http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1712150/posts
Thank you all very much!!
Seven police hurt in riots by youths near Paris
AFP via The Tocqueville Connection ^ | 10/02/2006
Posted on 10/02/2006 9:02:38 AM PDT by Republicain
VERSAILLES, France, Oct 2, 2006 (AFP) - Seven French police officers were hurt during clashes with scores of youths that broke out after a car chase in Les Mureaux, in the western Paris suburbs, justice officials said Monday.
The incident late Sunday followed the arrest of man who drove his car into a police vehicle after being chased for a traffic offence. As the man was being taken to the police station in another vehicle, it was set upon by a crowd.
"There were around 250 people -- very angry and very hostile," police officials said. The prosecutor's office said the number was around 130.
Some of the police were hurt when a stone hurled into their car detonated a tear-gas grenade. One of the police cars was gutted by fire. There were no arrests.
On Wednesday seven youths suspected of the September 19 beating of two riot police officers in Corbeil-Essonnes south of Paris were arrested during a raid on a housing project. Both officers suffered injuries to the face and head and bruising to the body. One was hospitalized.
The attacks underscored continuing concern over violence in Paris's depressed suburbs, where riots broke out nearly a year ago.
In a letter sent to French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy last June, a senior government official warned of a sharp spike in crime and the active incitement of Islamic radicals in the northern suburbs.
Said to be rare photos taken on 9-13-2001 of the wreckage of the WTC:
http://www.lagunajournal.com/more_photo.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061003/ap_on_re_eu/hijack
By MAX FRIGIONE, Associated Press Writer 5 minutes ago
Two Turks who wanted to protest Pope Benedict XVI's planned trip to Turkey next month hijacked a Turkish Airlines jet carrying 113 people from Albania to Istanbul on Tuesday, and it landed safely in this southern Italian coastal city, officials said.
The hijackers, who were unarmed, told authorities they were prepared to surrender, said Candan Karlitekin, chairman of Turkish Airlines' board of directors. He said no one aboard the Boeing 737-400 was injured.
Istanbul Deputy Gov. Vedat Muftuoglu also said the hijackers had agreed to give themselves up.
Asked about the hijacking, a Vatican official said he expected no changes in Benedict's plans for the visit. The official, who asked that his name not be used because of the sensitivity of the issue, said an official Vatican announcement that the trip would take place Nov. 28-Dec. 1 would be made soon.
Benedict angered the Muslim world in a speech in Germany on Sept. 12, when he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Benedict has expressed regret for offending Muslims by his remarks and said they did not reflect his personal views, but he has not offered a complete apology as some had sought.
Turkish Airlines officials had spoken to Capt. Mursel Gokalp and co-pilot Yavuz Yilmaz, who told them the hijackers were not armed and that the passengers were not in any danger, said Ali Genc, a spokesman for the carrier.
Muftuoglu said the hijackers stormed the cockpit about 15-20 minutes after takeoff from the Albanian capital of Tirana.
"They told the pilots that they wanted to carry out an act to protest the pope and that they wanted the plane diverted to Rome and that they (the pilots) should not resist," he told Turkey's CNN-Turk television.
Karlitekin said the hijackers declared that the would surrender "the moment they hijacked the plane," which carried 107 passengers and a crew of six. Most of the passengers were Albanians, Genc said.
The Turkish captain issued an alert that his plane was hijacked and he was contacted by Greek air traffic controllers at 5:55 p.m. (10:55 a.m. EDT), 15 miles north of Thessaloniki, Greece, said Dimitris Stavropoulos, spokesman for Greece's Civil Aviation Authority.
The captain told the Greek controllers: "I have two undesirable people who want to go to Italy to see the pope and give him a message," according to Stavropoulos.
The plane later contacted Italian air traffic controllers and asked to land in Brindisi, and it was escorted to the ground by two Italian military jets, according to Nicoletta Tomiselli, a spokeswoman for the Italian air traffic agency ENAV.
___
Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser and Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara, Turkey, Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Greece, and Maria Sanminiatelli in Rome contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1712819/posts
Commercial Plane Hijacked in Greek Airspace [in protest of Pope's visit]
Posted on 10/03/2006 8:51:58 AM PDT by Ragnar Danneskjold
Fox, AP, Dow Jones reporting
Latest on Roberts the Pa. school killer.
Commercial Plane Hijacked in Greek Airspace [in protest of Pope's visit]
Re-election of the Gambia President and other news:
http://www.observer.gm/enews/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=16&Itemid=33
http://www.ketv.com/news/9993849/detail.html
Ashland-Greenwood School Locked Down; Student Arrested
POSTED: 5:45 pm CDT October 3, 2006
UPDATED: 5:47 pm CDT October 3, 2006
ASHLAND, Neb. -- Ashland-Greenwood High School was put into lockdown mode on Tuesday.
KETV NewsWatch 7 has learned that a student allegedly threatened to shoot a teacher.
The 17-year-old student is in the Saunders County Jail on a charge of making terroristic threats. He was arrested in Lincoln after fleeing the school Tuesday morning, authorities said.
The student did not have a gun at the time of the threat nor at the time of his arrest, officials said.
It took nearly two hours to find the teenager and the school remained locked down mode until he was located.
Copyright 2006 by KETV.com. All rights reserved.
A week of local Omaha news:
not checked.....tired
http://www.ketv.com/newsarchive/index.html
http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw060929_1_n.shtml
29 September 2006
Battles highlight Sea Tigers' capabilities
By Iqbal Athas JDW Correspondent
Colombo
The recent flare-up of fighting between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has resulted in the secessionist rebels suffering significant setbacks among ground forces, but their naval arm remains a potent threat.
Both sides claimed success in a sea battle in late September, with outside observers unable to confirm either view.
Earlier in September Sri Lankan air and naval forces sank an LTTE ship heavily loaded with ammunition and other hardware 6.4 km off the country's northern coast. The action followed a tip-off from the intelligence agency of a "neighbouring country", presumably India, that an unidentified cargo vessel was transferring military hardware to smaller craft.
These recent incidents underscore the capabilities retained by the Sea Tigers, who can engage the Sri Lankan Navy at sea for prolonged periods with considerable firepower.
Intelligence estimates suggest that Sea Tiger strength is around 2,000 personnel, with a further 100-200 suicide cadres in the Black Sea Tigers. The latter are tasked to ram speedboats, heavily laden with explosives, into enemy naval vessels.
174 of 432 words
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jtic/jtic050531_1_n.shtml
31 May 2005
JTIC Briefing: Post-millennium patterns of jihadist terrorism in Western Europe - Part I
By Petter Nesser
Jihadist terrorist conspiracies and attacks in Western Europe over the past few years have involved multinational, transnationally operating, ad-hoc jihadist terrorist cells that were either associated with, or inspired by, Al-Qaeda.
Weapons and modus operandi
The terrorists planned to attack these targets with low-tech weapons, mostly home-made bombs, and they often planned to deliver the bombs using suicide-bombers, a typical modus operandi of Al-Qaeda and its associated groups.
Terrorist suspects in the UK, Italy and France, and other European countries displayed an interest in manufacturing poison in order to use it in attacks. The militants' modus operandi strongly indicated that they had been trained in techniques of covert operations. For example, they all followed a set of similar security precautions such as having multiple identities, false travel documents, coding their communications and renting apartments on the ground level in order to facilitate an easy escape.
Cell structure
The cells were most often composed of five to ten core members, and varying numbers of affiliates. Although the core had a fixed structure, there were fuzzy cell boundaries. The conspiracies involved contacts and coordination between jihadists belonging to different terrorist cells in several European countries and often these contacts were based upon personal relationships established in jihadist camps in Afghanistan, or in the Islamist underground milieus of European urban centres. Individual terrorists, or terrorist groups, also maintained contacts with militants in other regions of the world.
Motivations for jihadism in Europe
The doctrine and idea of global defensive jihad against aggressors attacking Islam and Muslims stands out as the single most important motivational factor at the group level. Key operatives and leaders appeared to be ideologically informed and conscious about political matters.
My analysis indicates that political and military developments in areas of symbolic value and political grievance for radical Islamists are the most important as motivational factors for the terrorist group as a whole.
At the individual level, a notion of 'social relative deprivation', defined as raised expectations of being accepted as a fully fledged member of European societies, which was not fulfilled, seemingly played an important role in motivating young Muslim immigrants to join jihadist groups and become terrorists.
359 of 2,204 words
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jiaa/jiaa060809_1_n.shtml
09 August 2006
Jihadist forums and the evolution of a creed
The first tenet of present jihadist ideology is that early Muslim society, when Islam was dynamic and all-conquering, is the single, perfect model for human existence as represented in the divine revelation of the Koran, the acts and statements of the Prophet, and the conduct of 'al-salaf al-salih', or virtuous ancestors.
The second is that the only way back to this ideal is through jihad, understood as a war fought by any licit means against all enemies, infidel or Muslim, and viewed as the core obligation of all true Muslims at this historical juncture.
The third is that the enemy-world, "kufr" or unbelief, led by the Jews and US and abetted by quisling regimes throughout the Islamic world, is committed to the destruction of Muslim identity and the subjugation of Muslim lands.
The fourth tenet is that history, which began with the Prophet Mohammad's message but stalled when Muslims went astray after his death in 632 AD, stirred anew with the jihad that liberated Afghanistan in 1992.
The fifth is that the forces of jihad now stand arrayed to fight a decisive battle against the US empire, Israel and the quisling regimes of the Islamic world.
The sixth tenet is that the infidel forces, despite their apparent wealth and military might, are weak and vulnerable to blows of the sort Al-Qaeda struck on 11 September 2001. The lesson jihadists take from this last tenet is that faith and a firm hand on the trigger will topple their foes and ensure the global triumph of the true Islam of the Prophet.
260 of 1,605 words
[End of non-subscriber extract]
Jane's Information Group is an impartial supplier of authoritative and accurate information and inclusion of this material in its information services in no way implies its endorsement or support of the views expressed therein.
Customers with a paid subscription to Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst can access the full article here
If you would like to subscribe, please see our products section for more information and pricing on Islamic Affairs Analyst
http://www.google.com/search?q=Internal+strikes+will+leave+the+eagle+deaf+and+bling+&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Islamic+Affairs+Analyst&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=200
Al-Qaeda's Top Ideologues Release New Statements on the Global Jihad
10/03/2006 - By Michael Scheuer (from Terrorism Focus, October 3) - The past week produced messages from the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who uses the name Abu Hamza al-Muhajir and may be an Egyptian by the name of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and al-Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. While there is nothing startlingly new in either message, both provide occasions for examining al-Qaeda's ability to stay on message, to learn from and try to redress serious errors and to deploy Islamic history and tradition in support of its case for a "defensive jihad" against the United States and its allies. Al-Muhajir was first out of the box on September 28 with a statement that again focused on al-Qaeda's efforts to mend its virulently anti-Shiite reputation in Iraq, as well as to solidify what apparently had become a shaky relationship between the group and Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq. Al-Muhajir's message appears to be a continuation of the effort he has made—and to which Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have publicly contributed—to clearly distinguish among Shiites, between those who are supporting the coalition-backed Iraqi government and those who are neutral toward it or actively resisting it. He used the opening of the holy month of Ramadan to reassure the latter of al-Qaeda's willingness to live and let live, while offering the former a chance to repent, join the resistance and save their lives, but only if they do so before the end of Ramadan. (NB: This offer presumably also applies to Sunnis working for the regime.)
"I say to those traitors in this blessed month, the month of pardon and forgiveness," al-Muhajir wrote, "that we are declaring a general pardon for all of them, forgiving them for our blood that was spilled by your hands and your treachery. We welcome you once again. Return to your religion and homeland before we defeat you, and you will have peace and security. We will not touch you but with kindness. You must first declare your sincere repentance in front of your tribes and families and inform us by whatever means, lest we make a mistake [and kill you]. You should put your hands in the hands of your brothers and sons, the mujahideen, for peace and security to return to our homes and expel the invader and to expel the occupier from our midst in this blessed month" [1].
Al-Muhajir also took another step toward undoing some of the anti-al-Qaeda alienation Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had created in Iraq's Sunni community. Knowledge of those al-Zarqawi-created difficulties was boosted last week when West Point's Combating Terrorism Center released a December 2005 letter from al-Qaeda's headquarters in South Asia in which al-Zarqawi was warned that his approach to the war contained "negatives…things that are perilous and ruinous." The letter was signed by a senior al-Qaeda leader—believed to be a Libyan named Atiyah Abd al-Rahman—and included a judgment that al-Zarqawi might have to step down as chief in Iraq "if you find at some point someone who is better and more suitable than you" [2].
In his statement, al-Muhajir seemed to be trying to redress al-Zarqawi's failure to abide by an order contained in al-Rahman's letter; al-Rahman had written that al-Zarqawi was not to "to kill any religious scholar or tribal leader who is obeyed, and of good repute in Iraq from among the Sunnis, no matter what" [3]. (NB: There have been a number of such killings in Sunni-dominated al-Anbar Province since al-Rahman's letter was written.) Al-Muhajir confronted this issue directly on September 28, and strongly implied that the success of al-Qaeda in Iraq and, indeed, that of all the Iraqi resistance depended on the leadership of tribal elders. "My second message is to those who sacrificed greatly, and endured pressures of which only God knows," al-Muhajir said [4]. "To the tribal leaders who supported and stood by us in secret and in public, provided us with men and money, I say: May God reward you well. You are the people of chivalry, generosity, bravery and fearlessness. If one with knowledge and status swore that the most generous people among the people of the earth are the Iraqi people, I do not think he would be lying. The day will come upon you, o most noble sheikhs, when we will place you on our shoulders, nay on our heads, and say to the masses: These are our fathers, we challenge you to find their likes…"
On the heels of al-Muhajir's message, Ayman al-Zawahiri released a statement on September 29 entitled "Bush, Pope of the Vatican, Darfur and the Crusader Wars." Also taking advantage of the holy month of Ramadan, al-Zawahiri adroitly used his message to speak to the long historical memory of Muslims. Interestingly, al-Zawahiri directed his discussion of Pope Benedict's recent remarks about Islam—quoting the negative views of a Byzantine emperor—directly to his Muslim audience; the video ceased providing English subtitles when the subject turned to the Pope's words.
Al-Zawahiri took two traditional avenues in attacking the Pope's comments. He first dismissed any claims that Islam was in any way lacking in reason because it included the duty of jihad. Al-Zawahiri claimed that the reverse was true. Catholicism's claims to being a reason-based, monotheistic religion "cannot be accepted by a sound mind because it includes superstitions like the trinity, the crucifixion, redemption, the original sin, the infallibility of the Pope and the church's forgiveness of sins" [5]. This is the traditional Islamic scholar's condemnation of Catholicism and Christianity, and al-Zawahiri completed it by citing the revelatory nature of the Quran, and reminding the Pope that "the book he deems holy [the Bible] does not have an authentic source and did not descend upon Jesus [as did the Quran upon Muhammad], peace be upon him. Rather it is about what was written about Jesus, peace be upon him..."
Having pointed out the sharp differences between Catholicism and Islam—and having offered the Pope and all Christians a chance to convert—al-Zawahiri launched an attack on the "charlatan Pope," indicting him as one "who blasphemed God and insulted the reverend Prophet [Muhammad], peace and prayers be upon him..." Seeking to place the Pope's remarks in the context of perpetual assaults by Christendom on Islam, al-Zawahiri explained that the Pope's "insolence" follows in the wake of imprisoned and mistreated Muslim prisoners, the caricatures of the Prophet, Salman Rushdie's book and France's ban on the headscarf for Muslim women. The Pope's words, al-Zawahiri concluded, are clearly part of the medieval Catholic crusades that have been renewed in the form of the "crusader U.S. campaign against Islam and Muslims."
"The [talk of the] charlatan Benedict XVI reminds us of the speech delivered by his predecessor Pope Urban II in Claremont in France, in which he instigated the people of Europe to fight Muslims and wage crusade wars because the pagan Muslims, the enemies of Christians, as he claimed, desecrate the grave of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him," al-Zawahiri said. "He [Urban II] deliberately lied to the mob of the West and ignored crystal-clear facts; namely, that Muslims are not pagan and eradicated paganism wherever they go…He also ignored the fact that Muslims cannot be the enemies of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, because they believe in his prophecy and consider him an apostle messenger of inflexible purpose…"
He continues, arguing that "the result of this charlatanism [by Urban II] was crusade wars that lasted for about two centuries and ended with the utter defeat of the crusader West. Benedict XVI fabricated lies against us, but we respond to this insult by benevolence, inviting him and all Christians to Islam...However, if they insist on their failed crusade war, let them have the same fate of Urban II and those who obeyed him and believed his lies" [6].
This review of the statements by al-Muhajir and al-Zawahiri are not exhaustive; topics such as Darfur, the role of clerics in jihad, the West's imprisonment of Muslim scholars and the Afghan and Iraq wars were also discussed. The issues covered above, however, are all central parts of the doctrine al-Qaeda has developed for trying to enroll the Muslim masses in the war against the United States and its allies: publicly admit and study your mistakes, and try to rectify them using Islamic themes; never forget the centrality of religion to the war and its unique ability to push your agenda forward and to help repair errors; and, in public statements, never forget the resonance and mobilizing power of Islam and Islamic history among Muslims. In their remarks, al-Muhajir and al-Zawahiri validated a point recently made by Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of al-Quds al-Arabi. "People in the West do not often fully understand the deep connection many Muslims feel with their past," Atwan said [7]. "After centuries of decline, they view bin Laden as having brought hope and dignity back to a people under a shadow of humiliation and exploitation, and having squared up to the bullies of the West."
Michael Scheuer served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is now a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation.
Notes
1. Statement by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, September 28, 2006.
2. Washington Post, October 2, 2006.
3. Ibid.
4. Statement by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, September 28, 2006.
5. Ayman al-Zawahiri, "Bush, Pope of the Vatican, Darfur and the Crusader Wars," September 29, 2006.
6. Ibid.
7. Abdel Bari Atwan, "The Secret History of al-Qaeda," Los Angeles: University of Californian Press: 2006, pp. 40 and 66.
Posted By: Jamestown
1983-2003 © The Jamestown Foundation