Albanian Muslims risked their own lives to save Jews from Nazis during World War II

Creve Coeur, MO (KSDK) — With rising anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, an untold story is raising greater awareness about the Muslim faith and the teachings of the Quran. That awareness comes from an unlikely source: a small Jewish congregation in Creve Coeur.

Temple Emanuel is premiering a groundbreaking exhibit of photos that reveals Albanian Muslims who saved 2,000 Jews during World War II.

It’s a story you’ve likely never heard. It is a story told through the faces of Albanian Muslims who risked their own lives to live by a code of faith and honor called Besa.

Dr. Ghazala Hayat is a neurologist at St. Louis University and serves as spokesperson for the Islamic Foundation of Greater Saint Louis.

Hayat said while Besa is an Albanian word, it is part of Islamic culture and teachings. According to Dr. Hayat, Besa is an ancient code which requires people to endanger their own lives if necessary to save the life of anyone seeking asylum. To this day, Besa is the highest moral law of the region, superseding religious differences, blood feuds, and even tribal traditions.

The exhibit is opening eyes throughout the world.

“You don’t have to share the same faith. You have to respect each other’s faith,” Hayat said.

Pictures of the Albanian Muslims in the exhibit tell a lifetime of stories. As a young mother, one woman did not have enough breast milk to feed her son. A Jewish woman she hid nursed him instead. She was asked if she minded that a Jewish mother had fed her baby.

“Jews are God’s people like us,” the woman said.

Another man who also hid Jewish families said, “I did nothing special. All Jews are our brothers.”

And the head of the Bektashi sect, with more than seven million followers, tells the story of Albania’s prime minister, who gave a secret order during the Nazi occupation.

“All Jewish children will sleep with your children, all will eat the same food, and all will live as one family,” the order read.

In post-war Europe, it is said Albania was the only Nazi-occupied country to boast a greater number of Jews than before the Holocaust.

“They were among the people who at great personal risk sheltered Jews and protected them in their homes and did so out of a religious obligation,” said Rabbi Justin Kerber, Temple Emanuel.

The Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis and several local Jewish agencies hope the St. Louis community will experience this rare look at the role Albanian Muslims played in sheltering Jews from the Nazis.

“At this time of tension over Islam in America, there is so much more to understanding Islam,” Rabbi Kerber said.

\\KSDK via CNN

Wikileaks defies feds, releases Iraq war files

Wikileaks defied a series of increasingly stern warnings from the U.S. military and other government officials today by releasing a massive trove of secret documents from the Iraq war.

Portions of the U.S. military reports, totaling nearly 400,000 classified documents, began appearing on the Internet this afternoon, including on the Web sites of some news organizations that had been handed the documents in advance.

The U.K. Guardian reported that the Iraq war logs show an Apache crew killed insurgents who had tried to surrender. Al Jazeera’s analysis found a Pentagon directive told troops to ignore allegations of torture conducted by Iraqi soldiers. Germany’s Der Spiegel called the information deluge, simply, “the greatest revelation of U.S. military history.”

It will likely take weeks, or even months, for researchers and analysts to pore through the vast number of files, which can be browsed at warlogs.wikileaks.org. (The New York Times chose to redact the portions it excerpted, and the main Wikileaks.org site remains offline.)

A few hours earlier, the Obama administration had asked Wikileaks not to release the files and had requested that news organizations not cooperate.

“We condemn the fact that Wikileaks will continue to release this classified information,” said assistant secretary of state Philip Crowley. “We do believe it continues to put both our personnel and our interests at risk. We wish heartily that they wouldn’t do it, and we wish heartily that news media organizations wouldn’t cooperate with them.”

The Defense Department had prepared in advance in case the Iraq files were to leak–really, to flood–onto the Internet. A task force has been sorting through the files that were considered most likely to have been leaked and trying to evaluate whether any disclosures would imperil current military operations.

A Pentagon spokesman warned U.S. troops not to read the leaked documents. “The information remains classified even if it is released publicly,” Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan said today.

France’s Le Monde said that the logs show U.S. casualty figures are “partially false.”

Wikileaks’ release will escalate, if that’s possible, the war of words and rhetoric between its representatives and Washington officialdom.

After the Web operation posted about 100 megabytes of confidential dispatches from U.S. troops in Afghanistan this summer, a mix of condemnation and threats soon followed.

The White House condemned the leak, and conservative commentators argued that Wikileaks.org should be shut down by any means necessary. A Republican congressman who’s a member of the House Intelligence Committee went so far as to say that the Web site’s alleged source for the files, Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence specialist who is facing charges, should be executed for treason.

Geoff Morrell, the department’s press secretary, said at the time that it would be willing to explore ways to force the issue. If Wikileaks doesn’t comply with government requests, he said: “How do we intend to compel? At this point, we are making a demand of them…If it requires compelling them to do anything, then we will figure out what other alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing.”

Free speech concerns aside, the problem with censoring Wikileaks is the difficulty of convincing an Internet service provider in Sweden–or the Swedish government, for that matter–that material that irks the Pentagon is necessarily also illegal under Swedish law. Even if Wikileaks.org is taken offline, the group has long planned mirror sites in other nations. And if the real damage was the revelations reported by the news organizations, that has already been done.

\\CNET NEWS

G20 summit agrees to reform IMF

Andrew Walker

Finance ministers from the G20 leading economies have agreed reforms of the International Monetary Fund, giving major developing nations more of a say.

At a meeting in South Korea, they agreed a shift of about 6% of the votes in the IMF towards some of the fast-growing developing countries.

Those nations will also have more seats on the IMF’s Board, while Western Europe will lose two seats.

But the US will retain the veto it has over key decisions.

Such decisions require an 85% vote – Washington holds 17% under the IMF’s weighted voting system.

The ministers also agreed to refrain from competitive devaluations of their currencies and move towards more market-determined currency systems.

‘Currency manipulation’

The talks in the city of Gyeongji come against a background of strains in financial markets which some have called a currency war.

Much of the tension in the currency market is being blamed on the US and China, although it is not clear that either country will be restrained by the latest agreement.

The pressure has been on China to end its policy of holding the yuan down to maintain its competitiveness.

There was, however, no timetable for change in the devaluations agreement, so Beijing has kept to its long-held position that it will reform its currency policy gradually.

In the US, low interest rates and other central bank policies have led many investors to seek higher returns in developing countries, which tends to push their currencies higher, undermining competitiveness.

This is partly a result of policies in the US which mean investors are seeking higher returns elsewhere. US officials would argue the weak dollar is not the result of a deliberate devaluation, but rather a side effect of policies aimed at stimulating the domestic US economy.

It is possible that there will be more dollar weakness: One of the policies behind it – the Federal Reserve boosting the US money supply – might be extended in the next few weeks.

German Economy Minster Rainer Bruederle suggested that US policies, if not reversed, amount indirectly to currency manipulation – an accusation more often levelled at China.

\\BBC NEWS

Pentagon’s Biggest Lie? “No Surprises” Expected from WikiLeaks

The pre-leak spin by the Pentagon is that they have already disclosed everything important that will be revealed in the next WikiLeaks document super-dump.

Obama’s Pentagon apparently believes that Americans are as gullible – if not mutton-headed – as the Bush Pentagon believed.

No surprises expected in WikiLeaks Iraq war dump: Pentagon

WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 22, 2010 11:21am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon said on Friday it does not expect any big surprises from an imminent dump of as many as 500,000 Iraq war documents by the WikiLeaks website.

“In terms of the types of incidents that are captured in these reports, where innocent Iraqis have been killed, where there are allegations of detainee abuse, all of these things have been very well chronicled over time,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said.

//AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE

 

Cable/Satellite Companies Leverage Fox Decision in Comcast/NBCU Argument

The American Cable Association, DirecTV and Dish have have joined those using Fox’s decision to briefly block Cablevision subscribers from Fox online content as leverage in their argument for online access conditions on the Comcast/NBCU merger.

In a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the companies said that “if Fox, an entity with no affiliation to a distribution platform, was willing to deny certain viewers access to its online content in order to gain a negotiating advantage, a vertically integrated Comcast/NBCU would have an even greater incentive and ability to take similar action.”

Comcast has declined comment on tying the two cases together, but has pointed out in the past that it has never even lost access to the primary signal of any TV station during retrans discussions.

ACA et al said that Fox’s online move, which a source familiar Fox’s thinking said was an effort not to weaken its negotiating position by giving subs access to Fox programming, was a “timely illustration both of the extent to which online content has become an integral part of the television viewing landscape and of the opportunities for disadvantaging MVPDs this development would present to Comcast/NBCU.”

Public Knowledge, Free Press and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MAss.) are among those who have also linked Fox’s move the issue of access to online content, including access to Comcast and NBCU content.

ACQA, DISH and DirecTV (and Public Knowlege) are all members of the American Television Alliance, a collection of companies that have petitioned the FCC to reform what they say is a broken retrans system that favors broadcasters and harms consumers.

Broadcasters argue just as strongly that it is a marketplace negotiation, that most deals are done without interruptions, and that they are simlpy trying to get fair market value for programming that is among the most popular on cable.

\\BROADCASTING & CABLE

VIDEO: Waxman Confronts ‘U.S.’ Chamber Over Foreign Money Questions, Secret Corporate Campaign Funds

Earlier this month, ThinkProgress investigated the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and found fundraising documents soliciting money from foreign businesses for the same 501(c)(6) account the Chamber is using to wage an unprecedented $75 million dollar partisan attack campaign. ThinkProgress documented evidence of at least 80 foreign companies giving at least $885,000 to the Chamber largely from two countries alone. The Chamber has acknowledged that it accepts foreign funds for its 501(c)(6), but refuses to say how much and which funds they use for their partisan attack ads. While speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for a trade event with Israeli businesses, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) chastised the Chamber for killing billions of dollars in private sector jobs by helping to lobby against clean energy climate reform. He then finished his remarks, in front of a body of Chamber executives and lobbyists, by confronting the Chamber for accepting foreign money without providing “proper transparency and disclosure”:

WAXMAN: An event like this conference today is an appropriate use of contributions from Chamber members overseas. Spending such money on an election in any country would be inappropriate. In this country it would also be illegal. I urge the Chamber to be transparent, to provide full disclosure on the contributions it is making in this election cycle. Without proper transparency and disclosure it is hard for the Chamber to be a role model for corporate citizenship in America and around the world.

Watch it:

A secret memo obtained by ThinkProgress shows that David Chavern, the second most powerful lobbyist at the Chamber, quietly met with Koch Industries and executives from over a dozen other oil and coal companies to plot the 2010 midterm elections last summer. Chavern also met with Tom Petrie, a Bank of America VP who specializes in Bank of America’s oil investments (Bank of America is one of the largest American shareholders of BP).

Update Yesterday, during his debate with GOP opponent Robert Hurt, Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) slammed the U.S. Chamber and Hurt for opposing disclosure. Referencing the Chamber’s support of outsourcing policies, Perriello vigorously denounced the Chamber for accepting foreign money, then running ads in support of pro-outsourcing candidates like Hurt. Watch it:

\\THINKPROGRESS

Republican Billionaires Arrange Secret Meeting to Plot Evil

The vast Right Wing Conspiracy will convene in January, according to a personal invitation that infamous billionaire Charles Koch recently sent to his rich friends. There they will plot to stop the Obama agenda, perhaps with Glenn Beck giving instructions.

The New York Times and Think Progress each obtained a memo sent in September from Koch Industries owner Charles Koch — who, along with brother David, has quietly spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the years building a right-wing network of businessmen, think tank scholars, and political operatives — inviting hedge fund managers and industry captains and whomever else to his biannual “retreat.” If the Kochs don’t want so many people believing conspiracy theories about how they secretly control the country from behind closed doors, then maybe they should write hyperbolic personal pleas like this to their network of friends, because they will get leaked. Click to enlarge:

You can read the full memo here. Koch included a brochure of events from their last meeting in July, in Aspen. Think Progress compiled a guide to the 200+ rather powerful attendees, who had the 2010 election much on their minds.

But this is the scariest revelation about the June conference, from the Times report:

The participants in Aspen dined under the stars at the top of the gondola run on Aspen Mountain, and listened to Glenn Beck of Fox News in a session titled, “Is America on the Road to Serfdom?” (The title refers to a classic of Austrian economic thought that informs libertarian ideology, popularized by Mr. Beck on his show.) The participants included some of the nation’s wealthiest families and biggest names in finance: private equity and hedge fund executives like John Childs, Cliff Asness, Steve Schwarzman and Ken Griffin; Phil Anschutz, the entertainment and media mogul ranked by Forbes as the 34th-richest person in the country; Rich DeVos, the co-founder of Amway; Steve Bechtel of the giant construction firm; and Kenneth Langone of Home Depot.

Glenn Beck was their teacher, everyone. Talking to billionaires about serfdom. Good lord.

\\GAWKER