LOL...
Sorry, some has stolen your shadow, you are out now, so keep joining in.
Your thoughts are on track, as many of the TMer's are watching the utilities.
That is why I was listening to the California news and nit picking them.
Several years ago, back in the late 1990's, I had the short wave on one afternoon and listened to how to use a tree branch to take down the transmission lines for electric.
AND how to make and travel with biological germs.
I thought it was strange and there was never a station there
again.
It was all in great details and went on for several hours.
An American voice, it said you could culture the bio hazards in the kitchen.
Having heard how to do it, I assume that a lot of the reports on things are for real.
No, I didn't have a recorder then and it did not mean a lot to me, as when I was young, we didn't study science in school, or i quit before we got there.
I will always wonder, who it was and why that station was broadcasting.
Hate Radio and global terrorism
Radio al-Tajdeed exploits legal loophole
by Nick Grace*/Andy Sennitt, 25 August 2005
Global terrorism has added a new element to Hate Radio, and exposed a major
weakness in existing legislation for dealing with broadcasts that encourage violence by
one section of society against another. An example of the problem is Radio al-Tajdeed,
whose programmes were produced in London and broadcast to the Middle East via
satellite and the Internet.
Radio al-Tajdeed served as the mouthpiece for the militant Party for Islamic Renewal (Tajdeed)
and its founder Dr Mohammed al-Massari. Al-Massari, a Saudi exile who received asylum in the
United Kingdom in 1994, has publicly advocated attacks on British troops serving in Iraq and the
assassination of Prime Minister Tony Blair. His ties to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are also
widely documented.
Links to al Qaeda
The Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), a group that al-Massari runs to oppose the Saudi government,
has been tied directly to Khalid al-Fawwaz, former bin Laden spokesman in Europe who is now fighting extradition to the
US, and Tarik A Hamdi, an American citizen who was arrested in August 2005 while working for the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.
Al-Massari, according to The Seattle Times, recently went so far as to openly describe CDLR as the "ideological voice" of
al-Qaeda.
Ostensibly broadcasting to undermine the Saudi regime, Radio al-Tajdeed also targeted Iraq, Israel, Egypt and Western
civilization. Two hours of new programming each day were recorded and looped for a full 24-hour period. In between
militant Islamist chants and music that hailed bin Laden and called upon Muslim youth to fight non-Muslims, al-Massari
fielded live phone calls from listeners across the Middle East who directly incited violence. Rather than preach tolerance or
moderation al-Massari and the station's hosts, however, would stoke outrage by reminding the audience of perceived Arab
grudges against the West and Israel. Its satellite footprint covered the entire Middle East.
Raid
On 6 May 2005, the studios were raided during the recording of a programme and its listeners
were treated to a spectacle. Reports indicated that the raid was connected to an investigation into
the fate of an Australian hostage in Iraq. After a two-week period of silence Radio al-Tajdeed
resumed its broadcasts, and al-Massari broadcast a 40-minute long speech by "Sheik" Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi in which the chief of al-Qaeda in Iraq justified Muslim "collateral damage." According
to Clandestine Radio Watch (CRW) Cairo monitor Marwan Soliman, al-Massari's station was the only Arab-language
media outlet to air a majority of the speech unedited.
Listeners, meanwhile, were encouraged to participate in the group's Arabic-language Internet community, the Tajdeed
Forum. The message board served as a platform for the proliferation of instructional videos on terrorism, gory footage of
terrorist attacks in Iraq, scores of images, links to al-Qaeda Web sites, al-Qaeda audio and video, and the like. The
Al-Qaeda organisation in Iraq, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade and other al Qaeda-related terror groups often posted
messages and promotional materials on the Tajdeed Forum.
While it's clear that the station played a strategic role in al-Massari's organisation by stoking Arab prejudices and inflaming its
audience, less clear is if Radio al-Tajdeed broadcast coded tactical information and commands to extremists inside Iraq or
elsewhere.
No means of regulation
British regulators, however, were powerless to act, according to a representative of the British regulatory authority Ofcom
who spoke with Radio Netherlands Media Network partner ClandestineRadio.com on condition of anonymity. Although the
programmes were recorded in London and could be received in London and the UK, Radio al-Tajdeed's satellite feed was
physically located in Paris, France, where jurisdiction of the nature and content of the programming ultimately fell.
To outwit British laws, the station used the services of an airtime broker based in Belgium, to locate facilities outside of
London's jurisdiction. The same broker had previously arranged airtime for Saad al-Fagih's Movement for Islamic Reform in
Arabia (MIRA). The MIRA station, Sawt al-Islah (Voice of Reform), initially broadcast on shortwave, where its signal was
quickly obliterated by Saudi jamming. To overcome the obstacle, the broker placed them on a satellite through the uplink
facilities of T-Systems in Germany. The German firm quickly dropped the programme as a client after its uplink feed was
jammed and legally threatened by the Saudi government. MIRA were eventually forced to use a dedicated uplink facility for
Sawt al-Islah to both hide its location from the Saudis and isolate the programme from other commercial programming in the
event of jamming. Now renamed "Debate," the programme continues to broadcast from London to an undisclosed uplink
facility believed to be located in Europe.
Ignoring the evidence
Sawt al-Islah faced an uncertain future in December 2003 when the US added al-Fagih
and MIRA to the State Department list of terrorists. Shortly thereafter, al-Fagih was
added to the United Nations Consolidated List of Terrorists. Despite these developments
and alarming ties with al Qaeda, the Belgian airtime broker retained the programme as a
client, and then took on Radio al-Tajdeed and a third Arabic-language program called
"Al-Balagh," of which little to nothing is known.
Radio al-Tajdeed was placed on Globecast, a French broadcast service provider that rents bandwidth to al-Massari to feed
the audio up to the Hotbird 6 satellite - a satellite administered by another French firm, Eutelsat. Neither Globecast nor
Eutelsat would respond to inquiries about Radio al-Tajdeed.
According to industry insiders, international broadcasters monitor foreign language commercial programming and hire
translators when needed, to avoid potential legal trouble. While it is not known if either Globecast or Eutelsat took the effort
to monitor Radio al-Tajdeed, it is unlikely that the station would have remained on the air had they done so.
Finally, someone pays attention
The British political establishment and press finally woke up to the situation in mid-August after BBC Radio 4's Today
programme broadcast a feature about Radio al-Tajdeed and used recordings supplied by ClandestineRadio.com to
demonstrate the type of programming broadcast by the station. Al-Massari refused to speak with journalists, and
transmissions of Radio al-Tajdeed had already been put on hold.
The fact remains that current laws in Europe have, up to now, been insufficient to prevent
this type of operation. Programme producers whose material is broadcast by satellite do
not have to register with the authorities in the country where the programmes are
recorded, only in the country in which the satellite uplink is located. And nobody, it
seems, is legally required to take responsibility for the content of the broadcasts. At this
very moment, there are probably other groups making similar extremist programmes in
London or other European cities, and nobody is able to do anything about it. New legislation is urgently needed to close the
loopholes that allow this to happen.
EU legislation needed
Introducing legislation at a national level in the European Union would cause huge problems, as the domestic legal systems
vary so much from country to country. You would end up with 25 different versions. This is surely something which ought to
be agreed at EU level, so that someone committing an offence in the UK would be committing the same offence regardless of
which EU member country he or she was in. Making the laws tough enough to deal with hate broadcasts while ensuring press
freedom for everyone else will not be easy. But the current situation is clearly not acceptable, and the lives of ordinary people
are being threatened by allowing it to continue.
The EU has already indicated that it will "propose bans on indirect incitement, glorification or apology for terrorism following
bomb attacks in London." The European Commission and national governments are to consider measures to tackle
‘radicalisation’ this autumn. But while websites are specifically mentioned as likely to be affected, there is no mention of
radio programmes. Separately, the UK government has said it will create a database of foreign-born radicals accused of
encouraging acts of terrorism. On 24 August 2005, British Home Secretary Charles Clarke published a list of activities which
might fall under this definition, but producing radio programmes was not on it. It so happens that Britain holds the Presidency
of the EU until the end of 2005. Surely getting legislation passed that will make it difficult for operations such as Radio
al-Tajdeed to function anywhere in the EU would be a far more worthy cause than arguing over whether or not Britain should
get a rebate for its contribution to EU funds.
*) Nick Grace is Managing Editor of the Washington Bureau of Clandestine Radio Watch, and runs the website
ClandestineRadio.com.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the personal views of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Radio Netherlands.
© Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, all rights reserved
External Links:
ClandestineRadio.com
Disclaimer: Radio Netherlands is not responsible for the content of external Web sites
www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/features/media/wot050822.html
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Humphries20050825.shtml
"Debunking Three Years of Media Lies"
Part 2 with link to Part 1
By Rusty Humphries
I heard Rusty talk of his trip, a few days ago.
I do not as a rule read about the prison at Cuba, have heard all I need to know.
I am very glad that I read this article, complete with photos.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1471174/posts
They should be Freepers.
There are still a few good Americans out there.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1471174/posts"China charges 17 with Running Guns from Pakistan"
More muslims on trial for being terrorists........
Freeper mail.