Posted on 06/19/2007 4:43:36 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
The Coming Urban Terror (back)
August 22, 2007
For the first time in history, announced researchers this May, a majority of the world’s population is living in urban environments. Cities—efficient hubs connecting international flows of people, energy, communications, and capital—are thriving in our global economy as never before. However, the same factors that make cities hubs of globalization also make them vulnerable to small-group terror and violence.
Over the last few years, small groups’ ability to conduct terrorism has shown radical improvements in productivity—their capacity to inflict economic, physical, and moral damage. These groups, motivated by everything from gang membership to religious extremism, have taken advantage of easy access to our global superinfrastructure, revenues from growing illicit commercial flows, and ubiquitously available new technologies to cross the threshold necessary to become terrible threats. September 11, 2001, marked their arrival at that threshold.
Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning. The arc of productivity growth that lets small groups terrorize at ever-higher levels of death and disruption stretches as far as the eye can see. Eventually, one man may even be able to wield the destructive power that only nation-states possess today. It is a perverse twist of history that this new threat arrives at the same moment that wars between states are receding into the past. Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists’ likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city.
Cities played a vital defensive role in the last major evolution of conventional state-versus-state warfare. Between the world wars, the refinement of technologies—particularly the combustion engine, when combined with armor—made it possible for armies to move at much higher speeds than in the past, so new methods of warfare emphasized armored motorized maneuver as a way to pierce the opposition’s solid defensive lines and range deep into soft, undefended rear areas. These incursions, the armored thrusts of blitzkrieg, turned an army’s size against itself: even the smallest armored vanguard could easily disrupt the supply of ammunition, fuel, and rations necessary to maintain the huge armies of the twentieth century in the field.
To defend against these thrusts, the theoretician J. F. C. Fuller wrote in the 1930s, cities could be used as anchor or pivot points to engage armored forces in attacks on static positions, bogging down the offensive. Tanks couldn’t move quickly through cities, and if they bypassed them and struck too deeply into enemy territory, their supply lines—in particular, of the gasoline they drank greedily—would become vulnerable. The city, Fuller anticipated, could serve as a vast fortress, requiring the fast new armor to revert to the ancient tactic of the siege. That’s exactly what happened in practice during World War II, when the defenses mounted in Leningrad , Moscow , and Stalingrad played a major role in the Allied victory.
But in the current evolution of warfare, cities are no longer defensive anchors against armored thrusts ranging through the countryside. They have become the main targets of offensive action themselves. Just as the huge militaries of the early twentieth century were vulnerable to supply and communications disruption, cities are now so heavily dependent on a constant flow of services from various centralized systems that even the simplest attacks on those systems can cause massive disruption.
Most of the networks that we rely on for city life—communications, electricity, transportation, water—are overused, interdependent, and extremely complex. They developed organically as what scholars in the emerging field of network science call ‘scale-free networks,’ which contain large hubs with a plethora of connections to smaller and more isolated local clusters. Such networks are economically efficient and resistant to random failure—but they are also extremely vulnerable to intentional disruptions, as Albert-Laszlo Barabasi shows in his important book Linked: The New Science of Networks. In practice, this means that a very small number of attacks on the critical hubs of a scale-free network can collapse the entire network. Such a collapse can occasionally happen by accident, when random failure hits a critical node; think of the huge Northeast blackout of 2003, which caused $6.4 billion in damage.
Further, the networks of our global superinfrastructure are tightly ‘coupled’—so tightly interconnected, that is, that any change in one has a nearly instantaneous effect on the others. Attacking one network is like knocking over the first domino in a series: it leads to cascades of failure through a variety of connected networks, faster than human managers can respond.
The ongoing attacks on the systems that support Baghdad ’s 5 million people illustrate the vulnerability of modern networks. Over the last four years, guerrilla assaults on electrical systems have reduced Baghdad ’s power to an average of four or five hours a day. And the insurgents have been busily finding new ways to cut power: no longer do they make simple attacks on single transmission towers. Instead, they destroy multiple towers in series and remove the copper wire for resale to fund the operation; they ambush repair crews in order to slow repairs radically; they attack the natural gas and water pipelines that feed the power plants. In September 2004, one attack on an oil pipeline that fed a power plant quickly led to a cascade of power failures that blacked out electricity throughout Iraq .
Lack of adequate power is a major reason why economic recovery has been nearly impossible in Iraq . No wonder that, in account after account, nearly the first criticism that any Iraqi citizen levels against the government is its inability to keep the lights on. Deprived of services, citizens are forced to turn to local groups—many of them at war with the government—for black-market alternatives. This money, in turn, fuels further violence, and the government loses legitimacy.
Insurgents have directed such disruptive attacks against nearly all the services necessary to get a city of 5 million through the day: water pipes, trucking, and distribution lines for gasoline and kerosene. And because of these networks’ complexity and interconnectivity, even small attacks, costing in the low thousands of dollars to carry out, can cause tens of millions and occasionally hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Iraq is a petri dish for modern conflict, the Spanish Civil War of our times. It’s the place where small groups are learning to fight modern militaries and modern societies and win. As a result, we can expect to see systems disruption used again and again in modern conflict—certainly against megacities in the developing world, and even against those in the developed West, as we have already seen in London , Madrid , and Moscow .
Another growing threat to our cities, commonest so far in the developing world, is gangs challenging government for control. For three sultry July days in 2006, a gang called PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital, ‘First Command of the Capital’) held hostage the 20 million inhabitants of the greater São Paulo area through a campaign of violence. Gang members razed police stations, attacked banks, rioted in prisons, and torched dozens of buses, shutting down a transportation system serving 2.9 million people a day.
The previous May, a similar series of attacks had terrified the city. ‘The attackers moved on foot, and by car and motorbike,’ wrote William Langewiesche in Vanity Fair. ‘They were not rioters, revolutionaries, or the graduates of terrorist camps. They were anonymous young men and women, dressed in ordinary clothes, unidentifiable in advance, and indistinguishable afterward. Wielding pistols, automatic rifles, and firebombs, they emerged from within the city, struck fast, and vanished on the spot. Their acts were criminal, but the attackers did not loot, rob, or steal. They burned buses, banks, and public buildings, and went hard after the forces of order—gunning down the police in their neighborhood posts, in their homes, and on the streets.’
The violence hasn’t been limited to São Paulo . In December 2006, a copycat campaign by an urban gang called the Comando Vermelho (’Red Command’) shut down Rio de Janeiro , too. In both cases, the gangs fomenting the violence didn’t list demands or send ultimatums to the government. Rather, they were flexing their muscles, testing their ability to challenge the government monopoly on violence.
Both gangs had steadily accumulated power for a decade, helped in part by globalization, which simplifies making connections to the multitrillion-dollar global black-market economy. With these new connections, the gangs’ profit horizon became limitless, fueling rapid expansion. New communications technology, particularly cell phones, played a part, too, making it possible for the gangs to thrive as loose associations, and allowing a geographical and organizational dispersion that rendered them nearly invulnerable to attack. The PCC has been particularly successful, growing from a small prison gang in the mid-nineties to a group that today controls nearly half of São Paulo ’s slums and its millions of inhabitants. An escalating confrontation between these gangs and the city governments appears inevitable.
The gangs’ rapid rise into challengers to urban authorities is something that we will see again elsewhere. This dynamic is already at work in American cities in the rise of MS-13, a rapidly expanding transnational gang with a loose organizational structure, a propensity for violence, and access to millions in illicit gains. It already has an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 members, dispersed over 31 U.S. states and several Latin American countries, and its proliferation continues unabated, despite close attention from law enforcement. Like the PCC, MS-13 or a similar American gang may eventually find that it has sufficient power to hold a city hostage through disruption.
The final threat that small groups pose to cities is weapons of mass destruction. Though most of the worry over WMDs has focused on nuclear weapons, those aren’t the real long-term problem. Not only is the vast manufacturing capability of a nation-state required to produce the basic nuclear materials, but those materials are difficult to manipulate, transport, and turn into weapons. Nor is it easy to assemble a nuke from parts bought on the black market; if it were, nation-states like Iran, which have far more resources at their disposal than terrorist groups do, would be doing just that instead of resorting to internal production.
It’s also unlikely that a state would give terrorists a nuclear weapon. Sovereignty and national prestige are tightly connected to the production of nukes. Sharing them with terrorists would grant immense power to a group outside the state’s control—the equivalent of giving Osama bin Laden the keys to the presidential palace. If that isn’t deterrent enough, the likelihood of retaliation is, since states, unlike terrorist groups, have targets that can be destroyed. The result of a nuclear explosion in Moscow or New York would very probably be the annihilation of the country that manufactured the bomb, once its identity was determined—as it surely would be, since no plot of that size can remain secret for long.
Even in the very unlikely case that a nuclear weapon did end up in terrorist hands, it would be a single horrible incident, rather than an ongoing threat. The same is true of dirty bombs, which disperse radioactive material through conventional explosives. No, the real long-term danger from small groups is the use of biotechnology to build weapons of mass destruction. In contrast with nuclear technology, biotech’s knowledge and tools are already widely dispersed—and their power is increasing exponentially.
The biotech field is in the middle of a massive improvement in productivity through advances in computing power. In fact, the curves of improvement that we see in biotechnology mirror the rates of improvement in computing dictated by Moore’s Law—the observation, borne out by decades of experience, that the ratio of performance to price of computing power doubles every 24 months. This means that incredible power will soon be in the hands of individuals. University of Washington engineer Robert Carlson observes that if current trends in the rate of improvement in DNA sequencing continue, ‘within a decade a single person at the lab bench could sequence or synthesize all the DNA describing all the people on the planet many times over in an eight-hour day.’ And with ever tinier, cheaper, and more widely available tools, a large and decentralized industrial base that is hiring lab techs at a double-digit growth rate, and the active transfer of knowledge via the Internet (the blueprints of the entire smallpox virus now circulate on the Web), biotech is too widely available for us to contain it.
In less than a decade, then, biotechnology will be ripe for the widespread development of weapons of mass destruction, and it fits the requirements of small-group warfare perfectly. It is small, inexpensive, and easy to manufacture in secret. Also, since dangerous biotechnology is based primarily on the manipulation of information, it will make rapid progress through the same kind of amateur tinkering that currently produces new computer viruses. Terrorists also have a growing advantage in delivering bioweapons. The increasing porousness of national borders, size of global megacities, and volume of air travel all mean that the delivery and percolation of bioweapons will be fast-moving and widespread—potentially on several continents at once.
It is almost certain that we will see repeated, perhaps incessant, attempts to deploy bioweapons with new strains of viruses or bacteria. Picture a Russian biohacker who, a decade from now, designs a new, deadly form of the common flu virus and sells it on the Internet, just as computer viruses and worms get sold today. The terrorist group that buys the design sends it to a recently hired lab tech in Pakistan, who performs the required modifications with widely available tools. The product then ships by mail to London, to the awaiting ‘suicide vectors’—men who infect themselves and then board airplanes headed to world destinations, infecting passengers on the planes and in crowded terminals. The infection spreads quickly, going global in days—long before anyone detects it.
It’s very possible that many cities will fall in the face of such deadly threats. Megacities in the developing world—which often, because of their rapid growth, widespread corruption, and illegitimate governance, aren’t able to provide security or basic services for their citizens—are particularly vulnerable. However, cities in the developed world that properly appreciate the threats arrayed against them may devise startlingly innovative solutions.
In almost all cases, cities can defend themselves from their new enemies through effective decentralization. To counter systems disruption, decentralized services—the capability of smaller areas within cities to provide backup services, at least on a temporary basis—could radically diminish the harmful consequences of disconnection from the larger global grid. In New York, this would mean storage or limited production capability of backup electricity, water, and fuel, with easy connections to the delivery grid—at the borough level or even smaller. These backups would then provide a means of restoring central services rapidly after a failure.
Similarly, cities may combat networked gangs by decentralizing their own security. Cities have long maintained centralized police forces, but gangs can often overwhelm them. Many governments are responding with militarized police: China is building a million-man paramilitary force, for example; and even in the United States, the use of SWAT teams has increased from 3,000 deployments a year in the 1980s to 50,000 a year in 2006. But militarized police may too easily become an army of occupation, and, if corrupt, as they are in Brazil, they may become enemies of the state along with the gangs.
A better solution involves local security forces, either locally recruited or bought on the marketplace (such as Blackwater), which can be powerful bulwarks against small-group terrorism. Such forces may become a vital component in our defense against bioterrorism, too, since they can enforce local containment—and since large centralized services, like the ones we have today, might actually accelerate the propagation of bioweapons. Still, if improperly established, local forces can also become rogue criminal entities, like the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia and the militias in Rio de Janeiro. Governments need to regulate them carefully.
In the future, we probably won’t know exactly how we will be attacked until it happens. In highly uncertain situations like this, centralized solutions that emphasize uniform responses will often collapse. Heterogeneous systems, by contrast, are unlikely to fail catastrophically. Moreover, local innovation—supplemented by a marketplace in goods and services that improve security, detection, monitoring, and so on—is likely to develop responses to threats quickly and effectively. Other localities will copy those responses that prove successful.
In June 2007, the FBI and local law enforcement halted a plot to blow up the John F. Kennedy International Airport’s fuel tanks and feeder pipelines. This was another great example of how police forces, if used correctly, can defuse threats before they become a menace [see ‘On the Front Line in the War on Terrorism’]. However, our current level of safety will not last. The selection of the target demonstrated clearly that future attackers will take advantage of our systems’ vulnerability to disruption, which will sharply increase the number of potential targets. It also showed that these threats can emerge spontaneously from small groups unconnected to al-Qaida. More and more attempts will come, with higher and higher rates of success. Our choice is simple: we can rely exclusively on our current security systems to stop the threats—and suffer the consequences when they don’t—or we can take measures to mitigate the impact of these threats by exerting local control over essential services.
Source: www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_urban_terrorism.html
Kosovo: ‘Bloody and Destabilising Conflict’ if Independence Denied (back)
August 21, 2007
Europe risks a new bloody and destabilising conflict unless the EU spearheads breakaway Muslim-majority Kosovo’s drive to supervised independence by April/May 2008, a Brussels-based think-tank warned in a report published on Tuesday.
‘The EU has a ticking time-bomb in its own backyard’, said Alexander Anderson, the International Crisis Group’s Kosovo Project Director.
‘The sooner the EU, or a significant majority of its member states, declares itself ready to back an independent Kosovo, the better the chances of forestalling disaster,’ he added.
The comments accompanied ‘Breaking the Kosovo Stalemate: Europe’s Responsibility’, the latest report from the International Crisis Group. The report analyses the key role of the EU in protracted international efforts to resolve the future status of Kosovo, which has been under United Nations control since 1999.
Four more months of have been mandated by France, Germany, Italy, Britain and staunch Serb ally Russia, after Serbia’s refusal to accept a UN plan backing independence for Kosovo - an outcome demanded by its 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority.
The talks are due to resumed in Vienna later this month.
‘The preferred strategy of bringing Kosovo to supervised independence through the United Nations Security Council has failed, following Russia’s declared intention to veto, and a new round of negotiations between Pristina and Belgrade will most likely lead nowhere,’ said the report.
‘This leaves the EU - with the most to lose from renewed violent conflict in the Balkans - before crucial decisions.’
‘Europe tragically failed the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Now it has a second chance to show it can be an effective actor in the Balkans,’ said Sabine Freizer, Crisis Group’s Europe director.
‘If it is incapable once again, it would almost certainly lead to bloodshed and renewed regional chaos that would blow back into Central and Western Europe in the form of refugees and stronger organised crime networks.’
The think-tank recommended that if no agreed solution emerges ‘as is overwhelmingly likely,’ EU, US and NATO need begin implementing need to be ready to start coordinated action with the Kosovo government to implement top UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s blocked independence plan, including its recommended 120 transition period.
‘That period should be used to accumulate recognition of the conditionally independent state from many governments; to adopt and set in place the state-forming legislation and related institutions foreseen by the Ahtisaari plan,’ it said.
‘In April/May 2008, Kosovo would be conditionally independent, under EU and NATO supervision,’ the think-tank said.
‘Not all EU member states need to recognise Kosovo during the transition or even in April 2008,’ it added.
Source: www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=1.0.1222001119
U.S. Fears Overseas Funds Could ‘Buy up America’ (back)
August 21, 2007
For years, the Bush administration has shrugged off concerns about the trillions of dollars that the United States owes to China, Japan and oil-producing countries in the Middle East, arguing that these debts give no undue leverage to foreign governments.
But at a time of global financial instability, the administration has started to worry.
U.S. concerns - like those of many European policy makers - focus on a growing but little understood trend of foreign governments converting their debt holdings into ‘sovereign investment funds’ that are acquiring assets in the United States and elsewhere - and could influence the markets when they buy and sell.
In response, the Bush administration is pressing the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to examine the behavior of these funds, which control as much as $2.5 trillion in investments, and to develop possible codes of conduct for them.
Among the proposed rules would be an obligation to disclose their investment methods and to avoid interfering in a host country’s politics.
Officially, the United States welcomes all investments - except those that could compromise national security.
But a note of caution can be heard regarding investment by foreign governments as opposed to companies. Some officials warn of a possible political backlash as the trend grows.
‘Money is naturally going to gravitate toward dollar-based assets because of the strength of our economy,’ the Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., said in an interview. ‘I’d like nothing more than to get more of that money. But I understand that there’s a natural fear that they’re going to buy up America.’
One of the American concerns is over philosophy. The United States has for years preached the gospel of privatization, calling on other countries to sell their government-owned industries.
Now, with sovereign wealth funds, many experts are asking whether cross-border investment is evolving into something new that could be called cross-border nationalization, raising the specter of government interference in free markets - only this time, in other countries’ markets rather than their own.
Another concern is the sheer size and potential growth of these funds. Their estimated $2.5 trillion in assets exceeds the sum invested by the world’s hedge funds. Also, Morgan Stanley, in a widely cited study, projects that these investment funds could grow to a staggering $17.5 trillion in 10 years.
Though sovereign wealth funds do not appear to have played a role in the recent turmoil of global markets, experts say they could in the future, in favorable or unfavorable ways - by selling assets abruptly and precipitating a crisis, or by bailing out funds or companies that are in trouble.
‘They could become either the source of the problem or part of the solution,’ said Edwin Truman, senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. ‘When you have foreign governments holding stocks and bonds, not just Treasury securities, you have to ask whether they will be a stabilizing force or a destabilizing force.’
Truman said that it would be easy to imagine that in a future global crisis, Paulson might be calling not just central bankers but also the directors of sovereign wealth funds.
‘He may be calling them right now, for all we know,’ he added.
The political furor over these funds so far has been limited. Efforts this year by China and Singapore to buy stakes in Barclays Bank in Britain, and by Qatar to take over the J Sainsbury supermarket chain in Britain, have caused little stir among British leaders.
Neither Dubai’s bid for Barney’s, the American retailer, nor China’s purchase of nearly a 10 percent stake in Blackstone earlier this year has produced an outcry in the United States, although there have been some repercussions in China over the Blackstone investment’s recent losses.
But in Germany, where there is concern about Russia buying up pipelines and energy infrastructure and squeezing Europe for political gain, Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that purchases by foreign governments or government-controlled companies pose a risk.
‘How do we actually deal with funds in state hands?’ Merkel said at a news conference in July. ‘This is a phenomenon which until now has not existed on such a scale.’
Probably the most political turbulence caused by a sovereign wealth fund occurred when Temasek Holdings, the state-owned investment branch of Singapore, purchased a stake in the company owned by the prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. The deal fed anti-government demonstrations that led to his ouster in a military coup in 2006.
The worry is that, beyond the possibility of foreign funds pushing up prices on bonds, stocks and real estate, they might exercise inappropriate control politically or in the private sphere.
Truman, of the Peterson Institute, is one of many experts urging the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to draw up codes of conduct that would keep politics out of investment decisions and require the funds to share information about the composition of their portfolios and their investment strategies.
‘A government is a different type of animal in the investing world,’ he said. ‘We call them sovereign wealth funds, but once you’re operating outside your own borders, you’re not sovereign in the same sense.’
Others favor requiring the funds to place their investment decisions in the hands of nonpolitical managers.
‘As Asian countries and petro states get rich, they certainly have the money to try to exert influence,’ said Kenneth Rogoff, professor of politics and public policy at Harvard University.
‘We don’t want that influence to be channeled in a reckless way. There has to be transparency in company governance and financial governance to protect against it,’ he said.
Paulson and the deputy Treasury secretary, Robert Kimmitt, have traveled to China, Russia and the Gulf to urge top financial officials to adopt greater disclosure of their investment practices and to ban government subsidies or other forms of incentives for their overseas investment activities.
The administration is also telling these countries that they must open their own properties to American investments if they want to invest in the United States.
Kimmitt said in an interview that sovereign funds appeared to be adhering to sound financial practices and not political motivations, at least so far.
‘When I was in China and Russia, I was struck by the degree to which, although I was talking to government officials, it was like talking to asset managers,’ he said.
With $300 billion in its fund, Norway is seen by many financial experts as a model for disclosure of its portfolio strategy, holdings and methods. But it is also unabashedly political, recently pulling its investment out of Wal-Mart, citing accusations that it has violated child-labor laws and scuttled efforts by employees to unionize.
But China and Middle East countries have a long way to go before they are as transparent about their activities as Norway is.
Some experts wonder what would happen if China took over a U.S. pharmaceutical company and pressed for changes in prescription drug programs. Likewise, what would the reaction be if an Arab government demanded a bailout or tax break for its company in return for supporting peace talks in Iraq or Israel?
‘If these funds buy into a big Fidelity mutual, they make standard kinds of investments that the Yale endowment makes,’ said Lawrence Summers, the economist who served as Treasury secretary and president of Harvard. ‘But if they make more direct investments, they become meaningful actors in the economy, and that raises many more questions.’
President George W. Bush recently signed a bill enacted by Congress to streamline the process of screening and possibly rejecting purchases of American companies by foreigners on national security grounds.
But these account for only about 10 percent of such purchases, the Treasury Department says.
‘The Bush administration is right to look at this phenomenon, not with alarm but some attention,’ said Stephen Jen, head of currency research at Morgan Stanley.
‘What needs to be more transparent is the strategy and governance of these funds, so you don’t suspect of them some dark geopolitical strategy in their investments,’ he said.
Source: www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/21/america/wealth.php
TERRORISM RESPONSE
Egypt: Italy to ‘Defend’ Rights of Christian Convert (back)
August 21, 2007
Italy’s Foreign Ministry has instructed the country’s embassy in Cairo to monitor closely the plight of an Egyptian man, Mohammed Hegazi, who has received death threats following his conversion from Islam to Christianity.
Hegazi, a journalist and political activist, is in hiding together with his wife Katarina, who is four months pregnant.
Hegazi’s case ‘would not be taken lightly’, Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Ugo Intini was quoted as saying by Milan- based daily Corriere della Sera on Tuesday.
‘We will act, so as to defend human rights and freedom of religion’, Intini said.
Last year Italy granted political asylum to an Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, who converted to Christianity and who could have been executed in Afghanistan for renouncing Islam.
Hegazi’s case first came to light when he asked the Egyptian Interior Ministry to change the religion in his identity card, only to have his request refused.
While some 10 million Egyptians are Coptic Christians, Muslims who convert to Christianity or to other religions are branded as apostates, and according to some interpretations of Islamic law, can be punished with a death sentence.
While Egypt’s top Muslim cleric, the Grand Mufti, has said that apostasy is not punishable ‘in this world’ fundamentalists have often threatened to kill those who abandon Islam.
Source: www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.1221165580
TERROR ON TRIAL
Lebanese Court Charges 227 Islamists with Terrorism, Murder (back)
August 21, 2007
A Lebanese court has charged 227 Islamist militants suspected of belonging to the Fatah al-Islam movement with murder and terrorism, a judicial source said Tuesday. Lebanese authorities arrested 108 of the suspects in May, when fighting first started between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
The militants were charged with the killing of Lebanese troops, including 11 officers and 129 soldiers.
They were also charged with carrying out acts of terrorism, undermining the state’s authority and attacking its military and security institutions as well as civilians.
The militants can face the death penalty if they are found guilty of terrorism.
The Fatah al-Islam militant group has been engaged since May 20 in fierce battles with the Lebanese army at the Nahr al-Bared camp, outside the port city of Tripoli.
The fighting has left at least 200 people dead, including 140 soldiers, in the deadliest internal unrest since the 1975-1990 civil war ended.
Source: www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/96347.html
Saddam Aides Go on Trial in Iraq (back)
August 21, 2007
Fifteen aides of Saddam Hussein have been accused in a court in Iraq of ‘one of the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history’.
The defendants are alleged to have helped suppress a Shia uprising after the 1991 Gulf War, in which tens of thousands are thought to have died.
In recent years, mass graves containing hundreds of bodies have been uncovered.
Those in the dock include the cousin of Saddam Hussein, Ali Hassan al-Majid, who is widely known as ‘Chemical Ali’.
Majid has already been sentenced to death following an earlier trial for genocide against Iraq’s Kurdish population in the so-called Anfal campaign of 1988.
Two more of the defendants in the latest trial - Sultan Hashim al-Tai, a former defence minister, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, a former deputy chief of operations for the armed forces - were also sentenced to death for those killings.
DEFENDANTS
Ali Hassan al-Majid
Sultan Hashim al-Tai
Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti
Abd Hamid Mahmoud al-Nasseri
Ibrahim Abdul Sattar al-Dahan
Walid Hamid Tawfik al-Nasseri
Iyad Fatiya al-Rawi
Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan
Abdul Ghafour Fulayih al-Ani
Ayad Taha Shihab al-Douri
Latif Maal Hamoud al-Sabawi
Qais Abdul Razzaq al-Adhami
Sabir Abdul Aziz al-Douri
Saadi Tuma Abbas al-Jabouri
Sufyan Maher al-Ghairiri
Mass Graves
Dressed in a cream robe and a white kuffiya shawl, Majid was among the first to enter the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone.
‘I am the fighter Ali Hassan al-Majid,’ he replied when asked to identify himself by Judge Mohammed al-Oraibi al-Khalifa.
Once they had been seated, the 15 men were told they faced charges of crimes against humanity ‘for engaging in widespread or systematic attacks against a civilian population’, offences punishable by death.
‘The acts committed against the Iraqi people in 1991 by the security forces and by the defendants sitting were among one of the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history,’ the chief prosecutor said in his opening remarks.
The prosecutor alleged that former President Saddam Hussein had ordered tanks and infantry troops withdrawn from Kuwait to attack Iraq’s southern provinces when he realised he had lost control there.
‘The convict Saddam made rash judgements. Majid was authorised to demolish anything and kill anyone who came in the way of the forces,’ he said.
He then accused the defendants of both ordering and carrying out cold-blooded executions while they directed Baghdad’s military response to the uprising.
‘The helicopters were bombing the cities and houses of people. Prisoners captured were killed,’ he said.
‘Majid used to come to detention centres, tie the hands of the detainees and then shoot them dead with his weapon. The dead were then later buried in mass graves.
‘Many mass graves have been found since the 2003 war ended. And we will find many more if we keep searching.’
The first witness, 65-year-old former soldier Raybath Jabbar Risan, said troops from the elite Republic Guard had shelled his village in Basra province with artillery and mortars.
‘My cousin was killed and nephew wounded. My brother’s house was burned. I escaped with my family,’ he told the court.
‘I worked in the army for 30 years and never imagined they would do this to me and my family.’
The court expects to hear about 90 witnesses as well as audio tapes and written reports. US officials said there was little remaining evidence of the orders given, however, as Saddam Hussein ordered the destruction of records.
Reprisals
The Shaaban Intifada (Uprising) started in March 1991 as defeated Iraqi troops fled back to southern Iraq after US-led forces took control of Kuwait.
Galvanised by a message by US President George Bush to ‘take matters into their own hands’, the Shia strongholds of Najaf and Karbala rose in revolt in an attempt to topple Saddam Hussein.
Soon, thousands of rebel troops seized control of the city of Basra and 14 of Iraq’s provinces, and advanced to within 60 miles of Baghdad.
But despite these early successes, the rebellion was swiftly crushed by government forces. Mass reprisals followed in which tens of thousands of people are believed to have died.
Many Shia blame President Bush for the uprising’s failure, as the US came to a ceasefire agreement that allowed forces loyal to Saddam to crush the rebellion by using helicopter gunships.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6956080.stm
New Misgivings on Wiretap Law (back)
August 22, 2007
The Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program looks set to be the subject of renewed and bitter wrangling between Congress and the White House when lawmakers return to Washington in September.
And this upcoming battle promises to be far more complex than a run-of-the-mill dispute over an agriculture bill, say, or tax legislation. The law in this area is unusually dense and difficult. The underlying activity is classified. One of the key administration figures dealing with the issue is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, an official in whom many in Congress have little trust.
‘Essentially, it’s a difficult situation to have a rational conversation on the merits,’ says Benjamin Wittes, an expert on national security law at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The expanded snooping powers of the National Security Agency (NSA) have been controversial ever since they became public in 2006. To critics, the program opens the door to the possibility of dangerous infringement on the civil liberties of US citizens. To supporters, they’re a necessary tool against terrorism in an era of cellphones and Internet communications.
At issue now is the temporary update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) passed earlier this month, just before Congress fled Capitol Hill for its summer break. This update was made necessary when the secretive judicial body that oversees the wiretapping, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, banned eavesdropping on foreigners whose communications were being routed through the United States.
The legal update, which expires in six months, allows the NSA to resume siphoning such communications. In one of its key changes, US intelligence no longer needs to know that at least one of the parties to a communication is abroad prior to eavesdropping. It needs only to ‘reasonably believe’ that one person is off US soil.
In the weeks since this bill’s passage some Democrats have begun to regret the manner in which it was approved. They feel the vote was held in haste, with summer break looming. And they’ve started to worry that by changing just a few words in a massive piece of law they’ve opened the door to practices they did not intend.
Some civil liberties experts believe that the US may now be able to gather a wide range of information from US citizens on home soil without a warrant as long as it bears upon the monitoring of a person thought to be overseas.
Nor do many lawmakers like the fact that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is one of the key officials who will determine how the new rule is put into practice.
The bottom line: The vote will likely be revisited.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. John Conyers (D) of Michigan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) of California wrote that ‘Many provisions of this legislation are unacceptable, and, although the bill has a six-month sunset clause, I do not believe the American people will want to wait that long before corrective action is taken.’
In addition, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Aug. 20 threatened to pursue contempt charges against the administration over its reluctance to produce documents outlining the eavesdropping’s legal foundation.
Senator Leahy subpoenaed the NSA, the National Security Council, and the offices of the president and vice president for these papers in late June. They are necessary, he says, so that the Senate can understand better exactly what it’s voting for in regard to warrantless wiretapping.
White House counsel Fred Fielding has asked for more time to respond. In an Aug. 20 letter to Leahy, however, he noted that the White House had identified a ‘core set’ of these papers that it would likely withhold under a claim of executive privilege.
Lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney, for instance, indicated that they had found more than 40 ‘Top Secret/Codeword Presidential authorizations’ and memoranda dealing with the issue.
‘When the Senate comes back in session, I’ll bring it up before the committee,’ Leahy said at a press conference. ‘I prefer cooperation to contempt. Right now, there’s no question that they are in contempt of a valid order of the Congress.’
In regard to the subpoenaed documents, both sides have strong arguments for their positions, notes one legal expert.
Congress is directly legislating on the subject. In fact, eavesdropping legislation ‘is a critically important item on the congressional agenda,’ notes Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
Yet courts have generally favored claims of executive privilege when they deal with issues of national security. And any move to hold the White House in contempt of Congress over the withheld documents would be slow going.
‘It’s hard to see that moving very far even this year,’ says Mr. Tobias.
Source: www.csmonitor.com/2007/0822/p01s03-uspo.html
Terror Goes Digital with Canadian Help (back)
August 18, 2007
Welcome to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia – pivotal battleground in the global jihad.
The town of 7,000 doesn’t look the part. Its quietly beautiful downtown lives and dies by tourists. The coastline puts postcards to shame. The New York Islanders have held their training camp here for the past two years. But unwittingly, Yarmouth has become an example of the sort of unassuming places that are serving as relay stations in a virtual war.
The town is home to a branch of Register.com, one of its largest employers and one of the most popular Internet domain-name registration services in the world. For a fee, the company allows users to register website names – the .com, .net or .org addresses you type into your web browser to surf the Internet. Normally, when anyone signs up new domains, they have to provide a name, address and contact information, all of which become publicly available to anyone who’s even remotely net-savvy. (The information is copied to one of the central databases that form the backbone of the Internet, to ensure there are no conflicts, such as two separate entities owning the same domain.) But for a few extra dollars, Register.com also offers an anonymous registration service: Try to find out who registered any one of these websites, and you’ll be handed the same address and phone number in Yarmouth.
This service is hugely popular: Civil-liberties advocates and anyone else who values their privacy flock to it. But it’s also very useful to another group of people, halfway around the globe: On one of the world’s largest pro-Hamas websites, viewers can download martyrdom videos that feature the diatribes of masked men shortly before they launch deadly attacks. Look up the registration info for that site, and you’ll get that Yarmouth address and phone number.
The challenge this situation poses is not unprecedented. Years ago, authorities noticed that child pornography websites, though often operated from outside North America, made use of North American anonymous-registration services. In response, a large number of watchdog groups began hunting down such sites to force the registration firms to shut them down.
‘There’s nothing near that level [of public monitoring] with terrorist websites,’ says Wade Deisman, Director of the National Security Working Group at the University of Ottawa. Government intelligence services don’t have the resources to manage the scale of the problem. ‘I haven’t seen anything that comes even close to addressing this issue,’ he says.
The FBI estimates somewhere in the range of 6,000 terrorism-supporting websites are currently active. Last week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies published a report stating that, in terms of nefarious online activity, terrorism promotion had eclipsed hatemongering.
This is the new jihad – the evolution of a propaganda effort that, just a decade ago, consisted mostly of Osama bin Laden speeches on video tapes smuggled out of a hideout in Afghanistan. Today, the public-relations arms of terrorist organizations – run less by grizzled warriors than by 20-something computer geeks – deal in digital currency, getting their messages out instantly and universally using the scope and anonymity of the web.
The process is borderless. A beheading video moves from a hideout in Peshawar to a server in London to a computer screen in Toronto unhindered, fuelling a global radicalization juggernaut that intelligence agencies describe as perhaps the biggest threat facing the West today.
All manner of video, audio and even interactive propaganda have found an audience among many disaffected Muslim youth around the world. But while the majority of people who download such content may only fuel a passive resentment of the West, for others the audiovisual diatribes of Mr. bin Laden and his kin have served as a sort of gateway drug to a more violent worldview. That was the case among some of the alleged ringleaders of the Toronto terrorist group arrested during a sweep last summer – a trail led from some of those arrested to a massive, and now defunct, web forum where angry youth traded incendiary content.
In another case, a young British man named Younis Tsouli was arrested in England in 2005 and charged with ‘conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, conspiracy to obtain money by deception, fundraising and possession of articles for terrorist purposes.’ Mr. Tsouli, now 23, had never so much as fired a rifle – his agitation was purely online. The computer hacker got his start moving propaganda videos around the web for al-Qaeda in Iraq and soon popped up in connection with at least three alleged terrorist plots, including one in Canada. For Mr. Tsouli, it was not a great stretch from posting beheading videos to sending out suicide-bomb-belt manuals.
Besides the anonymous registries, many effective terrorist-propaganda producers rely on the hugely popular public blogging and file-sharing sites used by millions to rant about their bosses and share barbecue recipes. That leaves law-enforcement officials in the uncomfortable position of trying to catch a wisp of an enemy without trampling on everyone else’s civil liberties.
And so a battle rages in Ottawa, as Canadian police and spy agencies complain that the legislation governing online crime is a historical relic. Privacy advocates, on the other hand, fear a world where every 0 and 1 is visible to Big Brother.
Meanwhile, terrorist propaganda operations have come to rival the PR departments of multinational corporations, complete with publishing houses, movie-editing studios and video-game developers. This is the ammunition in a battle of ideas that all sides agree may end up being more important than any blood-and-bullets conflict – a battle that, so far, the West is losing.
al-Qaeda’s Spin Doctor
It started with a single memo, dated June 20, 2000. Abu Huthayfa, a member of al-Qaeda’s inner circle, was writing to his mentor, Osama bin Laden, about the importance of public relations. The writer was struck by some of the tactics already in use by Hamas, especially the practice of videotaping statements of soon-to-be ‘martyrs.’ A year earlier, the al-Jazeera television network had aired an interview with Mr. bin Laden, and the public response convinced Mr. Huthayfa that there were many people around the world hanging on the soft-spoken Saudi’s every word.
He asked his leader, why wasn’t al-Qaeda taking better advantage? Why was it that two years after the U.S. embassy bombings in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi, many people knew little about ‘the heroes of this magnificent undertaking’?
Abu Huthayfa’s solution to al-Qaeda’s PR shortfalls would serve as the foundation for the single most important advance in the terrorist group’s history. He proposed the creation of a separate informational branch of al-Qaeda. At the time, the group’s communiqués flowed freely around much of Afghanistan, but that was a form of preaching to the converted – elsewhere in the world, al-Qaeda was still a small fish.
To remedy this, Mr. Huthayfa set his sights on the Internet, especially e-mail and file-sharing websites. He touted the advantages of instant communication, the massive amount of information that could be sent around the world in a blink.
‘The importance of establishing a website for you on the Internet in which you place all your legible, audible, and visible archives and news must be emphasized,’ he wrote. ‘It should not escape the mind of any one of you the importance of this tool in communicating with people.’
It didn’t. Within a year, Mr. bin Laden would declare that up to 90 per cent of al-Qaeda’s battles would be fought not with guns, but words and images. (The memo, recovered in a raid on an al-Qaeda hideout, is now a public document found on several terrorism-studies databases.)
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a flood of videos glorifying the carnage began appearing online. In many cases the producer was al-Sahab (’the Clouds’), the newly created media arm of al-Qaeda. The hijackers appeared superimposed over images of the planes crashing into New York’s twin towers, reading their wills and issuing stern warnings to the U.S. This time, the propaganda opportunity would be fully exploited.
The post-9/11 videos showcased many of al-Qaeda’s major talking points. Over and over, would-be martyrs and senior leaders glorified the attacks and the attackers – the idea of a fast-track to eternal paradise being a significant selling point for disaffected Muslim youth and other possible recruits. Another refrain was to warn of further attacks, citing a list of demands that combined legitimate and illegitimate grievances from across the Muslim world in a patchwork of outrage.
‘If you look at the messaging and narrative, it’s aimed at a Western audience,’ says Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, and a former special assistant on security to the president. ‘I look at al-Qaeda as a brand, and you have to look at what makes brands flourish – there has been a big improvement in use of symbols.’
One of the most oft-repeated symbols is the Arabic word ummah, meaning ‘Muslim nation.’ Among many Muslims worldwide, it conjures halcyon images of a global empire ruled by religion, where borders of race, ethnicity and nationality are obliterated and the only common denominator is the word of God. But the ummah also has come to serve a second purpose, as justification for violence. If Muslims everywhere are one, the thinking goes, then a car bombing in Bali is a legitimate response to the killing of a child in Gaza.
In geographic reality, there is no ummah; perhaps the most recent attempt at one was the Ottoman empire. But from another view, there is perhaps the largest ummah in the history of Islam, composed of chat rooms and file servers from Islamabad to Antigua. In this cyber- ummah, race, ethnicity and nationality are invisible; the common denominator is the digitized word of God. There are segments of the cyber- ummah that have nothing to do with terrorism: Many mainstream Muslim youth groups in Canada use web forums. But, as with neo-Nazi and child-porn rings, the qualities that make Internet forums legitimately useful also empower the bad guys.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan scattered much of al-Qaeda’s leadership – its literal Arabic name, ‘the base,’ was no longer apt. At that point, al-Qaeda morphed from a group into a mindset: Where there once was one well-defined organization, there sprung up dozens of relatively unconnected cells, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in London and Madrid. The founders of those cells were, in many cases, Western-born young men whose parents were immigrants but who had never set foot themselves in any war zone. Instead, this new generation of jihadis had grown up watching the fruits of al-Sahab’s labour – the propaganda and martyrdom videos floating freely across the cyber- ummah.
‘You have a group of individuals who are distanced from their parents; don’t necessarily feel fully embedded in their current society, so they look to one another to reaffirm their attitudes,’ says Mr. Cilluffo. ‘It really goads the bravado.’
A new generation has taken over the informational arm Abu Huthayfa suggested some seven years ago. As comfortable at the keyboard as the original mujahedeen were with rifles, they have swapped the grainy video of past terrorist communiqués for a far more polished product. But it wasn’t only the form of the message that took a generational leap forward. The target demographic also had come into focus: young, angry, Western kids.
Joystick Jihad
By almost any measure, Night of Capturing Bush is an unbelievably awful video game.
In the first-person shooter, released in September of last year, you play the role of a hardcore, AK47-toting Islamic warrior. Your goal is to mow down feeble, eerily identical U.S. troops in Iraqi settings – Iraq being composed mainly of various heavily pixilated shades of brown. The difficulty levels are skewed to the point where the cloned U.S. troops could unload entire armouries of bullets on you and still not make much of a dent. As war songs play in the background, you make your way through six levels, culminating, as the title suggests, in a showdown with U.S. President George W. Bush. (Ironically, Night of Capturing Bush is a minor modification of Quest for Saddam, an equally mediocre 2003 game from right-wing U.S. activist Jesse Petrilla.)
But glitchy game-play and atrocious graphics did little to hinder Night of Capturing Bush’s primary purpose, which was strictly ideological. In a press release hyping the game, its creators, an anonymous group called the Global Islamic Media Front, dubbed their desired audience ‘terrorist children.’ Within a few hours of its release, across thousands of online message boards, these ‘terrorist children’ passed the game back and forth. The Media Front only had to initiate the craze; thousands of sympathizers around the planet did the rest.
It wasn’t the first time Islamic extremist propaganda fused with pop culture. Two years previous, a young British man calling himself Sheikh Terra stepped in front of a camera, his face covered, carrying what appeared to be a pistol, and began dancing. The resulting rap video was called Dirty Kuffar (Kuffar is an Arabic word for disbeliever).
Since its release, Dirty Kuffar has been downloaded onto millions of computers and remixed by many like-minded web jihadists. You can find it on video-sharing sites such as YouTube.
‘I saw a number of video games. I saw rap videos with a very good tune to them,’ says Mr. Cilluffo. ‘I can’t tell you for a fact we’re certain who’s designing what, but I can tell you that when it comes to technology and its application, I think the younger generation has a leg up.’
One common method of disseminating anything from a terrorist video game to a bomb-making manual to a beheading video is to make copies available on dozens of free websites at the same time. On these sites, which were created to help people transfer data files too large to e-mail, anyone can quickly create an account – when barred by the administrators of one site, the user just jumps to another. By the time all such sites wise up, the message is all over the world.
On the Global Islamic Media Front site, each newly produced video is quickly uploaded to a dozen or more free sites. The Front’s own site is not hosted on an obscure or secret server, but on Wordpress, one of the most widely used blogging services in the world. Because registering with a blogging site such as Wordpress doesn’t require domain registration, there is no publicly accessible address or phone number.
That’s likely the same thinking behind Press-Release, a website chock full of communiqués from ‘the Islamic State Of Iraq.’ There, users can download high-quality videos featuring attacks on U.S. military vehicles, as well as detailed listings of American casualties. Look up the registration info and you’re handed an address in Mountain View, Calif. – far removed from the killing fields of Iraq, but near the headquarters of Google Inc., which owns the popular blogging domain Blogspot, on which ‘Press Release’ is hosted.
Anonymity isn’t enough, however. There’s an intense emphasis on secrecy evident in the various password-protected forums and message boards where jihad-minded teens gather. One of the most widely visited extremist forums subscribes to the country-club model – the only way in is to have a current member vouch for you.
This security consciousness is in large part due to the new emphasis police and intelligence agencies are placing on infiltrating such forums. But today the level of infiltration is so high that intelligence agencies face a recurring problem: An agent goes undercover on a web forum and finds dozens of users making violent, extremists statements, but to the agent’s dismay, it soon becomes apparent that many of them are undercover operatives from other intelligence agencies.
Joining the Fray
Frank Cilluffo sat before a dozen or so of the most powerful politicians in the world last May and told them they should consider broadcasting footage of dead children to the public.
Mr. Cilluffo had been called before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee to talk about strategies for combatting online extremism. He presented a simple argument: Extremist videos often leverage footage of civilians killed by Israeli and U.S. troops. Why not show the world what happens to civilians – often Muslim civilians – when Islamic extremist groups carry out their attacks?
‘I don’t remember exactly [the committee’s] response,’ Mr. Cilluffo recalls. ‘I think we did have some silence. It’s a pretty provocative statement.
‘The idea behind that was to take off any filters and demonstrate that the consequences of terror have a real impact: People are killed. This is not a theoretical set of issues.’
The recommendation was part of a broader argument that if the U.S. government and its allies attempt to fight a war of ideas on their own, they’re going to lose.
‘Much of the solution comes from people with credibility in these constituencies, I don’t think that can come from Western governments,’ Mr. Cilluffo says. ‘We need people who are versed in the Koran, who can show how it’s being distorted. We need people who appreciate cultural nuances and norms. I think that governments have a role to play, but by no means the primary role.’
What Mr. Cilluffo was pitching was the construction of a rival narrative to the one circulated in the cyber- ummah – one that would separate out the reasonable grievances from the specious ones circulated by extremists, and be delivered by someone credible. But his pitch wasn’t an easy one to make, given that many Western governments, police and intelligence shops had long viewed the war on terror as just that – a war, which will be won or lost with old-fashioned techniques. Producing a rival message has been a low priority.
‘This is the tip of a much bigger issue,’ says Mr. Deisman of the National Security Working Group in Ottawa. ‘The reason why we haven’t matched the propaganda war is because we consider ourselves states characterized by tolerance and acceptance. For us to be saying what we stand for may be seen as infringing on someone else.’
In England, where the problem of ‘homegrown terrorism’ is far more urgent, Mr. Deisman points out the propaganda war has intensified: ‘England truly is an embattled country. The government is producing videos about what Englishness means,’ he says. ‘Can you imagine if we did that in Canada? People would be up in arms.’
But even on the traditional counterterrorism front, law-enforcement officials are coming up against a major wall: For the most part, the legal system was not designed for cyberspace, as you can see by looking at the key case of the murder-conspiracy trial of Younis Tsouli in England this summer. Mr. Tsouli was alleged to have lived a double life on the Internet under the name ‘Irhabi007’ ( Irhabi means terrorist in Arabic), distributing tools of extremism. He had become one of the most important terrorism conduits in the world, and his trial marked a watershed moment in combatting cyber-crime.
However, in May, that trial hit an embarrassing bump. Justice Peter Openshaw, the supervising judge, turned to prosecutors and said: ‘The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a website is.’ A university professor was quickly brought into court to explain the Internet.
In the case of child pornography, Mr. Deisman points out, there was a lag of about five to seven years before independent groups began forming for the purpose of shutting illegal sites down. The delay might be equally long with terrorism sites.
‘This stuff has happened so quickly,’ Mr. Deisman says. ‘Typically it takes a while to catch up.’
In Canada, the onus is largely on the public to point out such websites – such as the pro-Hamas one registered in Yarmouth – to the domain-name firms.
Register.com is based in New York but has offices in many places; the municipality and province provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in perks to convince it to locate operations in Yarmouth. And it has a very specific policy for dealing with cases where someone reports a domain being used for illegal purposes.
‘This policy includes reviewing the content to determine the validity of the report and, if applicable, disabling the domain and notifying the customer of the reason for this action,’ says Wendy Kennedy, the firm’s manager of public relations and customer marketing. ‘At times, Register.com has also reached out to law enforcement to report suspicious activity.’
But the servers in Yarmouth are by no means the only ones in Canada where terrorist-related content may be residing. Until a few weeks ago, the website for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the most extensive and regularly updated of its kind, was registered to a building near downtown Toronto. The address belongs to Contactprivacy, the anonymous-registration arm of Canadian domain-name provider Tucows Inc.
After its web-hosting service in Germany was alerted to the Maghreb site and pulled the plug earlier this year, Tucows followed suit. But in an environment where similar sites are popping up daily, it was a small victory.
It has been seven years now since Abu Huthayfa sent a memo to Osama bin Laden extolling the virtues of an online public-relations strategy. Their opponents have yet to catch up.
‘We have been slow to recognize that we have to go beyond tactics and recognize there’s a war of ideas,’ says Mr. Cilluffo. ‘I believe there’s only one side that has stepped up to the battlefield, and it’s not us.’
Source: www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070817.wyarmouth18/BNStory/National/home
Iran Hangs 30 Over ‘US Plots’ (back)
August 19, 2007
Iran has hanged up to 30 people in the past month amid a clampdown prompted by alleged United States-backed plots to topple the regime, the British Observer newspaper has revealed.
Many executions have been carried out in public in an apparent bid to create a climate of intimidation while sending out uncompromising signals to the West. Opposition sources say at least three of the dead were political activists, contradicting government insistence that it is targeting ‘thugs’ and dangerous criminals.
The executions have coincided with a crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a ‘soft revolution’ with US support.
The most high-profile recent executions involved Majid Kavousifar (28) and his nephew, Hossein Kavousifar (24), hanged for the murder of a hard-line judge, Hassan Moghaddas, a man notorious for jailing political dissidents. They were hanged from cranes and hoisted high above one of Tehran’s busiest thoroughfares.
The spectacle, the first public executions in Tehran for five years, took place outside the Judiciary Department headquarters where Moghaddas was murdered. But the location, near many office blocks and the Australian and Japanese embassies, meant they were seen by many middle-class Iranians who would not normally witness such events.
The previous day, seven men were publicly executed in the north-eastern city of Masshad, including five said to be guilty of ‘rape, kidnapping, theft and committing indecent acts’. Another two were hanged separately for raping and robbing a young woman. The executions were also shown live on state television.
Dramatic Increase
Public hangings are normally carried out sparingly in Iran and reserved for cases that have provoked public outrage, such as serial murders or child killings.
Human rights organisations say the rising death toll has brought the number of prisoners executed this year to about 150, compared with 177 in 2006, a dramatic increase in capital punishment since the country’s radical President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took office two years ago.
The executions come after the government launched a campaign targeting murderers, sex offenders, drug traffickers and others cast as a threat to ‘social security’. It resulted in a wave of arrests after police raided working-class neighbourhoods in Tehran and other cities. Those arrested were paraded in public, often in humiliating poses.
The government has also sought to publicise executions conducted behind closed doors. Last month, state television broadcast footage of 12 condemned men as they were about to be hanged in Tehran’s Evin prison. The authorities said they had been guilty of ‘rape, sodomy and assault and battery’. Opposition sources say at least three were political activists, though they have not disclosed their identities. Asiran, a government website, dismissed the claims as ‘lies’.
International gay rights campaigners have also said that homosexual men were among the executed. Homosexuality is a capital offence in Iran, along with adultery, espionage, armed robbery, drug trafficking and apostasy.
Worst Record
Iran has long been one of the world’s most prolific exponents of the death penalty and ranks second only to China in the number of executions. Human rights groups say it has the world’s worst record for executions for crimes committed when the defendant was under 18.
However, there have been signs of official disquiet over the recent trend. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the relatively moderate judiciary chief, has made an apparent protest by openly criticising Ahmadinejad’s government on a range of issues. He also signalled displeasure with the repressive climate by ordering officials to investigate claims that student activists were tortured during a recent detention in Evin Prison.
Shahroudi is believed to have been unhappy over the stoning to death last month of a man convicted of adultery after he had ordered a stay of execution.
However, the spate of executions seems likely to continue. Tehran’s hard-line chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, has announced that he is seeking the death penalty against 17 ‘hooligans’.
Source: www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/&articleid=316927&referrer=RSS
Faith, Charity and the Money Trail to Pakistan’s Islamist Militants (back)
August 21, 2007
Lolling on a ragged carpet in his cupboard-sized shop in the heart of old Peshawar, Wahhab the money-changer beckoned customers with a sly smile. ‘Best rate,’ he said, fingering a fat wad of banknotes over a low glass counter.
The portly man also offered another, more discreet, service: black market money transfers, any amount, to anywhere, in almost no time. Whipping out a calculator and a mobile phone, he explained how it worked.
‘You give me the money; I call my contact in London,’ he said. ‘Then in one hour your friend can go and collect the money - guaranteed.’
Quick, cheap and paperless, the age-old hawala money transfer is thriving in Pakistan. Millions of emigrants use it to remit their wages to families back home. But hawala is also favoured by drug smugglers, corrupt officials, and the financiers of militant Islam.
Foreign money is fuelling the tide of Islamist violence washing across northern Pakistan, according to diplomats, analysts and money laundering experts. Pakistan’s notoriously lax financial system helps them to move the money into the country.
Donors in petrodollar-rich Gulf countries, the US and Europe send donations - anything from a few thousand dollars to several million, said Seth Jones of the Washington-based Rand Corporation. ‘Without significant funding from abroad, especially the Gulf states, we would be nowhere near the current level of Islamist militancy,’ he said. ‘We’re talking about tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.’
President Pervez Musharraf is coming under fresh pressure to crack down on the flow. Last month’s Red Mosque siege in Islamabad raised questions about how a madrasa with no apparent source of income could afford to feed up to 6,000 students - and still have money to build a small arsenal of weapons.
Karachi is reputedly a hub of Taliban and Islamist financing. Last month Mariane Pearl, widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Karachi in 2002, launched a court action against a bank she alleges helped her husband’s killers.
On August 2 the US undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, called for new laws. ‘There’s a lot of financing, money that gets laundered through banks that support these terrorist groups. We’ve asked the Pakistani government to take stronger measures,’ he said.
But halting the flow of militant money is a complex - some say impossible - task. In Pakistan law enforcement is weak and militant money is often disguised as a religious donation - thrusting investigators into a sensitive area at the heart of Islam.
The government has already outlawed hawala, the system that Osama bin Laden used to transfer funds between Pakistan and Dubai, according to the 9/11 Commission. But police are powerless to stop it in the tribal belt, where the Taliban is strongest, and have shown little enthusiasm for crackdowns in major cities such as Peshawar.
Many militant donations are disguised as zakat, the annual Muslim charity tax, and channelled through a shadowy nexus of radical mosques, madaris (madrasas) and charities.
In Pakistan zakat - one of the five pillars of Islam - is levied by the state. But in oil-rich Gulf States Muslims also send zakat abroad - an estimated £50m a year from Saudi Arabia. That money has helped fund an explosion of mosques and madaris in Pakistan; some also ends up in the coffers of militant groups.
‘There’s a lot of people in the Gulf, particularly the rich merchant class, who feel a religious obligation to fund charities. They don’t think too hard about where it goes,’ said Robert Baer, an ex-CIA agent and Middle East expert.
The Saudi money is most visible in North West Frontier Province. In Peshawar the number of madaris has increased from 13 in 1980 to more than 150 today, according to one study. One of the most recent is Jamia Asaria, a sprawling complex amid the green maize fields on the city outskirts.
Built last year, the £500,000 Jamia Asaria is among the best madaris in Pakistan. Its multi-storey classrooms, dormitories, medical centre and bright, bejewelled mosque can cater for 1,200 students. Yet annual fees are just £16 - one-tenth of the real cost - thanks to the generosity of donors in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. ‘We are very grateful to them,’ said administrator Majid Khan.
Jamia Asaria follows the Ahle Hadith school of Islamic thought - sexes are strictly segregated, and it has links to schools in Saudi Arabia. Mr Khan stressed it had no links with militancy - but admitted there had been offers.
One time the charity Jamaat ud Dawa, which the US branded a ‘terrorist entity’ last year, offered a fleet of free vehicles, he said. Another time ‘some wealthy Saudis said that if we became involved in political activities, they would fund it’. In both instances the school refused. ‘We told them this is an educational institution and we want it to remain like that,’ he said.
Four years ago, under US pressure, the Saudi government started regulating zakat donations and charities. But the laws controversially exempted groups such as the International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO), a charity founded by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, which still has a large office in Pakistan.
At its Islamabad HQ director Muhammad Javed said IIRO gave relief to victims of the Kashmir earthquake and Baluchistan floods, and ran two orphanages. He insisted all operations were ‘entirely transparent’ but referred further queries to the Saudi embassy.
Militant funding also comes from donors in the UK, said Tahseen Ullah Khan of the National Research and Development Foundation, a Peshawar-based NGO that promotes madrasa reform. ‘If I go to the UK as a cleric and tell people that Islam is under attack, I can come back with lot of funding.’
The holy month of Ramadan, which starts in mid September this year, is the main fundraising season. ‘Muslims abroad need to be educated. They think their money is going for Allah. But they should check if their money is going to a poor student or to buy guns,’ he said.
Western diplomats are getting impatient with Gen Musharraf’s promises of tighter regulation. An anti-money laundering law first pledged seven years ago is still languishing in parliament.
Diplomats suspect that powerful vested interests, possibly linked to official corruption or drug smuggling, are stalling the law. ‘This needs commitment at the highest level but it doesn’t seem to be there,’ said one.
The government bristles at suggestions it is not doing enough. ‘We are making concerted efforts but we will do it in our own national interest,’ admonished foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri. The State Bank of Pakistan recently set up a financial monitoring team.
Some experts say that laws and regulations alone will never be enough. Militants are adapting, pushing their money through increasingly obscure - or mainstream - channels. Abu Zubeida, an al-Qaida operative arrested in Pakistan in 2002, used to withdraw his funds from accounts in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait through ATM machines.
Mr Baer, the former CIA agent, said it was ‘plain nutty’ to try and regulate something like zakat. ‘Some people use the money for Qur’ans, others for peroxide bombs. It’s just impossible to make it accountable,’ he said.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2152802,00.html
al-Qaeda Tries YouTube to Raise Funds, Recruits (back)
August 21, 2007
al-Qaida-linked extremists in the Philippines have turned to the wildly popular video-sharing website YouTube in an apparent attempt to raise cash and recruits, media reported Tuesday.
For the first time, two video clips from the Abu Sayyaf group, responsible for some of the worst terror attacks in the Philippines, have been posted on the site.
Philippine military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Bartolome Bacarro said the clips were taken from a one-hour video that was distributed throughout the Arabic-speaking jihadist community.
He said the speakers used Arabic apparently to appeal to wealthy would-be benefactors from the Middle East.
The armed forces, which is mounting a bloody major offensive against Abu Sayyaf strongholds on the southern islands of Jolo and Basilan, dismissed the YouTube posting as an ‘act of desperation.’
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-08/21/content_6578335.htm
New UK PR Policy on Terrorists (back)
August 20, 2007
After the terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow almost two months ago, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared that his country had sustained attacks from criminals, not terrorists.
David Rieff points out in his New York Times Magazine article titled ‘Policing Terrorism’ (July 22, 2007) that Brown told his ministers not to use the phrase ‘war on terror’ and not to use the word ‘Muslim’ when describing these criminals acts. Brown’s Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said, ‘Terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religions.’
It is fairly clear that Brown’s and Smith’s goal is to send a message to British Muslims that they should not feel as if they are going to be victims of a backlash from either British security forces or people.
This is a smart move, especially since England has had to deal with homegrown terrorists that live in the same cities and neighborhoods they attack. Former PM Tony Blair’s stance was more ‘divisive, threatening social peace between communities in Britain,’ in the word of Rieff. Making British Muslims feel comfortable in English society, thus less prone to extremism and more likely to help security officials, is smart but Brown’s message is still damaging and counter-productive.
Brown’s mistake was calling terrorists criminals. This is misleading to the public and incorrect. Security agencies and their governments should not treat terrorist like criminals and should not react to terrorist attacks as they would to a criminal act.
Racist ‘hate crimes’ are treated differently in many countries, even with different detectives and task forces than regular police units, because the ideology that fuels these crimes is different than regular criminal activity. Terrorism too should be treated like a hate crime, that is, differently.
One of the main differences between criminals and terrorists is how each group operates.
Criminals are opportunists. They will strike when they see fit for their own benefit, and when they feel they won’t get caught. Terrorists will attack whenever this is a target. They also do not care if they are caught, especially if they are of the suicidal variety.
In addition, and possibly more important, the ideologies behind criminal and terrorist behavior are completely different and must be not treated the same way.
One does not steal because they fundamentally believe that things must be stolen. Drug cartels do not supply the world with illegal substances because they believe wholeheartedly in drug consumption. Criminals steal, deal drugs, and commit crimes because they want to benefit themselves.
Terrorists on the other hand, kill because they believe the murder of their enemies advances their cause, even if their own personal benefit is diminished.
Brown, of course, is not the only politician to make the mistake of diminishing or misrepresenting the threat of terrorism.
John Edwards made this mistake when he claimed that the war on terror was nothing more than a ‘bumper sticker slogan.’ Although this was also a political tactic it was still damaging to how the West could perceive this war, which is real both in rhetoric and in practice.
Fortunately, Edwards was criticized for his remarks and was not supported in those comments even by Democrats.
Brown’s comments on the other hand were much more tactful. Rieff was in agreement with Brown’s description of terrorism. In fact, the name of his article ‘Policing Terrorism’ should give hints to how Rieff feels about Brown’s reaction to terrorists.
What is more troubling is that since Brown was not nearly as blunt as Edwards was, his comments could signal a change in how many British perceive the attacks against them and the reason for the attacks against London and Glasgow (and anywhere else in the world) will not be properly understood.
When the motive is not understood our ability to confront terrorism is reduced. The evil that terrorists spew and the belief of radical Muslims that they will raise the banner of Islam over the White House and 10 Downing Street will be ignored because Brown, Smith and many others are equating bombs with bums, and terrorists with criminals.
The motives and ideology of terrorists are vastly different than those of criminals and we must understand this vital point if we want to win the war against terror.
Source: www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=13054
Censored Articles from the ‘Middle East Times’ in Egypt (back)
August 22, 2007
Throughout its 20-year publishing life in Egypt, the Middle East Times newspaper had never been given a license to publish and Egyptian law gave the Ministry of Information the right to arbitrarily ban any newspaper printed outside Egypt from entering the country.
The censor reviewed all of our issues upon arrival at the airport before allowing them to be distributed. We censored ourselves, but sometimes we pushed the limits and lost several issues every year.
This was bad for sales and advertising revenue. Over time we developed new systems. One was an agreement to submit a proof of each issue to the censor in advance. If they didn’t like an article, or a paragraph, or a sentence, we took it out and left a space. There we printed the words, ‘We apologize that we were unable to print in this space.’
In no time, the censor told us we were not allowed to mention in this space the reason it was there.
This did not look good either for us or for them.
So, finally we agreed to submit all text for scrutiny before printing. Deleted sections were replaced with text or filled with an illustration or picture.
The print publication was suspended by us in 2003.
Reasons for Censorship
Report on human rights abuses:
* Criticize the president or his family
* Criticize the military
* Refer to any ill-treatment of Egyptians in ‘friendly’ Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia.
* Discuss modern, unorthodox interpretations of Islam.
* Report on discrimination against Coptic Christians in Egypt.
* However, the censor was very arbitrary — sometimes these things went through, sometimes they didn’t.
What Did They Censor?
Here is a selection of some stories that the Egyptian authorities censored:
* An Embarrassment in Exile
* Book ban exposes Azhar censorship
* Boycott US, then boycott Mubarak
* Brothers backtrack on gizia
* Bulls-eye say Egyptians as they celebrate anti-US attacks
* Cairo’s ‘Jack the Ripper’ terrifies women
* Call-girl ring for the rich and famous
* Can international courts curb abuses in Egypt?
* Cash gist
* Controversy swirls around Egypt’s early Islamic history
* Copt contests hotel dismissal
* Copts crusade to bring back converted girls
* Copts pay protection money to fundamentalists
* Deported Egyptians ‘faced abuse’
* Detainee families lose hope
* Does Egypt want nuclear weapons?
* Don’t participate in killing and torture of our people
* Economic woes embolden opposition
* Egypt marks 15 years of Mubarak
* Egyptian journalists hospitalized
* Egyptians celebrate an American Catastrophe
* Egyptians rejoicing
* Economic woes embolden opposition
* Enraged Copts riot over sexual expose of defrocked monk
* Freedom of speech under attack
* Fundamentalists demand Mafia-style protection money from Copts
* Gay Muslims come out in San Francisco parade
* Gihad celebrates 6 October
* Hiding themselves in the crowd
* In search of what went wrong
* Italians swarm into Western Desert for military exercises
* Jordanian chairman turns on his paper
* Journalists group protest expulsion of MET publisher
* Madonna draws recruits to the Kabbalah
* Militants celebrate ‘eid’ with church attack
* [Nothing] Censored this week…
* Orientalism, anyone?
* Out to catch the street
* Police uncover call-girl ring
* Protestors condemn prison torture
* Report logs ‘wide abuse’ of human rights in Egypt
* Sleeping Rough on the Streets of Cairo
* Sleeping rough on the streets of Cairo
* Students rally in support of an ‘Islamic alliance’
* Stop teasing us, say Egyptians
* Thanks a lot, Mr. President - but that’s illegal
* The tragedy of administrative detention
* Torture frequent and widespread in Egypt
* Torture victim’s wife calls for justice
* US government facilities in Egypt partially suspended
* With friends like Egypt…
Source: www.metimes.com/censored/
[2006 ‘The Plan’
ISLAM
Thinking About the Resurgence of Muslim Aggression (back)
October 9, 2006
by Col. Gerry Hickman
Islam began in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. From the outset, the religion was spread by military force. Aggression was justified as a holy war, or jihad, that the Muslims believed sanctified by God.
Although conversion to Islam was by force, some conquered peoples not only accepted Islam but also joined in its mission. Most notable perhaps were the Ottoman Turks.
The rise of Islam occurred at what was for its followers a propitious time. Byzantium, the last outpost of Roman rule, was in final collapse. When Constantinople fell to the Turks, few other states or rulers were strong enough to resist the Muslim tide.
Yet, a fragmented Europe fought valiantly. When Muslim aggression finally was halted at the gates of Vienna, and restricted to the Iberian Peninsula, its vigor was dissipated. For many centuries, Western Civilization would be safe.
Stopped in Europe, Islam moved on to conquer large parts of Asia. Today, centuries after the first Muslim horsemen brought war to the Middle East, Islam dominates countries from Africa’s west coast to the eastern tip of Indonesia.
Reportedly, some 1.5 billion people subscribe to the Islamic faith.
Obey the Sharia
In countries controlled by Islam, nonbelievers must bow to Islamic dominion. All must obey the Sharia, i.e., Islamic laws drawn from the Koran and interpreted by Islamic priests. The culture created under the Sharia disapproves of thought and progress not sanctioned by the priesthood.
Possibly it is this development more than any others that accounts for the widespread impoverishment of Muslim countries. Islamic intellectuals deny it, while blaming the problems of its peoples on Europe and America, i.e., the West.
During the past century Islamic intellectuals, principally clerics, began preaching a Muslim resurgence, calling for a reawakening of Muslim militancy and resumption of Islam’s ancient holy war.
Perhaps to make their goal more acceptable, the activists asked Islamic populations, ‘If Allah intends an earthly paradise for his followers, why is it that the world’s most prosperous peoples are those of the corrupt West?’
For the 0Islamic man, the question was answered in no uncertain terms. Western countries, particularly America, it was said kept the Muslim man and his family poor, and caused all his problems.
While the material progress of the West was frustrating to Muslim intellectuals, far more infuriating to them was the growing influence within Islamic society of Western values. Rightly, they foresaw that liberalizing philosophies would weaken Islam.
The original solution offered in rising Islamic thought was to sternly reinforce Shariah law within Muslim countries, while driving Westerners out of them. Such thinking led directly to the spread of radical Islamic teaching.
Today, aggressive Muslim resurgence continues to be fueled by radical Islamic thought, promulgated throughout much of the huge Muslim community. In practice, such thinking has already resulted in the Iranian Revolution, the Taliban, and among other violent groups, al Qaeda.
War Between Civilizations
Thus was born what Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington has called ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ The liberal Western Civilization and the Shariah of Islamic Civilization are perhaps so different as to make their clash inevitable.
In her book, Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror, Mary Harbeck of Johns Hopkins University, writes of current Islamic intellectuals:
‘…all assume that Muslims have a duty to spread the dominion of Islam, through military offensives, until it rules the world…’
Harbeck notes that Azzam, perhaps foremost among modern Islamic activists, believes that ‘The jihadist is obliged to perform with all available capabilities until there remain only Muslims or people who submit to Islam’.
Presumably, ‘all available capabilities’ is supposed to justify the premeditated murder of women, children, and indeed anyone who does not subscribe to Islam.
It would seem then, that the nineteenth-century goals of reinforcing the Shariah within Islamic countries, while expelling Westerners from them, have morphed into a much larger objective.
In the event, the resurgence of Muslim aggression, asleep for centuries, is now fully awake and on the move. Hugely funded, already in control of Iran, and believing that they are doing what God wants them to do, those who invoke jihadism probably cannot be stopped by military force alone.
Yet a united West, relying at the least on its diplomatic, economic, cultural, and military strengths should be able to once again contain the jihadist movement. Every possible tool will be needed because religious revolutions have throughout history been hard to stop. At stake are Western Civilization and the continued evolution of mankind.
Scoffing at Warnings
While many scoff at such warnings, one need only refer to the Muslim activist question, ‘If Allah intends an earthly paradise for his followers, why is it that the world’s most prosperous peoples are those of the corrupt West?’
The question implies correctly that Muslims, once the world’s foremost astronomers, mathematicians, and scientists, are now among the world’s most intellectually starved and impoverished peoples. Conquest of the West and establishment of Shariah would surely halt progress not sanctioned by the jihadists.
Western peoples are only gradually awakening to the threat posed by the resurgence of Muslim aggression. The best-selling book in Denmark today, written by two of the nation’s leading progressive intellectuals, almost stridently issues a wake-up call. Yet, only vicariously have most people now benefiting from the philosophies of Western Civilization known war. Nor have most known poverty.
Having grown up in affluent societies based on liberalizing philosophies, it is perhaps hard for Westerners to grasp their growing peril.
Too often Americans, as well as Europeans, dispute with each other about parts of the developing struggle. Lost in the contention is the broader need of the West to find ways to stop the Islamic jihad before it has the capability of truly mass destruction.
Even now, Iranian jihadists are reportedly working feverishly to create a nuclear weapon. Compared to the explosion of a nuclear bomb, even the al Qaeda attack on New York would be found exceedingly minor.
Strategic and Tactical: Understanding the Difference
Thus it is that when Americans urge a speedy U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, they display purely tactical thinking. Either willingly or unwillingly, they fail to see the conflict in Iraq for what it actually is —only part of a much broader war.
‘A profound ability to think small’ is an old saying that describes those who can only see the tactical elements of any wider, strategic struggle.
A profound ability to court disaster might be a better way to put it.
Although difficult to achieve in an environment of political discord, more Americans and Europeans must learn to focus on the overall ‘War on Terror’. Failure to do so could trigger bad consequences —untoward events that are probably still preventable.
By keeping a larger view always in mind, Westerners might be less distracted by events in Iraq, or other single pieces of a much broader struggle. Learning to think in strategic terms could help the West unite against the serious peril that now threatens it.
Perhaps in time the big picture will materialize for most Americans. Within it, Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, Iraq, President Bush, the Taliban, liberals, conservatives, and other individuals and entities are but pieces. Altering a tactical element of the big picture, such as withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, might somehow benefit the enemy but will not alter his goals.
While early removal of U.S. power from Iraq might encourage and even embolden the enemy, its strategy as attributed to Azzam will remain unchanged.
It is enemy strategy that the West must defeat. To achieve victory, a Western strategy with a clear goal must be developed.
Seemingly, the goal should be to protect Western Civilization –a goal so sweeping in scope that it might be difficult for some to countenance.
Identifying the Enemy
Opposing Western Civilization is at the least a violent, ruthless, and determined segment of the Muslim world. No meaningful reports about its actually size within Islam apparently exist. Claims that only a small percentage of Muslims are involved in what they call a holy war must therefore be discounted or at least seriously questioned.
Western strategy must take into account that the size and strength of the Muslim force might be larger than current speculation suggests. The strategy should also address the proper way to identify the enemy.
While our adversaries indeed commit terroristic acts, simplistic labeling of a readily identifiable enemy as ‘terrorists’ obscures the true nature of the enemy and makes understanding of the broader war extremely difficult.
As an early step in helping Westerners to think of the war in strategic terms, the governments should abandon the meaningless term ‘War on Terror’. Confusing at best and meaningless at worst, the term was apparently coined to appease the supposed large majority of Muslims opposed to the allegedly few radicals among them.
Whether or not Western governments are willing to admit it publicly, the fact remains that the Western world is engaged in a great religious conflict that could grow into a significantly larger worldwide struggle. Muslims constitute the enemy force that the West must somehow dismember. Perhaps not all Muslims are involved in the struggle, as Western political and other thought leaders proclaim, but the enemy force is indisputably Muslim.
Rather than calling the struggle a ‘War on Terror’, Western governments might better call the conflict what it is: Defense Against Muslim Aggression. No doubt this would instigate protests from supposedly peaceful Muslims, but their remarks should be measured against the value of helping Americans and Europeans to focus on the threat.
Some Muslims have proclaimed a ‘holy war’, and correctly reject the idea that they are merely nihilistic terrorists. The sooner the West comes to accept this self-proclaimed, true nature of its adversaries, as well as the broader context of the struggle thrust upon it, the better its nations can equip themselves –politically, economically, socially, and militarily —to contain it.
Western Civilization is the ultimate target of Islamic jihadism. As a foremost beneficiary of Western culture, America is identified by Muslims, whether peace loving or not, as the epitome of all that their customs proscribe. The aggressors have openly declared war on America, with the avowed intention of destroying its culture and converting its people to their Islamic forms.
Meanwhile, because Muslim aggressors expect Europe to be easier than America to overcome, it is expected by Islamic intellectuals to be the first part of the West to capitulate. Inroads there are being made, and the anticipated appeasement is being achieved.
The Muslim Strategy
While I have not seen a Muslim strategy enunciated, it clearly involves several discernible aspects. The ultimate goal, the spread of Islam, appeals to all members of the faith –whether or not they are radicals. The idea of converting hopelessly corrupt societies to Islam is universally seen as worthwhile.
What the allegedly peaceful Muslims fail to recognize is that the jihadists intend not only to spread Islam, but also to purify it from within according to the Shariah.
States that embrace Islam but not Islamic jihadism might suffer severe penalties.
Recognizing that the list is incomplete, following are several identifiable elements of Muslim aggressor strategy:
1) Patience. Some Muslim religious leaders talk of a war to the death that might take more than a century.
(Whether or not the U.S. withdraws soon from Iraq must seem fairly inconsequential to an enemy strategist who thinks in terms of decades. The withdrawal might help, hinder, or have no effect on the aggressor, but would not in the event be viewed as an end to his holy war.)
2) Teach virulent radicalism in Muslim schools and mosques by arousing and nurturing abiding hatred of America, Europe, and indeed Western Civilization.
(Saudi Arabia reportedly has not lived up to its commitment to suppress such instruction. Other nations, such as Iran, never made such promises.)
3) Teach young Muslims that the murder of non-believers as well as the sacrifice of their lives guarantees their entry into paradise.
(Again, Muslim countries reportedly are not taking steps to curb such preaching.)
4) Assure relatives of those thus sacrificed that they will be compensated.
(Both Saudi Arabia —and formerly Iraq— reportedly pay or have paid families of suicide bombers as much as $25,000 in honor of their sacrificed children.)
5) Recruit, train, and heighten the indoctrination of young Muslims to murder, destroy, and intimidate.
(This element of Muslim aggressor strategy is apparently spreading. Young Muslims born in Britain, for instance, committed murder by bombing subways.)
6) Without apology, seek every opportunity to kill all who do not subscribe to the radical beliefs of the Muslim aggressors. While the main target will always be Western Civilization, Muslims who fail to support the radicals are also targeted.
(Through such intimidation, the Muslim aggressors earn at least passive acceptance of other Muslims.)
7) Develop both willing supporters and unwilling supporters among Muslim and other peoples, thereby creating an obscure and supportive sea in which the jihadist might swim until sufficiently strong to abandon secrecy..
(The quiet takeover of Lebanon by radical Muslims while the Lebanese either offered aid or passive non-resistance is an example.)
8) Encourage Muslim immigration into Western countries, many of whose native populations are shrinking due to declining birth rates, thereby forming separate and rapidly growing cultural enclaves and developing the ability to turn Western liberal philosophy to gains for Islam.
(The influx of Muslims into Europe and America is large, and ongoing. Some reports claim more than eight million Muslims now live in the United States. Western failure to appreciate the danger of this element of Muslim aggressor strategy could result in increasing numbers of killings by homegrown Muslim jihadists. London subway bombings and the plot to destroy 10 U.S. airliners by English born and raised Muslims are examples. )
7) Rely on the Western news media to serve its propaganda aims.
(The news media reportage of fighting in Iraq has focused largely on casualties without accounts of Allied military achievements and heroism. Such day-by-day reports have gradually discouraged many Americans and Europeans and obscured the true nature of the enemy.)
8) Use the Western news media as a source of intelligence.
(Revelations of previously secret U.S. efforts to counter funding, communications, and other radical Muslim activities allow the jihadist aggressor to reduce losses and shift tactics.)
9) Use the West’s own liberality against it.
(Capitalize on liberal ideals –ideals that Muslim aggressors consider corrupting influences— to create confusion among Western peoples. Example: Inspire efforts to extend to Muslim aggressors captured by Western forces all conceivable Constitutional rights enjoyed by Americans and Europeans in their own countries.)
10) Intimidate Western leaders into appeasement.
(According to the Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune, the European Union announced that it will ‘investigate’ European banks that have helped the U.S. track the flow of funds to Muslim aggressors.)
11) Continuously push non-radical Muslims to become radical.
Understanding Enemy Organization
For centuries, discernible hierarchies have led Western peoples. Chains of command have existed whether in kingdoms, empires, or republics. Yet there is no such hierarchy within the Islamic jihadist movement.
Instead, both nation states and lesser groups, some of which are exceedingly small, independently plan and conduct Muslim aggression. Inspiration for the formation of aggressor cells, each operating on its own but often supported by established jihadist entities, is apparently spread by roving clerics. The United Kingdom recently expelled one such priest, but the task is made difficult by the Western belief in freedom of religion.
As shown by the London subway bombings, the operations of a homegrown aggressor cell might also be at least partially planned by other Muslim radicals, but the British cell was independent.
That the cell was part of modern Muslim aggression is indisputable, but the fact is that no chain-of-command issued orders to it. Even the roving clerics who convince young Muslims become jihadists seemingly operate independently.
What Aggressor Strategy Seems to Envision
Through intimidation wrought by cold-blooded murder in both Muslim and Western countries, the Muslim strategist seems to envision ever increasing numbers of willing supporters among Muslims, growing numbers of Western converts to Islam, and increasing civil discord throughout the West.
By the time the West awakens to his overall strategy, the aggressor strategist must anticipate that Islamic countries will already by purified by the stern enforcement of Shariah. Assuming that the West at last responds meaningfully, a battle to the death between the clashing civilizations would then occur.
Islamic intellectuals, the true Muslim strategists, believe Western Civilization is so corrupt that it is incapable of defending itself against a determined Islam. They believe that Muslim forces will take control of Western countries. Those Westerners who refuse to convert to or else bow to Shariah law will be killed.
With the West conquered, the rest of the world would then be targeted.
Note that since it was not America who declared war on Muslim aggressors, we Americans cannot of ourselves now declare the conflict ended. The war will end only after Muslim jihadism has been thoroughly discredited in the community of 1.5 billion believers, and recalcitrant jihadists have been defeated.
An end to the conflict might take a long time. Radical Islamists have stated that the war might last 100 years or more.
Although the U.S. Government, news media, and Western intellectuals tell us repeatedly that the majority of the Muslim religion’s huge membership is peace loving, careful examination of the larger picture reveals that within those populations at least some of the apparent jihadist strategy is working. There appear to be insignificant numbers of Muslims who actively oppose the radicals.
The heart of Muslim aggressor resurgence seems to lie in Saudi Arabia and Iran. While the Saudi government has forcibly restrained Muslim attacks, it reportedly continues to tolerate the schools that might be central to the entire jihadist movement. Meanwhile, Iran openly ignores appeals to halt nuclear weapons production, and reportedly has supported aggressor operations in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq.
Iraq
In the West, despite a beginning awareness of the broader problem, most of the focus remains on Iraq. Lightning rods of contention are the president of the United States and the prime minister of the United Kingdom.
Given the threat of broader Islamic jihad, it seems pointless to castigate either a sitting U.S. president or a British prime minister. While it is possible that different leaders might more effectively combat the jihadist movement, any administration will face a far broader conflict than that now occurring in Iraq. Whether under the leadership of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, or others, the West should unite against a graver peril than any posed by Iraqis alone.
Until the West acknowledges the real nature of Islamic resurgence and the war that it pursues, Western leaders will probably appear uniformly weak, indecisive, or worse.
One discernible aspect of Western strategy is that of creating democracies in Islamic countries presently under totalitarian forms of government. Ultimate goal of Western strategists is to get help from governments based on the Western model of popular rule.
While this approach has appeal in parts of the West, and might eventually be helpful in suppressing the jihadist movement, in light of events it to be somewhat forlorn. Free elections were achieved in both Iraq and Palestine.
Violence in Iraq continues despite a massive turnout on its election day. And some ask, ‘What good did it do to democratize Palestine only to have Hamas elected overwhelmingly?’
Perhaps what America and its allies should recognize that above all the jihadist movement must be discredited and contained. To achieve that purpose America and European countries might be forced to work with totalitarian governments rather than seeking to overthrow them.
Defeating the modern Muslim aggressor is where the vital interest of America and its European allies lie. The West might have little choice in choosing partners to help protect the mutual vital interests of both.
Sense of Urgency
The West it would seem must soon develop a sense of urgency. It cannot long continue to dither. The enemy is identifiable, as is his goal. To reach it, the Muslim jihadist movement has shown itself capable of the most abhorrent acts. Now, it stands at the threshold of achieving incalculable destruction.
Iran we are told may soon have a nuclear bomb. Western leaders plead with the Iranians to stop development of the weapon, yet development seemingly continues apace.
Those who would withdraw our forces from Iraq now must overlook or else ignore Iranian nuclear developments. Should the West eventually be forced to use military power to stop Iran, would it not be tactically advantageous to have bases and lines of communication operating in the country next door?
Overlooked in most reporting is the danger of Pakistan falling into the control of Muslim aggressors. What Americans and Europeans should not forget is that Pakistan already has nuclear weapons, and a sizeable population of radical Moslems.
Should Muslim jihadists come to power in Pakistan, the nuclear problem there would immediately become even more serious than that posed by Iran.
Just as its ancient predecessors, the modern Islamic jihadist movement seeks to rebuild the Muslim world in its own image, destroy Western Civilization, and eventually convert the remaining people of the world. The movement has developed a clearly perceptible strategy designed to achieve its ultimate goal.
In the meantime, our European friends and we Americans appear to be weak and indecisive. Measured against the broader threat, attacks on the sitting U.S. president and British prime minister are at best simply expressions of frustration. Changing Western leaders might lead to greater effectiveness in combating the resurgence of jihadism, but will hardly change its goal.
Appeasement of Muslims by the West is foolish. Those who have historically sought to appease their enemy have found themselves only encouraging further aggression. Like the men trapped by crocodiles, the strategy of the appeaser is to be the last one eaten.
Having identified the enemy and examined his strategy while reviewing the Western response, one might shudder at thoughts of the future. Yet, there is still time for the beneficiaries of Western Civilization to unite, bring all possible resources to bear, and once again contain ages-old Muslim expansionism.
Source: http://www.americandaily.com/article/15962
[Maybe google will find the free article versions]
E-Library on Islamic Econ & Finance (back)
August 22, 2007
Please be advised that the there is a paid memebership when it comes to reading some of the articles on this site. Below are a few articles from the E-Library on Islamic Econ & Finance that are readable to the public.
* An Economic Explication of the Prohibition of Riba in Classical Islamic Jurisprudence. - Mahmoud El-Gamal
* Islamic Banking in Australia -Nidaul Islam
* No-Interest-Financing-Concepts for Islamic and Capitalist Cyber-City-Clusters by Michael Schreiber
* Can Islamic Banking Survive? A Micro-Evolutionary Perspective - Mahmoud El-Gamal
* The Design of Instruments for Government Finance in an Islamic Economy - Nadeem Ul Haque and Abbas Mirakhor (IMF Working Paper)
Source: http://islamic-finance.net/elief.html
August 23, 2007 Anti-Terrorism News
(U.S.) Foreign aid groups face terror screens that receive U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) funds — U.S. to require information on key personnel for secret screening program
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20402964/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294215,00.html
(Iraq) 32 killed, 15 kidnapped in Al Qaeda fighting with rival Sunni Arab militants (my title) — Al Qaeda kidnapped 15 Iraqi women and children — Diyala villages of Tamim and Ibrahim Yehia
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070823/wl_nm/iraq_dc_68;_ylt=Ak.7oxfE984NC_.VJwx.EjVX6GMA
(Iraq) Sunni village attacked, leader killed
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_070822203352;_ylt=AiEZMF6VDMwl58I30hwh11xX6GMA
(Iraq) Wednesday truck bomb death toll rises to 27 - attack on police station (my title)http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22292847-663,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22292847-663,00.html
(Iraq) US suffers 34 casualities in Iraq in one day
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1013809
(Iraq) ‘Chemical Ali’ back in Iraq court over Shiite repression
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_mideast_afp/iraqtrialshiitesopen_070823082956;_ylt=Agfn1l3HzAUpQTVvaEmCU99X6GMA
(Iraq) US general blames Britain for Basra crisis
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/23/wkeane123.xml
(Afghanistan) Taliban ambush leaves 10 Afghan guards dead
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/asia/AS-GEN-Afghanistan.php
(Afghanistan) Bombers target Afghan police chief - in the Helmand town of Gereshk
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan_070822233829;_ylt=AvSX1gwQUIMwrn6LdqrW6rPOVooA
(Afghanistan) German hostage in Afghanistan appears in video
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070823/wl_nm/afghan_hostages_dc_2;_ylt=AnZgQF3bzOUzrdHapLD1xjnOVooA
(Afghanistan) Bomb kills 2 Canadians in Afghanistan — Zhari district of southern Kandahar province - on Wednesday
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_as/afghan_canadian_soldiers_1;_ylt=Aj0yqWM79GCHETZ52eC2oMXOVooA
(Afghanistan) Al-Qaeda teach kids, 6, to kill
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007390138,00.html
(Pakistan) Pro-Taliban militants attack Pakistani camp - dozen soldiers wounded
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_sthasia_afp/pakistanafghanistanunrest_070823094101;_ylt=ApqM8Hl9uBAP2VXTTJrlSr_zPukA
(Pakistan) Group clash leaves six dead in Pakistan — at a peace jirga in Zargari in Hangu district
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=9164d9ed-0d45-4fc8-848b-e8692227d534&&Headline=Group+clash+leaves+six+dead+in+Pakistan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\23\story_23-8-2007_pg7_6
(Pakistan) Five terrorists arrested in Islamabad
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#11
(Pakistan) Ex-Taliban commander killed in Balochistan
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#7
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\23\story_23-8-2007_pg7_20
Pakistani militants are released from jail — dozens of suspected Islamic militants have been released from prison without trial
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2310632.ece
(Pakistan) NGOs stopped from working in Swat — threatening letters from suspected militants
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\23\story_23-8-2007_pg1_9
(Pakistan) Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs blasts pro-US foreign policy - blames Jewish people for 9/11 attacks, and cites Qu’ran as basis for enmity against other religions
http://www.dawn.com/2007/08/22/top6.htm
(Indian Kashmir) Militants attack para-military post in Jammu and Kashmir
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#8
(Indian Kashmir) Policeman among two persons killed by militants in J&K
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Policeman_killed_by_militants_in_JK/articleshow/2303501.cms
(India Assam) Grenade hurled in Assam
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#9
Indian actor Sanjay Dutt freed on bail - convicted on weapons charge for 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_as/india_dutt_trial_9;_ylt=ArL0OKLm3H.liXOdC7DX2L1A7AkB
(India) Five persons supplying diesel to Sri Lankan LTTE arrested in Tamil Nadu
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#12
(U.S.) Feds want Oregon Islamic charity figure held — Pirouz Sedaghaty of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation
http://www.katu.com/news/local/9319852.html
(U.S.) Background on Al-Haramain Surveillance Hearing
http://www.zombietime.com/al-haramain_surveillance/
(U.S.) Islamic Charity in Michigan Wants Documents Seized in Courterterrorism Investigation Returned — Life for Relief and Development
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3514472
http://wbztv.com/nationalwire/MuslimCharityRaided/resources_news_html
(U.S.) Report: Two Michigan Muslim Charities Shut Down - Goodwill Charitable Organization (GCO) and Mabarrat
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=435ccffd6f487a0859706c22db94a03c&from=rss
(U.S.) Report: Flying Imams drop suit against passengers, but not against flight attendants and captain
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017880.php
http://greenspiece.blogspot.com/2007/08/not-all-john-does-out-of-imams-sights.html
(U.S.) More Iraqis cross Southwest border seeking asylum
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_6684100
(U.S.) Bomb threat briefly shuts New York State highway
http://today.reuters.com/investing/FinanceArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2007-08-22T155703Z_01_N22444781_RTRIDST_0_NEWYORK-SECURITY.XML
Turkey charges two over plane hijacking
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_mideast_afp/turkeyhijackcourt_070823072605;_ylt=Aoso2fklFH7RZB4IaMwMYDjtfLkA
Algeria: Al-Qaeda ‘apologizes’ for attack on ex-Islamist rebel leader Mustafa al-Kartali
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1229013058
Philippines: Security alert after blast injures 14 people
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1225949944
(Philippines) More residents flee Philippine fighting
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_afp/philippinesattacksunrestevacuees_070823032210;_ylt=AooSpqiEvp7j3dlRJURIf.pUKYUA
Lebanon army awaits news from militants on evacuation
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_mideast_afp/lebanonunrest_070823084324;_ylt=AsIWba_Ob1ryxSiD80y12v7agGIB
(Lebanon) Two Lebanese soldiers die in battle with Islamists
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070823/wl_nm/lebanon_fighting_dc_1;_ylt=AgtDRRaUAL5mkdpRCo.i.mXagGIB
Lebanon arrests 2 Palestinian suspects in bombing targeting UN mission
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779144151&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Hizbullah threatens to set up second gov’t if unity gov’t not formed
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3441014,00.html
Hizbullah Building Defensive Line North of Litani River
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/132114
Iran Revolutionary Guards try to get around nuclear sanctions
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779139642&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Iranian dissident warns of US actions — by declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist group
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/August/middleeast_August252.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
(Iran) Lawyer: Iran detainee free, but has no passport
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779138742&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Poll: Palestinians prefer Fatah gov’t over Hamas-led cabinet
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896753.html
Israeli, Hamas forces clash inside Gaza
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/August/middleeast_August250.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
(Gaza) Three Qassam fighters injured in S. Gaza shelling
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1013777
(Israel) 3 IDF troops lightly wounded in Nablus
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1187779139271&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
(Israel) Police break up Hamas, Islamic Movement meeting in Jerusalem
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896438.html
(Israel) In Two Months Terrorists Fire 300 Rockets into Israel
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/132125
(Israel) Kassam rocket lands near Sderot
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779137431&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Israel offers Palestinians control of Gaza-West Bank link in talks on deal
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/africa/ME-GEN-Israel-Palestinians.php
(Israel) CNN Special Compares Yesha Jews to Muslim Terrorists — media watch dog states that CNN’s “God’s Warriors” compares the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria to Islamist terrorists
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/132118
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=3&x_outlet=14&x_article=1354
USA Today Article on ISNA Leader — without mentioning that ISNA has been named an unindicted co-conspirator in Holy Land Foundation trial
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-08-20-mattson-islam_N.htm?csp=34#uslPageReturn
http://www.nysun.com/article/55778
Syrian Information Minister: The U.S. - A Viper-Like Fascist State; Teshreen: ‘U.S. Leaders Are Terrorists and Serial Killers’
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD169007
(UK) Britain frees assets eyed in jet plot — lifted financial sanctions against Shazad Khuram Ali, was suspect in transatlantic jet plot to attack USA
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070822/ap_on_re_eu/britain_terrorism_finance_1;_ylt=Altm2jdcH3Iy0cJOChQE7DITv5UB
(UK) Britain ready to back down on asylum for its interpreters in Iraq
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2310532.ece
(UK) Britain to start terrorism survival course
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Britain_to_start_terrorism_survival_course/articleshow/2300951.cms
(UK) Scotland: Terror accused ‘saw bomber video’ — Mohammed Atif Siddique
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/6960285.stm
(UK) Scotland: Terror trial student was a model high school pupil, court is told
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1335972007
(UK) Scotland: Muslim warns of Scotland’s ‘home-grown’ terror threat
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1335502007
(Australia) Terror Suspect Jack Thomas allowed to travel interstate
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22295500-29277,00.html
Australian police slams Haneef’s lawyers
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Australian_police_slam_Haneefs_lawyers/articleshow/2302845.cms
(Australia) Haneef case must end, say Australian lawyers
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/FullcoverageStoryPage.aspx?id=007b3056-64ff-46a7-86a7-5114dfa59ff6indiandocsinukterrorplot_Special&&Headline=Haneef+case+must+end%2c+say+Australian+lawyers
Russian serviceman killed in attack in Ingushetia
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/europe/EU-GEN-Russia-Restive-South.php
(Sudan) Darfur rebel faction threatens to pull out of peace talks over refugee camp raid
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/africa/ME-GEN-Sudan-Darfur-Rebel.php
(Morocco) Islamists test Morocco’s democracy limits in polls
http://africa.reuters.com/country/MA/news/usnL21814640.html
(Columbia) 5 Colombian farmers killed in FARC attack
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779137152&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Commentary: The Viral Spread of Explosive Technologies in the Land of Jihad
http://www.douglasfarah.com/article/238/the-viral-spread-of-explosive-technologies-in-the-land-of-jihad.com
Other News:
Italy: Protests against new mosque, Egypt’s treatment of Christian convert
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.1229012746
Iran: 24 hair salons closed in latest moral campaign
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1226660388
Malaysian paper apologizes for picture of Jesus holding cigarette — (no global protests or threats by Christians)
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/asia/AS-REL-Malaysia-Jesus-Picture.php
Indian communists adamant about U.S. nuclear deal
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070823/wl_nm/india_nuclear_dc_1;_ylt=AkAasz0Q9WHZhKyVWxoBcAhA7AkB
(Germany) Support for Nazi ideas still haunts Germany, says gov’t minister
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896214.html
(U.S.) Foreign aid groups face terror screens that receive U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) funds —
U.S. to require information on key personnel for secret screening program
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20402964/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294215,00.html
(Iraq) 32 killed, 15 kidnapped in Al Qaeda fighting with rival Sunni Arab militants (my title) — Al Qaeda kidnapped 15 Iraqi women
and children — Diyala villages of Tamim and Ibrahim Yehia
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070823/wl_nm/iraq_dc_68;_ylt=Ak.7oxfE984NC_.VJwx.EjVX6GMA
(Iraq) Sunni village attacked, leader killed
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_070822203352;_ylt=AiEZMF6VDMwl58I30hwh11xX6GMA
(Iraq) Wednesday truck bomb death toll rises to 27 - attack on police station (my title)
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22292847-663,00.html
(Iraq) US suffers 34 casualities in Iraq in one day
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1013809
(Iraq) ‘Chemical Ali’ back in Iraq court over Shiite repression
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_mideast_afp/iraqtrialshiitesopen_070823082956;_ylt=Agfn1l3HzAUpQTVvaEmCU99X6GMA
(Iraq) US general blames Britain for Basra crisis
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/23/wkeane123.xml
(Afghanistan) Taliban ambush leaves 10 Afghan guards dead
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/asia/AS-GEN-Afghanistan.php
(Afghanistan) Bombers target Afghan police chief - in the Helmand town of Gereshk
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan_070822233829;_ylt=AvSX1gwQUIMwrn6LdqrW6rPOVooA
(Afghanistan) German hostage in Afghanistan appears in video
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070823/wl_nm/afghan_hostages_dc_2;_ylt=AnZgQF3bzOUzrdHapLD1xjnOVooA
(Afghanistan) Bomb kills 2 Canadians in Afghanistan — Zhari district of southern Kandahar province - on Wednesday
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_as/afghan_canadian_soldiers_1;_ylt=Aj0yqWM79GCHETZ52eC2oMXOVooA
(Afghanistan) Al-Qaeda teach kids, 6, to kill
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007390138,00.html
(Pakistan) Pro-Taliban militants attack Pakistani camp - dozen soldiers wounded
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_sthasia_afp/pakistanafghanistanunrest_070823094101;_ylt=ApqM8Hl9uBAP2VXTTJrlSr_zPukA
(Pakistan) Group clash leaves six dead in Pakistan — at a peace jirga in Zargari in Hangu district
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=9164d9ed-0d45-4fc8-848b-e8692227d534&&Headline=Group+clash+leaves+six+dead+in+Pakistan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\23\story_23-8-2007_pg7_6
(Pakistan) Five terrorists arrested in Islamabad
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#11
(Pakistan) Ex-Taliban commander killed in Balochistan
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#7
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\23\story_23-8-2007_pg7_20
Pakistani militants are released from jail — dozens of suspected Islamic militants have been released from prison without trial
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2310632.ece
(Pakistan) NGOs stopped from working in Swat — threatening letters from suspected militants
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\23\story_23-8-2007_pg1_9
(Pakistan) Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs blasts pro-US foreign policy - blames Jewish people for 9/11 attacks,
and cites Qu’ran as basis for enmity against other religions
http://www.dawn.com/2007/08/22/top6.htm
(Indian Kashmir) Militants attack para-military post in Jammu and Kashmir
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#8
(Indian Kashmir) Policeman among two persons killed by militants in J&K
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Policeman_killed_by_militants_in_JK/articleshow/2303501.cms
(India Assam) Grenade hurled in Assam
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#9
Indian actor Sanjay Dutt freed on bail - convicted on weapons charge for 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_as/india_dutt_trial_9;_ylt=ArL0OKLm3H.liXOdC7DX2L1A7AkB
(India) Five persons supplying diesel to Sri Lankan LTTE arrested in Tamil Nadu
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=8/23/2007#12
(U.S.) Feds want Oregon Islamic charity figure held — Pirouz Sedaghaty of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation
http://www.katu.com/news/local/9319852.html
(U.S.) Background on Al-Haramain Surveillance Hearing
http://www.zombietime.com/al-haramain_surveillance/
(U.S.) Islamic Charity in Michigan Wants Documents Seized in Courterterrorism Investigation Returned —
Life for Relief and Development
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3514472
http://wbztv.com/nationalwire/MuslimCharityRaided/resources_news_html
(U.S.) Report: Two Michigan Muslim Charities Shut Down - Goodwill Charitable Organization (GCO) and Mabarrat
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=435ccffd6f487a0859706c22db94a03c&from=rss
(U.S.) Report: Flying Imams drop suit against passengers, but not against flight attendants and captain
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017880.php
http://greenspiece.blogspot.com/2007/08/not-all-john-does-out-of-imams-sights.html
(U.S.) More Iraqis cross Southwest border seeking asylum
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_6684100
(U.S.) Bomb threat briefly shuts New York State highway
http://today.reuters.com/investing/FinanceArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2007-08-22T155703Z_01_N22444781_RTRIDST_0_NEWYORK-SECURITY.XML
Turkey charges two over plane hijacking
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_mideast_afp/turkeyhijackcourt_070823072605;_ylt=Aoso2fklFH7RZB4IaMwMYDjtfLkA
Algeria: Al-Qaeda ‘apologizes’ for attack on ex-Islamist rebel leader Mustafa al-Kartali
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1229013058
Philippines: Security alert after blast injures 14 people
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1225949944
(Philippines) More residents flee Philippine fighting
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_afp/philippinesattacksunrestevacuees_070823032210;_ylt=AooSpqiEvp7j3dlRJURIf.pUKYUA
Lebanon army awaits news from militants on evacuation
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_mideast_afp/lebanonunrest_070823084324;_ylt=AsIWba_Ob1ryxSiD80y12v7agGIB
(Lebanon) Two Lebanese soldiers die in battle with Islamists
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070823/wl_nm/lebanon_fighting_dc_1;_ylt=AgtDRRaUAL5mkdpRCo.i.mXagGIB
Lebanon arrests 2 Palestinian suspects in bombing targeting UN mission
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779144151&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Hizbullah threatens to set up second gov’t if unity gov’t not formed
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3441014,00.html
Hizbullah Building Defensive Line North of Litani River
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/132114
Iran Revolutionary Guards try to get around nuclear sanctions
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779139642&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Iranian dissident warns of US actions — by declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist group
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/August/middleeast_August252.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
(Iran) Lawyer: Iran detainee free, but has no passport
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779138742&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Poll: Palestinians prefer Fatah gov’t over Hamas-led cabinet
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896753.html
Israeli, Hamas forces clash inside Gaza
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/August/middleeast_August250.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
(Gaza) Three Qassam fighters injured in S. Gaza shelling
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1013777
(Israel) 3 IDF troops lightly wounded in Nablus
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1187779139271&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
(Israel) Police break up Hamas, Islamic Movement meeting in Jerusalem
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896438.html
(Israel) In Two Months Terrorists Fire 300 Rockets into Israel
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/132125
(Israel) Kassam rocket lands near Sderot
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779137431&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Israel offers Palestinians control of Gaza-West Bank link in talks on deal
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/africa/ME-GEN-Israel-Palestinians.php
(Israel) CNN Special Compares Yesha Jews to Muslim Terrorists — media watch dog states that CNN’s “God’s Warriors”
compares the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria to Islamist terrorists
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/132118
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=3&x_outlet=14&x_article=1354
USA Today Article on ISNA Leader — without mentioning that ISNA has been named an unindicted
co-conspirator in Holy Land Foundation trial
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-08-20-mattson-islam_N.htm?csp=34#uslPageReturn
http://www.nysun.com/article/55778
Syrian Information Minister: The U.S. - A Viper-Like Fascist State; Teshreen: ‘U.S. Leaders Are Terrorists and Serial Killers’
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD169007
(UK) Britain frees assets eyed in jet plot — lifted financial sanctions against Shazad Khuram Ali, was suspect in
transatlantic jet plot to attack USA
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070822/ap_on_re_eu/britain_terrorism_finance_1;_ylt=Altm2jdcH3Iy0cJOChQE7DITv5UB
(UK) Britain ready to back down on asylum for its interpreters in Iraq
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2310532.ece
(UK) Britain to start terrorism survival course
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Britain_to_start_terrorism_survival_course/articleshow/2300951.cms
(UK) Scotland: Terror accused ‘saw bomber video’ — Mohammed Atif Siddique
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/6960285.stm
(UK) Scotland: Terror trial student was a model high school pupil, court is told
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1335972007
(UK) Scotland: Muslim warns of Scotland’s ‘home-grown’ terror threat
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1335502007
(Australia) Terror Suspect Jack Thomas allowed to travel interstate
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22295500-29277,00.html
Australian police slams Haneef’s lawyers
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Australian_police_slam_Haneefs_lawyers/articleshow/2302845.cms
(Australia) Haneef case must end, say Australian lawyers
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/FullcoverageStoryPage.aspx?id=007b3056-64ff-46a7-86a7-5114dfa59ff6indiandocsinukterrorplot_Special&&Headline=Haneef+case+must+end%2c+say+Australian+lawyers
Russian serviceman killed in attack in Ingushetia
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/europe/EU-GEN-Russia-Restive-South.php
(Sudan) Darfur rebel faction threatens to pull out of peace talks over refugee camp raid
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/africa/ME-GEN-Sudan-Darfur-Rebel.php
(Morocco) Islamists test Morocco’s democracy limits in polls
http://africa.reuters.com/country/MA/news/usnL21814640.html
(Columbia) 5 Colombian farmers killed in FARC attack
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779137152&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Commentary: The Viral Spread of Explosive Technologies in the Land of Jihad
http://www.douglasfarah.com/article/238/the-viral-spread-of-explosive-technologies-in-the-land-of-jihad.com
Other News:
Italy: Protests against new mosque, Egypt’s treatment of Christian convert
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.1229012746
Iran: 24 hair salons closed in latest moral campaign
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1226660388
Malaysian paper apologizes for picture of Jesus holding cigarette — (no global protests or threats by Christians)
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/asia/AS-REL-Malaysia-Jesus-Picture.php
Indian communists adamant about U.S. nuclear deal
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070823/wl_nm/india_nuclear_dc_1;_ylt=AkAasz0Q9WHZhKyVWxoBcAhA7AkB
(Germany) Support for Nazi ideas still haunts Germany, says gov’t minister
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896214.html
Cashill Newsletter: The War on Weldon Gets Scarier
1. This week, we feature further news in the War on former Rep Curt Weldon. Jack Cashill’s investigation uncovers the attempts to silence him, unseat him, and why — in this four-part series.
1. The War on Weldon Gets Scarier - Part 1 (ran 8/20/07 in WND)
2. The War on Weldon Gets Scarier - Part 2 (ran 8/21/07 in WND)
3. The War on Weldon Gets Scarier - Part 3 (ran 8/22/07 in WND)
4. The War on Weldon Gets Scarier - Part 4 (runs today in WND)
Or start with Part 1: http://www.cashill.com/natl_general/WeldWar1.htm
2. Monday, August 27th at 9:05 AM (Central) Jack Cashill will be on-air at KSFO 560 AM with Melanie Morgan and Brian Sussman to discuss Jack’s recent columns (see above). So even if you’re in Timbuktu, click on http://ksfo.com/showdj.asp?djid=2347 and choose “Listen Now” to hear the live broadcast on your computer.
Don’t miss #4.....................granny
CAIR Says It’s Been ‘Smeared’ by Association With Criminal Case
CAIR concedes membership down
August 22, 2007
By Audrey Hudson - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
says
it’s suffering a decline in membership and fundraising and blames the
Justice Department for listing it as an unindicted co-conspirator in a
Texas
case against a charity accused of ties to terrorists.
CAIR asked a U.S. District Court in Dallas to strike it from the list
of
more than 300 other Muslim groups named as unindicted co-conspirators
in the
government’s case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and
Development. The case is being tried in Dallas.
“The public naming of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator has impeded
its
ability to collect donations as possible donors either do not want to
give
to them because they think they are a ‘terrorist’ organization or are
too
scared to give to them because of the possible legal ramifications of
donating money to a ‘terrorist’ organization,” CAIR said in an amicus
curiae
brief filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
Texas.
The brief cites reporting by The Washington Times as evidence of the
organization’s declining membership. When this account of declining
CAIR
membership was published in The Times earlier this summer, CAIR
denounced it
as a “hit piece.”
The Justice Department shut down the Holy Land Foundation and in 2004
indicted several of its top officers, who are accused of raising $36
million
from 1995 through 2001 for the benefit of organizations and persons
linked
with Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by the Clinton
administration in 1995. The foundation raised $12.4 million after the
designation that made such fundraising illegal, prosecutors say.
The 42-count federal indictment accuses the foundation’s officers of
conspiracy, providing support to terrorists, money-laundering and
income-tax
evasion.
On May 29, the Justice Department made public a list naming 307
unindicted
co-conspirators - including CAIR - in the case now being tried before
U.S.
District Judge A. Joe Fish.
“The name of CAIR has been smeared by association with a criminal case
that
ostensibly involves the charitable funding of a ‘terrorist’ group,” the
brief, filed last week, sets out. The brief argues that federal
prosecutors
had no legitimate governmental interest in publicly releasing the names
of
CAIR and other unindicted co-conspirators. “Instead, the disclosure is
the
vindictive attempt of the government to smear a group which has been
critical of the government’s actions in aggressively and selectively
prosecuting Muslim groups or persons,” CAIR told the court.
It goes on and on...................................granny
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2007/08/threats-situational-awareness-and.html
August 22, 2007
Threats, Situational Awareness and Perspective
Source: Stratfor
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August 22, 2007 18 07 GMT
In last week’s Terrorism Intelligence Report, we said U.S. counterterrorism sources remain concerned an attack will occur on U.S. soil in the next few weeks. Although we are skeptical of these reports, al Qaeda and other jihadists do retain the ability — and the burning desire — to conduct tactical strikes within the United States. One thing we did not say last week, however, was that we publish such reports not to frighten readers, but to impress upon them the need for preparedness, which does not mean paranoia.
Fear and paranoia, in fact, are counterproductive to good personal and national security. As such, we have attempted over the past few years to place what we consider hyped threats into the proper perspective. To this end, we have addressed threats such as al Qaeda’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities, reports of a looming “American Hiroshima” nuclear attack against the United States, the dirty bomb threat, the smoky bomb threat, and the threat of so-called “mubtakkar devices”, among others.
Though some threats are indeed hyped, the world nonetheless remains a dangerous place. Undoubtedly, at this very moment some people are seeking ways to carry out attacks against targets in the United States. Moreover, terrorism attacks are not the only threat — far more people are victimized by common criminals. Does this reality mean that people need to live in constant fear and paranoia? Not at all. If people do live that way, those who seek to terrorize them have won. However, by taking a few relatively simple precautions and adjusting their mindsets, people can live less-stressful lives during these uncertain times. One of the keys to personal preparedness and protection is to have a contingency plan in place in the event of an attack or other major emergency. The second element is practicing situational awareness.
The Proper State of Mind
Situational awareness is the process of recognizing a threat at an early stage and taking measures to avoid it. Being observant of one’s surroundings and identifying potential threats and dangerous situations is more of an attitude or mindset than it is a hard skill. Because of this, situational awareness is not just a process that can be practiced by highly trained government agents or specialized corporate security countersurveillance teams — it can be adopted and employed by anyone.
An important element of this mindset is first coming to the realization that a threat exists. Ignorance or denial of a threat — or completely tuning out to one’s surroundings while in a public place — makes a person’s chances of quickly recognizing the threat and avoiding it slim to none. This is why apathy, denial and complacency are so deadly.
An example is the case of Terry Anderson, the Associated Press bureau chief in Lebanon who was kidnapped March 16, 1985. The day before his abduction, Anderson was driving in Beirut traffic when a car pulled in front of his and nearly blocked him in. Due to the traffic situation, and undoubtedly a bit of luck, Anderson was able to avoid what he thought was an automobile accident — even though events like these can be hallmarks of pre-operational planning. The next day, Anderson’s luck ran out as the same vehicle successfully blocked his vehicle in the same spot. Anderson was pulled from his vehicle at gunpoint — and held hostage for six years and nine months.
Clearly, few of us are living in the type of civil war conditions that Anderson faced in 1985 Beirut. Nonetheless, average citizens face all kinds of threats today — from common thieves and assailants to criminals and mentally disturbed individuals who aim to conduct violent acts in the school, mall or workplace, to militants wanting to carry out large-scale attacks. Should an attack occur, then, a person with a complacent or apathetic mindset will be taken completely by surprise and could freeze up in shock and denial as their minds are forced to quickly adjust to a newly recognized and unforeseen situational reality. That person is in no condition to react, flee or resist.
Denial and complacency, however, are not the only hazardous states of mind. As mentioned above, paranoia and obsessive concern about one’s safety and security can be just as dangerous. There are times when it is important to be on heightened alert — a woman walking alone in a dark parking lot is one example — but people are simply not designed to operate in a state of heightened awareness for extended periods of time. The body’s “flight or fight” response is helpful in a sudden emergency, but a constant stream of adrenalin and stress leads to mental and physical burnout. It is very hard for people to be aware of their surroundings when they are completely fried.
Situational awareness, then, is best practiced at a balanced level referred to as “relaxed awareness,” a state of mind that can be maintained indefinitely without all the stress associated with being on constant alert. Relaxed awareness is not tiring, and allows people to enjoy life while paying attention to their surroundings.
When people are in a state of relaxed awareness, it is far easier to make the transition to a state of heightened awareness than it is to jump all the way from complacency to heightened awareness. So, if something out of the ordinary occurs, those practicing relaxed awareness can heighten their awareness while they attempt to determine whether the anomaly is indeed a threat. If it is, they can take action to avoid it; if it is not, they can stand down and return to a state of relaxed awareness.
The Telltale Signs
What are we looking for while we are in a state of relaxed awareness? Essentially the same things we discussed when we described what bad surveillance looks like. It is important to remember that almost every criminal act, from a purse-snatching to a terrorist bombing, involves some degree of pre-operational surveillance and that criminals are vulnerable to detection during that time. This is because criminals, even militants planning terrorist attacks, often are quite sloppy when they are casing their intended targets. They have been able to get away with their sloppy practices for so long because most people simply do not look for them. On the positive side, however, that also means that people who are looking can spot them fairly easily.
The U.S. government uses the acronym TEDD to illustrate the principles one can use to identify surveillance, but these same principles also can be used to identify criminal threats. TEDD stands for Time, Environment, Distance and Demeanor. In other words, if a person sees someone repeatedly over time, in different environments and over distance, or one who displays poor demeanor, then that person can assume he or she is under surveillance. If a person is the specific target of a planned attack, he or she might be exposed to the time, environment and distance elements of TEDD, but if the subway car the person is riding in or the building where the person works is the target, he or she might only have the element of demeanor to key on. This also is true in the case of criminals who behave like “ambush predators” and lurk in an area waiting for a victim. Because their attack cycle is extremely condensed, the most important element to watch for is demeanor.
By poor demeanor, we simply mean a person is acting unnaturally. This behavior can look blatantly suspicious, such as someone who is lurking and/or has no reason for being where he is or for doing what he is doing. Sometimes, however, poor demeanor can be more subtle, encompassing almost imperceptible behaviors that the target senses more than observes. Other giveaways include moving when the target moves, communicating when the target moves, avoiding eye contact with the target, making sudden turns or stops, or even using hand signals to communicate with other members of a surveillance team.
In the terrorism realm, exhibiting poor demeanor also can include wearing unseasonably warm clothing, such as trench coats in the summer; displaying odd bulges under clothing or wires protruding from clothing; unnaturally sweating, mumbling or fidgeting; or attempting to avoid security personnel. In addition, according to some reports, suicide bombers often exhibit an intense stare as they approach the final stages of their mission. They seem to have tunnel vision, being able to focus only on their intended target.
Perspective
We have seen no hard intelligence that supports the assertions that a jihadist attack will occur in the next few weeks and are somewhat skeptical about such reports. Regardless of whether our U.S. counterterrorism sources are correct this time, though, the world remains a dangerous place. Al Qaeda, grassroots jihadists and domestic militants of several different political persuasions have the desire and capability to conduct attacks. Meanwhile, criminals and mentally disturbed individuals, such as the Virginia Tech shooter, appear to be getting more violent every day.
In the big picture, violence and terrorism have always been a part of the human condition. The Chinese built the Great Wall for a reason other than tourism. Today’s “terrorists” are far less dangerous to society as a whole than were the Viking berserkers and barbarian tribes who terrorized Europe for centuries, and the ragtag collection of men who have sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden pose far less of a threat to Western civilization than the large, battle-hardened army Abdul Rahman al-Ghafiqi led into the heart of France in 732.
Terrorist attacks are designed to have a psychological impact that far outweighs the actual physical damage caused by the attack itself. Denying the perpetrators this multiplication effect — as the British did after the July 2005 subway bombings — prevents them from accomplishing their greater goals. Therefore, people should prepare, plan and practice relaxed awareness — and not let paranoia and the fear of terrorism and crime rob them of the joy of life.
About Stratfor
Stratfor is the world’s leading private intelligence company delivering in-depth analysis, assessments and forecasts on global geopolitical, economic, security and public policy issues. A variety of subscription-based access, free intelligence reports and confidential consulting are available for individuals and corporations.
Posted by Naxal Watch at 12:46 PM
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