ASSASSIN OF PRESIDENT KARZAI'S HALF-BROTHER PUBLICLY HANGED
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Threats and terrorist-related activities HEADINGS - SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLES
TERROR INCIDENTS 3 Mumbai Bombings Minutes Apart Kill 21, Wound 141; 2 Americans Abducted by Muslims in Southern Philippines; Fear of Islamic Militant Attacks in Nigeria Spreads to Lagos; Kentucky Muslim Woman Made Christians Drink Each Other's Blood before Murdering Them; and Syrian Government Thugs Break into US Embassy in Damascus
WAR NEWS Taliban Takes Credit For Chasing Canadians Away
THREATS Disarmed by Shariah; Arkansas Jihad; This is The Century of a Worldwide Islamic Awakening; US Airports Still Have Security Vulnerabilities; and Iran Duplicates Chinese Wonder Weapon
PIRACY Pirate Games
BORDER DISORDER Catastrophe And The Cartel Wars; and 'Gunwalker' Deepens: Agent Zapata Killed By Gun From...Texas?
Obama Threatens Gun Owners in Border States
MIDDLE EAST Arabic Dreams of Turkish Ways; Morocco's Constitutional Referendum for Dummies; and Muslim Brotherhood Challenges Jordan's King
CYBER ACTIVITY al-Qaeda Plotting Internet Jihad; and Jihadi Sites Focusing on CIA sites in Somalia
TERROR MODUS OPERANDI Dry Run? Muslim Goes Jihad, Causes Flight Diversion on Plane to Germany, Kicking and Spitting at Passengers; More Somalis from MN and OH leave to fight with Al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda); HizbAllah Sets Up Shop in Mexico; al-Qaeda's Egyptian Ideologues Planning Caliphate's Return to Egypt; and Haqqani Network
STEALTH JIHAD Radical Islam in Germany: The Convert as Missionary; and Women under Sharia Law: The Dilemma of 'The Wife Beating Protocol'
TERRORIST CONNECTIONS Yes We Khan
PROPAGANDA CAIR Spokesman Turns Blind Eye to 'War on Islam' Rhetoric; and Illinois: Muslim Leader Calls for Sharia to the Chants of 'Allah Akbar'
Responses and counter-terror measures are noted in:
WAR NEWS Afghan War News - July 13, 2011; and Afghan-led Security Force Detains Insurgents
BORDER DISORDER Obama Threatens Gun Owners in Border States
HOMELAND SECURITY Report Shows Gaping Holes in Intelligence on Overseas Terrorists; A Nuclear Security Fund - Policy Innovation Memorandum No. 6; Feds Review Policies Affecting Terrorist Travel; and Minorities 'Alienated by Airport Security'
TERRORISM RESPONSE Norway Police Charge 3 Muslims over Bomb Plot
TERROR ON TRIAL Assassin Who Killed President Karzai's Brother Hanged in Public Square; Federal Government Isn't Touching Arkansas Terrorism Case; and US Federal Prosecutors Want Brotherhood Terrorist's Jail Term Reduced
POLICE AND CRIME ISSUES Thousands Back Tulsa Officer Ordered to Muslim Worship
Threats and terrorist-related activities are reported in:
TERROR INCIDENTS 3 Mumbai Bombings Minutes Apart Kill 21, Wound 141; 2 Americans Abducted by Muslims in Southern Philippines; Fear of Islamic Militant Attacks in Nigeria Spreads to Lagos; Kentucky Muslim Woman Made Christians Drink Each Other's Blood before Murdering Them; and Syrian Government Thugs Break into US Embassy in Damascus
WAR NEWS Taliban Takes Credit for Chasing Canadians Away
THREATS Disarmed by Shariah; Arkansas Jihad; This is The Century of a Worldwide Islamic Awakening; US Airports Still Have Security Vulnerabilities; and Iran Duplicates Chinese Wonder Weapon
PIRACY Pirate Games
BORDER DISORDER Catastrophe and the Cartel Wars; and 'Gunwalker' Deepens: Agent Zapata Killed By Gun from...Texas?
Obama Threatens Gun Owners in Border States
MIDDLE EAST Arabic Dreams of Turkish Ways; Morocco's Constitutional Referendum for Dummies; and Muslim Brotherhood Challenges Jordan's King
CYBER ACTIVITY al-Qaeda Plotting Internet Jihad; and Jihadi Sites Focusing on CIA sites in Somalia
TERROR MODUS OPERANDI Dry Run? Muslim Goes Jihad, Causes Flight Diversion on Plane to Germany, Kicking and Spitting at Passengers; More Somalis from MN and OH leave to fight with Al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda); HizbAllah Sets Up Shop in Mexico; al-Qaeda's Egyptian Ideologues Planning Caliphate's Return to Egypt; and Haqqani Network
STEALTH JIHAD Radical Islam in Germany: The Convert as Missionary; and Women under Sharia Law: The Dilemma of 'The Wife Beating Protocol'
TERRORIST CONNECTIONS Yes We Khan
PROPAGANDA CAIR Spokesman Turns Blind Eye to 'War on Islam' Rhetoric; and Illinois: Muslim Leader Calls for Sharia to the Chants of 'Allah Akbar'
Responses and counter-terror measures are noted in:
WAR NEWS Afghan War News - July 13, 2011; and Afghan-led Security Force Detains Insurgents
BORDER DISORDER Obama Threatens Gun Owners in Border States
HOMELAND SECURITY Report Shows Gaping Holes in Intelligence on Overseas Terrorists; A Nuclear Security Fund - Policy Innovation Memorandum No. 6; Feds Review Policies Affecting Terrorist Travel; and Minorities 'Alienated by Airport Security'
TERRORISM RESPONSE Norway Police Charge 3 Muslims over Bomb Plot
TERROR ON TRIAL Assassin Who Killed President Karzai's Brother Hanged in Public Square; Federal Government Isn't Touching Arkansas Terrorism Case; and US Federal Prosecutors Want Brotherhood Terrorist's Jail Term Reduced
POLICE AND CRIME ISSUES Thousands Back Tulsa Officer Ordered to Muslim Worship
ASSASSIN WHO KILLED
PRESIDENT KARZAI’S BROTHER HANGED IN PUBLIC SQUARE
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TOPIC
SUBJECT
TERROR INCIDENTS
3 Mumbai Bombings Minutes Apart Kill 21, Wound 141
2 Americans Abducted by Muslims in Southern Philippines
Fear of Islamic Militant Attacks in Nigeria Spreads to Lagos
Kentucky Muslim Woman Made Christians Drink Each Other's Blood before Murdering Them
Syrian Government Thugs Break into US Embassy in Damascus
WAR NEWS
Afghan War News - July 13, 2011
Afghan-led Security Force Detains Insurgents
Taliban Takes Credit For Chasing Canadians Away
THREATS
Disarmed by Shariah
Arkansas Jihad
This is The Century of a Worldwide Islamic Awakening
US Airports Still Have Security Vulnerabilities
Iran Duplicates Chinese Wonder Weapon
PIRACY
Pirate Games
BORDER DISORDER
Catastrophe And The Cartel Wars
'Gunwalker' Deepens: Agent Zapata Killed By Gun From...Texas?
Obama Threatens Gun Owners in Border States
MIDDLE EAST
Arabic Dreams of Turkish Ways
Morocco's Constitutional Referendum for Dummies
Muslim Brotherhood Challenges Jordan's King
CYBER ACTIVITY
al-Qaeda Plotting Internet Jihad
Jihadi Sites Focusing on CIA sites in Somalia
HOMELAND SECURITY
Report Shows Gaping Holes in Intelligence on Overseas Terrorists
A Nuclear Security Fund - Policy Innovation Memorandum No. 6
Feds Review Policies Affecting Terrorist Travel
Minorities 'Alienated by Airport Security'
TERRORISM RESPONSE
Norway Police Charge 3 Muslims over Bomb Plot
TERROR ON TRIAL
Assassin Who Killed President Karzai's Brother Hanged in Public Square
Federal Government Isn't Touching Arkansas Terrorism Case
US Federal Prosecutors Want Brotherhood Terrorist's Jail Term Reduced
POLICE AND CRIME ISSUES
Thousands Back Tulsa Officer Ordered to Muslim Worship
TERROR MODUS OPERANDI
Dry Run? Muslim Goes Jihad, Causes Flight Diversion on Plane to Germany, Kicking and Spitting at Passengers
More Somalis from MN and OH leave to fight with Al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda)
HizbAllah Sets Up Shop in Mexico
al-Qaeda's Egyptian Ideologues Planning Caliphate's Return to Egypt
Haqqani Network
STEALTH JIHAD
Radical Islam in Germany: The Convert as Missionary
Women under Sharia Law: The Dilemma of 'The Wife Beating Protocol'
TERRORIST CONNECTIONS
Yes We Khan
PROPAGANDA
CAIR Spokesman Turns Blind Eye to 'War on Islam' Rhetoric
Illinois: Muslim Leader Calls for Sharia to the Chants of 'Allah Akbar'
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TERROR INCIDENTS
3 Mumbai Bombings Minutes Apart Kill 21, Wound 141 (back)
July 13, 2011
by Rajesh Shah and Muneeza Naqvi
MUMBAI, India -- Three coordinated bombings tore through the heart of India's busy financial capital during rush hour Wednesday, killing 21 people and wounding 141 in the worst terror attack in the country since the 2008 Mumbai siege.
Bloody bodies were strewn in the dirt of Mumbai's crowded neighborhoods and markets. Doors were ripped off storefronts, motorcycles were charred and a bus stop was shredded. After the blasts in three separate neighborhoods, police set up checkpoints and were put on high alert.
The bombings came just months after peace talks resumed between India and Pakistan, which New Delhi has blamed for past attacks.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the blasts and appealed to the people of Mumbai 'to remain calm and show a united face.'
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and Indian officials refused to speculate on who might be behind the blasts.
Indian officials have accused Pakistan's powerful spy agency of helping coordinate and fund earlier attacks, including the Mumbai siege, which killed 166 people over three days. Peace talks between the countries were suspended after the siege and resumed only recently.
Pakistan's government expressed distress about the loss of lives and injuries soon after Wednesday's blasts were reported.
U.S. President Barack Obama also condemned the 'outrageous attacks.'
'The American people will stand with the Indian people in times of trial, and we will offer support to India's efforts to bring the perpetrators of these terrible crimes to justice,' he said in a statement. 'I have no doubt that India will overcome these deplorable terrorist attacks.'
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she will go ahead with her plans to visit India next week despite the bombings. Standing with India 'is more important than ever,' she said.
The bombings began with an explosion that ripped through the famed Jhaveri Bazaar jewelry market at 6:54 p.m. A minute later, a blast hit the busy business district of Opera House, several miles (kilometers) away in southern Mumbai. At 7:05 p.m., the third bomb exploded in the crowded neighborhood of Dadar in central Mumbai, according to police.
Because of the close timing of the blasts, 'we infer that this was a coordinated attack by terrorists,' Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.
A lifeless body lay on a cart. Survivors carried the wounded to taxis. One man was dragged out of the area on a red board used as a stretcher. Bleeding victims crowded into the back of a cargo truck to be taken to a hospital, where wards were filled with the wounded, slathered in white burn cream.
At Jhaveri Bazaar, a witness described two motorcycles exploding in flames and saw at least six bodies.
'People were shouting 'Help me, help me,'' the man told Headlines Today television.
People hugged and wept. Crowds gathered in the blast areas as police questioned witnesses, and investigators wearing gloves sifted through the debris for clues.
The government said the blasts killed 21 people and wounded 141 others.
'India is not going to cow down,' Cabinet minister Farooq Abdullah said. 'Let those perpetrators of this terror remember, we will find them and Inshallah (God willing) we will give them the justice that India believes in.'
A U.S. official said there were no immediate claims of responsibility, or firm indication of which terrorist group might be behind the attack. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The blasts marked the first major attack on Mumbai since 10 militants laid siege to the city for 60 hours in November 2008. That attack targeted two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and a busy train station.
C. Uday Bhaskar, a defense analyst, said the bombings showed that Mumbai remained vulnerable despite precautions taken after the 2008 attack.
'The local police still does not have either the capability or the capacity to pre-empt such attacks, and this is going to be a constant challenge,' he said.
Some media incorrectly reported Wednesday's blasts happened on the birthday of Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Kasab, who was sentenced to death in Mumbai, was born on Sept. 13.
The city has been on edge since the 2008 attack. In December, authorities deployed extra police on city streets after receiving intelligence that a Pakistan-based militant group was planning an attack over New Year's weekend.
In March 2010, Mumbai police said they prevented a major terrorist strike after they arrested two Indian men, who, police said, were preparing to hit several targets in the city. In September, police issued a terror alert for the city during a popular Hindu festival.
Last month, India and Pakistan held their first formal talks on the disputed region of Kashmir since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Both nuclear-armed nations claim Kashmir in its entirety, and have fought two of their three wars over the region since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.
Source:
2 Americans Abducted by Muslims in Southern Philippines (back)
July 12, 2011
MANILA, Philippines — More than a dozen armed men abducted a naturalized American, her teenage son and Filipino nephew before dawn Tuesday from a southern Philippine island near a stronghold of al-Qaida-linked militants, officials said.
Suspicion fell on the notorious Abu Sayyaf, which has been blamed for ransom kidnappings, beheadings and bombings in the last two decades, or a Muslim rebel commander whose group has been linked to previous abductions.
The 400-plus Abu Sayyaf militants, who are fighting for an Islamist state in the predominantly Christian nation, are holding three other kidnap victims, including a child, as part of desparate efforts to raise funds, according to the Philippine army.
The assailants seized Gerfa Yeatts Lunsmann, her 14-year-old son and 19-year-old Filipino nephew from a house in Zamboanga city's Tictabon island village, then fled with their captives in two motorized boats, said police Senior Superintendent Edwin de Ocampo.
No contact or ransom demand has been made by the abductors, and their identities remain unconfirmed, de Ocampo said.
It happened near Basilan Island, the birthplace and stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf militants, about 550 miles (880 kilometers) south of Manila.
The largest Muslim separatist group, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, is present in the area but it has been negotiating with the government and a cease-fire has largely held for several years.
However, the military said a separatist Moro commander identified as Waning Abdulsalam may have been responsible. Rebel spokesman Von Al Haq said his group would investigate but that it has no such report and will not tolerate criminal activities.
Police earlier said the woman was a Filipino married to a German and the family lives in the U.S. state of Virginia.
But army Col. Buenaventura Pascual, commander of an anti-terrorist task force in Zamboanga, said his men on Tictabon Island saw the U.S. passports of Lunsmann and her son, showing they were American citizens.
Lunsmann, 50, was originally from Basilan and her previous name was Jerpa Usman, police and military officials said.
Pascual said the woman's husband is apparently an American citizen of German ancestry. He did not accompany his wife and son, who arrived in the Philippines two weeks ago to visit relatives.
Calls and text messages to the U.S. Embassy were unanswered Tuesday.
'We have deployed troops to track down the victims,' Pascual said.
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the local crisis committee was convened and that police and the military were trying to rescue the victims and capture the culprits.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Randolph Cabangbang said intelligence reports showed the victims may have been brought to Basilan's Tuburuan township.
Source: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/AS-Philippines-Abduction/2 011/07/12/id/403288
Fear of Islamic Militant Attacks in Nigeria Spreads to Lagos (back)
July 12, 2011
by Scott Stearns
Lagos - The fear of attacks by Islamic militants in Nigeria is spreading south to the commercial capital, Lagos, where city buses are being checked for bombs. A group that says it is fighting for a separate Islamic state is thought responsible for a series of attacks across the north.
Bomb attacks and ambushes in the northern city of Maiduguri have indefinitely closed the university there and led to an exodus of civilians, some of whom are newly unemployed motorbike taxi drivers after all motorbikes were banned in Maiduguri because Islamic militants were using them to throw bombs.
The Islamic sect Boko Haram recognizes neither Nigeria's constitution nor the federal government and says it is fighting for a separate nation in the north, ruled by Islamic law.
The group bombed national police headquarters in Abuja and a church just outside the capital, which is now under a limited curfew with all bars and movie theaters closed by 10 p.m.
The fear of Boko Haram attacks is now spreading south to Lagos, following a text message purportedly sent by the group warning people not to take government buses because they are a target.
The managing director of LAGBUS, Yemi Odubela, told the News Agency of Nigeria that the firm is aware of the threat and is asking passengers to remain vigilant and cooperate with spot checks of their bags.
At the Eko roundabout bus stop on Victoria Island, this passenger says her bags were checked when she boarded the LAGBUS.
'They have been checking us before we entered at Leventis,' she said. 'They checked us to see if anybody is carrying any equipment inside their bags. So they checked us before we entered. Men check men. Women check women.'
STEARNS: 'Did that make you feel safer then?'
BUS PASSENGER: 'Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We are afraid. We are afraid. Everybody is afraid to enter, you see that blue color [bus] and this red color [bus]. We are afraid. They check under all the seats before we entered. So maybe there is something they hide under the seats. There is nothing under [the seats].'
This man, getting off the #55 LAGBUS, says he does not believe the Boko Haram threat.
'They have been operating,' he said. 'Even when they have been bombing, have they been giving warnings? No. They have not been giving warnings. They do it. So I want to believe that people are just trying to use that to cause confusion.'
With heavy rains in Lagos, this woman says her car will not make it through the flooding, so she has to take the bus, despite the threat.
'I have no choice,' she said. 'Because of the rain, I have no other transport means to get to this place.'
This passenger says Boko Haram will find it far harder to operate in the south.
'We will continue to take the bus because there is security in Lagos,' said the passenger.'I don't believe they will come to this place. I just call it a threat. They can't come down to the south. We will check them here. LAGBUS is even better because at LAGBUS you queue. So you can check anybody who enters that LAGBUS. So if it just an ordinary bus like this one that everybody jumps inside it is a different thing.'
President Goodluck Jonathan has offered to open talks with the group, but Boko Haram leaders have so far refused, saying they cannot meet with security forces that are trying to destroy them.
Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/west/Fear-of-Islamic -Militant-Attacks-in-Nigeria-Spreads-to-Lagos-125406593.html
Kentucky Muslim Woman Made Christians Drink Each Other's Blood before Murdering Them (back)
July 12, 2011
Kentucky: Bosnian Muslima Faces Extradition for War Crimes Against Serb Christians, Made Serbs Drink Blood of Serbs she Murdered, Carved Crosses and 'SS' onto Foreheads
More debunking of the Bosnian lie that our soldiers went to war for. Died for. Unfathomable.
Here is yet another 'poor innocent victimized Bosnian Muslim,' Azra Basic, who murdered Christian Serbs, collected their blood and made other Christians drink the blood. She worked in three different death camps, where she 'murdered and tortured Christians' because of their religion. According to eyewitness testimony, she forced Christians to drink gasoline, then set their hands and faces on fire.
She carved crosses and 'SS' onto the foreheads and backs of Christian Serbs.
She is fighting extradition. What say you? Will the US allow her to stay to cover up one of Clinton's most egregious mistakes?
Bosnian Muslim woman made Serbs drink blood of Serbs she killed July 11, 2011, Serbianna (hat tip Rod)
Azra Basic has been described as a 'Croatian woman' and a 'Lovely’ Ky. woman' but she slayed Serbs, collected their blood and made other Serb prisoners she was yet to kill drink the blood she so carefully collected.
American media considers Bosnian Muslims 'heroes' and the American President Clinton bombed Serbs so Bosnian Muslims like Basic can drain Serbian blood and make other Serbs that America bombed drink it.
Of course, the accusations against her are just the tip of the iceberg of Bosnian Muslim atrocities but the description of this Muslim terrorizer goes just like any other description of a Muslim that goes around killing infidels:
'She’s a pretty nice person. If I was standing here right now and … she drove by, she would throw her hand up and if the window was down, she would speak and say ‘hi’ by my name.'
'She’s a lovely person, very diligent in her work,' another said.
[...]
US accuses Serbs of 'genociding' Bosnian Muslims like Basic and are persecuting the Serbian General Ratko Mladic for Srebrenica although many of the Bosnian Muslims that are listed as massacred in Srebrenica are living in the US.
Investigators have found that numerous Bosnian Muslim names that are listed at the Srebrenica memorial as allegedly murdered by Mladic’s forces are actually living in the US, especially in Minnesota.
Developing…
Azra Basic fighting extradition in Lexington federal court to face alleged war crimes in Bosnia
LEXINGTON, Ky. — An attorney for a Croatian woman accused of committing war crimes in Bosnia told a federal judge Friday in Lexington that she should be allowed to stay in the U.S. instead of facing charges in Europe.
Azra Basic is accused of torturing prisoners after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. U.S. officials want the 52-year-old woman extradited to Bosnia to face charges of murder and torture.
But a long list of international issues stand in the way of extradition, including the absence of a treaty between Bosnia and the U.S., and whether the statute of limitations has expired on the alleged crimes, her attorney, Patrick Nash, argued Wednesday. Basic (pronounced bah'-sich) is also a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Nash said that complicates things.
According to court documents, Basic is charged with fatally stabbing a prisoner in the neck in 1992 during the conflict in Eastern Europe, along with other atrocities.
She appeared in court Wednesday in a grey jumpsuit with handcuffs on her wrists and shackles around her ankles. Basic spoke only privately to Nash during the hearing and waved to a couple as she was leaving after the proceedings.
Many people who know Basic say she was friendly and lived a peaceful life in Kentucky. The woman known locally as 'Issabella' in Stanton took jobs in a nursing home and also worked at a food factory.
'I'd say she's probably terrified of being sent back,' said Edith Fultz, who lives in Cynthiana and met Basic through her sister-in-law. Fultz and her husband have been visiting Basic in jail weekly and said they believe Basic was trying to survive in the middle of a bloody war.
'A lot of people kill people in a war because they have to,' Fultz said outside the courtroom Wednesday. 'She did not commit the things they are saying.'
More than 100,000 people were killed in the ethnic war that followed Yugoslavia's collapse, most of them Muslim Bosnians.
Fultz said Basic came here as a refugee and was not hiding out in Kentucky.
'She told us if she was trying to hide, she wouldn't have come here,' Fultz said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Weir said he would rule on the arguments at a later date. Basic's extradition hearing is set for Aug. 22.
Azra Basic has been described as a 'Croatian woman' and a 'Lovely’ Ky. woman' but she slayed Serbs, collected their blood and made other Serb prisoners she was yet to kill drink the blood she so carefully collected.
American media considers Bosnian Muslims 'heroes' and the American President Clinton bombed Serbs so Bosnian Muslims like Basic can drain Serbian blood and make other Serbs that America bombed drink it.
Of course, the accusations against her are just the tip of the iceberg of Bosnian Muslim atrocities but the description of this Muslim terrorizer goes just like any other description of a Muslim that goes around killing infidels:
'She’s a pretty nice person. If I was standing here right now and … she drove by, she would throw her hand up and if the window was down, she would speak and say ‘hi’ by my name.'
'She’s a lovely person, very diligent in her work,' another said.
Azra Basic was born Azra Alesevic on June 22, 1959 in Rijeka, Croatia, so that is why this Bosnian Muslim is called a 'Croatian'.
She married another Muslim, Nedzad Basic in 1994 in Bosnia. She holds Croatian and US citizenship.
She lived in Rochester, NY but moved in 2006 elsewhere.
US accuses Serbs of 'genociding' Bosnian Muslims like Basic and are persecuting the Serbian General Ratko Mladic for Srebrenica although many of the Bosnian Muslims that are listed as massacred in Srebrenica are living in the US.
Investigators have found that numerous Bosnian Muslim names that are listed at the Srebrenica memorial as allegedly murdered by Mladic’s forces are actually living in the US, especially in Minnesota.
Developing…
Link in German:http://medforth.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/bosnische-muslimin-zwang-serbische-gefangene-das-blut-von-getoteten-serben-zu-trinken/
Earlier link to her arrest in Kentucky: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42145729/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/lovely-ky-woman-accused-horrific-war-crimes
Source: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/07/kentuck y-bosnian-muslima-faces-extradition-for-war-crimes-against-serb-christia ns-made-serbs-drink-b.html
Syrian Government Thugs Break into US Embassy in Damascus (back)
July 11, 2011
DAMASCUS, Syria - Angry pro-government protesters attacked the US Embassy and the American ambassador's home in Damascus Monday, causing some damage but no injuries before US Marine guards intervened.
A State Department spokesperson in Washington said a television station heavily influenced by Syrian authorities encouraged the violence and that Syrian authorities were slow to respond with extra security measures.
A US official told FOX News in Jerusalem a battering ram was used to breach the embassy grounds.
Once inside the compound, witnesses told Al Jazeera the attackers smashed windows, raised a Syrian flag and wrote anti-American graffiti referring to US Ambassador Robert Ford as a 'dog.'
However, they were unable to enter the embassy building itself.
It was not known if Ford was in either the embassy or residence at the time of the morning assaults.
He and the French ambassador, Erik Chevallier angered government loyalists last week when they visited the flashpoint city of Hama, scene of some of the largest protests against the rule of President Bashar al Assad.
A similar attack was staged Monday afternoon at the French embassy in Damascus. Three staff were injured there, AFP reported, and the ambassador's car was destroyed.
Security guards there fired into the air and used tear gas to drive back the crowds, Al Jazeera reported.
The State Department spokesman said no staff at either the US embassy or ambassador's home was injured and no one had been in imminent danger.
Because Syrian security forces were late to respond, US Marines intervened to push back the crowd on the embassy grounds.
Washington responded by calling Syria's senior diplomat there to lodge a complaint.
'We strongly condemn the Syrian government's refusal to protect our embassy and demand compensation for damages,' the State Department spokesman said.
Protesters threw rocks and eggs at the US embassy on Saturday, Ford said in a statement published on Facebook on Sunday.
'How ironic that the Syrian government lets an anti-US demonstration proceed freely while their security thugs beat down olive branch-carrying peaceful protesters elsewhere,' Ford said.
In the statement, Ford reiterated his support for protesters in Hama. 'Hama and the Syrian crisis is not about the US at all. This is a crisis the Syrian people are in the process of solving. It is a crisis about dignity, human rights, and the rule of law,' he added.
Source:
WAR NEWS
Afghan War News - July 13, 2011 (back)
July 13, 2011
War in Afghanistan News reports provided by ISAF Joint Command. Operations are reported in the following provinces: Logar, Balkkh, Baghlan, Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Wardak, Paktiya, Khost and Paktika.
A combined Afghan and coalition security force killed numerous insurgents during a security operation in Azrah district, Logar province, yesterday.
The Afghan-led force was searching for a Taliban leader when a group of insurgents, armed with a machine gun and AK-47 rifles, opened fire. The security team returned fire, killing the insurgents.
The security force confiscated one rocket-propelled grenade launcher with several rounds, roadside bomb materials and several grenades following the engagement.
While attempting to exit the area,
the force observed several armed insurgents attempting an ambush. The security force fired in response and requested support from an air weapons team. The air weapons team engaged the attackers as they moved into a rock crevasse, killing them.
The target of the operation was a Taliban leader responsible for directing roadside bomb attacks, and commanding sub-leaders and fighters in Hisarak district.
Tailor the way you get your War in Afghanistan News
In other International Security Assistance Force Joint (ISAF) Command Operational News throughout Afghanistan:
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Taliban Close School, Afghan Officials Re-Open Same School
Balkh Province
In Sholgarah district, Balkh province, a combined Afghan and coalition security force detained numerous suspected insurgents while searching for a Taliban leader, yesterday.
The leader is the Taliban-appointed governing official for operations in Balkh province. He is involved in planning and executing attacks against Afghan National Security Forces. Additionally, he organizes funding and delegates authority to Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, taking his orders from the Quetta Shura in Pakistan.
Baghlan Province
In Pul-e Khumri district, Baghlan province, an Afghan-led security force detained two suspected insurgents during a security operation targeting an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan facilitator, yesterday. The facilitator is directly involved in attack planning and movement of fighters in Takhar province.
Helmand Province
In Nahr-e Saraj district, Helmand province, an Afghan-led security force conducted a security operation targeting a Taliban leader resulting in the detention of several suspected insurgents, yesterday. The Taliban leader is responsible for planning and commanding operations against Afghan and coalition forces, and coordinating the procurement and distribution of weapons to fighters between various Taliban attack cells.
Tailor the way you get your War in Afghanistan News
Kandahar Province
In Panjwa’i district, Kandahar province, a combined security force detained several individuals with suspected ties to the Taliban during a security operation, yesterday. The security force also confiscated and destroyed roadside bomb making materials. The target of the operation was a Taliban leader responsible for roadside bomb attacks and distribution of roadside bomb making materials in eastern Panjwa’i.
Zabul Province
During a security operation in Shajoy district, Zabul province, an Afghan-led security force detained one suspected insurgent, yesterday. The security force was searching for a Taliban facilitator responsible for distributing money and information among Taliban leaders in the Qalat and Tarnek wa Jaldak districts.
Wardak Province
During a security operation in Sayyidabad district, Wardak province, an Afghan-led security force killed numerous insurgents and detained several suspected insurgents with ties to the Taliban, yesterday.
While attempting to clear a building, the force encountered several armed insurgents. The force made numerous attempts to apprehend the individuals peacefully. The individuals remained non-compliant and repeatedly displayed hostile intent toward the security force. The force fired in defense, killing several insurgents armed with grenades and AK-47 rifles.
Tailor the way you get your War in Afghanistan News
Paktiya Province
In Zurmat district, Paktiya province, an Afghan-led security force detained a Taliban leader and two suspected insurgents during a security operation, yesterday. The leader is believed to have commanded a group of insurgents responsible for an improvised explosive device attack July 5 that resulted in the deaths of three ISAF service members.
Khost Province
In Musa Khel district, Khost province, a combined security force detained numerous individuals with suspected ties to the Haqqani Network, yesterday. The security force detained the individuals while searching for a Haqqani facilitator responsible for high-profile attacks in the area.
Paktika Province
Finally, in Mata Khan district, Paktika province, a combined security force detained one suspected insurgent while searching for a Taliban facilitator yesterday. The facilitator provides safe haven and finances to senior level Taliban leaders in the district.
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Source: http://tinyurl.com/5r4vd7z
Afghan-led Security Force Detains Insurgents (back)
July 13, 2011
From an International Security Assistance Force Joint Command News Release
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan-led combined security force detained a Haqqani network leader and one suspected insurgent in the Terayzai district of Afghanistan's Khost province yesterday, military officials reported.
The leader was responsible for the distribution of weapons and supplies throughout the district, and also emplaced roadside bombs in the area.
In other Afghanistan news yesterday:
-- An Afghan-led combined force detained multiple suspects during a security operation targeting an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader in the Burkah district of Baghlan province. The leader was recently appointed head governing official for insurgent operations in the district.
-- A combined Afghan and coalition force detained one suspected insurgent while searching for a Taliban facilitator in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province. The facilitator is a smuggler, responsible for transporting weapons collected from Pakistan between Afghanistan's Spin Boldak and Nahr-e Siraj districts. Additionally, he supports associates responsible for the movement of weapons from Kandahar City to Nahr-e Siraj.
-- An Afghan-led security force detained two suspected insurgents during a clearance operation in the Zharay district, of Kandahar province.
-- An Afghan-led force detained two suspects during a search for a Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin leader in the Alingar district of Laghman province. The security force was searching for the leader after receiving several reports he was planning an attack against Afghan and coalition forces. Additionally, the leader is responsible for previous attacks against the Afghan army.
Source:
Taliban Takes Credit For Chasing Canadians Away (back)
July 12, 2011
Canada recently withdrew its combat forces from Afghanistan. The Taliban promptly took credit for that, claiming that the casualties the Taliban inflicted on Canadian troops forced Canada to leave. This claim is nothing new, the Taliban have been predicting such a withdrawal for over five years, and have been inflicting a disproportionate number of casualties on the Canadians. The Taliban said they were deliberately targeting the Canadians in the belief that anti-war political groups back home could be strengthened, and Canadian troops withdrawn, if enough casualties were inflicted.
During nine years of operations in Afghanistan, 157 Canadian troops died (87 percent because of the Taliban.) For most of that time, Canada suffered, proportionately, twice as many dead in Afghanistan as the United States. During this period, the U.S. had ten times as many troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. also has ten times the population of Canada, so the 3,000 Canadians are making the same scale of effort, but suffering more losses in the process. But most of those losses were not from 'fighting the Taliban,' but from mines in the road. Back in early 2007, 81 percent of Canadian deaths were from IEDs (roadside bombs). But that declined as Canadian troops received more bomb resistant armored vehicles.
Since the Taliban couldn't cope with Canadian troops in head-to-head combat, they devoted much of their roadside bombing effort against the Canadians. But in the last year, the Taliban were only able to kill four Canadian troops. Still, the constant Taliban propaganda about how killing even a few Canadian troops would eventually force the Canadians to withdraw, is believed by most Afghans. Canada decided to withdraw all their troops from Afghanistan back in 2008, and more American troops have moved in to replace them.
Source: http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20110712.aspx
THREATS
Disarmed by Shariah (back)
July 12, 2011
by Adm. James A. Lyons
Today, the mind-numbing disease of political correctness has so infected the American military leadership that it is a threat in itself. The political correctness mentality was the principal reason why Fort Hood's alleged murderer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was not cashiered out of the Army after a shocking June 2007 PowerPoint presentation he gave as part of his psychiatric residency program. In that presentation, he reportedly warned his Army colleagues and supervisor at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center of 'adverse events' that would occur if the Army did not accept the precepts of Islamic Shariah law and grant Muslims serving in the Army conscientious objector status.
He went on to describe what he meant by adverse events, citing previous cases of Muslims murdering their fellow soldiers, spying against the United States, deserting their units and refusing to deploy. None of his fellow doctors or his supervisor reported his remarks, most likely out of fear of being labeled a bigot or racist, which in today's military could end one's career.
Now it seems the Army has embraced Maj. Hasan's position in an incredible decision made last month by the secretary of the Army to grant conscientious objector status to Pfc. Naser Abdo. He is a 21-year-old soldier, a member of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., who refused to deploy to Afghanistan, claiming that Shariah law prevented him from killing other Muslims.
The fact that Shariah law is totally incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and has no legal basis in the United States was somehow overlooked in the Army's decision process. Shariah is a totalitarian legal-military-political system that is designed to control every aspect of an individual's life and is antithetical to our concept of freedom and democracy. By its dictates, Shariah is seditious.
By acceding to the dictates of Shariah, the Army has tacitly endorsed an absurd position that in effect sanctions Muslim service members to kill non-Muslims but forbids them to kill Muslims. Further, it is an unbelievable basis on which to classify them as conscientious objectors.
When Pfc. Abdo enlisted, he stated he initially believed that he could be a soldier and a Muslim at the same time. What changed his vision? He stated that his understanding of Islam 'changed' as he went through training ahead of a planned deployment to Afghanistan. He worried whether going to war was the right thing to do.
This would indicate that someone in the Army training process for an overseas deployment in the 2009-10 time frame was indoctrinating Pfc. Abdo and other Muslim soldiers. Could it have been one of the Muslim chaplains personally selected by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who currently is serving a 23-year sentence in a federal prison? He was convicted of terrorism-related charges and was proved to be a senior al Qaeda financier as well as a strong supporter of the terrorists groups Hezbollah and Hamas.
As a result of his close connections in the Clinton White House, Alamoudi had the lead role in establishing the Muslim chaplain program. He nominated and approved which Muslim chaplains could serve in the U.S. military. The chaplains have never been vetted. This, together with a review of how Muslim military personnel currently are being indoctrinated, needs to be examined on an expedited basis.
Who helped the Army come to this inconceivable position on classifying Pfc. Abdo as a conscientious objector? My guess would be the Army received 'guidance' from its Muslim 'outreach partners,' who it believes are operating in America's best interest. This would be classic stealth jihad at its finest.
By granting conscientious objector status to Pfc. Abdo, the Army is tacitly accepting a key tenet of the Islamic doctrine of jihad, as embraced by al Qaeda and other terrorists groups, which states that any incursion by non-Muslims into the Islamic lands makes it the duty for all Muslims to fight the 'occupiers.' This view is shared by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has challenged American efforts in Afghanistan as 'unwelcome outsiders,' in effect, occupiers.
The U.S. military is the finest in the world. It represents the best of America. We have many Muslims serving honorably in the U.S. military and their service should not be tainted by Pfc. Abdo's conscientious objector designation. His discharge from the Army is currently on hold because he has been charged with possession of child pornography. That should not be surprising: Shariah sanctions marriage of girls 9 years old and younger, in effect, legalized pedophilia.
Retired Navy Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.
Source: The Washington Times
Arkansas Jihad (back)
July 12, 2011
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 23, is escorted from the Little Rock police headquarters Monday, June 1, 2009 in Little Rock, Ark. Muhammad is the suspect in the killing of a soldier in a targeted attack on a military recruiting center, police said. Another soldier was also wounded in the attack.. (AP Photo/Brian Chilson)
An admitted jihadist who killed an American soldier on U.S. soil will be tried next week in Arkansas on a state charge of capital murder - not terrorism. This is odd, considering that the Obama administration recently went out of its way to bring a Somali-born jihadist into U.S. federal court to face terrorism charges for what he may have done overseas. Perhaps the White House thinks that if it turns a blind eye toward domestic Islamic terrorism, it won't really exist.
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad is a textbook case of homegrown terrorism. He was born Carlos Bledsoe in Memphis, Tenn., and converted to Islam at age 20. He was active in radical circles, traveled to the Middle East and married a Yemeni woman. In 2008, he was arrested in Yemen for a visa violation and was found to have counterfeit Somali identification documents. He was held in jail and interviewed by FBI agents but was allowed to return to the United States in 2009. He was interviewed once by the bureau upon his return but reportedly was not placed under surveillance.
On June 1, 2009, Mr. Muhammad allegedly opened fire on an Army recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark., killing Pvt. William Long and wounding Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, who were outside taking a break. Mr. Muhammad was picked up by police later that day; in his vehicle they found an SKS assault rifle, a scope, a laser sight, a silencer, two pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He said he was angry at the U.S. treatment of Muslims and involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He wanted to kill as many service members as he could.
The Little Rock shooting did not get the attention given to higher-profile jihadist incidents such as the Fort Hood massacre in November 2009 or the botched Christmas Day 2009 underwear bombing attempt. In all three cases, the bureaucracy ignored clear warning signs of potential terrorist activity. In all three cases, there was a known link to Yemen and American-born al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. Like Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, Mr. Muhammad is a homegrown jihadist.
The Justice Department's lack of interest in the Arkansas shooting case is consistent with the administration's attempts to delink radical Islam from terrorism. This also was the case with the Fort Hood shooting, where the administration doggedly ignored all aspects of Maj. Hasan's jihadist motives for the attack and initially refused to classify it as terrorism. This was a neat trick considering Maj. Hasan yelled the jihadist war cry 'Allahu akbar!' before opening fire.
It's not as though the administration is afraid of bringing terrorists to federal courts. Mr. Obama ordered the Justice Department to do an end run around Congress to charge accused Somali terrorist Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame with federal crimes and grant him full due-process rights even though he is not an American citizen and had not conducted an attack inside the United States.
Mr. Obama seems desperate to have foreign jihadists face federal judges and equally driven to deny that jihadism has sprouted on American soil. Perhaps Mr. Obama believes that the president on whose watch Osama bin Laden was killed cannot be called soft on terrorism, but the case of Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad may prove otherwise.
Source: The Washington Times
This is The Century of a Worldwide Islamic Awakening (back)
July 13, 2011
by Reza Kahlili
The Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, addressing participants in Tehran’s 28th International Holy Quran Contests, said on Tuesday that the revolutions and popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa show that God definitely fulfills His promises. He further emphasized that the regional nations’ uprisings are a 'clear indication of the fact that Allah’s promises mentioned in the Holy Quran are definitely materialized.'
Khamenei then declared the Holy Quran as 'the most important means and factor of unity, honor and dignity, and power for the Islamic Ummah (community), adding that lack of belief in Quranic concepts and divine promises 'has practically prevented unity, honor and dignity, power and mightiness of the Islamic Ummah.'
Then on Wednesday, July 6th, the Iranian Supreme Leader’s Advisor for Military Affairs, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the ex-chief commander of the Guards, stated that the Muslim states’ main share in control over the world’s vital energy corridors has provided Islamic nations with an excellent chance to control the world economy. He reminded the Islamic nations that their rich energy resources are their source of power, giving Muslims the capability to control the world economy.
Safavi further elaborated that '[a]bout 80 percent of the world trade is done through sea voyage and cargo fleets and these fleets of cargo ships will pass through the world’s strategic straits. Meantime, Islamic countries are located on both sides of these strategic bottlenecks, which we call ‘compulsory passages.’ Thus it can be said that Muslim states can come into control of the world economy.' He added that the same case is true even with military issues such as in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the U.S. dispatched over 200,000 troops through the very same vital and strategic waterways.
Safavi went on to say that the U.S. claims to have the world’s number-one army, while the main part of its forces, military strategy, and power lies with its Navy; and because of that, it is vulnerable to Muslim nations, given the Islamic states’ control over strategic waterways. He then pointed to the recent popular uprisings in the region, and stressed that the 21st century will witness the emergence of a new power under the name of the 'Muslim World.'
'God willing, we should name the current century as the century of Islamic Awakening,' Safavi underscored, adding that not only Egypt, Yemen, and Bahrain, but also a number of other nations in the Middle East and North Africa will eventually succeed in regaining power and controlling their fate in the next few years.
The Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, in demanding the removal of U.S. forces from the region, said: 'In one way or another they should be removed.' Then he added that '[t]he regional nations showed that they want Islamic populism and seek the rule of the Holy Quran. Therefore, there has remained no more room or option left for the U.S., Britain and Zionists in the Islamic region.'
Back in March, I reported on the statements of the commander of the Basij organization, Brigadier General Mohammad-Reza Naghdi, in which he claimed that all Middle East gas and oil will soon be cut off to infidels, elaborating that '[s]eventy percent of the world’s fossil fuel reserve is under the feet of the soldiers of the Supreme Leadership and soon oil and gas fields belonging to Muslims, which is now in the hands of America, will fall into the hands of the people. That will be the time when all those overlords will have sanctions put on them.' He added: 'The enemy is heavily dependent on this energy and the events in the region have them quite agitated. This, of course, provides us with a hopeful future.'
It is clear that the Iranian leaders are looking at the recent events in the Middle East with an eye to controlling the outcome to be one of anti-West sentiment, and that it will be played out to unite Muslims against Americans and Israelis.
With the radicals ruling Iran engaging us on several fronts: Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya and others; with Iran continuing to incite the populace in the region to overthrow U.S.-backed governments; with their progress on the missile delivery front; and with their pursuit of the nuclear bomb; it is time for President Obama and his administration to realize that the Iranian leaders are a grave danger to our national security and also to global stability. A nuclear-armed Iran must not be allowed! Nuclear bombs in the hands of jihadists should be a red line for the free world.
We must realize that unless and until we understand the ideology of the radicals ruling Iran, we will continue to miscalculate our approach, but this time, humanity will pay dearly if we fail to understand the threat.Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy who requires anonymity for safety reasons. He is the author of A Time to Betray, a book about his double-life as a CIA agent in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, published by Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster, April 2010.
Source: http://www.aina.org/news/20110713105218.htm
US Airports Still Have Security Vulnerabilities (back)
July 13, 2011
by Eileen Sullivan
WASHINGTON — It has been almost 10 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and U.S. airports still are not as secure as they need to be. More than 14,000 people have found their way into sensitive areas, and about 6,000 travelers have made it past government screeners without proper scrutiny, according to a congressman who is leading an inquiry into the deficiencies.
Since November 2001, more than 25,000 security breaches have occurred at U.S. airports, despite the extra security measures put in place over the past 9 ½ years, said Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, citing government statistics. That is an average of slightly more than five security breaches a year at each of the 457 commercial airports, and 'these are just the ones we know about,' said Chaffetz, who is overseeing a congressional hearing Wednesday on security shortcomings. 'I think it's a stunningly high number.'
The Transportation Security Administration said these numbers represent 'a tiny fraction of 1 percent' of the more than 5.5 billion people that have been screened across the country since 9/11. 'These events were reported, investigated and remedied,' agency spokesman Greg Soule said.
The 25,000 figure is misleading because a security breach is broadly defined to include instances when a checked bag was misplaced after it had gone through security screening to a person who was caught in the act of breaching security and immediately apprehended, Soule said.
Criticism of screening policies
The congressional interest comes amid the busy midyear travel season and growing criticism of some of the TSA's screening policies, like security pat-downs for children and travelers in their 90s. The TSA has defended its policies, citing terrorists' persistent interest in attacking commercial aviation. For instance, early this month, counterterror officials saw intelligence about some terrorists' renewed interest in surgically implanting bombs in humans to evade airport security like full-body imaging machines. The TSA and FBI are even testing this theory on pigs' carcasses to see how viable the threat is, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.
Since the 2001 attacks, the airport screening work force has been entirely revamped and billions of dollars have been spent on technology that has been deployed across the country. But despite all the enhancements, travelers have made it past security when they should not have. Most recently, a cellphone-sized stun gun was found aboard a plane operated by JetBlue Airways Corp. Officials do not believe the stun gun was intended for use in some type of attack, but the FBI is investigating how and why it was on the airplane. Earlier this month, a Nigerian American was accused of breaching three layers of airport security while getting on a cross-country flight with an expired boarding pass.
Chaffetz also worries that airports have issued more than 900,000 special credentials to workers for access to secure and restricted areas in airports, including 16,000 secure badges to Washington Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia alone, he said.
The government has long been aware and concerned about the 'insider threat' in which someone who wishes to do harm has access to secure areas such as those in airports. Terrorists have used such insiders to access overseas targets and collect sensitive information to aid terror operations, including hotel bombings in Indonesia in 2009 when a florist working in one of the hotels helped facilitate the attacks.
Source: The Associated Press
Iran Duplicates Chinese Wonder Weapon (back)
July 11, 2011
Iran announced that it had developed an anti-ship missile, with a range of 300 kilometers. The new missile, called the Khalij Fars, is said to be developed from the earlier Fateh 110. But this is where this announcement gets strange.
The Fateh 110 is a copy of the Chinese DF-11A ballistic missile, which had a range of 400 kilometers. The Fateh 110 is a 8.86 meter (27.5 foot), 3.5 ton rocket with a half ton warhead. Range is about 250 kilometers. The Fateh 110 is a solid fuel missile developed to replace the liquid fueled SCUD ballistic missiles Iran had been using since the 1980s. SCUD was developed from the German World War II era V-2.
What all this implies is that Iran is claiming to have developed a ballistic missile that can hit moving ships at sea. China is also claimed to have developed this technology (the DF-21D). But neither country has demonstrated their anti-ship ballistic missiles actually working. Moreover, Iran regularly announces wondrous new weapons, developed entirely in Iran. Very few of these weapons are ever seen in service.
Source: http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htweap/articles/20110711.aspx
PIRACY
Pirate Games (back)
July 12, 2011
The Somali pirate gangs have adapted to the growing fleet of warships and maritime patrol aircraft arrayed against them. One of the new tricks is getting into the databases of shipping companies and their Internet based communications. This information is bought from criminal operatives in London and the Persian Gulf, and provides precise information where the most lucrative and vulnerable ships will be.
Much of the money obtained from ransoms is used to buy goods and services from Persian Gulf merchants and other 'specialists.' This includes assistance in negotiating with the shipping and insurance companies, as well as other services. This includes intelligence. The Persian Gulf is rife with corruption, and this makes it easier to buy needed information. That's harder to do in London (the center of the maritime insurance industry, and where much information on where the most valuable ships is found). British police have detected some efforts to obtain information for pirates, and believe these efforts are becoming more intense.
As the pirates obtained more information on the best targets, they equipped their mother ships with GPS, radar and satellite phones. Thus the mother ships can be directed to interception courses with targets, so the speed boats towed, or carried, by the mother ships can attack the ships at night, and capture them. The pirate intelligence effort also seeks to find out what kind of security the target ships have. Ships with armed security teams on board are avoided, which is why more ships are carrying that kind of protection.
The pirates also seek information on shipping company security developments in general, in order to stay one jump ahead. This includes equipping pirate boarding parties with explosives and welding equipment to give them a chance of breaking into safe rooms that many ships equip themselves with. If the crew can get to the fortified safe room, after shutting down or disabling the engines and calling for help, the pirates usually leave the ship before a warship shows up. But if the pirates can break into the safe room, they have hostages that will keep the warships away.
Source: http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20110712.aspx
BORDER DISORDER
Catastrophe And The Cartel Wars (back)
July 11, 2011
The UN is once again weighing in on Mexico’s Cartel War. Though the government puts the figure at around 35,000 dead, several non-governmental organization claims that close to 40,000 people have died since the Cartel War began in December 2006. UN humans rights officials are focusing on the number of migrants that have been slain by the cartels. The migrants (most of them from Central American countries) have been murdered and kidnapped by the drug cartels. However, the UN is also alleging that Mexican military and police forces have also committed human rights violations during the course of the war. The key allegation is the use of torture by police in order to extract confessions from criminal suspects.
July 9, 2011: Twenty people were slain in a gun battle in the city of Monterrey. It began when cartel gunmen entered a bar in the city and started firing on the patrons.
July 8, 2011: Mexican prosecutors convicted four men in the murders of 15 young people who were attending a birthday party in Ciudad Juarez in January 2010.
Federal police engaged in a series of firefights with cartel gunmen in Michoacan state (western Mexico). The main battle took place in the town of Apatzingan, where four cartel gunmen died in the battle and three police were wounded. The four gunmen belonged to the Knights Templar (Los Caballeros Templarios) faction of La Familia cartel. The recent increase in violence in Michoacan caused the government to send in another 1,800 police over the weekend, along with four helicopters.
July 7, 2011: The US recession has resulted in a significant drop in illegal immigration from Mexico. Just how significant is unclear, though some analysts estimate the 2011 figure will be very low. One academic analyst reported that 2011 may witness a slight outward migration of illegals (ie, they are returning to Mexico). Everyone agrees that accurate numbers are tough since illegal aliens are, well, illegal.
July 4, 2011: Mexican federal police arrested a senior commander in Los Zetas drug cartel. Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar is currently the third-ranking commander in Los Zetas. He is also regarded as one of the founders of the organization. Rejon at one time served in a Mexican Army airborne special forces unit.
July 3, 2011: The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate won the governor’s race in Mexico state (south central Mexico). The PRI candidate won 62 percent of the vote. The Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD, left-wing party) finished second and the National Action Party (PAN, center right) candidate finished third. Mexican political analysts are arguing that the victory could signal a PRI comeback in the 2012 presidential election. Until 2000, when the PAN candidate won, the PRI had held the Mexican presidency for 71 years. During that period the PRI became synonymous with institutionalized corruption.
June 30, 2011: The American government reported that more and more Mexican heroin is showing up in the US. Gangs with ties to Mexican cartels are selling Mexican heroin in mid-western states (there was a major bust recently in Ohio), mid-Atlantic states, and Georgia. For several years Mexican-produced heroin has been showing up in Texas and California. US drug enforcement agencies estimate that Mexico produces around seven percent of the world’s heroin, and most of that is sold in the US.
June 28, 2011: Mexico’s President announced that his administration had done the right thing in launching the Cartel War. Because of that decision, 21 of the top 37 drug lords in Mexico have been taken into custody. The president is under intense criticism for the violence afflicting the country, though much of the violence comes from drug gangs fighting each other for control of territory. President Calderon has advocated a systemic approach to modernizing Mexico. Fighting political and judicial corruption is a key plank in his modernization policy.
June 25, 2011: Mexican Army soldiers discovered several graves on a ranch in Nuevo Leon state (a state bordering Texas). Investigator have so far found the remains of 11 murdered people. The investigators said several of the bodies were burned in barrels before being tossed in the graves.
Officials in Guerrero state (western Mexico) reported that five people were murdered in the city of Acapulco in what the police believe are drug gang related violence.
June 24, 2011: The government said that it will send some 3000 additional Mexican Army soldiers to Tamaulipas state to aid in operations against corrupt local police.
June 22, 2011: Mexican federal police arrested a senior commander (Jose de Jesus Mendez, also known as El Chango) in the main faction of La Familia drug cartel. The arrest took place in Aguascalientes state and prosecutors claimed that the arrest of Mendez severely damaged cartel leadership. Mendez is regarded as a master planner. He also orchestrated violent attacks that mimicked Los Zetas operations. In fact, some of Mendez’ attacks were incorrectly attributed to Los Zetas. La Familia has two major factions, the faction Mendez belongs to and the so-called Knights Templar faction.
June 21, 2011: Mexican police have launched a coordinated nation-wide operation against every day crime. The operation began in mid-June. All 31 states were involved in the operation (codenamed CONAGO 1), as well as the Federal District where Mexico City is located. 22,000 police were involved. Government officials said the operation was directed at street theft and car thefts. These are crimes that affect many Mexican people. The people often argue that the police are corrupt and do not care about crimes. Police reported that in the first days of the operation over 3,300 criminal suspects were arrested and 1,122 stolen cars were recovered.
Source: http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/mexico/articles/20110711.aspx
'Gunwalker' Deepens: Agent Zapata Killed By Gun From...Texas? (back)
July 12, 2011
by Bob Owens
On February 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were returning to Mexico City, where they were assigned after a meeting, when they were ambushed by members of the Zetas cartel on a highway near San Luis Potosi.
Agent Avila was lucky. While seriously wounded in the attack he managed to survive, and is on the long road to recovery back in the United States. Agent Zapata died as a result of the ambush, and it was determined that he was killed with a weapon smuggled across the U.S. border.
A week after the ambush Julian Zapata Espinoza, aka 'El Piolin,' was captured and confessed [1] to the shooting, saying that the Zetas mistook the ICE Chevrolet Suburban for a vehicle driven by a rival cartel. Curiously, that confession does not match the facts [2] as related by Agent Avila, which indicated the cartel knew exactly who they were attacking. It seems unlikely that the cartel gunners could have missed seeing the U.S. government diplomatic plates as they overtook the vehicle from behind and rammed it off the side of the road.
Regardless of the other details of the ambush, what is known is that these two agents were shot at point-blank range by a gunman armed with a weapon that had been purchased in a gun store in the United States. Agent Zapata’s death is commonly accepted as the second U.S. fatality related to 'Operation Fast and Furious.'
But that isn’t entirely true.
The weapon used to shoot these agents was not sold in the Phoenix, Arizona, area that was the hub of Operation 'Fast and Furious,' also known as Gunwalker, which allowed gunrunners to acquire the gun that was used to murder Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December. Instead, one of the weapons used to shoot these two ICE agents came from Lancaster, Texas [3], a suburb of Dallas.
Brothers Otilio and Ranferi Osorio and their neighbor Kevin Morrison were arrested in Texas after Zapata’s death, but only after ATF and DEA agents had organized a transfer [4] of some 40 weapons in November. It was one of those rifles that was traced back to Agent Zapata’s murder.
Senator Charles Grassley noted that these three men had actually been stopped by local police after the transfers took place, but they were not arrested — presumably on orders from the Department of Justice.
The men were trailed as part of a multi-agency operation similar to Fast and Furious, that to date has not been named, in the Dallas Field Operations area [5], which encompasses southwest Texas, north Texas, and Oklahoma.
This is in addition to considerable circumstantial evidence [6] that the Houston Field Operations area [5], which is made up of central and southeastern Texas, may have been responsible for shipping a large percentage of the recovered guns linked to Mexican cartels in central and southern Mexico. How large is the alleged Houston operation? It could possibly dwarf the Arizona operation now so infamously known as the source of the weapons recovered at Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder.
On March 3, Senator Grassley sent a letter to Kenneth Melson, the acting director of the ATF, 'concerned that the ATF may have employed the same risky strategy of encouraging weapons trafficking that was employed elsewhere by the ATF, beyond the Phoenix Field Office and its Operation ‘Fast and Furious.’'
Melson and the ATF never answered, prompting a follow-up letter on March 28, in which he revealed that the Department of Justice knew Otilio and Ranferi Osorio and Kevin Morrison were straw purchasers of cartel weapons as early as August 7, 2010, 193 days before Agents Avila and Zapata were murdered with a 'walked' Texas gun.
In addition to the allegations of 'Fast and Furious' type operations in both Texas Field Operations areas and the Fast and Furious operation itself in Arizona, there are sources reporting to Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea that another operation, codenamed 'Castaway,' may have run as many as a thousand guns to MS-13 in Honduras from the Tampa Field Operations area, and that field agents are itching to testify [7].
'Fast and Furious' in Arizona, 'Castaway' in Florida, unnamed operations in both the Dallas and Houston Field Operations areas — how many operations like 'Fast and Furious' were run concurrently by the ATF, FBI, DOJ, IRS, DEA, and DHS?
Are the confirmed operation in Arizona and the three suspected operations in Texas and Florida just the tip of a wider conspiracy run across the entire southern border?
Just how many individual operations are there in what appears to be a multi-jurisduction, multi-state Gunwalker scandal, which perverted the largely successful Gunrunner program launched in cooperation with Mexico under the previous administration?
What was the ultimate goal of these projects? Was it a cynical and criminal enterprise to manufacture cartel-linked murders in order to generate domestic support for harsh gun control measures — like that issued by fiat [8] by the Obama administration yesterday?
According to Mexican authorities, Gunwalker is allegedly responsible for contributing to hundreds of murders. As Congress digs to expose the roots of the scandal, the Obama Justice Department digs in, exuding the tell-tale signs of a cover-up: firing whistleblowers, manufacturing scapegoats, and manipulating witnesses [9].
By any objective measure, how is Gunwalker not a bigger scandal than Watergate or Iran-Contra?
Unfortunately for the Obama administration and the appointed officials that appear to be at the heart of this scandal, discovery seems to be outpacing the ability of the government to cover up their actions.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: URLs in this post:
[1] captured and confessed: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/02/24/ice-agent-jamie-zapatas-alleged-killer-confesses-mexican-army-error/
[2] match the facts: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41621249/ns/world_news-americas/t/drug-gang-shot-us-agents-mexican-governor-says/
[3] Lancaster, Texas: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361684/Gun-used-kill-immigration-agent-Jaime-Zapata-traced-to-U-S.html
[4] organized a transfer: http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/04/lancaster-trio-pleads-not-guil.html
[5] Dallas Field Operations area: http://www.nibin.gov/contact/field-operations-map.html
[6] considerable circumstantial evidence: http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2011/07/texas-guns-mexican-murders-an-interactive-map-of-gun-purchases-and-cartel-killings/
[7] itching to testify: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/07/sipsey-street-exclusive-more.html
[8] issued by fiat: http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/8189-obama-uses-executive-order-to-pass-border-states-gun-restrictions
[9] manipulating witnesses: http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/12/grassley-issa-slam-holder-again-are-you-skewing-witnesses-with-access-to-fast-and-furious-background-information/
Source: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/%e2%80%98gunwalker%e2%80%99-d eepens-agent-zapata-killed-by-gun-from-%e2%80%a6-texas/
Obama Threatens Gun Owners in Border States (back)
July 13, 2011
by Jim Kouri
In the midst of a growing scandal in Obama administration -- especially within the Justice Department and the office of Attorney General Eric Holder -- regarding an Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation that turned into a fiasco, President Barack Obama is threatening to violate U.S. citizen's Fourth Amendment rights to own firearms for self-defense and sport.
Obama is expected to issue an executive order making it more difficult for citizens living in states such as Texas, Arizona and New Mexico to legally buy firearms.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) on Monday criticized the Obama administration’s decision to impose these new reporting requirements for gun sales in states along the U.S.-Mexico Border.
'Today’s announcement follows months of controversy over the ATF’s Fast and Furious program that allowed guns to be trafficked into Mexico without any way of preventing the guns from being used for illegal activity. One of the guns was used in the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. It is the height of hypocrisy for the Obama administration to restrict the gun rights of border state citizens, when the administration itself knowingly and intentionally allowed guns to be trafficked into Mexico,' said Rep. Smith.
'Limiting the second amendment rights of law abiding citizens is not going to solve the problem of guns being trafficked into Mexico. An additional reporting requirement won’t stop drug cartels from getting weapons. This rule unfairly punishes citizens in Border States who have the right to purchase firearms to protect themselves and their families from dangerous drug traffickers and human smugglers,' the lawmaker added.
A recent report by the Government Accountability Office revealed that only 44% of the Southwest border is under operational control of the U.S. Border Patrol.
'Forty-four percent is a failing grade. If the Obama administration is serious about preventing guns from being trafficked to Mexico, they simply need to secure the Southwest border, not restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens,' stated Chairman Smith.
While President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder denied knowledge of Operation Fast & Furious, according to law enforcement sources, the rationale for the operation that went awry was that Attorney General Holder and his staff at the Justice Department wanted to show proof of his, and other Obama administration officials', statements that the majority of firearms used by Mexican drug cartels originated in the United States and are smuggled into that drug war-torn country.
In addition, investigation into this and other actions by President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano show that they knowingly distort figures to hide from federal lawmakers, state political leaders, and the American people the rampant corruption in this nation’s immigration court system as well, according to Beltway watchdog group Judicial Watch.
Source: http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/obama-threat ens-gun-owners-border-states-1
MIDDLE EAST
Arabic Dreams of Turkish Ways (back)
July 11, 2011
by Ozge Sayginer
Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited Benghazi last week, where the Libyan opposition is getting stronger every day. Davutoglu was welcomed, as any other AKP official in a Muslim country, and the crowd cheered for him holding interesting posters with the words, 'Thank you Erdogan, Turkey and Islam' written on them. Davutoglu was pleased.
This is not surprising given the new, stronger identity of the AKP party in the region. The AKP is becoming the protector of the 'Muslim and the fallen' more than ever following the Arab Spring. Turkey looks more Muslim, and appears much closer to Islamic governments. The good news is, the AKP does represent a middle ground based on democratic rule, secularism and economic power. Almost every other Middle Eastern dream is already alive in Turkey. And they welcome the AKP for bringing back Islam while keeping the modern Turkish identity.
This may look appealing to other Muslims of the world; however, can everyone adopt a Turkish way of governing? Let’s say it would require a couple of decades and Ataturk-like leaders.
1) Turkey has strategic importance that many other Middle Eastern nations do not have. This is where Turkish economic power is rooted and Erdogan has been using this as an advantage in his geopolitics.
2) Since the 1920s, Turkey has 'tasted' Western lifestyle and ideologies; though the AKP brings back the Islamic roots of the nation, it can only go so far in changing citizens’ life styles, at least in a democratic setting. Other Islamic nations, which still hold very conservative ideologies of Islam, may not welcome this much needed modernization. They will need well-educated leaders who are dedicated and brave enough to bring strict rules for modernization. There is no room for opportunists with radical Islamic agendas. We certainly don’t need another Iran.
3) Each of the struggling Middle Eastern nations have their own unique problems that will require unique solutions. Just like Turkey’s PKK politics, Libya, Yemen and Palestine need to identify who is who and who is working for what agenda in their own systems.
In their new term, the AKP identified its biggest roles as democratizing Turkey, bringing peace to the southeast, and representing a role model to other Muslim nations. So far, democratizing Turkey has led to further arrests of members of the military and very valuable journalists. The PKK just kidnapped and killed more than 9 soldiers in Tunceli and Diyarbakir. However, the party does succeed in its aspiration to be a role model for others. I think Turkish fire may look appealing to the people of Benghazi, but once it gets closer they might find it also burns. I would like to believe in the honesty of the AKP’s goals after the new election, but first they need to give up their phobia of military coups and writers with a mind of their own.
Source: http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2011/07/11/arabic-dreams-turkish-ways/
Morocco's Constitutional Referendum for Dummies (back)
July 13, 2011
You may have noticed that Morocco held a constitutional referendum on Friday, July 1, on the new constitution drafted by a royal appointed commission, and on the final text of which the King had the final cut â€' he reportedly tightened the provisions on freedom of religion (freedom of conscience, allowing for apostasy and conversion from Islam, was thus skipped) and deleted a provision forbidding ministers to have commercial activities. The probably most lasting innovation of this constitution, the recognition of tamazight, the Berber language, was also subject to last-minute modification, with provisions on the possibility of regions to recognise tamazight as a parallel official language scrapped in favour of a general but vaguer and more progressive status as official language across the whole country.
The February 20 protest movement had contested the constitutional revision process, which came as a reaction to its calls for a democratic political system: the royal commission set up on March 10 was led by a monarchist (and formerly socialist) stalwart, professor Abdeltif Menouni. The fifteen or so other members of that commission, while worthy academics, were all in the same mould, royalist moderates unlikely to rock the boat. No independent leftist or islamist personality was appointed to the commission, and only two of its members, renowned political scientist Mohamed Tozy and head of left-of-centre human rights NGO OMDH Amina Bouaiyache, had a reputation as independents â€' a reputation badly damaged now by their participation…
As though this wasn’t enough, the Palace set up a political follow-up committee headed by royal advisor (and formerly constitutional law professor) Mohamed Moatassime, in order â€' officially â€' to act as a communication channel between the Menouni commission and the political parties and â€' unofficially â€' to keep a close eye on what the commission might be up to, especially in the sensitive fields touching on royal prerogative and the place of Islam. The leader of islamist PJD, Abdelilah Benkirane, together with PJD hotheaded lawyer Mustapha Ramid (known to sympathise to some extent with the Februrary 20 movement) thus weighed in heavily against any recognition of freedom of conscience (as opposed to freedom of religion) in meetings with Moatassime.
While the commission heard representatives of political parties, trade unions, NGOs and even bloggers, individuals and political groupings (islamist Al adl wal ihsan and leftist Nahj addimoqrati, PSU, PADS and CNI, leftist trade-union CDT, militant human rights NGO AMDH) close to the February 20 movement refused to appear before it. They rightly insisted that the only democratic way of revising Morocco’s constitution was to hold elections to a constituent assembly, like the Tunisians plan to do on October 23.
The Menouni commission worked behind closed doors: none of its working sessions was held in public, no drafts or discussion papers were made public, neither do we know whether the commission was unanimous, what articles caused most internal debate or â€' more importantly â€' what provisions of its final draft were discarded or modified by the King (we know through the press that provisions on freedom of conscience and prohibiting conflict of interest with ministers were scrapped on the King’s say-so). Nothing has been said about whether the inner workings of the commission would be archived and eventually made public â€' the average Moroccan voter had to accept or reject the proposed constitution without any information on the debates that surrounded its drafting
After more than three months of internal and secretive debates, the commission adopted a draft (unanimously or not, we do not know yet) that was submitted to the King. Parliamentary parties and trade-unions (trade-unions hold seats in Morocco’s upper chamber of Parliament, the House of councillors) were given 24 hours to comment, and final cuts were made ultimately by the King, who went on air on Friday June 17 to present the draft constitution and resolutely ask for a «yes» vote, thus ironically stepping outside of his «umpire» role as set out in article 42 of the new constitution. Saying he would personally vote «yes» and calling on his subjects to do so as well, he concluded his speech by the following Quranic verse (see an English translation of this speech here):
“Say: ‘This is my way: I do invite unto Allah,- on evidence clear as the seeing with one’s eyes,- I and whoever follows me’.â€
The Word of God is Truth.
A not altogether unreasonable reading of that verse would be that those who do not vote «yes» would be refusing the path and word of God…
The referendum campaign started in style: while the official campaign was legally due to start only on Tuesday June 21, the «yes» campaign took over the waves of public radio and TV channels as soon as the King finished his speech on June 17. Allegedly spontaneous demonstrations of support for the new constitution took place almost simultaneously, with videos showing that demonstrators asked to get their payment in advance. Unlike other countries, where the «yes» and «no» campaigns would get an equal airing on public airwaves, the campaigning airtime in Morocco is divided among recognised parties and trade-unions â€' as the overwhelming majority of them support the draft constitution, about 95% of the airwaves were pro-»yes».
Protest marches on the 18th, 25th and 30th were marred by the now well-known use of Moubarak-style beltaji (or beltagui as Egyptians would say, referring to government-controlled thugs), often armed and always aggressive. Omar Radi, journalist and February 20 militant, had already been threatened to death by beltajis in Rabat in May. This time round, well-known human rights militants Samira Kinani and Abdelhamid Amine have been particularly targeted, with Amine reporting several death threats. On June 30 in Rabat, the last day of the referendum campaign, February 20 protesters were beaten up by beltajis, who pursued their victims right to the hospital.
The instrumentalisation of Islam has seldom been so blatant in Moroccan politics: Morocco’s most influential sufi order, the Tariqa Boutchichiya Kadiriya, led by Si Hamza el Kadiri Boutchichi, has usually steered clear of partisan politics (but it hasn’t refused the favours bestowed upon it by the Palace, which appointed Si Hamza’s son Ahmed as governor of Berkane a few years ago). This time, it lent itself to a staged pro-constitution march in Casablanca on June 19, as a way for the regime to counter-balance the presence of its bête noire â€' Al adl wal ihsan, probably Morocco’s most popular Islamist movement â€' among the ranks of the February 20-movement.
More was to come though: Morocco’s ministry of Habous and Islamic affairs drafted the khotba to be read in all Morocco’s mosques on Friday June 24, which unashamedly called on the believers to vote «yes» (pro-February 20 website mamfakinch.com was able to publish the text of that khotba), and some imams were caught on tape doing just that.
Those who thought that the days of vote-rigging â€' as epitomised by Hassan II’s longest serving interior minister Driss Basri â€' were to be sorely disappointed. Having the official campaign heavily skewed towards the «yes» wasn’t sufficient: with opponents to the proposed reform opting for a boycott (a boycott is the default option for opposition parties in Morocco’s constitutional referendums, and very seldom have opposition parties called for a «no»), the participation rate, and not the no-vote, was to be the main indicator of success.
To make sure the participation rate would be acceptable, no shortcuts were shunned. Astonishingly enough for a country with positive demographics, the number of registered voters actually fell by one million and a half between the 2007 parliamentary elections and this referendum â€' and this, despite of military and security personnel being allowed to vote (they are barred to vote in elections). Furthermore, in flagrant violation of the electoral code, the authorities decided to allow Moroccans residing abroad to vote even if they weren’t registered at the embassy or consulate at their country of residence.
The irregularities have been many, right up to the counting of votes, as documented by independent Moroccan election observers. While some witnessed having been handed more than one voting card, other voters witnessed voting stations where «no» ballots were missing or where there was no voting booth. Many have reported sloppy voter identification procedures â€' IDs and/or voting cards not checked. Generally speaking, most independent observers have noticed a sizeable difference between the relatively high participation rate and the low numbers of voters actually present at voting stations â€' the only reports of a high turnout were those in public media.
The official referendum results are well within the range of results previously reported under Morocco’s long history of rigged elections â€' under the infamous former interior minister Driss Basri (who served from 1974 to 1999), the range was between 96% and 99,96% â€' and a lower participation rate than this year’s 73,5% had been registered in 1995. Conventional wisdom has it that voters in a referendum do not take a stand on the question being asked but rather on the person who’s asking it. This holds especially true in Morocco, where referenda are invariably seen as a ritual of allegiance towards the King â€' official media for example ritually report participation rates in the disputed Sahara region as a sign of «renewed allegiance» by Sahrawis to the Alawi throne.
By and large, this referendum has been in the same mould as the previous sham referenda held under Hassan II. Continuity trumped change yet again, most strikingly in the area of public propaganda, while the use of Egyptian-style «baltajiya» â€' here attacking a leftist meeting in Casablanca on July 6 â€' is a novelty the country could have done without.
Protests have continued since the referendum, which will not have solved the problems facing Morocco â€' the Sahara question (the provisions on regionalisation in the new Constitution are astonishingly timid), corruption, lack of civil liberties, inept judiciary and stark social inequalities. No wonder that protests continued, on July 3 and July 10 â€' as Montassir Sakhi, one of the leaders of the movement said after the referendum, «the referendum is a non-event». The King might have gotten his referendum and his Constitution, but politics as usual it certainly isn’t â€' not any longer, thanks to the February 20 movement.
Source: http://www.kabobfest.com/2011/07/moroccos-constitutional-refer endum-for-dummies.html
Muslim Brotherhood Challenges Jordan's King (back)
July 13, 2011
by David E. Miller
Upcoming demonstrations may usher in new, harsher phase of protests; Brotherhood may increase rhetoric on regime overthrow, says journalist.
As it prepares for a large-scale demonstration on July 15, Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood has stepped up its criticism of King Abdullah II’s monarchy, going so far as to risk breaking the law by questioning its legitimacy.
'Any authority that does not rely on the people does not represent it nor does it express its interests,' declared the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Brotherhood's political wing, in a press statement issued Tuesday. Since March, the Brotherhood has vociferously criticized the government's snail-pace political reforms, organizing weekly demonstrations throughout the kingdom.
Friday's demonstration may be different, experts say. Organizers plan an open-ended sit-in in Amman's Gamal Abd Al-Nasser Square, where a previous demonstration organized by a youth coalition on March 25 was violently dispersed by government security forces and pro-monarchy thugs. One man was killed and dozens injured as pro-monarchists hurled stones at opposition demonstrators.
'An open ended sit-in would mean a scenario similar to Tahrir Square in Cairo,' Assaf David, a Jordan expert at Jerusalem's Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, told The Media Line. 'The regime's big fear is that more and more people will join the demonstration and things will get out of hand.'
Abdullah, a key US ally in the region, has failed to snuff out protests and other political activity that has surfaced this year and grown bigger and increasingly critical of his rule in recent weeks. He has promised reforms and has re-shuffled his cabinet twice, most recently last week, but protesters have been encouraged by their Arab Spring peers across the region and by revelations of corruption in the government.
Like mass protests elsewhere in the Middle East this year, young, mostly secular figures mobilized through social media have been leading the way. But the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was formed in 1942, is the kingdom's largest and most organized opposition group and its decision to up the stakes poses a bigger threat to the king.
Fahed Khitan, a political columnist with the independent Jordanian daily Al-Arab Al-Yawm, said the crowd's size scared the government less than its chants. 'It‘s not unlikely that the demonstrators will raise the famous banner of Arab revolutions: 'The people want the regime to fall',' he wrote on Tuesday, adding that such calls would lead Jordan to a disastrous civil war.
The Brotherhood's growing assertiveness was made clear in an interview given by Zaki Bani Arshid, a senior member, to the Qatari daily Al-Shourouq on Sunday. Bani Arshid told the newspaper that his movement was leading the popular mobilization against the government of Jordanian Prime Minster Maaruouf Al-Bakhit. The Brotherhood has refused to participate in the national dialogue initiated by the king in March to appease the opposition movement.
'The majority of Jordanian society is religious and believes that those who raise the banner of Islam should be trusted,' Bani Arshid told Al-Shourouq.
The Brotherhood is quite popular on the Jordanian street, said Fatima Al-Smadi, a journalism professor at Zarka University and columnist for Al-Arab Al-Yawm. She said the group's power was recently boosted by an American announcement that the administration would engage Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the Jordanian movement’s parent organization.
An expected rise in gasoline prices would also push the average Jordanian away from the government and towards the opposition, she added.
'The Muslim Brotherhood is the best organized opposition group, and the most capable of mobilizing the street,' Al-Smadi told The Media Line. 'The government's reaction to Friday's demonstration will determine whether the situation will escalate further.'
But Al-Smadi said it was all but inevitable that the government and Brotherhood are headed for conflict in the coming days.
'They demand a just election law, which hasn't materialized so far,' she said. 'Over the past few months the Brotherhood has gauged the government and come to realize that it wasn't serious about reforms.'
On July 2, Al-Bakhit reshuffled his cabinet, replacing nine ministers, including the minister of interior, in the wake of a corruption scandal. But the prime minister kept his job and in the weekly demonstration the following Friday, protesters clearly said that wasn’t enough.
David of the Truman Institute said Friday's demonstrators may call for the resignation of Bakhit's government and even the dissolution of parliament, but would likely not call for the king to step down. Criticism of the King and the royal family is illegal in Jordan.
But Al-Smadi said calls to topple the regime were already heard, albeit limitedly, during demonstrations in southern Jordan last Friday. She said the Muslim Brotherhood is capable of fanning the flames or extinguishing them at will.
'It depends on the Islamists,' she said. 'They can raise the rhetoric to that level.'
Source:
CYBER ACTIVITY
al-Qaeda Plotting Internet Jihad (back)
July 13, 2011
London - Al Qaeda is plotting a jihad on the internet against Britain and the West, and has launched teams to target key computer systems, officials said.
Terrorists have even tried to invade Facebook in their 'campaign of electronic warfare', The Sun reported.
The Google Earth and Street View applications are being used by the terrorists to plan out atrocities, it said.
Security officials in Britain say cyber terrorism will become an ever growing threat.
A 123-page counter-terror report said a special unit - called the Tariq bin Ziyad Brigades for Electronic Jihad - attacked computers last year.
'Since the death of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda has called not only for acts of lone or individual terrorism but also for cyber jihad,' it said.
Experts now say there are thousands of terrorist-related websites, and a 'few dozen are highly influential' and frequented by terrorists.
'Use of social network sites and video sharing is now commonplace. There have been a number of attempts by terrorist and extremist groups to invade Facebook,' it said.
Source: http://www.newkerala.com/news/2011/worldnews-26938.html
Jihadi Sites Focusing on CIA sites in Somalia (back)
July 13, 2011
Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishu's Aden Adde International Airport is a sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport. The site, which airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access. At the facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted “combat†operations against members of Al Shabab, an Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda. As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu. While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu. Among the sources who provided information for this story are senior Somali intelligence officials; senior members of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG); former prisoners held at the underground prison; and several well-connected Somali analysts and militia leaders, some of whom have worked with US agents, including those from the CIA. A US official, who confirmed the existence of both sites, told The Nation, “It makes complete sense to have a strong counterterrorism partnership†with the Somali government.
The CIA presence in Mogadishu is part of Washington’s intensifying counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations. The US agents “are here full time,†a senior Somali intelligence official told me. At times, he said, there are as many as thirty of them in Mogadishu, but he stressed that those working with the Somali NSA do not conduct operations; rather, they advise and train Somali agents. “In this environment, it’s very tricky. They want to help us, but the situation is not allowing them to do [it] however they want. They are not in control of the politics, they are not in control of the security,†he adds. “They are not controlling the environment like Afghanistan and Iraq. In Somalia, the situation is fluid, the situation is changing, personalities changing.â€
According to well-connected Somali sources, the CIA is reluctant to deal directly with Somali political leaders, who are regarded by US officials as corrupt and untrustworthy. Instead, the United States has Somali intelligence agents on its payroll. Somali sources with knowledge of the program described the agents as lining up to receive $200 monthly cash payments from Americans. “They support us in a big way financially,†says the senior Somali intelligence official. “They are the largest [funder] by far.â€
According to former detainees, the underground prison, which is staffed by Somali guards, consists of a long corridor lined with filthy small cells infested with bedbugs and mosquitoes. One said that when he arrived in February, he saw two white men wearing military boots, combat trousers, gray tucked-in shirts and black sunglasses. The former prisoners described the cells as windowless and the air thick, moist and disgusting. Prisoners, they said, are not allowed outside. Many have developed rashes and scratch themselves incessantly. Some have been detained for a year or more. According to one former prisoner, inmates who had been there for long periods would pace around constantly, while others leaned against walls rocking.
A Somali who was arrested in Mogadishu and taken to the prison told The Nation that he was held in a windowless underground cell. Among the prisoners he met during his time there was a man who held a Western passport (he declined to identify the man’s nationality). Some of the prisoners told him they were picked up in Nairobi and rendered on small aircraft to Mogadishu, where they were handed over to Somali intelligence agents. Once in custody, according to the senior Somali intelligence official and former prisoners, some detainees are freely interrogated by US and French agents. “Our goal is to please our partners, so we get more [out] of them, like any relationship,†said the Somali intelligence official in describing the policy of allowing foreign agents, including from the CIA, to interrogate prisoners. The Americans, according to the Somali official, operate unilaterally in the country, while the French agents are embedded within the African Union force known as AMISOM.
Among the men believed to be held in the secret underground prison is Ahmed Abdullahi Hassan, a 25- or 26-year-old Kenyan citizen who disappeared from the congested Somali slum of Eastleigh in Nairobi around July 2009. After he went missing, Hassan’s family retained Mbugua Mureithi, a well-known Kenyan human rights lawyer, who filed a habeas petition on his behalf. The Kenyan government responded that Hassan was not being held in Kenya and said it had no knowledge of his whereabouts. His fate remained a mystery until this spring, when another man who had been held in the Mogadishu prison contacted Clara Gutteridge, a veteran human rights investigator with the British legal organization Reprieve, and told her he had met Hassan in the prison. Hassan, he said, had told him how Kenyan police had knocked down his door, snatched him and taken him to a secret location in Nairobi. The next night, Hassan had said, he was rendered to Mogadishu.
According to the former fellow prisoner, Hassan told him that his captors took him to Wilson Airport: “‘They put a bag on my head, Guantánamo style. They tied my hands behind my back and put me on a plane. In the early hours we landed in Mogadishu. The way I realized I was in Mogadishu was because of the smell of the seaâ€'the runway is just next to the seashore. The plane lands and touches the sea. They took me to this prison, where I have been up to now. I have been here for one year, seven months. I have been interrogated so many times. Interrogated by Somali men and white men. Every day. New faces show up. They have nothing on me. I have never seen a lawyer, never seen an outsider. Only other prisoners, interrogators, guards. Here there is no court or tribunal.’â€
After meeting the man who had spoken with Hassan in the underground prison, Gutteridge began working with Hassan’s Kenyan lawyers to determine his whereabouts. She says he has never been charged or brought before a court. “Hassan’s abduction from Nairobi and rendition to a secret prison in Somalia bears all the hallmarks of a classic US rendition operation,†she says. The US official interviewed for this article denied the CIA had rendered Hassan but said, “The United States provided information which helped get Hassanâ€'a dangerous terroristâ€'off the street.†Human Rights Watch and Reprieve have documented that Kenyan security and intelligence forces have facilitated scores of renditions for the US and other governments, including eighty-five people rendered to Somalia in 2007 alone. Gutteridge says the director of the Mogadishu prison told one of her sources that Hassan had been targeted in Nairobi because of intelligence suggesting he was the “right-hand man†of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, at the time a leader of Al Qaeda in East Africa. Nabhan, a Kenyan citizen of Yemeni descent, was among the top suspects sought for questioning by US authorities over his alleged role in the coordinated 2002 attacks on a tourist hotel and an Israeli aircraft in Mombasa, Kenya, and possible links to the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
An intelligence report leaked by the Kenyan Anti-Terrorist Police Unit in October 2010 alleged that Hassan, a “former personal assistant to Nabhan…was injured while fighting near the presidential palace in Mogadishu in 2009.†The authenticity of the report cannot be independently confirmed, though Hassan did have a leg amputated below the knee, according to his former fellow prisoner in Mogadishu.
Two months after Hassan was allegedly rendered to the secret Mogadishu prison, Nabhan, the man believed to be his Al Qaeda boss, was killed in the first known targeted killing operation in Somalia authorized by President Obama. On September 14, 2009, a team from the elite US counterterrorism force, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), took off by helicopters from a US Navy ship off Somalia’s coast and penetrated Somali airspace. In broad daylight, in an operation code-named Celestial Balance, they gunned down Nabhan’s convoy from the air. JSOC troops then landed and collected at least two of the bodies, including Nabhan’s.
Hassan’s lawyers are preparing to file a habeas petition on his behalf in US courts. “Hassan’s case suggests that the US may be involved in a decentralized, out-sourced Guantánamo Bay in central Mogadishu,†his legal team asserted in a statement to The Nation. “Mr. Hassan must be given the opportunity to challenge both his rendition and continued detention as a matter of urgency. The US must urgently confirm exactly what has been done to Mr. Hassan, why he is being held, and when he will be given a fair hearing.â€
Gutteridge, who has worked extensively tracking the disappearances of terror suspects in Kenya, was deported from Kenya on May 11. The order, signed by Immigration Minister Otieno Kagwang, said Gutteridge’s “presence in Kenya is contrary to national interest.
The underground prison where Hassan is allegedly being held is housed in the same building once occupied by Somalia’s infamous National Security Service (NSS) during the military regime of Siad Barre, who ruled from 1969 to 1991. The former prisoner who met Hassan there said he saw an old NSS sign outside. During Barre’s regime, the notorious basement prison and interrogation center, which sits behind the presidential palace in Mogadishu, was a staple of the state’s apparatus of repression. It was referred to as Godka, “The Hole.
“The bunker is there, and that’s where the intelligence agency does interrogate people,†says Abdirahman “Aynte†Ali, a well-connected Somali analyst who has researched the Shabab and Somali security forces. “When CIA and other intelligence agenciesâ€'who actually are in Mogadishuâ€'want to interrogate those people, they usually just do that.†Somali officials “start the interrogation, but then foreign intelligence agencies eventually do their own interrogation as well, the Americans and the French.
Some prisoners, like Hassan, were allegedly rendered from Nairobi, while in other cases, according to Aynte, “the US and other intelligence agencies have notified the Somali intelligence agency that some people, some suspects, people who have been in contact with the leadership of Al Shabab, are on their way to Mogadishu on a [commercial] plane, and to essentially be at the airport for those people. Catch them, interrogate them.
In the eighteen years since the infamous “Black Hawk Down†incident in Mogadishu, US policy on Somalia has been marked by neglect, miscalculation and failed attempts to use warlords to build indigenous counterterrorism capacity, many of which have backfired dramatically. At times, largely because of abuses committed by Somali militias the CIA has supported, US policy has strengthened the hand of the very groups it purports to oppose and inadvertently aided the rise of militant groups, including the Shabab. Many Somalis viewed the Islamic movement known as the Islamic Courts Union, which defeated the CIA’s warlords in Mogadishu in 2006, as a stabilizing, albeit ruthless, force. The ICU was dismantled in a US-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2007. Over the years, a series of weak Somali administrations have been recognized by the United States and other powers as Somalia’s legitimate government. Ironically, its current president is a former leader of the ICU.
Today, Somali government forces control roughly thirty square miles of territory in Mogadishu thanks in large part to the US-funded and -armed 9,000-member AMISOM force. Much of the rest of the city is under the control of the Shabab or warlords. Outgunned, the Shabab has increasingly relied on the linchpins of asymmetric warfareâ€'suicide bombings, roadside bombs and targeted assassinations. The militant group has repeatedly shown that it can strike deep in the heart of its enemies’ territory. On June 9, in one of its most spectacular suicide attacks to date, the Shabab assassinated the Somali government’s minister of interior affairs and national security, Abdishakur Sheikh Hassan Farah, who was attacked in his residence by his niece. The girl, whom the minister was putting through university, blew herself up and fatally wounded her uncle. He died hours later in the hospital. Farah was the fifth Somali minister killed by the Shabab in the past two years and the seventeenth official assassinated since 2006. Among the suicide bombers the Shabab has deployed were at least three US citizens of Somali descent; at least seven other Americans have died fighting alongside the Shabab, a fact that has not gone unnoticed in Washington or Mogadishu.
During his confirmation hearings in June to become the head of the US Special Operations Command, Vice Admiral William McRaven said, “From my standpoint as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard†at Somalia. McRaven said that in order to expand successful “kinetic strikes†there, the United States will have to increase its use of drones as well as on-the-ground intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations. “Any expansion of manpower is going to have to come with a commensurate expansion of the enablers,†McRaven declared. The expanding US counterterrorism program in Mogadishu appears to be part of that effort.
In an interview with The Nation in Mogadishu, Abdulkadir Moallin Noor, the minister of state for the presidency, confirmed that US agents “are working with our intelligence†and “giving them training.†Regarding the US counterterrorism effort, Noor said bluntly, “We need more; otherwise, the terrorists will take over the country.
It is unclear how much control, if any, Somalia’s internationally recognized president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has over this counterterrorism force or if he is even fully briefed on its operations. The CIA personnel and other US intelligence agents “do not bother to be in touch with the political leadership of the country. And that says a lot about the intentions,†says Aynte. “Essentially, the CIA seems to be operating, doing the foreign policy of the United States. You should have had State Department people doing foreign policy, but the CIA seems to be doing it across the country.
While the Somali officials interviewed for this story said the CIA is the lead US agency coordinating the Mogadishu counterterrorism program, they also indicated that US military intelligence agents are at times involved. When asked if they are from JSOC or the Defense Intelligence Agency, the senior Somali intelligence official responded, “We don’t know. They don’t tell us.
In April Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali man the United States alleged had links to the Shabab, was captured by JSOC forces in the Gulf of Aden. He was held incommunicado on a US Navy vessel for more than two months; in July he was transferred to New York and indicted on terrorism charges. Warsame’s case ignited a legal debate over the Obama administration’s policies on capturing and detaining terror suspects, particularly in light of the widening counterterrorism campaigns in Somalia and Yemen.
On June 23 the United States reportedly carried out a drone strike against alleged Shabab members near Kismayo, 300 miles from the Somali capital. As with the Nabhan operation, a JSOC team swooped in on helicopters and reportedly snatched the bodies of those killed and wounded. The men were taken to an undisclosed location. On July 6 three more US strikes reportedly targeted Shabab training camps in the same area. Somali analysts warned that if the US bombings cause civilian deaths, as they have in the past, they could increase support for the Shabab. Asked in an interview with The Nation in Mogadishu if US drone strikes strengthen or weaken his government, President Sharif replied, “Both at the same time. For our sovereignty, it’s not good to attack a sovereign country. That’s the negative part. The positive part is you’re targeting individuals who are criminals.
A week after the June 23 strike, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, described an emerging US strategy that would focus not on “deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us.†Brennan singled out the Shabab, saying, “From the territory it controls in Somalia, Al Shabab continues to call for strikes against the United States,†adding, “We cannot and we will not let down our guard. We will continue to pummel Al Qaeda and its ilk.
While the United States appears to be ratcheting up both its rhetoric and its drone strikes against the Shabab, it has thus far been able to strike only in rural areas outside Mogadishu. These operations have been isolated and infrequent, and Somali analysts say they have failed to disrupt the Shabab’s core leadership, particularly in Mogadishu.
In a series of interviews in Mogadishu, several of the country’s recognized leaders, including President Sharif, called on the US government to quickly and dramatically increase its assistance to the Somali military in the form of training, equipment and weapons. Moreover, they argue that without viable civilian institutions, Somalia will remain ripe for terrorist groups that can further destabilize not only Somalia but the region. “I believe that the US should help the Somalis to establish a government that protects civilians and its people,†Sharif said.
In the battle against the Shabab, the United States does not, in fact, appear to have cast its lot with the Somali government. The emerging US strategy on Somaliaâ€'borne out in stated policy, expanded covert presence and funding plansâ€'is two-pronged: On the one hand, the CIA is training, paying and at times directing Somali intelligence agents who are not firmly under the control of the Somali government, while JSOC conducts unilateral strikes without the prior knowledge of the government; on the other, the Pentagon is increasing its support for and arming of the counterterrorism operations of non-Somali African military forces.
A draft of a defense spending bill approved in late June by the Senate Armed Services Committee would authorize more than $75 million in US counterterrorism assistance aimed at fighting the Shabab and Al Qaeda in Somalia. The bill, however, did not authorize additional funding for Somalia’s military, as the country’s leaders have repeatedly asked. Instead, the aid package would dramatically increase US arming and financing of AMISOM’s forces, particularly from Uganda and Burundi, as well as the militaries of Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia. The Somali military, the committee asserted, is unable to “exercise control of its territory.
That makes it all the more ironic that perhaps the greatest tactical victory won in recent years in Somalia was delivered not by AMISOM, the CIA or JSOC but by members of a Somali militia fighting as part of the government’s chaotic local military. And it was a pure accident.
Late in the evening on June 7, a man whose South African passport identified him as Daniel Robinson was in the passenger seat of a Toyota SUV driving on the outskirts of Mogadishu when his driver, a Kenyan national, missed a turn and headed straight toward a checkpoint manned by Somali forces. A firefight broke out, and the two men inside the car were killed. The Somali forces promptly looted the laptops, cellphones, documents, weapons and $40,000 in cash they found in the car, according to the senior Somali intelligence official.
Upon discovering that the men were foreigners, the Somali NSA launched an investigation and recovered the items that had been looted. “There was a lot of English and Arabic stuff, papers,†recalls the Somali intelligence official, containing “very tactical stuff†that appeared to be linked to Al Qaeda, including “two senior people communicating.†The Somali agents “realized it was an important man†and informed the CIA in Mogadishu. The men’s bodies were taken to the NSA. The Americans took DNA samples and fingerprints and flew them to Nairobi for processing.
Within hours, the United States confirmed that Robinson was in fact Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a top leader of Al Qaeda in East Africa and its chief liaison with the Shabab. Fazul, a twenty-year veteran of Al Qaeda, had been indicted by the United States for his alleged role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings and was on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists†list. A JSOC attempt to kill him in a January 2007 airstrike resulted in the deaths of at least seventy nomads in rural Somalia, and he had been underground ever since. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Fazul’s death “a significant blow to Al Qaeda, its extremist allies and its operations in East Africa. It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents.â€
At its facilities in Mogadishu, the CIA and its Somali NSA agents continue to pore over the materials recovered from Fazul’s car, which served as a mobile headquarters. Some deleted and encrypted files were recovered and decoded by US agents. The senior Somali intelligence official said that the intelligence may prove more valuable on a tactical level than the cache found in Osama bin Laden’s house in Pakistan, especially in light of the increasing US focus on East Africa. The Americans, he said, were “unbelievably gratefulâ€; he hopes it means they will take Somalia’s forces more seriously and provide more support.
But the United States continues to wage its campaign against the Shabab primarily by funding the AMISOM forces, which are not conducting their mission with anything resembling surgical precision. Instead, over the past several months the AMISOM forces in Mogadishu have waged a merciless campaign of indiscriminate shelling of Shabab areas, some of which are heavily populated by civilians. While AMISOM regularly puts out press releases boasting of gains against the Shabab and the retaking of territory, the reality paints a far more complicated picture.
Throughout the areas AMISOM has retaken is a honeycomb of underground tunnels once used by Shabab fighters to move from building to building. By some accounts, the tunnels stretch continuously for miles. Leftover food, blankets and ammo cartridges lay scattered near “pop-up†positions once used by Shabab snipers and guarded by sandbagsâ€'all that remain of guerrilla warfare positions. Not only have the Shabab fighters been cleared from the aboveground areas; the civilians that once resided there have been cleared too. On several occasions in late June, AMISOM forces fired artillery from their airport base at the Bakaara market, where whole neighborhoods are totally abandoned. Houses lie in ruins and animals wander aimlessly, chewing trash. In some areas, bodies have been hastily buried in trenches with dirt barely masking the remains. On the side of the road in one former Shabab neighborhood, a decapitated corpse lay just meters from a new government checkpoint.
In late June the Pentagon approved plans to send $45 million worth of military equipment to Uganda and Burundi, the two major forces in the AMISOM operation. Among the new items are four small Raven surveillance drones, night-vision and communications equipment and other surveillance gear, all of which augur a more targeted campaign. Combined with the attempt to build an indigenous counterterrorism force at the Somali NSA, a new US counterterrorism strategy is emerging.
But according to the senior Somali intelligence official, who works directly with the US agents, the CIA-led program in Mogadishu has brought few tangible gains. “So far what we have not seen is the results in terms of the capacity of the [Somali] agency,†says the official. He conceded that neither US nor Somali forces have been able to conduct a single successful targeted mission in the Shabab’s areas in the capital. In late 2010, according to the official, US-trained Somali agents conducted an operation in a Shabab area that failed terribly and resulted in several of them being killed. “There was an attempt, but it was a haphazard one,†he recalls. They have not tried another targeted operation in Shabab-controlled territory since.
http://www.thenation.com/article/161936/cias-secret-sites-somalia
“Whoever relieves a Muslim of some distress in this world, Allah will relieve him of some distress on the Day of Resurrection.'
Source: http://www.ansar1.info/showthread.php?p=124973#post124973
HOMELAND SECURITY
Report Shows Gaping Holes in Intelligence on Overseas Terrorists (back)
July 12, 2011
by Catherine Herridge
Fox News has obtained a draft copy of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that concludes, a decade after 9/11, gaping holes remain in databases of overseas terrorists as well as in passport security.
'The system truly is as strong only as its weakest link,' Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the senior Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told Fox News after reviewing the report.
'We have spent literally billions of dollars to increase security, to make sure our watch lists are more complete, to verify documents, but in fact we have to rely to a certain extent on the systems used by other countries.'
Airports Still Vulnerable to Terror?
Report: 25,000 breaches since 2001
According to a year-long investigation by the GAO that included travel to Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand, many countries have yet to address the chronic problem of fake documents, such as birth certificates, which are a gateway to a genuine passport. Passport security is described as weak with many countries using no security features, such as biometrics, to prevent fraud.
The GAO report, first obtained by Fox News, reads in part:
'Some countries do not have their own database systems with terrorist screening information or access to other countries’ terrorist screening information to keep track of biographical and biometric information about individuals who are known or suspected terrorists. Even when countries have terrorist screening information, they may not have reciprocal relationships to share such information or other travel-related information such as airline passenger lists, with other countries, thereby limiting their ability to identify and prevent travel of known or suspected terrorists.'
The GAO report also notes widespread corruption means a wink and a nod at some foreign airports will get a suspected terrorist through security.
Pakistan was problematic for investigators. Even with Usama bin Laden's death at his compound near the capital Islamabad, the country remains the base for Al Qaeda's core leadership, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who replaced the Al Qaeda leader. Yet, Pakistan's ability to track known and suspected terrorists is substandard.
'It is stunning, that Pakistan which is supposed to be our ally in the war against terrorism, does not even share fingerprint data within its own government,' Collins told Fox News. 'It doesn’t share it with other Pakistani law enforcement agencies. That’s a real problem.'
While information sharing and passport security has improved in the U.S., the disparity overseas remains a serious problem.
'Fraudulent travel documents are the same as weapons to terrorists; they can't carry out their plots without them,' Chad Sweet, co-founder of the Chertoff Group, told Fox News.
Sweet, who is a former chief of staff for the Homeland Security Department and once worked for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, says progress is being made overseas, but it has not kept pace with improvements to domestic security.
'On the defensive homeland game, we're probably at an A. If I give us a grade abroad, with our partners, again some of that is out of our control, we are probably closer to a C.'
The GAO report will be officially released on Wednesday when the issue is taken up publicly by the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who chairs the committee, called for an updated approach.
'As part of our efforts to keep terrorists from entering the United States, we provide security assistance to foreign countries where terrorists are likely to begin their travels. Unfortunately, GAO has found miscommunication and overlap on the part of U.S. agencies trying to help our foreign partners,' he said. 'I urge the administration to update what is now a five-year-old strategy for preventing terrorist travel so that we can work as effectively as possible to keep terrorists out of the country and away from innocent Americans.'
Collins told Fox that the issue has taken on more importance because the threat from Al Qaeda’s affiliates in Somalia and Yemen is growing.
The Yemeni affiliate, which includes the American Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki among its leadership, was behind the last two major attempts on the U.S. using airplanes. It was also behind the recent threat intelligence that the group was trying to recruit a surgeon to surgically embed explosive devices in suicide bombers. The threat was not described, by U.S. officials, as imminent, but the intelligence was described as credible and another sign the Yemeni affiliate was thinking out of the box.
'What this latest intelligence tells us about surgically implanting explosives is that Al Qaeda and its affiliates will continue to explore all possibilities to defeat the security that we have in place now,' Collins explained. 'And that is why the gaps that the GAO found are so troubling because inevitably there is going to be yet another attempt and the terrorists eventually are going to get through. We've got to do everything we can to put in place barriers to terrorists traveling to this country.'
National Correspondent Catherine Herridge's book 'The Next Wave: On the Hunt for al Qaeda's American Recruits' was published by Crown in June. It draws on her reporting for Fox News into al-Awlaki and his new generation of recruits -- Al Qaeda 2.0. New evidence shows the cleric was an overlooked key player in the 9/11 attacks who double-crossed federal investigators.
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/12/report-shows-gaping-h oles-in-intel-on-overseas-terrorists/#ixzz1S1Yp3LUs
A Nuclear Security Fund - Policy Innovation Memorandum No. 6 (back)
July 2011
by Emma L. Belcher
Nuclear terrorism could cause widespread death and destruction and potentially devastate the global economy. However, not all nations are convinced that acting to prevent nuclear terrorism should be a priority, and many lack the capacity to control nuclear materials within their borders. Nations, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have taken a variety of measures to help build nuclear security capacity worldwide. But a lack of funding for important projects complicates progress. Though many private firms have said they are willing to partner with governments on security, practical partnerships are limited and the international community has not leveraged the private sector’s financial resources. In an era of shrinking government budgets, this is a missed opportunity.
The United States should establish a nuclear security fund to which the private sector could contribute. Such a fund would allow the United States to better engage the private sector, which is integral to the material supply chain, and draw on expertise and funding from the full range of sources to address this public-private problem.
A Mushrooming Problem
Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups say they want nuclear weapons and will use them if they can. The most likely acquisition method is to buy or steal fissile material and fashion a crude Hiroshima-style device, provided they have some training in explosives and engineering. Alternatively, a group could use fissile material in a radiological dispersal device, or dirty bomb, which would cause panic, even if it did not cause significant destruction. This makes securing fissile material, and preventing its trafficking if it is stolen, vitally important. There are approximately 1,600 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and 400 metric tons of plutonium in over 1,100 civilian and military locations worldwide—enough for many thousands of bombs. The security of these sources varies widely, as does the robustness of measures to prevent smuggling of stolen sources.
Though many nations are taking measures to prevent terrorists from acquiring fissile material, others lack the resources or prefer to fund other and—in their view—more pressing problems. This situation is most prevalent in eastern Europe and the Caucasus, where sources of fissile material are concentrated, and in sub-Saharan Africa, where public health and civil strife issues take priority over securing borders against smuggling. Terrorist groups could exploit these critical gaps, thus undermining global nuclear security efforts.
Some nations are attempting to plug these gaps by donating to bodies that fund nuclear security activities—the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Nuclear Security Fund and the UN Trust Fund for Global and Regional Disarmament. Nations also implement their own nuclear security programs. In the United States, these include the Cooperative Threat Reduction program and the Nuclear Smuggling Outreach Initiative (NSOI). But none of these initiatives has a formal mechanism to include the private sector as potential donors. Though government engagement with universities and advocacy groups is growing, and entrepreneurs such as Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, Sam Nunn, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative have donated funds for nuclear security, engagement with the industries that play an integral role in the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) material supply chain lags.
A Public-Private Fund: Bang for the Buck
The United States should establish a public-private sector fund to advance its nuclear security objectives. The fund would finance projects that reduce the likelihood of nuclear theft and improve measures to detect and prevent smuggling of stolen sources in vulnerable nations. Examples include: adding capacity for regular inspections of sites that house fissile material; providing better security for the transport of radioactive material; supplying detection equipment, such as dosimeters, for use at border crossings; establishing outposts to help border police cover remote areas between official border crossings; training border police in proper use of such equipment; and legal workshops to improve criminal codes’ ability to punish nuclear crimes.
Private firms do not need to donate large amounts of money to have an impact. In some cases, relatively small contributions can sponsor important projects, such as legal review workshops. Lax penalties are all too common in the nations most vulnerable to nuclear crime. By increasing penalties, nations can affect smugglers’ risk-reward gamble and deter those who might be tempted to smuggle fissile material for profit. A few tens of thousands of dollars can sponsor review workshops to improve criminal codes. Similarly, small-scale projects that bring scientists and government officials to attend international forensics conferences can advance knowledge and build relationships at the transnational level—critically important given the transborder nature of smuggling.
Projects of this type are often (and justifiably) overlooked by governments in favor of higher-priority projects, such as securing spent fuel, which tend to be exponentially more expensive and sensitive and thus remain in the realm of nations. Through a nuclear security fund, the private sector could make a big difference in funding smaller yet important projects that support the international community’s goal of preventing nuclear terrorism but that have not yet attracted government and international organization donors. Many of these projects have useful side benefits that could be attractive for business investment. For example, strengthening borders against fissile material smuggling helps detection of other forms of illicit activity, which benefits firms that operate in areas prone to organized crime. Anticorruption programs reduce the likelihood that officials not only turn a blind eye to fissile material smuggling but also to the smuggling of other goods, making operating environments more stable and reliable for business ventures.
The State Department should lead the fund in partnership with the departments of Defense, Energy, and Treasury—to which businesses would contribute. A board consisting of representatives from the U.S. departments and private sector would govern the fund. In this way, the fund would serve as a focal point for identifying mutual interests and provide a means for private sector contribution, both financially and in-kind. To help coordinate activity and reduce duplication, an experts group—including representatives of other nations, international organizations such as the IAEA, and NGOs—could advise the board. U.S. agencies would submit their funding requirements for specific nuclear security projects that they have found difficult to fund through their regular budgets. They would provide an estimated budget, ranging from tens of thousands to millions of dollars. The proposals could be smaller parts of large projects that might have synergy with business interests.
Businesses could contribute to the fund as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) portfolios—through their foundations, just as they do in other areas—and receive tax incentives for participation. Their contributions could be financial donations or donations of their goods and services, such as technical instruments to detect smuggling and legal advice for prosecution of nuclear crime. There would be a list of projects to which businesses could chose to contribute, so they could tailor their donations, or they could simply make a general donation and let the administrators decide where their contribution is best spent.
Feasibility
In the past decade, the private sector has invested more in public goods such as environmental technologies and sustainable development. Firms have also donated their services, by paying select employees their regular salaries and assigning them to nonprofit organizations that advance their CSR goals. They do this not only because it is viewed as good CSR practice, but also because it can make good business sense. For example, incorporating environmentally sound practices can improve efficiency and the bottom line, and investing in local education and health care can improve stability in the communities in which firms conduct business.
A similar argument applies to private sector investment in nuclear security. The private sector has an incentive to help nations secure nuclear materials and technology, as it benefits from a stable operating environment that could be devastated by a nuclear blast. The nuclear energy industry, in particular, has an interest in making sure that its livelihood does not contribute to nuclear terrorism. Moreover, private firms that operate in nations in which illicit activity takes place stand to benefit from projects that strengthen infrastructure, like border patrols to detect such activity.
A successful public-private fund example exists in the Millennium Challenge Corporation (an independent U.S. foreign aid agency led by the State Department), which works to reduce global poverty in conjunction with the private sector. A similar framework could be used for a nuclear security fund—building on the tradition of Buffett, Turner, Nunn, and the NTI—to provide a systematic mechanism for more widespread private sector contribution.
The Author
Emma L. Belcher wrote this memorandum while she was a Stanton nuclear security fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is currently a program officer at the MacArthur Foundation. The views expressed herein are solely her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the MacArthur Foundation.
Source: http://www.cfr.org/proliferation/nuclear-security-fund/p25388
Feds Review Policies Affecting Terrorist Travel (back)
July 13, 2011
The Department of Homeland Security soon will complete its review of 1.6 million people who may have overstayed their visas in the United States, witnesses told members of a Senate committee during a hearing Wednesday.
'I'm expecting a report of the completion of this process' Thursday, DHS Coordinator for Counterterrorism Rand Beers told members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Committee members expressed concern over the high number of backlogged records searches, noting that several of the 9/11 hijackers had overstayed their visas.
Already, Beers said, DHS investigators have determined half of the suspected overstays have either left the country or have changed their status by submitting new paperwork. The remaining half is currently being run alongside other databases to identify potential threats.
'The number of 1.6 million will be down to 0 in a week or so,' Assistant DHS Policy Secretary David Heyman assured the committee. Anyone who left the country in overstay status would not be allowed back into the country, Beers added.
Committee members and witnesses spent much of the Senate hearing, entitled 'Preventing Terrorist Travel,' discussing strengths and weaknesses of different programs which allow foreign nationals into the country, including the visa, refugee and asylum processes.
Security gaps drew attention in 2009, after a Nigerian man unsuccessfully tried to detonate a bomb in 2009 aboard a Detroit-bound airliner. It was the misspelling of attempted Christmas day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's name by U.S. Embassy officials which prevented the State Department from realizing that he had received a valid visa. The U.S. Embassy in Nigeria sent the cable with the misspelled name to intelligence officials after Abdulmutallab's father identified him as being involved with Yemeni-based terrorists.
'That is so troubling to me,' said Sen. Susan Collins, R.-Maine, referring to the case. 'That he wasn't listed on the watch list.but also that his visa wasn't revoked.'
But now, testified Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Janice Jacobs, you can misspell a name and the State Department database will display hits on the name and others that come close. The system, which Jacobs said uses 'fuzzy logic,' is useful when Arabic names are spelled differently when transliterated into English.
Committee members also expressed concern over two Iraqi men living in Bowling Green, Ky. who were granted refugee status in 2009. It was later discovered that fingerprints belonging to one of those men, Waad Alwan, were found in 2005 on an improvised explosive device (IED) in Iraq positioned to target American troops.
Waad Alwan and Kentucky resident Mohanad Hammadi were indicted in May on charges that they aided insurgents fighting American troops in Iraq. The men received refugee status through the U.S.'s Iraqi refugee program, created in 2007.
DHS now is reviewing the 58,000 Iraqi refugees already in the U.S. who came in through the program, Heyman said.
Despite the recent breaches, the witnesses, all federal officials, said that they are closing security gaps.
More stringent screening policies for visa applicants have been put into place, Jacobs said, offering to provide senators details in a classified briefing.
'We have revoked over 1,000 visas since 2009,' Jacobs said. And Heyman added that the TSA's secure flight program has stopped 25 people per month from boarding flights.
Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3039/feds-review-policies-affecting-terrorist-travel
Minorities 'Alienated by Airport Security' (back)
July 13, 2011
by Gareth Rose
Over-zealous airport security threatens to exacerbate the terror threat by pushing those flirting with radical Islam over the edge, an MSP has warned.
Humza Yousaf, who organised a meeting last night between members of ethnic minorities and police and Scottish Government figures, warned there was growing resentment over how Glasgow Airport's border control was operating.
He has also launched a petition calling on Home Secretary Theresa May to review Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2006, which governs searches of people at UK borders.
Mr Yousaf, who is the Nationalist MSP for Glasgow, said: 'Everyone understands there's a security threat to Scotland, but any counter-terror expert will tell you that there is a tipping point caused by a sense of grievance towards an authority.
'Instead of counter-terror, it's counter-productive, and leaving people with a sense of resentment. Now 999 out of 1,000 people will shrug their shoulders and carry on, but one person who may already be flirting with these ideas may be pushed over the edge.'
Strathclyde Police are not understood to have received any complaints about security measures at the airport from members of ethnic communities.
However, Mr Yousaf believes some people are voting with their feet and choosing to make domestic journeys by land and departing on international flights from other airports, such as Manchester.
Glasgow Airport plans to organise a security open day for members of ethnic communities to try to allay concerns that they are being unfairly singled out.
Mr Yousaf said it was a growing concern for people.
He said: 'In 2008 and 2009 the situation seemed to get better, but in the last 12 months, during the election campaign in the south side of Glasgow, which has higher numbers of ethnic minorities, it came up a lot.
'People as young as 18, right up to 70-year-olds have been affected. The complaints generally fall into three categories.
'One is the questions asked. What mosque do you pray at? How many times a day do you pray? Does your wife wear a headscarf?
'Second is the nature of the stop itself. Sometimes it is so blatant that it is literally making ethnic minorities queue up in a different line. I've been stopped twice myself and it's humiliating.
'The third point that people raise is the frequency with which it happens. One person said he had been stopped seven times in three months. If you've been cleared once, why must you continue to go through this?'
Mr Yousaf has also joined the likes of David Lammy MP in calling for a review of Section 7 of the Terrorism Act, and launched a petition to give to Mrs May.
Critics have said Schedule 7, like its predecessor Schedule 44, is too broad, draconian and over-used.
Under its terms, people can be physically detained for up to nine hours while they and their belongings are searched. In some cases they are strip-searched, DNA samples are taken and they are fingerprinted.
They may also be questioned on their social, political and religious views.
Police do not say how often the powers are used, for security reasons, but sources insist it is infrequent at Glasgow Airport. Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, who attended last night's meeting, defended the way searches were conducted in Scotland.
He said: 'Scotland is not immune from terrorism, so it is vital that our airports are effectively policed to preserve public order and ensure that any threats to security are identified and addressed.
'The police play a crucial role, having to balance a duty to tackle crime with the protection of individual civil liberties.
'The powers they use are necessary to assist in their challenging role. Officers on the ground are best placed to make individual judgments as to when those powers should be used.
'I believe our forces make a proportionate and necessary use of the powers available to them.
'It is also important that powers to stop and question travellers must be used consistently, sensitively and appropriately.
'I am well aware of the sensitivities involved in the use of Schedule 7 powers.
'Where there are concerns and grievances we need to understand them and work together to try to address them.'
A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police added: 'Officers from Strathclyde Police, Acpos (the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland], representatives from the Scottish Government and members of the local community took part in a public meeting to address any concerns the public may have.
'Schedule 7 is only one of many tools we use to ensure the wrong people do not gain access into the UK through our airports and ports.'
Meanwhile, airport bosses insisted they were working with ethnic communities to try to allay any concerns they may have. A Glasgow Airport spokesman said: 'Schedule 7 checks are a police matter and we can, therefore, not comment. Glasgow Airport has worked and continues to work closely with various local ethnic minority groups and we will help facilitate an open day which will help highlight and explain the procedures involved in the security screening process.'
Source: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/politics/Minorities-39alienated-by -airport-security39.6800483.jp
TERRORISM RESPONSE
Norway Police Charge 3 Muslims over Bomb Plot (back)
July 8, 2011
OSLO - Norwegian security police are seeking charges against three men suspected of planning Scandinavian bomb attacks in an alleged plot with possible al Qaeda connections, state broadcaster NRK reported Friday.
After their arrest last July the three told different stories -- one admitting a plot to blow up China's embassy in Norway, one saying his target was a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, and one professing his innocence.
The Norwegian Police Security Service had no immediate comment when contacted by Reuters Friday, and NRK did not say what charges the service proposed in a recommendation to Norway's prosecuting authority.
The presumed leader of the trio, Mikael Davud, an ethnic Uighur from China with Norwegian citizenship, 'had plans for a bomb that was supposed to be exploded at the Chinese embassy,' his attorney, Carl Rieber-Mohn, told NRK last September.
Suspect Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd with Norwegian residency, confessed to planning a bomb attack against Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published the Mohammad cartoons in 2005, the police have said.
The third suspect, David Jakobsen, an Uzbek with Norwegian residency, has denied any illegal activity and was released from custody in October after the Norwegian Supreme Court rejected a security service appeal to keep him jailed.
On announcing their arrest last year, security service chief Janne Kristiansen said: 'We believe this group has had links to people abroad who can be linked to al Qaeda, and to people who are involved in investigations in other countries, among others the United States and Britain.'
In a separate case, a Danish court Friday extended the detention of four men charged with plotting an act of terrorism against the paper that published the cartoons of the Prophet. The drawings, including one showing him with a bomb in his turban, caused widespread outrage among Muslims.
Source: http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE7671YR20110708
TERROR ON TRIAL
Assassin Who Killed President Karzai's Brother Hanged in Public Square (back)
July 13, 2011
This is the brutal lynching and public display of the close confidante who shot dead Ahmed Wali Karzai - the half-brother of president Hamid Karzai.
A group of men in plain clothes hung the corpse against the wall in Kandahar for around 20 minutes before they carried it away.
Ahmed Wali Karzai was assassinated on Tuesday by the man who is said to have been from his own tribe and home town, whom he had travelled with and worked alongside for seven years.
Brutal: Sardar Mohammad, who shot dead Ahmad Wali Karzai, half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, hangs from a building in Kandahar
Grief-stricken: Afghan President Hamid Karzai bows his head during the memorial service for his half brother Ahmad Wali Karzai
Assassinated: Thousands of mourners attended the service along with Mr Karzai in the family's ancestral village of Karz
President Karzai was joined by thousands of mourners at the funeral of his half brother.
The president, tribal leaders, government officials and others attended first a morning prayer service in the provincial capital, Kandahar, before travelling to the family's ancestral home village of Karz for the funeral.
A sea of mourners surged toward the grave as a large wooden coffin, adorned with red flowers was brought forward.
Helicopters circled overhead as the coffin was lowered into the earth.
Mr Karzai - surrounded by a ring of security men - was on the fringe of the throng of mourners, tears streaming down his cheeks.
The president approached the grave, climbed into it and had to be pulled out by his shoulders as his grief got the better of him.
Shock: Afghans cover the grave of Ahmad Wali Karzai with earth after he was shot dead by one of his own bodyguards
Security concerns: Ahmed Wali Karzai was head of the provincial council in Kandahar - an area still heavily influenced by the Taliban
Loss: Shah Wali Karzai, left, the younger brother of Ahmad Wali Karzai, arrives for the funeral
Shortly after the funeral in Karz, Mr Karzai held a press conference in the provincial capital.
He said: 'My message for them (the Taliban) is that my countrymen, my brothers, should stop killing their own people.
'It is easy to kill and everyone can do it, but the real man is the one who can save people's lives.'
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for Wali Karzai's killing, but Afghan officials have said it is unclear whether he was shot by insurgents or died as a result of an internal dispute.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that insurgent fighters killed Wali Karzai because he cooperated with British, U.S. and Canadian forces in the south.
He said: 'He was aligned with foreign occupiers,' before describing him as a 'puppet' of the West and claiming he was on the CIA payroll.
Killed: Ahmad Wali Karzai, right, was extremely influential in the south of Afghanistan
Tributes: Bismillah Muhammadi, Afghan Interior Minister, and General Sher Muhammad Karimi - the country's army chief - were also at the funeral
Alert: Police check vehicles near the house of Ahmad Wali Karzai in Kandahar. The assassin shot him in the head and chest, before being gunned down by other bodyguards
Attack: The body of the assassin is covered up. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the killing, saying Ahmad Wali Karzai was cooperating with the West
Vacuum: Mr Karzai gave a press conference after the funeral, in which he attacked the Taliban for killing their own people
Walid Karzai had denied working for the CIA or having profited from the illegal seizure of government and private land - another Taliban claim.
His death has left a dangerous power vacuum in the south as the Afghan government pursues peace talks with insurgents ahead of a U.S. troop withdrawal.
The international military coalition has few friends of stature in the province and none with the influence of Mr Karzai's half brother - considered a master operator and the uncrowned 'king' of Kandahar.
Without his sibling, the president will struggle to find an ally resourceful and ruthless enough to balance alliances with tribal and political leaders, drug runners and militias in a province where the Taliban still holds much influence.
Rustam Shah, former Pakistan ambassador to Afghanistan, said Wali Karzai's death exposed the fragility of the security infrastructure in the southern provinces, particularly Kandahar.
He said: 'It will be a big blow to the government's image in the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan.
'The president will have to be very careful to move quickly to consolidate and maintain his power structure in Kandahar.'
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2014275/Hamid-Karzais-sh ock-buries-brother-24-hours-gunned-bodyguard.html#ixzz1S2NOeYBq
Federal Government Isn't Touching Arkansas Terrorism Case (back)
July 11, 2011
by Richard A. Serrano
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad of Memphis, Tenn., says his trial in a fatal Little Rock Army facility attack is being handled in Arkansas state court to get him the death penalty. His father alleges a government coverup.
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, center, charged in the 2009 death of an Army recruiter, will be tried in Little Rock, Ark. (Danny Johnston / Associated Press / July 12, 2011)
Reporting from Little Rock, Ark., and Memphis—
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad insists he is an Islamic radical, has confessed to killing an Army soldier and wounding another at a Little Rock recruiting station two years ago, and wants to be tried on terrorism charges in federal court.
But in an unusual twist, state prosecutors, with the blessing of the federal government, are treating him like a common American criminal and trying him in state court next week on capital murder charges.
Either way, Muhammad could become the first person sentenced to death in the U.S. for an act of terrorism — even if that is not the charge — since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Muhammad, 24, born Carlos Bledsoe in Memphis, Tenn., has a profile that is now familiar in home-grown terrorism cases. He converted to Islam at age 20 at a Tennessee mosque, changed his name and traveled to the Middle East.
In 2008, he was arrested in Yemen for overstaying his visa and holding false Somali papers. His father said he became radicalized in a Yemeni jail after mixing with other prisoners there.
Six months after Muhammad returned to the U.S., he allegedly drove his black Ford Sport Trac truck to the military recruiting station. Inside the vehicle were a rifle, scope, laser sight, silencer and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He allegedly fired several rounds before fleeing.
Later, at a police roadblock eight miles away, Muhammad was captured with a semiautomatic handgun tucked in his waistband.
Police said he told them he was 'mad at the U.S. military because of what they had done to Muslims in the past.' He said his 'intent was to kill as many people in the Army as he could.'
Melvin Bledsoe, who runs a Memphis tour bus company, said he learned of his son's incarceration in Yemen from a Tennessee FBI agent who interviewed Muhammad while he was in jail there. But that was the last Bledsoe heard from the FBI. And he believes that gets at the explanation behind the federal government's strange lack of interest in trying his son.
Bledsoe charges that federal officials deferred to state prosecutors because they feared a federal trial would make them look bad — because they knew his son was a radicalized Muslim and yet did not watch him when he returned to the United States.
'They should have done their job and this never would have happened,' Bledsoe said. 'I think that somebody in the federal government and the FBI should be charged with negligence. Negligent homicide.'
Bledsoe's son has a different explanation for why he is not being charged as a terrorist.
Muhammad, who says he is affiliated with several terrorist organizations, has written jailhouse letters to Pulaski County Judge Herbert Wright demanding a federal trial. 'In my eyes it's a sham trial [in Little Rock] set up only to make sure I'm handed down a death sentence,' he wrote May 10.
Ten days later, he wrote again: 'The facility where the shooting took place was a federal building. The army recruiters outside that federal building were federal employees. I was under federal investigation at the time of the shooting by the FBI. Why then is this a state case in state court, which the state seeks my execution? Injustice!'
To some outside legal experts, both father and son make valid points.
'That's unquestionably embarrassing for the FBI,' said Brian Gallini, a University of Arkansas criminal law professor. 'I can't come up with a comparable example of a mistake the feds would want to admit to.'
But John Wesley Hall Jr., a longtime Little Rock criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, said that 'just because the FBI didn't follow him doesn't mean it was their fault.'
In similar terrorism-related cases since the Sept. 11 attacks, federal prosecutors have wasted no time in taking the lead.
Just recently, federal officials in Seattle charged two alleged terrorists with plotting a raid on a military recruiting center there. They were charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction (a grenade) and unlawful possession of firearms.
In fact, the federal government has never won a death sentence in a terrorism case since Sept. 11. In 2006, federal prosecutors sought a death sentence for '20th hijacker' Zacarias Moussaoui, but his Alexandria, Va., jury gave him life without parole.
On the other hand, Arkansas, a mostly rural and conservative state, would seem the ideal setting to try a self-acknowledged terrorist on a capital offense.
The official explanation by the FBI for why Muhammad was not charged in federal court is that local authorities were first on the scene. 'We did assist in the investigation,' said FBI Special Agent Steve Frazier in Little Rock. 'But when we arrived at the scene, the Little Rock police were already in charge.'
However, the federal government routinely seizes jurisdiction from local authorities when it wants to prosecute a case.
A second federal law enforcement official, who asked not to be identified because the July 18 state trial was approaching, said the federal government had wanted to prosecute but deferred to state prosecutors.
'The Justice Department and the FBI were very interested in this case, obviously,' he said. 'There was a lot of back and forth with state prosecutors in Arkansas and they were extremely insistent in going forward on the state level. And that's how ultimately it was resolved.'
FBI officials in Memphis and Little Rock declined to respond to Bledsoe's allegations of a coverup.
'That's not something we would find prudent to comment on,' said FBI Supervisory Special Agent Joel Siskovic in Memphis.
In Arkansas, prosecutors view Muhammad as more of a 'cold-blooded killer' than a lone terrorist. 'You can draw your own conclusions about him,' said John Johnson, the chief deputy prosecutor in Little Rock. 'But it's ultimately the jury's decision.'
Muhammad's attorney, Patrick Benca, said his client is not a terrorist and not a premeditated killer. Though he confessed in writing and to investigators, Muhammad has pleaded not guilty and Benca plans to use an insanity defense.
Benca has two experts who believe Muhammad suffers from 'organic brain damage.' He has asked the judge to set aside the death penalty if Muhammad is found guilty. Prosecutors have their own experts, who found him sane and ready for trial.
Defense attorneys have shown some interest in the father's allegations. They have subpoenaed FBI records, including the bureau's 'surveillance, or lack thereof, of [Muhammad] once back in the U.S.'
The father of 23-year-old Army Pvt. William Long, who was killed in the Little Rock shooting, does not care whether Muhammad is a terrorist or a common criminal, tried by the state or the federal government. His son is dead all the same and he believes any juror will understand that.
'I think in Arkansas you've got to know the people here,' said Daris Long of Conway, Ark., a former Marine. 'They're pretty cut and dried on what's right and wrong.'
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-little-roc k-death-20110710,0,4956640,full.story
US Federal Prosecutors Want Brotherhood Terrorist's Jail Term Reduced (back)
July 13, 2011
U.S. media is reporting that federal prosecutors are asking for a judge to reduce the prison term of U.S. Muslim Brotherhood leader Abdurahman Alamoudi who was convicted for his role in a Libyan plot to assassinate King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. According to an AP report:
Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to cut the 23-year prison term being served by an American Muslim activist who admitted participation in a Libyan plot to assassinate King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Fifty-nine-year-old Abdurahman Alamoudi of Falls Church has been in jail since his arrest in September 2003. He pleaded guilty to illegal business dealings with Libya and admitted receiving more than $500,000 in cash from Libyan officials as part of an assassination plot. According to court records, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi wanted then-Prince Abdullah killed after a 2003 Arab League summit where Gadhafi felt he had been insulted. The documents explaining why prosecutors want to cut Alamoudi’s sentence are under seal, but such reductions are allowed only when a defendant provides substantial assistance to the government.'
Despite the AP characterization of Mr. Alamoudi as a 'Muslim activist', a Hudson Institute report identifies him as a leader of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and explains how a 1988 U.S. Brotherhood document included him as one of the heads of its committees:
The same spreadsheet identifies a number of committees, focusing on such issues as finance, politics, social issues, curricula, security, and Palestine. Those identified as heads of committees may include individuals mentioned throughout this report: Mohamed Hanooti, Jamal Badawi, Bassam Othman, Abdurahman Alamoudi, and Hammad Zaki.The spreadsheet also identifies several organizations as being part of the U.S. MB. These groups were AMSS, AMSE, IMA, ISNA, MAYA, MSA, MISQ, and NAIT.
The Hudson report goes on to explain how Alamoudi played a role in important U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations such as the Muslim Student Association (MAS) and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) before going on to form the American Muslim Council (AMC) which would play a leading role in U.S. Brotherhood affairs:
ISNA announced in November 1987 that it had formed its own PAC (ISNA-PAC), with Abdurahman Alamoudi as the 'leading force' of the ISNA-PAC. Alamoudi had been the ISNA regional representative for the Washington, DC, metropolitan area (and was previously president of MSA and executive assistant to the president of SAAR). He would later go on to form the American Muslim Council (AMC) with Elkadi’s father-in-law Abu-Saud in July 1990. The AMC was designed to encourage Muslims to become involved in politics and other civic activities. Alamoudi immediately began serving as the group’s director.
The AMC largely disappeared after Alamoudi’s conviction.
Source: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9937/pub_detail.asp
POLICE AND CRIME ISSUES
Thousands Back Tulsa Officer Ordered to Muslim Worship (back)
July 13, 2011
'If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.' ~ George Washington
Tens of thousands of Americans are lining up in support of a police officer in Tulsa, Okla., who was punished for refusing his department’s order to attend an 'Islamic proselytizing event' even as a legal team representing the captain is petitioning the court to add new allegations of misbehavior by his superiors to a lawsuit over the dispute.
WND reported earlier when a legal action was brought by attorneys with the Thomas More Law Center on behalf of Paul Fields.
Chief Charles Jordan
Named as defendants are the city, police chief Charles W. Jordan and deputy chief Alvin Daryl Webster.
The lawsuit focuses on the officer’s constitutional and civil rights, and along with a resolution of Fields’ concerns, it seeks an injunction preventing 'enforcement of defendants’ unconstitutional acts, policies, practices, procedures and/or customs.'
At issue were orders by the department that Fields participate in an event at a local Islamic center that has been described as a proselytizing campaign. The Tulsa Police Department had told officers to attend a 'Law Enforcement Appreciation Day' organized by the Islamic Society of Tulsa. The invitation said the officers would be given tours of the mosque, meet the mosque’s leadership, be given presentations of 'beliefs, human rights, women' and 'watch the 2-2:45 weekly congregational prayer service.'
Meanwhile, a legal team working on Fields’ behalf, the attorneys of the Thomas More Law Center, told WND they are seeking court permission to amend their original complaint over the city’s actions to include the specific damages that have accumulated.
The damages include two weeks of being suspended from pay for his refusal to attend the Islamic event and the threat that he will not be considered for promotion for a time, according to Law Center president Richard Thompson.
'We asked the court to amend our complaint to add the actual discipline,' Thompson said. 'Because of the new facts raised as our reason for amending the complaint that should be granted.'
He said an additional First Amendment claim also is being added, because city officials told Fields that part of the discipline was for allowing the public to know about the dispute.
'If this had been a Muslim officer told to go to a Christian prayer service and the Muslim officer refused because it would violate his Islamic faith, there would have been no reaction at all,' Thompson told WND.
'But this happened because this was a Christian officer who said the orders would violate his Christian principles.'
Thompson said it is startling how easily a Muslim Brotherhood-related idea can co-opt American rights.
The lawsuit explains that, at first, the police administration’s recommendation for attendance at the Islamic event appeared to be voluntary – there was a voluntary signup list. But the law firm said when officers refused to respond, the managers made it a required event.
Invitation to prayers
The day 'had nothing to do with any official police function. It clearly fell outside of the police department’s policy on community policing, and based on comments made by police department officials in a closed door meeting, it was not ‘community outreach’ as it has been previously portrayed,' the law firm explained.
'Rather, it included a mosque tour, meetings with local Muslims and Muslim leadership, observing a ‘weekly prayer service,’ and lectures on Islamic ‘beliefs,’' the Thomas More Law Center explained. 'The event was scheduled for Friday, March 4, 2011 – Friday being the ‘holy day’ or ‘Sabbath’ for Islam. In fact, the event was originally voluntary, but when not enough officers were willing to attend, it became mandatory.'
The lawsuit alleges, 'The event held by the Islamic Society involved Islamic proselytizing. The Islamic Society event was advertised as including Islamic proselytizing, and it in fact resulted in the proselytizing of city police officers who attended the event.'
…
The suit notes that under Islam, there are members of the House of Islam and 'infidels,' whom it teaches eventually all will submit to Islam.
Thus, the 'Appreciation Day' was no more than an opportunity 'to promote what Shariah-adherents such as the Muslim Brotherhood have described as ‘civilization jihad,’' the lawsuit said.
The complaint also notes the Tulsa organization is affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America – both 'unindicted, co-conspirators and/or joint venturers in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial.'
ISNA, the case explains, is the 'largest Muslim brotherhood front in North America.'
The Tulsa organization has had featured speakers such as Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who is 'a Shariah-adherent Muslim who promotes the destruction of Western civilization and the creation of an Islamic caliphate,' according to the lawsuit.
Source:
TERROR MODUS OPERANDI
Dry Run? Muslim Goes Jihad, Causes Flight Diversion on Plane to Germany, Kicking and Spitting at Passengers (back)
July 12, 2011
Why all the secrecy? The FBI finally released the name of the Muslim who caused the diversion of the flight last Friday while verbally abusing the crew and kicking and spitting at passengers. Saleh Ali S. Alramakh, aka Saleh Ali S. Alramaleh, age 21, of Riyadh Saudi Arabia, has been charged with interference with flight crew members and attendants.
According to the FBI, Alramakh went into the plane’s bathroom and used an electronic device while the plane was taxiing in Chicago. He allegedly refused to follow the flight attendant’s directives that he immediately turn off the device and return to his seat, but eventually returned to his seat.
Shortly after takeoff and while passengers are still required to stay seated, the FBI said Alramakh went into the bathroom again and used an electronic device. He once again refused to follow orders by the flight attendants to immediately return to his seat, investigators said.
At this point, the FBI said flight attendants unlocked and opened the bathroom door, at which point Alramakh became verbally abusive toward the attendants before returning to his seat.
At some point later in the flight, Alramakh got up a third time and approached a flight attendant in a 'belligerent, confrontational manner,' the FBI said.
'Alramakh was speaking in a loud tone of voice, using profanity, with his face inches from the flight attendant's face. The flight attendant asked Alramakh to step back multiple times, but instead Alramakh shoved the flight attendant backwards against the aircraft,' the FBI said in a news release.
At least one passenger stepped in, grabbing Alramakh and helping the flight crew restrain him, the FBI said, but Alramakh refused to comply with the crew and continued to try to kick and spit on the people around him.
Alramakh’s conduct caused the flight to divert to Cleveland, where police were waiting for him at the gate.
Now we find out the ‘unruly’ passenger who caused a flight from Chicago to Germany to be diverted, spoke with a 'heavy foreign accent.'
DRY RUN? Authorities are being tight-lipped on details about the foreign man who locked himself in the airplane lavatory, then went 'ballistic when he was confronted.' Gee, I wonder why? SEE VIDEO HERE: Foreign Man had to be subdued on Chicago to Germany flight which diverted to Cleveland
CBS – Some Chicagoans have quite a story to tell about the flight from O’Hare to Frankfort that was diverted Friday to Cleveland when a passenger was found hiding in the bathroom and went ballistic when he was confronted.
Joe Shulfer of Woodstock had his noise-cancelling headphones on and was sitting by himself on United Airlines Flight 944. 'The flight attendant just ran up to me and literally grabbed me by the shirt and said, ‘You need to come
Cell phone photo of 'unruly' passenger on floor of plane. Face is intentionally blurred. I wonder why?
with me now,’' the passenger told Newsradio 780.
They came upon three men wrestling with another passenger who, Shulfer learned, had been in the restroom for 20 or 30 minutes and wouldn’t come out.
They handcuffed the suspicious passenger and tied up his feet, but he started spitting and swearing, Shulfer says. 'So we duct-taped his mouth shut,' he says. 'He was able to get that off himself. He almost choked himself by swallowing the duct tape.'
Then they secured a surgical mask over his face 'just to get him to kind of shut up and stop spitting all over everybody.' Shulfer says he heard from United that the man had a boarding pass but wasn’t on the passenger list.
Bomb sniffing dogs were brought in but turned up nothing unusual. The plane was eventually allowed to fly back to Chicago. So far, officials have said nothing about charges. CBS 2 blurred out the suspect’s face because he has not been charged.
Source: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/07/dry-run.html
More Somalis from MN and OH leave to fight with Al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda) (back)
July 13, 2011
by Patrick Poole
A Minneapolis man, Omer Abdi Mohamed, is scheduled to go on trial next week in federal court on charges that he aided a group of young American Somali men in their travels to Somalia to fight with the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab terrorist organization. Two of the men that Mohamed helped leave the country conducted suicide bombings, the most recent last month which I reported on exclusively here at PJMedia. In fact, over the past few years more than two dozen Somali men from the U.S. are known to have left for the fields of jihad in Somalia.
But just as that trial is about to begin we can report exclusively here at PJMedia that a new batch of al-Shabaab recruits from Minnesota and Ohio have left the country to join the terrorist group.
Confirmation of this new crop of al-Shabaab recruits comes from award-winning Kenyan journalist Fatuma Noor, who met up with the ten new recruits ranging in age from 17 to 24 years old in Nairobi and then Northern Kenya as they were on their way to cross the border into Somalia. Noor just won the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist award for 2011 for her past work interviewing Western al-Shabaab recruits. In her current three-part series in the Nairobi Star, she also recounts her travel with the recruits to the Somali border, and how she was almost killed by al-Shabaab in Somalia for violating Islamic law by traveling without a chaperone with men who were not her relatives (only to be saved by the al-Shabaab recruits).
In her article, Noor identifies some of the American Somalis in the group:
Nuno Ahmed from Minneapolis, who says that he’s joining al-Shabaab because 'young people like me are needed there to protect our country.'
Abikar Mohamed from Minneapolis, who states that 'we are here to protect Islam and we are going to do that at all cost.'
Abdirahman Gullet from Minneapolis, who took inspiration from his friend Burhan Hassan and Shirwa Ahmed, both of whom died with al-Shabaab (Burhan while fighting with the group, Ahmed in a suicide bombing).
Adan Hussein from Minneapolis, who acknowledges that he 'might die protecting my religion, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.' He also says that their trips were funded by some of their community elders.
Abdinassir Osman from Ohio, who graduated from high school and joined a gang and now hopes his service with al-Shabaab will make up for any past wrongs he may have made.
Ali Mohamud from Ohio, who decided to join up after listening to stories and exhortations from his mosque elders.
They were joined by at least three other Somalis from other countries:
Omar Hassan from Canada, who claims that al-Shabaab in not a terrorist group but committed Muslims who are dedicated to ensuring Islamic law is observed in all Somalia.
Khalif Abdi from Sweden, who states that his desire to join al-Shabaab is rooted in his belief that the West is in a conspiracy to get rid of Islam as a religion.
Mukhtar Abdi from Kenya, who believes it is his responsibility to ensure Islamic law is imposed in every Muslim-majority country.
This week I called several FBI field offices that regularly handle Somali-related terrorism issues. I was told by one official, 'This is the first we’re hearing about it.'
Another official said that this news 'represents a complete and utter breakdown in our outreach to the Somali community':
> To have even more of these kids leave the country right under our noses without a word from the people we are working with who are supposed to be our eyes and ears means that all of this outreach over the past few years is a total failure. It doesn’t help that those we are working with are the ones recruiting these kids to go fight. … Everyone in the Muslim community and mainstream media who vilified [Rep.] Peter King and the House Homeland Security Committee who tried to look into this problem owe them a major apology.
One of those who testified in March before the House Homeland Security Committee (which I covered here at PJMedia) was Abdirazik Bihi, whose 17-year-old nephew Burhan Hassan was killed fighting with al-Shabaab. Bihi was the subject of a lengthy Washington Post article last weekend. He tries to fight radicalization in Minneapolis despite operating a one-man center on a shoe-string budget while being ostracized by his own community leaders and as billions are spent on ineffective Homeland Security programs. Ominously, Bihi warned that more Somali youths would be recruited from the U.S., being tragically vindicated by this news we are exclusively reporting here today.
The issue of radicalization and terror recruitment among Somali-American youths is an issue I’ve covered here at PJMedia since 2007 (long before it became fashionable for the establishment media). In November 2007, I wrote about a terror fundraiser and deputy of designated terrorist Sheikh Aweys, Zakaria Haji Abdi (who is now part of the Somali TFG government), who was scheduled to speak at several events in Minnesota and Virginia. Our pleas to Homeland Security officials to deny entry to the fundraiser fell on deaf ears and the event took place as planned.
At the time I noted that during the Minneapolis event Abdi instructed the attendees how to send money through hawala networks without raising suspicions of authorities. Law enforcement authorities now concede that the November 2007 meeting I reported on was the tipping point for radicalization in the Minneapolis Somali community. The first group of Somali Americans to leave for jihad back in Somalia left shortly after the Minneapolis event. Included in that group was Shirwa Ahmed, who conducted a suicide bombing attack in northern Somalia — the first known case of an American suicide bomber.
And in the aftermath of the November 2008 presidential election a larger group of nearly two dozen young Somali men left to fight with al-Shabaab. Several members of the November 2008 group have been confirmed killed fighting with al-Shabaab. Then in September 2009, Seattle resident Omar Mohamud carried out another suicide attack targeting African Union troops. Two stolen UN vehicles were used in that attack, which killed twenty-one people.
Last September I reported here at PJMedia that a top al-Shabaab commander killed in fighting Somali TFG troops in Mogadishu was Columbus, Ohio, resident Dahir Gurey. And let’s also not forget that last November, Portland college student Mohamed Osman Mohamud was caught in a FBI sting attempting to blow up a VBIED at the Portland Christmas Tree lighting ceremony that could have potentially killed hundreds of American citizens. With the news that an entirely new crop of al-Shabaab recruits has left the country, it seems clear that the problem of radicalization in the Somali community is increasing rapidly.
Yet as I recently reported here, the U.S. government continues to conduct 'outreach' to the very individuals responsible for radicalizing these youths and recruiting them for jihad. As the U.S. continues to attack al-Shabaab forces in Somalia and target al-Shabaab leaders, how long before one of these American Somali recruits is tasked to return home and kill Americans?
Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
Source: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/somali-americans-from-minnesota-leav e-to-wage-jihad-with-al-shabaab-terror-group/
HizbAllah Sets Up Shop in Mexico (back)
July 13, 2011
by Ryan Mauro
A Tucson Police Department memo from September 2010 has been leaked onto the Internet by hackers, and it warns that Hezbollah has set up shop in Mexico. The terrorist group has linked up with the Mexican drug lords, and is even said to have a large arms stockpile in the country. Terrorist groups are looking at the raging drug war in Mexico as an opportunity to further their deadly ambitions.
The memo recalls that a member of Hezbollah was arrested in Tijuana in July 2010 who was tasked with setting up a network for the terrorist group. It also mentions the April 2010 arrest of Jamal Yousef in New York City, who told the authorities that he worked with his cousin to steal weapons from Iraq for Hezbollah. According to Yousef, a stockpile of 100 M-16 assault rifles, 100 AR-15 rifles, 2500 hand grenades, C4 explosives and anti-tank weapons is presently in Mexico.
The police document says there is a 'strong suspicion' that car bombs set off by the drug lords last summer were created with the help of Hezbollah. On June 23 of last year, Rep. Sue Myrick said that a senior Mexican military officer informed her that Hezbollah was giving explosives training to members of the drug cartels. 'This might lead to Israel-like car bombings of Mexican/USA border personnel or National Guard units in the border regions,' her letter to the Department of Homeland Security cautioned. Myrick’s warning was prescient. In the first week of July 2010, a car bomb killed four people in Ciudad Juarez that had 'Hezbollah-like sophistication.' Car bombs have become part of the drug war since then.
There have been warnings for years that Hezbollah had partnered with the drug cartels. Michael Braun, a former Drug Enforcement Agency chief of operations, said in 2009 that the group utilizes 'the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels.' During his July 7 testimony to Congress, Roger Noriega, former assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, predicted that Iran and Hezbollah will carry out an attack on the U.S. using their networks in Latin America.
'If our government and responsible partners in Latin America fail to act, I believe there will be an attack on U.S. personnel, installations or interests in the Americas as soon as Hezbollah operatives believe that they are capable of such an operation without implicating their Iranian sponsors in the crime,' Noriega said.
Hezbollah isn’t the only terrorist organization salivating at the instability in Mexico. In February 2010, Anthony Joseph Tracy was arrested in Virginia for his links to al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia. He is thought to have smuggled at least 270 Somalis into the U.S. through Mexico, few of which have been located or even identified. It is very likely that a number of these Somalis are al-Shabaab operatives, given Tracy’s involvement with the terrorist group. Mexico has arrested and released members of al-Shabaab on their way to the U.S. before.
Another member of a Somali terrorist network was arrested in San Antonio. He admitted that he is a member of the al-Ittihad al-Islami terrorist group and also works with al-Barakat. From June 2006 to March 2008, he made at least $3,000 for each person he snuck into the U.S., earning up to $75,000 in a single day. He confirmed smuggling members of al-Ittihad al-Islami, and was recorded saying that 'he believed they would fight against the U.S. if the jihad moved from overseas locations to the U.S. mainland.'
The South American terrorist group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (often referred to as the FARC) has also gotten in on the action. The FARC’s former leader, Raul Reyes, wrote a letter excitedly discussing his collaboration with the Mexican drug gangs, projecting a doubling of profits from it. It has been estimated that the FARC makes $1 billion every year through its partnership with the Mexican traffickers. The FARC is also doing business with al-Qaeda to ship cocaine in West Africa.
It can be argued that the Mexican drug cartels have themselves become terrorists. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the Homeland Security Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, has introduced legislation to designate six of the cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. His office’s press release says the cartels 'operate in the same manner as al Qaeda, the Taliban or Hezbollah, each sharing a desire and using similar tactics to gain political and economic influence.'
Over 35,000 people have died in Mexico’s drug war since 2006, yet it is rarely mentioned in the news. What will it take happen to force the U.S. to pay attention to the crisis on its border? Entertaining answers to this question terrifies the imagination.
Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/07/13/hezbollah-sets-up-shop-in-mexico/
al-Qaeda's Egyptian Ideologues Planning Caliphate's Return to Egypt (back)
July 7, 2011 04:09 PM Age: 6 days
by Hani Nasira
The late Osama bin Laden with his Egyptian successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
While al-Qaeda focused on the global jihad under the leadership of the late Osama bin Laden, an examination of the speeches and publications of his Egyptian successor, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, show that renewing his own failed jihad in Egypt has never been far from al-Zawahiri’s mind.
• In speeches delivered before February 2010, al- Zawahiri mentioned Egypt 226 times, second only to the United States (mentioned 636 times).
• Al Zawahiri recently released the last in his six-part series about Egypt titled 'The Message of Hope and Good Tidings for Our People in Egypt.' The last four of its six parts focused on the Egyptian Revolution and ex-president Hosni Mubarak.
• In The Exoneration, his last and most important book, al-Zawahiri referred to Egypt 195 times and Mubarak 41 times while referring to Saudi leaders only once and the Kingdom not at all. The United States was mentioned 150 times. [1]
These works reveal the central position of Egypt in al Zawahiri’s thought and suggest the direction al-Qaeda may take now that al-Zawahiri has assumed leadership of the movement.
Conditions in Egypt now provide a suitable environment for al-Qaeda following the chaos in the internal security services, the rise of Salafist movements and the release from detention of a number of jihadi ideologues and the return of others from abroad. Al-Zawahiri may see a golden opportunity to renew jihad activities in Egypt after he was forced to suspend the activities of the Egyptian Jihad movement in 1995 due to the movement’s inability to cope with severe pressure from the Egyptian security forces.
Al-Qaeda is expected to witness a new phase of activity coinciding with the popular Arab revolutions that may see the movement grow stronger due to al-Zawahiri’s pragmatism and deep and effective relations with a number of al-Qaeda sub-organizations in the Maghreb, the Horn of Africa, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.
Al-Zawahiri claims to support the revolutions in Syria, Libya and Yemen, insisting they will result in an Islamic state with the help of an alliance of Islamist and jihadist groups. The al-Qaeda leader’s views are mirrored in the works of Anwar al-Awlaki on the Yemeni Revolution and those of Attiya Allah al-Libi on the Libyan Revolution (for Attiya, see Terrorism Monitor, August 12, 2010; June 9).
A process of ideological reconsideration is taking place in Egypt’s Salafist leadership. Some have opted for political action while others have announced they will focus on the Islamic Call. All of them stress the need for an Islamic state and Shari’a rule.
This process requires very little departure from the decisions adopted by many of the Islamist movements in Egypt to renounce violence since 1997. Nonetheless, the debate within the Egyptian Islamic Group over its future course has ended with the departure of a number of its historically prominent leaders and the appointment of cousins Aboud and Tarek al-Zomor as new leaders. The two were freed from three decades of imprisonment during the revolution after being connected to the assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. [2] Despite describing al-Zawahiri as 'a man who loves his religion and justice,' the cousins have been eager to reassure Egyptians that they have renounced violence and believe the Islamic state in Egypt will be established 'at the ballot box' (The Daily News Egypt, March 21).
Al Zawahiri’s view of the Arab revolutions and the role of Islamists and mujahideen were outlined in his series 'The Message of Hope and Assurance for Our People in Egypt.' In his perspective, America retreated from supporting the overthrown leaders in Tunisia and Egypt as a result of al-Qaeda’s activities. Al-Zawahiri also warned of 'predators' who would seek to manipulate the revolutions in their own interests and insisted that 'secular change' was not an option for the people of Egypt, claiming Shari’a has been the demand of the vast majority of Egyptians since the death of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna in 1949.
Perhaps in keeping with the revolutionary demands for social reforms, al-Zawahiri also addresses 'social injustice' in a nationalist fashion unfamiliar to most Salafi-Jihadi literature:
'Egypt must begin a popular campaign to regain the Egyptians’ rights, especially those of the impoverished, and this campaign must seek to uproot the social injustice, poverty, needs and short-handedness in Egypt. Islamic advocacy must consider the social justice cases as one of its main priorities. The Prophet (p.b.u.h.) said: 'the believer is one who doesn’t feel fed while his neighbor is hungry next to him.' The zakat obligation must be revived… Stealing Egypt’s resources must stop, and the clearest example is exporting gas to Israel, which the Egyptian judiciary ruled on and disallowed, and in spite of that the military council keeps exporting it to Israel' (As-Sahab Media/al-Fajr Media Center, May 21).
Al-Zawahiri has repeatedly warned of U.S. attempts to install a secular leader in Egypt after having abandoned its ally, first in a February 28 statement, again in two parts of 'The Message of Hope and Assurance for Our People in Egypt,' and finally in 'The Noble Knight Alighted,' his June 8 eulogy of Bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri has highlighted in various speeches the need to prepare for an Islamic state after these revolutions and the importance of making alliances with other Islamic forces in revolutionary countries to prevent the establishment of a secular state.
Explaining this vision was a recent essay released by al-Qaeda entitled 'The People’s Revolution and the End of Forced Rule' (al-Fajr Media Center, June 1). The document was written by Egyptian al-Qaeda member Abu Ubaydah Abdallah al-Adm, who appears to be very close to the movement’s high command.
The essay outlines a strategic vision for al-Qaeda in dealing with the popular revolutions and interpreting them in a religious way favorable to the various Islamist movements, especially those with a focus on restoring the Islamic state (the Caliphate), such as al-Qaeda and Egyptian Jihad.
In his paper, Al-Adm explains that the revolutions and overthrow of regimes represent the end of forced rule or tyrannies, a phase that followed the eras of the prophets and Caliphates. Al-Adm believes that these revolutions hasten the arrival of the Islamic state, though he notes that the establishment of such a state may be preceded by a period of chaos – possibly as long as 50 years, as suggested by Syrian jihad theorist Mus’ab al-Suri (a.k.a. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar). In al-Adm’s view, God has driven these revolutions, supporting the mujahideen as the Muslim people wake up to reject everything else but Islamic Shari’a.
At the end of the paper, al-Adm emphasizes that 'The Global Jihad Movement, no doubt, is waiting for the fruits of this popular movement in which it sacrificed the blood of its members and spent decades calling for it and fighting to plant the idea in the minds of Muslims who rose up today demonstrating [against] the tyrannical oppression they used to face. Al-Qaeda paved the way for these revolutions and waits for its fruits…'
Notes:
1. Al-Zawahiri’s book (Full title: A Treatise Exonerating the Community of the Pen and the Sword from the Debilitating Accusation of Fatigue and Weakness) was a March 2008 refutation of a book entitled Tarshid al-amal al-jihadi fi misr wa al-alam (Rationalizing the Jihadi Action in Egypt and the World) by the imprisoned founder of the Islamic Jihad organization, Sayed Imam Abdulaziz al-Sharif (a.k.a. Dr. Fadl). (See Terrorism Focus, April 30, 3008).
2. www.egyig.com//Public/articles/announce/index.shtml.
Source: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news] =38150&tx_ttnews[backPid]=26&cHash=fbbb6ae9cfc127590e109753204d31e9
Haqqani Network (back)
July 7, 2011
Afghan governors of provinces on the Pakistani border are becoming more outspoken in their criticism of the Pakistani army and intelligence services (ISI). That's because the Pakistani army has been unwilling to go after the last terrorist stronghold on its territory (North Waziristan), and continues to deny this support of terrorists. These Pakistan based killers have tried to kill these Afghan border governors, so this criticism of Pakistan is personal for the governors, and, literally, a matter of life and death. For years, the governors, and other senior government, kept these misgivings to themselves. That was because the Afghan government was led to believe that it could negotiate some cooperation (in containing the Islamic terrorists) from Pakistan. Didn't work out, and all that came from Pakistan was lies.
Meanwhile, the list of terrorist bad guys is changing. Al Qaeda is fading fast in Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially since the death of leader Osama bin Laden. An ally of al Qaeda in Pakistan, the Haqqani Network, is now seen as a larger threat, especially in Afghanistan. Based in North Waziristan (and adjacent areas). Haqqani has been at it for over two decades, and has long worked with Pakistani intelligence (ISI). Haqqani has been discreet, where the Taliban have not, and this has earned the group a measure of respect from Pakistani politicians and military commanders. Haqqani does not carry out terror attacks in Pakistan.
The Haqqani Network is a family business led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, an Afghan from the eastern part of Afghanistan. He is now in his 60s, and runs a tight ship. He was a major warlord during the 1980s war with the Soviets, and a major player in the civil war that broke out after the Soviets left in 1989. But he quickly saw the power of the Taliban (being an Islamic conservative himself), and joined the Taliban shortly after he encountered them. But Haqqani kept his organization separate, and his head down. He carries out terror attacks mainly in eastern Afghanistan. Considered something of an ass-kisser (for its deference to ISI) by other Islamic radicals, Haqqani has survived and grown in strength.
Haqqani has over 5,000 men under arms (but many are part-time fighters) and several hundred suicide bombers in training or ready to go. Haqqani can call on over 20,000 armed tribesmen in North Waziristan and adjacent areas. Again, these are largely part-timers, and have to be convinced to gather and fight. A threatened Pakistani Army invasion of North Waziristan would be convincing, and that has kept the Pakistani soldiers out so far. The only government forces in the area are the Frontier Constabulary, a border guard recruited from the local tribes. These guys guard the Afghan border in North Waziristan, but have an understanding with Haqqani men sneaking into or out of Afghanistan; they leave them alone. The Haqqani gunmen return the favor.
Source: http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/20110707.aspx
STEALTH JIHAD
Radical Islam in Germany: The Convert as Missionary (back)
July 11, 2011
by Veli Sirin
Abu Hamza, born a German named Pierre Vogel in 1978, is a very popular Islamist preacher in Germany. The former professional boxer became Muslim in 2001 and is now among the most influential German representatives of Saudi-originated Wahhabi fundamentalism, which masquerades as 'Salafism.'
His 'kunya' or 'Islamic nickname,' Abu Hamza, means 'father of the strong.' He should not be confused with the notorious radical Muslim agitator currently locked up in Britain, Abu Hamza al-Masri, known for his missing eye and a prosthetic hook that substitutes for his right hand, or for the two late al-Qaida terrorists active in Pakistan and Iraq, who also used the same name. Vogel's impact among German Muslims is no less ominous, however, even if his extremism appears more restrained.
Adherents of Wahhabism like Pierre Vogel, alias Abu Hamza, call themselves 'Salafi' in claiming they emulate the prominent adherents of early Islam. 'Salaf' is an Arabic noun meaning 'predecessor' or 'forefather,' and the first three Muslim generations are collectively referred to as 'al-Salaf as-Saleh,' or the 'Pious Predecessors.'
Vogel received his religious training in an Islamic school in Saudi Arabia. Through nationwide lecture tours and the creation of several websites, he has reached out to very religious young German Muslims, as well as to young non-Muslim Germans with identity problems.
Those who flock to him are impressed by Vogel's apparent knowledge of Islam and his mastery of Arabic, the language of the Koran. Central to his teaching is the belief that Islam is the only true religion, while all Christians and Jews are 'kuffar,' or 'unbelievers.' In addition, Vogel sees 'da'wa,' or calling others to Islam, as an obligation incumbent on every Muslim. He has fashioned himself as a missionary and argues explicitly that he possesses theological evidence for the superiority of Islam.
Vogel's worldview embodies a rigid distinction between Islamic and 'un-Islamic' behavior. The strict division between 'the bad' and 'the good' appeals to some young Muslims, because they are promised a clear orientation in their everyday lives and identification with a like-minded community. Although Vogel rejects the use of violence in the cause of Islam, the German authorities see his Manichean outlook – the harsh separation of 'bad' and 'good' – as dangerous, because of its radicalizing effects on the very religious and the confused.
The preaching of Pierre Vogel and his limiting Islam to a formal set of 'Salafi' rules is opposed increasingly by other German Muslim personalities and organizations. They also criticize Vogel for exploiting complaints of discrimination against Muslims in Germany. On his websites, Vogel asserts that Muslims in Europe are faced with an impending Holocaust.
The internet is his main stage. His sites have gained five million hits in one and a half years, a matter of which he is proud.
What is the basis of his attraction? Born Muslims consider him 'cool,' as a broad-shouldered German with a reddish-blond beard, who can chant Koranic chapters in Arabic without mispronouncing a syllable. Vogel knows what life is like as a teenager in Germany. 'I know everything,' he says. 'Casinos, discos, women. And I also know why it is better to live another kind of life in which one abstains from sex before marriage,' he explains. For every convert who comes to him, 10 to 20 people who were born Muslim claim that he has helped them find their way back to Islam.
For non-Muslims, and particularly the young who encounter him, Pierre Vogel provides answers to anxieties about the meaning of existence. If, according to simplistic Wahhabi doctrines, the only need is to serve God, then life immediately seems easier to face. By unquestioning adherence to the Koran and the prohibitions and recommendations of the Wahhabi interpretation, believers are promised standing in the afterlife and probable entry into paradise. Vogel's outward piety, like his German origin, adds to his image as someone who refuses to conform to the society in which he lives. That is also deemed 'cool.'
Radical Islam, in the style of a musical remix, with anti-globalization propaganda added to religious sermonizing, arrived in the German universities long ago. The media also play an important role in the prestige of the extremists, as a steady diet of news about aggressive Islam makes many young Muslims and non-Muslims defensive. 'One-sided news brings thousands of converts,' says Pierre Vogel. There are always those whose curiosity is stimulated by a threat. According to Vogel, they want to know the truth about Islam; 'they come to listen, and discover that Islam is the truth.'
Critics of Vogel describe his method as brainwashing. A young Pakistani studying in Germany comments, 'There is currently no alternative for young people who want to learn about moderate Islam in Germany.' The Wahhabi 'Salafis' have the best web sites and publish the most translations of Islamic literature. Unfortunately, Muslim university students are typically afraid to say anything about the situation. Whoever speaks against Pierre Vogel will be abused by his supporters, in online chat forums. 'The success of this movement makes me very angry, because it has nothing to do with Islam as I understand it,' says the same Pakistani student in Germany. 'I do not want to live in a society defined by Pierre Vogel. It would be a nightmare for all people.'
Pierre Vogel, or Abu Hamza, uses all the weaknesses of our society and sets us against one another. People like him do not appear randomly. With the help of financing from the Gulf states, they fill an existing void in knowledge about Islam. As they are daily more active in German universities, they are a serious problem.
A space should be opened up in German public life, where intelligent people may get together to repudiate the hatred Vogel uses to manipulate Muslims. This view of the condition of young German Muslims may seem pessimistic, but Vogel and others like him pose a real danger. It is necessary to admit it, face it, and combat it.
Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2253/radical-islam-germany
Women under Sharia Law: The Dilemma of 'The Wife Beating Protocol' (back)
July 13, 2011
by Al Fadi
The Quran is the source of all personal status laws in Islamic countries. Therefore, the rules of religious jurisprudence concerning the position and treatment of women are also based on the Quran. In order to fully understand the position of women in Islam, one must first examine the Quranic rules concerning them. Our dilemma in today’s article has to do with the Quranic command for husbands to beat their wives.
A. Man’s Supreme Authority
The Quran gives a man complete authority in marriage: 'Men stand superior to women...' (Q 4.34). The Quran justifies giving this authority to the man for the following reasons:
First, preference is given to him by the nature of his physical ability: 'God hath preferred some of them over others...' (Q 4.34).
Second, preference is given to him by reason of his financial ability: 'and in that they expend of their wealth...' (Q 4.34).
Apparently this higher position of man does not change even if 'a woman has enough money to support herself without needing him to spend money on her, or even if she has so much money that she can spend it on him.'15 This preference is because a man has authority over a woman according to the Quran, the ultimate source of Sharia Law, regardless of his or her economic situation.
The leading authorities of Islam state that this ruling of the Quran is an everlasting one as reported by al-Aqqad:
'It precedes the development of civilizations and general legislations and remains past them.'
B. Wife’s Relationship to Husband
In Islam, the wife is a slave to her husband. The Islamic traditions stress that a woman should obey her husband’s commands. The story is told of a man who ordered his wife not to leave the house while he was traveling. During his absence, her father became ill, so she sent to the prophet of Islam asking for permission to go to her father. The response she received was: 'Obey your husband.' Her father died, so she then requested permission to go see her father’s body before burial. Again the response was: 'Obey your husband.' When her father was buried, the prophet sent her a message saying, 'Allah [god] has forgiven her father because of her obedience to her husband.' In other words, once married, the woman’s complete emotional and intellectual abilities belong to her husband.
In addition to absolute obedience, a woman should revere her husband because Islam teaches that, 'If a woman knew the right of a husband, she would not sit at his lunch and supper time until he finishes.' One time, a woman came to the prophet of Islam to ask about her obligations to her husband. He said, 'If he had pus from his hair part to his foot [from head to toe] and you licked him, you would not have shown him enough gratitude.'
Obedience and reverence towards her husband are two of the wife’s duties. These duties form an element of worship for her. As the prophet of Islam once said, 'If a woman prays her five prayers, fasts the month of fasting, keeps her chastity, and obeys her husband, she will enter the paradise of her Lord.' In addition, Allah will not accept the prayer of a woman if her husband is angry with her.
C. Husband’s Right to Punish His Wife
The Quran gives the husband the right to punish his wife if she goes outside the parameters that he draws for her. It provides men with instructions: 'But those whose perverseness ye fear, admonish them and remove them into bed-chambers and beat them; but if they submit to you, then do not seek a way against them...' (Q 4.34).
In fact, in reading the verse above one will notice that these instructions were given to the husband concerning a wife whom he ONLY fears disloyalty, not a wife that actually committed a disloyal act. These instructions include the following step-by-step process:
1. Instructing
At the beginning of marriage, a husband reminds his wife about the rights that are given to him by Sharia Law. He can say to her, 'Fear Allah! I have rights due to me from you. Repent from what you are doing. Know that obedience to me is one of your obligations.' If the wife refuses to fulfill the sexual desires of her husband, then he should remind her of his rights over her body.
2. Sexual Abandonment
The Arabic word used in the verse to describe abandonment (hajr) on the part of the husband can carry multiple meanings:
• Desertion
If a wife remains 'disobedient,' her husband should ignore her. This means he abstains from sexual intercourse with her as part of this phase of punishment.
• Forced Sexual Intercourse ('tightening the bindings')
While the word hajr is interpreted to mean 'to refuse to share their beds,' the word hajr has several meanings. One of these meanings indicates the hajr of the camel when the owner binds the animal with a hijar, or rope. This disturbing interpretation means that the term used in Q 4.34 ('refuse to share their beds') can actually mean to bind the wife and force her to have sexual intercourse.
This meaning is the adopted view of al-Tabari, a renowned classical Islamic commentator. Other scholars, who also support this interpretation, state 'it means to tie them up and force them to have [sexual] intercourse.'
The Quranic principle of a man’s right to a woman’s body is not open for discussion. Regardless of her psychological or physical state, she has to obey the man’s command to lie in bed and have sexual relations with him. After all, the prophet of Islam repeatedly made statements advocating this view:
'If a man calls his woman to his bed, and she does not come, and then he goes to bed angry at her, the angels will curse her until the morning.'
3. Beating
If the previous methods, including instruction and verbal abuse, fail to correct a wife’s behavior, then a husband is given the right to beat his wife. Even though verse Q 4.34 does not specify the mode or limit of the beating, it is believed that the prophet of Islam put a condition on the beating, classifying it as 'not excessive.' As a result, when interpreting the phrase 'not excessive beating,' scholars offer the following guidelines:
• Avoid hitting the wife’s face.
• Do not break any of the wife’s bones.
• Use nonfatal implements or physical force:
° Such as the use of al-siwak (a twig of the Salvadora persica tree), or shoe laces, etc.
° and the use of hand, etc. [hitting, slapping, punching the neck and chest, etc.]
The wife may receive a beating for every behavior that incites the anger of her husband or for every act that her husband does not like. Current Islamic literature supports the legitimacy of beating and its benefit for 'upbringing.'
For example, the Egyptian scholar Muhammad Mitwalli al-Sha‘rawi (AD 1911-1998), who was considered among the top Muslim thinkers in the twentieth century, records his position:
Beating is not a sign of hatred. It could be a sign of love. As long as it is not excessive, it would only cause a small amount of pain. A person might resort to lightly beating the loved one due to desiring what is in the person’s [best] interests and due to caring about the person. A woman, by her very nature, understands that, coming from her husband. She knows that his anger at her and his punishing her…will soon pass away and with its passing, its causes will pass. Therefore, they remain in their relationship as if nothing happened.
Conclusion
Ironically, Islamic literature claims that Islam as a religion has improved the position of women and is the only religious doctrine that honors women. History shows that Islam did accomplish some limited advancement in the position of women during the seventh century in certain aspects such as, limiting the number of wives to four in comparison to the practices during that era in the Arabian Peninsula. Conversely, many of the changes implemented by Islam were not positive. The Quran permits men to beat their wives, making domestic abuse a divinely permissible act rather than just an individual behavior.
It is worthy to note that in various ancient societies and throughout human history, women have lived under the oppression of social injustice. However, our dilemma, when it comes to the position of women in Islam, stems from the fact that Islam is seen as the final religion and source of law by its followers. Hence, the position of women is fixed, and rulings, such as the beating of a wife, must remain in place as specified by the Quran. Though in modern society a woman may work and share in the financial burdens of life, she will still be deprived of equality because the Quran commands it so. Overall, the Quranic rules regarding the treatment of women can still be used today as tools of oppression in the hand of the Muslim man. Any effort she exerts other than that is of no value.'
For more on the treatment of women in the Quran, readers are encouraged to obtain a copy of the book: The Quran Dilemma.
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Al Fadi is a former Wahhabi Muslim, originally from Saudi Arabia. He is a co-author and editor of the scholarly book entitled The Qu’ran Dilemma, which will be reviewed here soon. He blogs at http://thequrandilemma.com/blog.
Source: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9930/pub_detail.asp
TERRORIST CONNECTIONS
Yes We Khan (back)
July 11, 2011
Signs of shortages and unrest are everywhere in the north. Anti-government graffiti has even been showing up in the capital, and is remaining visible longer in other parts of the country (where local officials are under orders to eliminate such public displays of disloyalty as soon as possible.) There is also an increase in illegal traders, even as there is less food to be found in the officially sanctioned markets. The Spring potato harvest was much less than usual. Even the army is short of food, and officers are increasingly coming to markets and demanding 'voluntary contributions.' Thus it's more profitable to be an illegal trader, even with the risk of arrest. That's not such a big risk anymore, as the police are easier to bribe. The crackdowns on the security forces are only temporary. Once the special secret police anti-corruption agents leave an area, it's back to business-as-usual. Even if the secret police have arrested some local cops, the others see bribes as an essential part of their income. With food growing increasingly scarce, black market alternatives get more expensive. For the local police, bribery is a matter of life and death.
For unarmed North Koreans, the only alternative is starvation. It's a more common sight to see very thin and desperate looking people on the streets, including homeless kids (whose parents have either died, been arrested or simply abandoned children in order to survive.) Foreign donors continue to refuse food aid for North Korea, unless the northerners allow the foreign aid organizations to supervise the distribution of the food. This the north refuses to do, as the northern government seeks to convert much of the food aid to cash (by selling it in North Korean markets, or to Chinese traders.) About a quarter of the North Korean population is starving, or at least malnourished. Some aid groups are urging that food be sent anyway, as some of it will get through and the rest can be written off as a bribe. In many parts of the world, a percentage (often large) of food shipped in is lost as bribes to local warlords and government officials. But there is real fear that the North Korea government would divert all, or nearly all, of food aid. Nevertheless, the EU (European Union) is going to ship some food to North Korea, enough for about ten percent of the six million or so in desperate need of it. The EU will try to monitor the situation and see if the North Korean government can be trusted to feed its starving population. Aid groups take advantage of an informal news and intelligence network that has developed in the north over the last few years. Increased bribery, more foreigners and North Koreans moving in and out of the country (legally or otherwise) and smaller video cameras make it possible to monitor things the northern government tries to hide.
A drought (that reduced hydroelectric power) and fuel shortages (no cash for oil imports) have sharply reduced electricity supplies. That has reduced economic activity still further, with factories unable to operate, and farms producing less because irrigation pumps or farm machinery cannot operate. There's also been a growing fertilizer shortage. Nuclear and missile programs have priority on energy and cash for imports, but this is in short supply as well. The American led arms embargo has been increasingly effective, and fewer missiles and other weapons are being delivered. Orders are down, as customers fear non-delivery, or retribution by the United States for flaunting the embargo.
The cash shortage has caused extreme measures to be taken. The most noticeable effect seen by foreigners is the commercial exploitation of North Korean embassies. In Russia, the embassy was caught running an illegal casino. In other countries, embassy facilities are available for rent, or businesses are set up in them. North Korean diplomats are more frequently caught using diplomatic mail privileges to smuggle illegal items (like drugs). In some countries, local freight companies won't handle North Korean embassy business.
North Korea has become so unstable that China is openly admonishing North Korea leaders to behave. Privately, Chinese officials warn the United States and South Korea that the northern leadership is increasingly unpredictable and resistant to Chinese threats. Russian officials report similar experiences. The U.S. and China have both openly warned the north to avoid armed incidents with South Korea, and China has privately told the north that, if the south is attacked again, the response could be massive, and that China would not back up the north in such a situation. None of this has produced any official change in the traditional North Korean paranoia and antagonism towards all foreigners.
China is angry at the growing quantity of illegal drugs coming out of North Korea. While most of this traffic used to be from criminals, it's now believed that most of the recent increase in shipments is coming from pharmaceutical plants, and being produced and smuggled into China with government approval. It would not be the first time North Korea has exported drugs to raise cash. China doesn't really care, except (as is now the case), when a lot of the drugs are sold in China. Growing affluence in China has created a growing demand for all sorts of recreational drugs. Entrepreneurs in North Korea have long shipped methamphetamines into China. Since the late 1990s, pharmacists and other medical personnel have been manufacturing methamphetamines, and selling the stuff to Chinese dealers across the border. Often, the Chinese gangs sent Chinese into North Korea to smuggle the drugs back. This trade was, and is, a vital source of income at a time when starvation was an ever present danger. But in the last few years, more and more of the methamphetamines have been sold inside North Korea, to the children of the ruling class, and the growing number of affluent trader families. Now, the North Korean government has apparently ordered state-owned drug plants to produce recreational drugs for export.
More Internet security researchers (academic, commercial and government supported) are looking at North Korea, and finding that North Korea is the source of an increasing amount of Cyber War activity. Most of it appears to be espionage or shutting down sites of organizations considered hostile, or harmful, to North Korea. Given the historical government use of criminal activity to raise money, the north is expected to use its growing Cyber War skills to raise cash.
July 8, 2011: Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has largely escaped punishment for selling nuclear secrets, was long accused of selling detailed plans for a nuclear weapon to North Korea. Now Khan has revealed a 1998 letter from a North Korean official that discusses the deal. Khan says that North Korea paid $3.5 million for nuclear weapons technology in the late 1990s. Previously, the only proof has been the similarities in the first nuclear weapons tested by Pakistan (in 1999) and North Korea (in 2006). Both of these bombs were only partially successful (they 'fizzled' instead of exploding). North Korea later denied any dealings with Khan.
July 4, 2011: A South Korean marine went on a shooting rampage, killing four other marines before he was subdued. The shooter complained of harassment and bullying by fellow marines. This is a growing problem in the South Korean armed forces. Often it's parents who complain to the media, and there are an increasing number of soldiers and marines getting injured or killed because of the breakdown of discipline.
Source: http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/korea/articles/20110711.aspx
PROPAGANDA
CAIR Spokesman Turns Blind Eye to 'War on Islam' Rhetoric (back)
July 13, 2011
A Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) spokesman demanded Friday that the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) either back up its claim that CAIR officials have repeatedly described the war on terrorism as a war on Islam or retract it.
Had CAIR National Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper clicked on a hyperlink included in the original story, he would have found eight pages of previously published examples on that very point.
It was Hooper's response to the six examples provided that proved most mystifying. For example, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad told CNN in 2007 that 'I think there is a growing perception among Muslims worldwide, specifically in Iraq, in majority Muslim countries, that the war on terrorism is in fact, a war on Islam.'
Hooper wrote back with a one-word retort: 'perception'.
Such parsing might be effective had it been the only time CAIR officials hammered the message, or, had any of them followed the statement by contesting that 'perception.' But that never happened.
The repetition of the 'perception' is significant because many in law enforcement believe the 'war on Islam' narrative is among the most significant messages in radicalizing young Muslims.
Hooper never explains why CAIR officials would repeatedly invoke that perception if they did not wish to perpetuate it. For each example the IPT cited, he seemed to indicate that they didn't mean what they said. See the exchange here. Hooper's responses come between the examples.
'If American Muslims allow their charities and institutions to be destroyed without defending them with their words, actions and funds,' wrote then-CAIR Western Region Communications Director Riad Abdelkarim in 2002, 'those organizations already targeted will not be the only American Muslim institutions eliminated in this war against American Muslims.'
'American Muslims, not Islam' wrote Hooper in response underneath the quote. It's not clear how saying the United States is at war with Muslim Americans helps his argument.
Abdelkarim also once wrote the following, which was provided to Hooper. 'On Tuesday 4 December 2001, the US government effectively declared war on Islam and Muslims in America.'
Similarly, Hooper wrote the word 'impression' after an example of a 2001 joint statement by CAIR and other groups which claimed that the U.S.'s decision to freeze the assets of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), 'is an unjust and counterproductive move that can only damage America's credibility with Muslims in this country and around the world and could create the impression that there has been a shift from war on terrorism to an attack on Islam.'
Not only have CAIR officials refused to challenge the 'perception,' but Awad has said 'Our administration has the burden of proving otherwise.' That's what he told Islam Online in 2002 during a trip to Saudi Arabia. While he was there, federal agents raided offices and homes related to Northern Virginia charities as part of a terror financing investigation. The Saudis, Islam Online reported, reacted to the raids by saying 'this is a war against Islam and Muslims.'
Despite the many examples provided to him, Hooper concluded, 'Still no CAIR statement to back up you[sic] false claim.'
Since 2007, CAIR seems to have backed off the 'war on Islam' talking point. But it continues to cast government actions as unduly threatening toward Muslims even if officials avoid provocative phrases like 'war on Islam.'
In April, CAIR-NY board member and attorney Lamis Deek told an audience at a 'Know Your Rights' seminar that the FBI is out to arrest and lock up Muslims even if agents have to lie and cheat to accomplish their objective. 'We're in an age where we are in fact all on the radar,' she said referring to Muslims, 'we are in fact most of us under investigation.'
When it comes to relations with the government, CAIR officials routinely misrepresent the facts.
Christina Abraham, an attorney with CAIR's Chicago office, claimed that a judge's ruling challenging the group's inclusion on a list of co-conspirators in a massive Hamas financing case was 'settled … in CAIR's favor.' The judge did rule that the list should not have been made public, but ruled that CAIR belonged on it because of 'ample evidence' linking it to Hamas.
CAIR's Michigan office, led by Dawud Walid, spent more than a year trying to drum up animosity toward the FBI by trying to cast the shooting death of a Detroit imam as an excessive use of force. Though two separate government reviews found that Imam Luqman Abdullah had concealed a weapon and opened fire as agents moved in to arrest him, Walid questioned whether Abdullah even had a gun and wondered 'Is this the kind of excessive force that we black Americans are all too familiar with?'
Those reviews found agents acted appropriately in returning fire after Abdullah, who had a history of making threatening statements toward law enforcement, refused to surrender peacefully, and fired first.
Meanwhile, Hooper was less accommodating in response to challenges about his own organization. We asked if he could produce copies of CAIR's annual tax forms, known as 990s, after requests by Politico and other media outlets were not fulfilled. As the IPT reported first, an IRS list published last month included the CAIR Foundation and CAIR-National among 275,000 organizations which have lost their tax exempt status after failing to file tax forms for three straight years.
As a result, donations made to CAIR are no longer tax deductible unless CAIR is able to successfully file for a retroactive reinstatement. But it took media exposure of that fact for CAIR to finally remove a statement from its website claiming that donations remained tax-deductible.
Hooper simply ignored the IPT's question.
We answered his directly, even if he didn't agree with it. For years, CAIR officials repeated the concern that the war on terrorism was a war on Islam and Muslims. Whether they were merely invoking a pre-existing perception is irrelevant since the examples we cited include no attempt to refute the idea.
We stand by our original claim and our response.
Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3032/cair-spokesman-tur ns-blind-eye-to-war-on-islam
Illinois: Muslim Leader Calls for Sharia to the Chants of 'Allah Akbar' (back)
July 12, 2011
Just two days ago Muslims in the UK stated they will soon be enforcing Sharia Law in several sections of country. If you think Muslims in America are different and do not want Sharia, please take a look at this video from Hizb ut-Tahrir America’s, June 26Th Khilafah Conference 2011.
Venue:
DoubleTree – Oak Brook, IL
1909 Spring Rd. Oak Brook, IL 60521
Trailer:
Meaning of Real Change By Muhammed Abu Anas:
In the up coming video Muhammed states the Ummah (Muslim community) is allowed to govern, but Allah is the only one who can legislate, and make laws.
Koran verse 004.059
YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you. If ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if ye do beelieve in Allah and the Last Day: That is best, and most suitable for final determination.
Muhammad also speaks out against democracy, as he uses our freedoms against us to try and help Islam take over America from within. While calling for full submission to Allah! This is a much watch because there is no hiding the Islamic agenda in this video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SfEKEjS7M-8
Koran verse 049.001
YUSUFALI: O Ye who believe! Put not yourselves forward before Allah and His Messenger; but fear Allah: for Allah is He Who hears and knows all things.
This is no game my friends. We are at war, whether you like it or not!
Koran verse 009.033
YUSUFALI: It is He Who hath sent His Messenger with guidance and the Religion of Truth, to proclaim it over all religion, even though the Pagans may detest (it).
Source: http://bit.ly/qwbEGb
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Fair Use Notice (back)
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