i.e., an approaching election & Gas Prices.

I told ya'll Pres. Obama is preparing to work with a 100% GOP-Controlled Congress just as Bill Clinton had to do.

Pres. Obama will most likely squeak through a Win but the Senate will most certainly go to GOP Candidates due to the amount of Big Money being spent by Wealthy GOP Super PACS & from Wall Street Executives.

As this election closes in don't be surprised to see Pres. Obama veering more & more to the Center.

Once the election ends & the new Congress is Sworn in, Pres. Obama is going to govern from a Very Conservative, Very Moderate perspective.

Just Watch.


Obama to fast track southern portion of Keystone XL Pipeline


President Obama plans to announce in Cushing, Oklahoma Thursday that his administration will expedite the permit process for the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, a source familiar with the president's announcement tells CNN.

In January, the Obama administration denied a permit for the 1,700 mile long Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would stretch from Canada's tar sands development to the U.S. Gulf Coast. That decision was met by persistent Republican criticism that the president has not been doing everything possible to create jobs and combat high gas prices.

Late last month, TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline, announced it would move forward with the process to build the southern portion of the pipeline, which would begin in Cushing, the president's third stop on his two-day energy tour. The White House praised the move.

Still, the permit process for a project like this can typically take a year or more. The source familiar with the president's announcement says the administration could shave several months off that timeline.

Senior administration officials would not confirm the president’s plan to unveil the effort to cut red tape for the project, though one senior administration official acknowledged the need to deal with the glut of oil in Cushing, where oil from the Midwest hits a bottleneck as it is transported to the Gulf of Mexico.

Such an announcement would no doubt be met with opposition from environmentalists, many of whom spent weeks protesting the Keystone XL project outside the White House late last fall into the early winter, before the administration announced its objection to the pipeline.


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Sources: CNN, PBS, Youtube, Google Maps

Tornadoes That Rocked Southeast Result Of Extreme Racism (Klan Karma!)

Call Me A Hateful Broad If You Please (I'm NOT!) However, I Don't Believe That Yesterday's "Epic" Storms Which Struck 8 Redneck States (North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama & Arkansas) Just Happened To Be Simply Seasonally Weather Related.

Here's My Analysis On The Situation:

GOD Is NOT Mocked & Karma Does Exist Even In The Form Of Tornadoes & Deadly Storms, For Acts Of Extreme RACISM Demonstrated Against Pres. Obama & Other People Of Color!

Wake Up America!

As It Relates To Decades Of Practicing Racial Discrimination, Your Chickens Have Finally Come Home To Roost!!

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Southeastern Storms leave 43 dead in destruction's wake


A devastating storm system spawned dozens of tornadoes as it barreled from Oklahoma to North Carolina, decimating communities in six states and leaving at least 43 people dead in its wake.

North Carolina officials reported that 22 people died as a result of Saturday afternoon's severe storms that swept across the state over a six-hour stretch.

North Carolina Emergency Management said the deaths occurred in Bertie, Bladen, Cumberland, Harnett, Johnston, Lee and Wake counties.

Half of the deaths occurred in Bertie, a rural county in the northeast corner of the state with more than 700 square miles of land and just 21,000 residents.

The storm cut a wide swath across the county, flattening houses and tossing around farm equipment and vehicles, said Zee Lamb, Bertie's county manager.

"We had several fatalities at the same location but they weren't all at the same location. They were spread out over several miles," he said. "A lot of them were in their homes ... there are homes that are just totally leveled. Anybody who was in those homes could not have survived."

The fatalities included several elderly residents of an assisted living facility that was in the path of the storm, Lamb said.

Across the state, more than 80 people have been transported to local hospitals, some with severe injuries. Gov. Bev Perdue declared a state of emergency for all of North Carolina on Saturday evening.

The declaration is a prerequisite for asking for federal disaster assistance. More than a dozen North Carolina counties have also declared local states of emergency, including Wake, Cumberland and Bertie counties. Initial damage estimates say 60 homes have been completely destroyed and more than 400 others sustained damage across the state.

Emergency crews searched for victims Sunday in hard-hit swaths of North Carolina, where 62 tornadoes were reported the night before from the worst spring storm in two decades to hit the state.

In the capital city of Raleigh, three family members died in a mobile home park, said Wake County spokeswoman Sarah Willamson-Baker. At that trailer park, residents lined up outside Sunday and asked police guarding the area when they might get back in.

Peggy Mosley, 54, who has lived in the park for 25 years, said she was prepared when the storm bore down on the trailer park. She gathered small pillows and other material and hunkered down in her small bathroom.

"I went and got into my small bathroom and just sat in there and cried and prayed until it was over," Mosley said.

Farther up the street, Angelina McCaizie was also among those hoping to get back to their homes. She said she had been cooking when she saw the winds and rain pick up. She grabbed her children, nephew and brother and brought them into the kitchen, where everyone ducked until the storm passed.

When the storm was over, McCaizie, her husband and her brother went outside to check on neighbors. She said she saw several people bleeding and others with broken bones. McCaizie also said one resident ran up to her shouting, "Please help me! Please help me! I need 911."




"It was horrible," McCaizie said.

Gov. Beverly Perdue said Sunday that state emergency management officials told her more than 20 were killed by the storms in North Carolina. However, the far-flung damage made it difficult to confirm the total number of deaths. The emergency management agency said it had reports of 22 fatalities, and media outlets and government agency tallies did not all match. The National Weather Service said 23 died in the state, including one in Johnston County, but an emergency management chief there told The Associated Press nobody died in that area.

The storm claimed its first lives Thursday night in Oklahoma, then roared through Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Authorities have said seven died in Arkansas; seven in Alabama; two in Oklahoma; and one in Mississippi. At least five died in Virginia.

In North Carolina, the governor declared a state of emergency and said the 62 tornadoes reported were the most since March 1984, when a storm system spawned 22 twisters in the Carolinas that killed 57 people — 42 in North Carolina — and injured hundreds.

Daybreak brought news of a horrific death toll in Bertie County, a place of about 21,000 people about 130 miles east of Raleigh. The tornado moved through about 7 p.m. Saturday, sweeping homes from their foundations, demolishing others, and flipping cars on tiny rural roads between Askewville and Colerian, Lamb said. At least three of those who died were from the same family, he said.

One of the volunteers who scoured the rubble was an Iraq war veteran who told Lamb he was stunned by what he saw.

"He did two tours of duty in Iraq and the scene was worse than he ever saw in Iraq — that's pretty devastating," Lamb said.

As dawn broke, dozens of firefighters, volunteers and other officials were meeting in a makeshift command center to form search teams to fan out to the hardest-hit areas.

"There were several cases of houses being totally demolished except for one room, and that's where the people were," he said. "They survived. Pretty devastating."

The aftermath of the storm left the county commission chairman unable to recognize areas from the county where he grew up, graduated high school and lived most of his life.

L.C. Hoggard said the storms were another terrible blow to the county of just 21,000 people that was devastated by flooding last October. The water submerged the county seat of Windsor, damaging 200 homes and businesses. No one lost their lives in the flooding. But Hoggard said the tornado was going to have a staggering emotional impact.

"You might not recognize a name. But you recognize faces and families," Hoggard said. "That's how it is in rural communities."

In Virginia, Department of Emergency Management spokesman Bob Spieldenner said one apparent tornado ripped across more than 12 miles through Gloucester County, uprooting trees and pounding homes to rubble while claiming three lives. Spieldenner said two others were killed when a vehicle ran into flash flooding near Waynesboro.

He reported homes and mobile homes damaged and destroyed in a series of other Virginia counties and flash flooding west of Charlottesville that prompted water rescues — including four people rescued unhurt from a car that had plunged into deep water flowing over a street.

Scenes of destruction across the South looked eerily similar in many areas.

At one point, more than 250,000 people went without power in North Carolina before emergency utility crews began repairing downed lines. But scattered outages were expected to linger at least until Monday.

Among areas hit by power outages was Raleigh, a bustling city of more than 400,000 people where some of the bigger downtown thoroughfares were blocked by fallen trees early Sunday.

Police and rescue crews began conducting house-to-house searches later Saturday at a mobile home park in north Raleigh, where the storm snapped some trees in half, ripped others out of the ground and tossed some trailers from one side of a street to the other.

At the Cedar Creek Mobile Home Park in Dunn, one woman died while another man was critically hurt when a car was blown atop him outside his home, said Police Chief B.P. Jones.

More than half the 40 homes in the park were unrecognizable piles of debris Sunday morning. A bulldozer was scooping up wood beams and piling them up in a different part of the park. In one home, all that was left was the seat of a recliner — the back gone — and a bathtub.

In Bladen County, the dead included a 92-year-old father and his 50-year-old son. They were killed when they were thrown from their adjacent mobile homes in the town of Ammon. A 52-year-old woman also died in Ammon, and a 50-year-old man died in Bladenboro — both also thrown from their homes, County Medical Examiner Kenneth Clark said.

Bladen County emergency management chief Bradley Kinlaw said 82 homes were damaged and 25 destroyed in Saturday's storms. The path of destruction was narrow — but at least six miles long, he said.

In Sanford, about 40 miles southwest of Raleigh, a busy shopping district was pummeled by the storms, with some businesses losing rooftops in what observers described as a ferocious tornado. The Lowe's Home Improvement Center in Sanford looked flattened, with jagged beams and wobbly siding sticking up from the pancaked entrance. Cars in the parking lot were flipped by the winds.

Remarkably, no one was seriously injured at the Lowe's, thanks to a quick-thinking manager who herded more than 100 people into a back area with no windows to shatter.

"It was really just a bad scene," said Jeff Blocker, Lowe's regional vice president for eastern North Carolina. "You're just amazed that no one was injured."



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Sources: Brainy Quotes, CNN, McClatchy Newspapers, MSNBC, WALA, WCNC, WRAL, Youtube, Google Maps

Shariah Law Advocates vs British Government Backlash: Islam4UK Group Banned!

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Islamists Raise Fears Of Violent "Clash Of Cultures" In Europe


It is a Sunday night in London's East End and the self-styled "most hated man in Britain" is holding court, reveling in his vision of a Taliban victory over America and a world under Islamic Shariah law.

The crowd of about 250 listens intently as Anjem Choudary issues a call to arms in the pristine surroundings of the newly refurbished art deco conference center, built to host weddings and business meetings.

"There are many battlefields," he says calmly into a microphone. "There's a battlefield outside 10 Downing Street [home to Britain's prime minister] and in the mountains of the Tora Bora [in Afghanistan]."

Any man who fails to fight, he warns, will face difficulty when the "angel of death" arrives and he is forced to explain to Allah why he did not raise his hand "against the oppressor" out of fear. "Allah will say to him, 'Am I not more worthy to be feared than them?'" Choudary says.

"Allahu Akbar!" the men shout out in unison, as if a war cry, during his speech. "Allahu Akbar." God is great.

A group of women, all heavily veiled and sitting in a screened-off area, remain quiet throughout.

As former leader of the banned Islamist organizations al-Muhajiroun and Islam4UK, Choudary was kept off the bill and appeared as the surprise star speaker at the rally.

His groups may be outlawed but, unlike his female followers, Choudary will not be silenced.

His message is one that echoes across Europe, which experts say is home to thousands of people who would wholeheartedly support Choudary's "ultimate objective" — the "domination of the world by Islam."

The majority of Muslims are not Islamists, who believe in a society based on Islamic law, and not all of the latter are seeking world domination or are willing to use violence.



But fear of another Islamist-inspired atrocity after Madrid in 2004 — 191 dead — and London in 2005 — 53 dead — remains high.

Rightly so, according to Dr. John J. Le Beau, a former CIA officer and now professor of strategy and security studies at Germany's George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

"It's a mathematical certainty there will be a successful attack in Europe at some point," he told msnbc.com. "The amount of attempted plots we see is not decreasing. I think what we have seen is a ... strengthening of attempted attacks that in some cases have come pretty close."

Le Beau, who cautioned that putting a figure on the number of Islamists was a "soft science," estimated there were between 5,000 and 10,000 people in Europe "willing to engage in violence."

In 2007, the German Central Institute Islam Archive said there were 53.7 million Muslims living in Europe.

A backlash is growing.

Support for the far-right in normally liberal countries like Sweden and the Netherlands is on the rise. French lawmakers voted for a ban on full face veils. Protest groups, such as the English Defense League which has been linked to soccer hooligans, have made headlines.

Le Beau warned of "an incipient clash of cultures." The consequences of another terrorist spectacular — intelligence reports recently warned an al-Qaida-linked group was planning to hit Western Europe with a commando-style raid like that on Mumbai, India — could be profound, he suggested.

"I could see that leading to a spontaneous violent reaction on the part of others. Could this spin out of control? Sure," he said. "I think that would be very dangerous because ... it runs the risk of sectarianizing or 'Balkanizing' Western Europe."

Europe is home to ancient conflicts. The Balkans, which includes the former Yugoslavia, has been the scene of intermittent religious strife stretching back to the fall of Constantinople, now Istanbul, to the Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1453.

After the fall of Yugoslavian Communism, a resurgence of ethnic tensions led to the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, during which 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred by Bosnian Serb forces in a single act of genocide.

The U.K., far removed from such turmoil, has a long tradition of tolerating other countries' dissidents. In the 19th century, political philosopher Karl Marx took refuge in London after outraging authorities in his native Germany and France.

But that tradition has been frayed by the increasingly vocal presence of Islamists in the U.K.




'Crazies' flock to 'Londonistan'

In the 1990s, the city became so popular for Islamists fleeing authorities in Muslim countries that some commentators dubbed it "Londonistan."

Citing the WikiLeaks cables, the Guardian newspaper last week reported that the future U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron told an American official in April 2009 that the former Labour government had "let in a lot of crazies and did not wake up early enough" to the danger posed by Muslim extremists.

Le Beau said while Choudary and others like him were unlikely to fight themselves,

they were helping to recruit people to the cause who would.

"These groups are not the terrorist cells that are going to launch an attack," he said. "These are the groups that radicalize individuals and put them in the frame of mind where they might engage in an attack."

Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber" who attempted to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001, was radicalized after meeting extremists at mosques in London, his father Robin tearfully told BBC News.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian dubbed the "underwear bomber" after being accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day last year, studied at University College London. Yemeni officials told the BBC he became an Islamist in the U.K., although the British government has denied this.

And London's Finsbury Park Mosque, now renamed after a takeover by moderates, was once the power-base of radical cleric Abu Hamza, a former nightclub bouncer who organized a conference praising the 9/11 attackers. He was later sentenced to seven years in prison for inciting murder and racial hatred.


A Reformed Islamist

Ghaffar Hussain once counted himself among London's Islamists.

His reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks was "well, so what?"

"I felt it was kind of redressing some of the imbalance," Hussain said. "'They've done this to the Palestinians by supporting the Israelis, this is the price you pay.'"

However, he now battles the Islamist ideology as head of outreach at a British counter-extremism think tank, the Quilliam Foundation.

"London is like the heart of the Arab world," Hussain said. "The political dissidents are all based here."

In the 10 years before 9/11, foreign Arab dissidents "set up shop and carried on doing what they were doing in their own countries: Preaching violent jihad," he explained.

They found a ready-made constituency of young, disaffected, second-generation Muslims who had "experienced racism when they were younger."

"Merge those two together and you have a recipe for disaster," Hussain said. "I was caught up in that ... and became active in my own area, doing speeches, giving out leaflets for about three years.

"I abhor any kind of extremism, anything that takes innocent life. I look back with surprise at the things I used to believe."

His "wild guess" on the number of Islamists in Europe was "less than 5,000 hardcore activists" with a further 20,000 to 30,000 people who are "broadly sympathetic at times."

Al-Qaida's propaganda gives an indication of where they believe support is strongest, Hussain said, as they tend to publish only in English and German, not French, Spanish or Dutch.

Fears of a terrorist attack may have recently gripped Germany , but Hussain said authorities there had not done enough to minimize the risk. Many of the 3 million Muslims there came as "guest-workers" and he said there had been little attempt to integrate them into society.

"Germany is a bit of a basket case. Those communities are very hard to penetrate. Guessing, I'd say it’s probably not as bad as the U.K., but nobody really knows," he said.




Angry Young Men

As for Choudary, "he’s got about 50 followers, all young men — I know some of them personally — very, very ill-informed," Hussain said. "All they know is they are angry about something."

Choudary has achieved infamy in Britain, particularly after announcing an Islamist parade through the town of Wootton Bassett, where local people have taken to lining the streets to pay respects to dead soldiers as they return home through a nearby air force base.

The event, which would have seen the Islamists carrying empty coffins to symbolize Muslims "mercilessly murdered" in Afghanistan, did not take place but still sparked public anger.

Given his rhetoric, some in Britain question Choudary's right to freedom of speech.

And the European Union is taking steps to limit the flow of Islamist propaganda, putting itself at odds with the U.S. and its adherence to the First Amendment.

Gilles de Kerchove, the EU's counterterrorism coordinator, said legislation would soon be implemented which would allow "even 'free speech' member states to shut down websites, to bring people to court when they cross the line."

"That's where we have a problem with the U.S.," he told msnbc.com. "Most of the neo-Nazi and most radical Islamist websites are hosted by U.S. servers."

The EU has invested millions of dollars on research to develop programs capable of monitoring the internet for the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behavior or violence," the Sunday Telegraph reported.

cargo and using computer programs to analyze this data could prevent terrorist attacks.

The attempt to send bombs hidden in printers from Yemen to Chicago in October was detected by Saudi Arabian intelligence. However, a surveillance program might have red-flagged the shipment as a U.S. synagogue was likely to purchase office equipment closer to home.

"It's stupid to send a printing machine from Yemen to a synagogue in Chicago," de Kerchove said. "That does not make sense."

He insisted the danger to Europe remained real, despite the lack of a major attack since London in 2005.

"That's not because there's no threat. It's because the security services have been very effective," de Kerchove said, highlighting recent arrests in connection with an alleged plot to kill the moderate head of a Paris mosque.

Like Le Beau, he thought it likely that a significant attack would eventually slip through. "Since the threat is becoming more ... diverse and complex, it's not that risky to speak like this and say, 'It's not if, but when,'" he added.

Choudary, who rose to prominence in 1999 when media reports described him as a key figure in the recruitment of fighters for Islamist forces around the world, insists that his beliefs did not mean "I'm going to kill you."



'There will always be Wars'

The mild-mannered Choudary told msnbc.com that some "battlefields" were merely "ideological" ones.

The former lawyer said he "cannot have a friendship" with a non-Muslim but different religions could live side-by-side "peacefully."

"As long as my life and wealth is protected in Britain, I do not target the life and wealth (of people here)," Choudary said, citing a passage from the Quran to that effect.

However, he cautioned this stance was a matter for legitimate religious debate. "There are many Muslims who do not believe that," he said. "(London suicide bomber) Mohammed Siddique Khan didn’t believe that."

And he appeared almost to relish the prospect of ethnic violence.

"There will always be wars. The conflict will continue always. I think it's a matter of time before another 9/11 takes place and another 7/7 (London bombings)," Choudary said.

"I think we are on the brink of many more operations in the West. This is going to be very, very nasty ... The Muslims engaged in jihad are not going to stop. People will declare jihad in Britain and America. I don't think you can stomach something like that."


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Monster Winter Storm Pummels South, East Coast

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Midwest Holiday Blizzard Claims 21 Lives

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Christmas Storm Strands Travelers In Midwest


Residents across the Midwest and the Plains who made it home for Christmas were digging out on Friday after a fierce snowstorm while those who spent the night in airports and shelters tried to resume their journeys. Meteorologists warned that roads across the region remained dangerous.

The National Weather Service said blizzards would hit parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin through Saturday. The storm had already dumped significant snow across the region, including a record 14 inches in Oklahoma City and 11 inches in Duluth, Minn., on Thursday.

Slippery roads have been blamed for at least 21 deaths this week as the storm lumbered across the country from the Southwest. Ice storm warnings and winter weather advisories were issued for parts of the East Coast on Friday, but the region was largely spared.

Paul Mews, who drove from Faribault, Minn., to a relative's home in Plum City, Wis., on Friday morning, said the first 15 minutes of the 80-mile trip were clear, but a surge of heavy snowfall produced a stretch of near-whiteout conditions.

"It was snow-pocalypse. It was wicked," said Mews, 25. "We thought about turning around and going back."

They decided to continue when the surge passed minutes later.

Christmas in the truck stop

Others weren't as lucky.

Army Sgt. Mark Matthey was spending Friday night at the Flying J Travel Plaza in Sioux Falls, S.D., after Interstate 90 closed. Matthey, 26, left Fort Bragg, N.C., on Wednesday for his hometown of Spokane, Wash., in hopes of making it by late Friday or early Saturday.

Instead, he spent Friday afternoon drinking coffee, watching TV and making friends at the truck stop. He planned to find a spot to sleep on the floor or in the cab of his truck.

Matthey said he and the other travelers were in decent spirits.

"Everybody has the attitude that you have to play the cards you were dealt," he said. "No use in getting upset about something you can't control."

Interstates also were closed in North Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming. Meteorologists warned that massive snow drifts and blustery winds could cause whiteouts across the northern Plains. Officials urged travelers to stay home and pack emergency kits if they had to set out.

Rescues along Texas highways

In Texas, volunteer firefighters and sheriff's deputies rescued hundreds of people stranded along Interstate 44 and Texas State Highway 287 near Wichita Falls. The area recorded up to 13 inches of snow, said Doug Speheger, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

"It's really been horrible," Wichita County Sheriff David Duke said. "Although we live in North Texas and get a lot of cold weather, we weren't prepared for the significant amount of snow that we've received."

Only two of the sheriff department's vehicles have four-wheel drive, so rescuers used their own pickups and the heavy 5-ton brush trucks normally used to fight fires to get to motorists, many of whom ran out of gas while they were stuck in traffic stalled by the storm.

"It was exciting at first to wake up and go, 'Oh, this will be great. We'll have a white Christmas,'" Wichita Falls Mayor Lanham Lyne said. "Then it kept snowing. As the roads became impassable, then we started to worry."

Even residents in the Dallas-Fort Worth area briefly experienced a white Christmas, their first in more than 80 years. Not since Dec. 25, 1926 — when 6 inches fell on Dallas and Collin counties — had the area had a true postcard-looking Christmas.

But by late afternoon, the 3 inches of snow measured at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on Christmas Eve was all but melted.

Winds were gusting from 45 mph to 60 mph across the Dakotas and Nebraska on Friday. Crews were working to restore power to thousands of customers in Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois and Iowa.

The storm also grounded flights at South Dakota's biggest airports. Sioux Falls Regional Airport was closed until Saturday morning at the earliest, manager Dan Letellier told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. Flights also were canceled at Rapid City Regional Airport and Pierre Regional Airport. The total number of flights affected wasn't immediately available.

About 200 people were stuck overnight at Oklahoma's largest airport, which closed Thursday afternoon after several inches of snow clogged runways, said Mark Kranenburg, director of the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City. The airport reopened Friday morning, but only one runway was operational.

Most of the stranded passengers were gone by Friday afternoon. While some were able to catch flights, many simply went home. Kranenburg predicted it would be two or three days before all three runways were open and flights resumed as scheduled.

The 14 inches of snow in Oklahoma City broke a record for the day of 2.5 inches set back in 1914.

The previous record for Christmas Eve in Duluth, which has gotten more than 22 inches in two days, was 3 inches in 1893, said Kevin Kraujalis, a National Weather Service meteorologist. By the time the storm is over, it could be one of the 10 worst in Duluth's recorded history.

With heavy winds producing snow drifts as deep as 5 feet, "it's awful, it's just awful," Kraujalis said. "It's a big workout just walking outside to check my weather equipment."

Since Tuesday, icy roads have been blamed for accidents that killed at least seven people in Nebraska, five people in Oklahoma, four in Kansas, two in Minnesota and one each in North Dakota, Missouri and New Mexico.



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Massive Storm Disrupts Holiday Travel



A blustery storm spread snow and ice across the heartland Thursday as Americans rushed to get home for the holidays, grounding flights, stranding drivers on white-knuckle highways and forcing churches to cancel Christmas Eve services.

"I don't think God wants anyone to get killed or break a hip or break a knee or something," said the Rev. Joseph Mirowski of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration in Mason City, Iowa, where up to a foot of snow and sleet was expected.

A foot or two of snow was forecast in parts of the Plains and the Midwest by Christmas Day. Blizzard warnings were issued for Minnesota, North Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin, and drivers were encouraged to pack emergency kits before setting out during what is normally one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

The storm was also expected to glaze highways in the East with ice on Christmas.

Slippery roads were blamed for at least 18 deaths this week as the slow-moving storm made its way across the country from the Southwest.

The snowstorm also put the brakes on some last-minute Christmas shopping. At the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., some shoppers had entire stores to themselves.

"It doesn't bother me any," said Steve Burns, who was browsing for shirts and other gifts with his teenage daughter.

Dangerous Travel

High winds blowing snow across icy roads were a concern elsewhere. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol closed eastbound Interstate 40 in El Reno after numerous accidents, and the state's National Guard was activated to rescue motorists stranded by collisions or spinouts along the H.E. Bailey Turnpike, which runs to the Texas state line.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry activated military personnel to help drivers. North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven placed additional state troopers and the National Guard on standby.

The wind gusted to 40 mph in central Kansas, and gusts up to 60 mph were forecast in Oklahoma.

"The wind is killer, especially when you're empty," trucker Jim Reed said during a stop in Omaha, Neb. "Anything that's boxed, like a refrigerator trailer like I have, becomes like a giant sail in the wind."

In eastern Kansas, Tony Glaum was traveling with his wife and daughter to his parents' home north of Manhattan. He said they were thinking about staying overnight, rather than making their usual Christmas Eve trip back home.

Glaum, 43, of Leavenworth, said he didn't have any delays — until he found himself behind a plow salting the highway. He and his daughter noticed a biting chill in the air.

Still, he said, he is looking forward to a white Christmas: "I think snow would be pretty nice."

Airline Headaches

Nearly 100 scheduled flights from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport were canceled Thursday and dozens more were delayed. The Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City shut down one of its three runways and canceled nearly 30 flights. Two-hour-plus delays were reported at Houston's Hobby Airport, and Chicago's O'Hare had hour-long delays and more than 30 cancellations.

The Rev. Roger Claxton canceled Christmas Eve services at Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Wabasha, Minn., after the area got at least 8 inches of snow. Claxton feared his congregation's senior citizens would feel compelled to attend.

"I'd rather have people stay home than do their funerals in a couple weeks," he said.

The Rev. Mark Kelm told parishioners to stay home if they didn't feel safe, though he planned to hold services even if he was the only one there at St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church in White Bear Lake, a suburb of St. Paul, Minn.

"If I have to make it on cross-country skis, I'll be here," Kelm said. "The best way I can explain it is, it's just like a pregnant woman — if the baby is coming, the baby is coming. For us, the Christ child is going to be celebrated."

Karen Scholten said her would family would conduct a mini-service at home after the Eagle Grove, Iowa, church she has attended since 1965 canceled its Christmas Eve service for the first time she could recall.

"I'm sure we will read the Christmas story and listen to some Christmas hymns," she said.

Since Tuesday, icy roads have been blamed for accidents that killed at least seven people in Nebraska, four in Kansas, one each in Minnesota and Oklahoma, and one near Albuquerque, N.M.



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