Broward Palm Beach News Blog

Christine Levinson of Coral Springs is the wife of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent turned private investigator who in 2007 followed a case to Kish Island in the Persian Gulf and hasn't been seen since. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's in New York, where today he gave a speech to the United Nations. Diplomats from the United States, Canada, and Israel all boycotted in anticipation of anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Ahmoudinejad believes that the Holocaust never happened and that he was democratically elected, so this is a man with vast powers of self-delusion.

Check the Levinson family's website for updates about whether Christine managed to get close to the little rat.

​Last night, ABC's 20/20 aired a segment featuring an interview with Elie Assaad, the undercover operative who was working for the FBI to infiltrate a Miami-area mosque where agents believed terrorist plots were being hatched. In the interview (video hasn't been posted yet), Assaad tells of being suspicious of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta but being ordered by supervisors against pursuing that lead, which would have meant spending a lot of time in Broward County.

After the jump, photographs and screen grabs of Broward locations where Atta and his co-conspirators spent the months before the attack.

​Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-Miramar) tried to help gays in the military but says he has been forced to back off "due to pressure from some of my Congressional colleagues and from the White House."

Yesterday, he withdrew his proposed amendment to H.R. 3326, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010. The measure would have prohibited the use of funds to carry out the provisions in Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It would have taken away the money to investigate and dismiss soldiers who acknowledge they are homosexual or bisexual. 

In a statement, Hastings said, "Americans recognize that forcing men and women out of the military on the basis of sexual orientation is not only blatantly discriminatory, but harms our national security and, indeed, runs counter to the values of our Armed Forces. We cannot afford to lose any more of our soldiers to the vagaries of outdated bigotry. Every day, we lose approximately two service members to Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Our country is engaged in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our military has spent over $95.1 million on retraining soldiers because of this law. What is the holdup, then? Last month, 76 of my colleagues and I sent a letter to President Obama urging him to take leadership on this issue and to work together with Congress to repeal this law. More than a month later, I have yet to receive an official response."

He went on, "I continue to hear the phrase, 'next year, next year' with regard to repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell. That is absurd. This law is plain wrong. It is wrong now and it will be wrong then. How many more soldiers are we going to force to suffer through the humiliation of a so-called 'investigation?' How many more Arabic- and Farsi-speaking soldiers are we going to remove from duty, depriving our country of valuable, even life-saving intelligence? How many more combat veterans are we going to tell that we don't need their experience because their sexual orientation somehow precludes them from serving their country? If we know we are going to repeal this law eventually, then why not take action right now?"

Kaufman: Setting her sights on Shadowood.

Fort Lauderdale's WFTL-AM (850) talk-radio host Joyce Kaufman is smelling conspiracy everywhere lately. She has hooked up with those zany folks over at the Florida Security Council and believes that there's a radical Muslim hiding under every rock. "I am obsessed with exposing radical Islam," Kaufman told us by phone. "Sharia law is infiltrating my society, and if something isn't done about it, America will fall. I'm just addressing these issues in an open and honest way. Islam needs to go through a major reformation; it's a nontolerant religion. You had the same thing with Christianity, the Crusades, early on, and eventually Christianity was reformed. I look at London; I have friends who can't live there anymore. The same thing is happening here."

 Even the high stink of the popcorn machine at Shadowood movie theaters in Boca can't throw her off the scent of a secret plot. When Kaufman and a group of friends went to see The Stoning of Soraya M. last Sunday, a film about the dire effects of Muslim sharia on a woman living in a small Iranian town, she and her group were turned away at the door.

A lens on the  projector was broken, they were told. And no, they couldn't bump one of the kids' movies showing and screen Soraya instead of Transformers.

"The manager was like an 18-year-old kid, and he was nervous. We asked him if he knew what the movie was about, and he had no idea," Kaufman says.

It's a controversial film -- maybe you don't want to show it to us, one of Kaufman's friends suggested.  

When we phoned Shadowood this week, a manager told us they'd had a power failure that night that blacked out one of the projectors. But they were showing the movie at its regularly scheduled times for the rest of the week. Had al Qaeda perhaps cut the power lines? We phoned FPL and were put on hold for a really long time.

Palm Beach County is running so smoothly these days, what it really needs is a taste of Iraqi-style contracting. Private companies rake in billions of dollars supporting the military operations in that stunningly successful war, so why shouldn't they also earn a buck or two at home?

That's where Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) comes in. The Houston-based company is a former subsidiary of Halliburton. When Halliburton's ex-CEO, Dick Cheney, was in the White House, KBR was winning multibillion-dollar government contracts in Iraq--more than any other private firm. One of the many things KBR does in the war zone is perform electrical work and maintain buildings used by the military. Unfortunately, according to the Associated Press, some soldiers have been electrocuted and even killed while showering in buildings maintained by KBR. The company is currently being sued by the families of two soldiers who died after being electrocuted--one while showering, the other while using a power washer to clean a vehicle.

As the AP reports:

Last year, 94 troops stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan or other Central Command countries sought medical treatment for electric shock, according to Defense Department health data. KBR's database lists 231 electric shock incidents in the more than 89,000 facilities the company runs in Iraq, according to military records.

Now, these fabulous electrical skills are coming to Palm Beach County. The Solid Waste Authority--which is overseen by the county commission--has awarded a $126 million contract to a KBR division, BE&K, to renovate a West Palm Beach plant that converts trash into steam to produce electricity.

According to a KBR press release, the renovation includes upgrades to the plant's electrical and pollution control equipment. Hmm... Burning trash. Air pollution. Electricity. We're going to hand this over to the company accused of electrocuting people in Iraq? Wise choice, Palm Beach County.

Today, the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) pointed out that State Rep. Adam Hasner -- the House Republican leader -- is listed as a "coalition partner" for an upcoming coming "free speech summit" that could be seen as an anti-Muslim event.  The featured speaker will be Geert Wilders, a controversial Dutch politician who faced death threats after making a film about Islam in the Netheralnds. In January, criminal charges were filed against Wilders in Amsterdam for "inciting hatred and discrimination."

The conference --scheduled for Monday, April 27 at the Delray Beach Marriott -- is being put on by the Florida Security Council. On its website, the FSC says it is run by Tom Trento, a speaker who enjoys "challenging any and all Islamists to public debates" and often speaks at "hostile settings that include universities, radio, and TV."

Rep. Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach, who is Jewish, has been criticized in recent months for seeming worried when some Muslims constituents were coming to speak with their representatives in Tallahassee. In reaction to the criticism, he held a press conference emphasizing that all constituents, Muslims included, should have their voices heard.  He also introduced a resolution expressing support for Israel. (The House passed the resolution unanimously.)

While critics have called Hasner a "hatemonger," and CAIR says Hasner is behind the "Anti-Muslim Hate Fest," the groups supporting the conference are generally unapologetic for coming off as discriminatory, arguing that it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the threat of radical Islam.  Asked to confirm or deny his involvement with the conference, a spokesperson for Hasner, Joseph Agostini, said "Representative Hasner intends to participate if he is able to return home in time for the event. The uncertainty of this happening is because of the heavy Session week scheduled...we have floor sessions through Friday and lots on our agenda."

www.army.mil

We all know how well it worked out when MoveOn.org took out an ad in the New York Times in 2007 calling General Petraeus "General Betray Us." (President Bush called the ad "disgusting," polls indicated a majority of America found it distasteful, and the Senate even passed a resolution to formalize its condemnation.)

But that's not stopping a women's-based peace and justice organization called Code Pink from organizing a protest of Petraeus when he comes to the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach to give a speech as a guest of the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches. Protesters plan to meet at the corner of Okeechobee Boulevard and Parker Avenue at 10:30 a.m. on April 9th. The Green Party of Palm Beach County, calling Petraeus "the general who betrayed us," is also supporting the protest.

Forum Club executive director Gail Pallesen told the Juice that General Petraeus was invited to speak because the Forum Club is "Florida's largest non-partisan political and public affairs organization" and that inviting key figures in world affairs is "what we do."  The Forum Club was the last stop for General Tommy Franks before he flew to Qatar to oversee the invasion of Iraq, Pallesen said. She expects Petraeus talk to serve as an update on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Pallesen said the Forum Club's speakers have drawn protests a few times before (like when Governor Jeb Bush came to town), and she's not worried about them. There are plenty of paying guests happy to hear Petraeus out -- all 740 tickets have been sold. A representative of Code Pink was not immediately available for comment.   

Rafal Gerszak

Click on the photo for a slideshow from Afghanistan.

Former New Times writing fellow P.J. Tobia went to the last place most people would think of spending their Thanksgiving: to an Army base in Afghanistan. The result was "Afghaniscrewed," which ran this week in New Times. Now Tobia's headed back to Afghanistan for, well, who knows what?

So I caught up with him by email as he prepared to head back to the war-torn country.

The Juice: Most people would probably think you're crazy to go back to Afghanistan. What gives?
 
When I was 13, I read P.J. O'Rourke's "Holidays in Hell." Since then I've always had this odd desire to go to strange/dangerous places and write about them. It's an expensive habit though, and one that newspapers are increasingly less likely to pay for.

When a friend suggested that embed with U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, a light bulb went off. The trip not only resulted in "Afghaniscrewed," but also in a Sunday feature for The Washington Post called "A War's Impossible Mission." Before I went to Afghanistan, the Post literally wouldn't return my emails.

When they bought that story, I knew that Afghanistan might be the key to living my dream. 

What's it like where you'll be living?