http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1905101/posts
West Palm Beach water system cleansing underway, but boil water order continues
South Florida Sun-Sentinel ^ | September 30, 2007 | Marc Freeman and Rhonda J. Miller
Posted on 10/01/2007 4:29:26 PM PDT by CounterCounterCulture
West Palm Beach water system cleansing underway, but boil water order continues
WEST PALM BEACH - Chlorine began flowing this morning to cleanse West Palm Beach’s contaminated water supply, and authorities are still searching for the source of the contamination that prompted a boil water order likely to last through Wednesday.
Affected water customers can help too: At 8 p.m. tonight, people should use plenty of water on long showers, car washes, and clothes washing.
“To flush the system in your house, basically,” said West Palm Beach spokesman Chase Scott.
The boil water alert Friday was for its 125,000 utilities customers who live in the city of West Palm Beach, as well as in the town of Palm Beach and the town of South Palm Beach on the barrier island. But residents across Palm Beach County who weren’t sure of the target area jammed city phone lines.
Water samples from the town of Palm Beach came back negative for contamination, but the boil water order remains in effect, Scott said today.
An elusive source of human or animal waste is to blame, said Assistant City Administrator Ken Rearden. Water from 13 sites tested positive for fecal coliform, total coliform and E. coli bacteria, which could be coming from sewage or bird droppings, Steve Schmidt, laboratory manager for West Palm Beach Public Utilities, said at a news conference Saturday at the water plant on Banyan Boulevard.
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
http://marksilverberg.com/index.php?article=2473
America’s Bio-Terrorism Nightmare
By Mark Silverberg | On March 14, 2007 | In Perceptions on War & Defeat | Rated
The recent revelation from an American bio-defense analyst living in Europe that Syria is ready to respond with biological weapons of mass destruction if the U.S., Israel or Europe attack Iranian nuclear installations has again brought forth the reality that such weapons in the hands of our enemies represent an intolerable threat to our national security.
The recent revelation from an American bio-defense analyst living in Europe that Syria is ready to respond with biological weapons of mass destruction if the U.S., Israel or Europe attack Iranian nuclear installations has again brought forth the reality that such weapons in the hands of our enemies represent an intolerable threat to our national security.
According to Jill Bellamy-Dorsey, who currently directs the Public Health Preparedness program for the European Homeland Security Association under the French High Committee for Civil Defense: ?Syria is positioned to launch a biological attack on Israel or Europe should the U.S. attack Iran. The Syrians are embedding their biological weapons program into their commercial pharmaceuticals business and their veterinary vaccine-research facilities?? she said. [1] Bellamy-Dorsey anticipates a variation of smallpox (cryptosporidium) as the biological agent Syria would use probably by infecting water supplies. Cryptosporidium is a one-celled parasite that causes a gastrointestinal illness with symptoms of diarrhea, abdominal cramps, headaches, nausea, vomiting, and a low-grade fever, the symptoms of which could last for weeks. The resulting mass illness would greatly inhibit the ability of any nation to defend itself. It is believed that the Syrians have tested their biological weapons in Darfur and that the Syrian military is planning the eventual integration of these weapons into its tactical and strategic arsenals by mounting biological warheads on its long-range surface-to-surface missiles and using them against military and civilian targets.
The Syrian revelation is only the latest in a long line of related warnings that have arisen in the West in recent years. Diseases such as SARS, AIDS, West Nile virus, hoof-and-mouth disease, and mad cow disease have highlighted the challenges of managing deadly pathogens in our shrinking world. But few are truly aware of the horrific nature of these weapons. The accidental release of anthrax from a military testing facility in the former Soviet Union in 1979 and Iraq’s admission in 1995 to having quantities of anthrax, botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin ready to use as weapons led President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen on November 25, 1997 to give a briefing on a Pentagon report dealing with the threat of chemical and biological weapons in the hands of then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. After showing a picture of a Kurdish mother and her child who had been gassed by Saddam’s army in Halabja in March 1988, he stated: “One drop (of VX nerve agent) on your finger will produce death in a matter of just a few moments.? He then sketched an image of a massive chemical attack on an American city. Recalling Saddam’s use of poison gas and the Sarin gas attack in Tokyo, Cohen warned that “we face a clear and present danger today” and reminded people that the “terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in New York had in mind the destruction and deaths of some 250,000 Americans that they were determined to kill.” Years later, a UN panel of experts found that the only thing holding al Qaeda back from using chemical and biological weapons was its lack of technical know-how, but the decision, it appears, has already been made to use chemical and biological weapons in future attacks. The CIA has said that an analysis of an al Qaeda document recovered in Afghanistan in the summer of 2002 “indicates the group has crude procedures for making mustard agent, Sarin and VX”, and could also attempt to build a cyanide-based chemical weapon using material readily available on the market.
As horrible as it was to have thousands of innocent Americans killed on September 11th, that is nothing compared to what terrorists could do with the biological and chemical weapons that we know they already possess. A mass-attack with Sarin, anthrax or some other biological agent could bring about civilian casualties and catastrophic damage to our country on a scale far beyond anything we experienced on September 11th, 2001. Experts cite the uncovering of several canisters of unidentified chemicals, possible residues of a ?tetanus virus-carrying chemical,? a bio-terror manual in a police raid on a Jemaa Islamiyah hideout in the southern Philippines and the recent discovery of a seven-pound block of highly-toxic cyanide salt in an al Qaeda safe-house in Baghdad believed to have been produced by Abu Musab Zarqawi, al Qaeda?s former ?poisons specialist.? These discoveries suggest that al Qaeda is developing a new generation of lethal biological weapons of mass destruction.
In one of the more sinister aspects of ?al Qaeda research,? Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a former Bin Laden associate testified during the U.S. trial on the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa that he himself had met with al Qaeda representatives and the Sudanese army where joint discussions were held in the early 1990s on the manufacture of chemical weapons to be mounted on artillery shells. Al Qaeda, at that time, had also been experimenting with biological weapons by gassing dogs with cyanide. Known as the “poor man’s atomic bomb,” these microscopic killers are easily made, easily dispersed and easy to transport though airports and across borders.
Nasser Asad al-Tamimi, an Islamic Jihad leader who died in 1998, said in Amman shortly before his death, that chemical and biological weapons were “the way to win the jihad.” Around the same time, former CIA Director James Woolsey cited reports that Hezbollah operatives had acquired chemical and biological weapons with the help of two Swiss businessmen and a captured Hamas activist Mohammed Salah, under interrogation in Israel in 1993, confessed that he and Moussa Abu Marzook, the then-head of Hamas operations in the U.S. had sought recruits in America with chemical and biological expertise. Steven Emerson, the maker of the film “Jihad in America,” (an exposé of Islamic fundamentalist activities in the U.S.) told a Congressional hearing in February 1998 that after smashing a Hamas cell in Hebron in 1998, Israeli agents found computer records of plans to use chemical and biological agents to contaminate food and water.
Thus, long before the anthrax scare of 2001 made the threat real, U.S. officials were expressing concern over the implications of a terror cell in the U.S. unleashing a biological or chemical agent on American soil. The threat became even more sinister with the knowledge that Libyan dictator Muammar Ghadaffi had provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons before changing heart and agreeing to destroy his own weapons program. U.S. forces invading Afghanistan in 2001 discovered and destroyed two production centers that were preparing to manufacture cyanide and the botulinum and salmonella toxins and possibly anthrax. Two terrorism manuals seized from al Qaeda operatives in several locations contained detailed instructions on making and using the toxin. One was found by British journalists in November 2001 at a deserted al Qaeda safe house in Kabul, Afghanistan; another was a 7,000 page manual titled, “The Encyclopedia of Jihad” which recommended the use of ricin as one of the “poisons that the holy warrior can prepare and use without endangering his health.? Since then, ricin-making equipment or traces of the toxin have been discovered during police raids on al Qaeda-affiliated cells in Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Georgia, and Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. [2]
Deadlier by far than cobra venom, a speck of pure ricin the size of a pinhead can kill an adult if injected into the bloodstream. A slightly larger dose - roughly a pinch - is fatal if swallowed or inhaled. Ricin is water-soluble and virtually odorless, so it can be used to contaminate water or food supplies on a large scale. In 2002, 29-year-old Menad Benchellali, an al Qaeda ?chemist? was discovered to have set up a laboratory in his parents’ spare bedroom in Lyons, France and began to manufacture ricin. Today, exactly how many jars of ricin Benchellali may have produced - and their whereabouts - is an urgent question for European governments facing a wave of terrorist attacks and threats. Last year, similar containers turned up in Britain in the possession of North Africans who were allegedly planning an attack. At least one other jar is known to be missing, and French investigators suspect that still others exist.
But that was only the beginning of the nightmare scenario. On April 13, 2005, Kamel Bourgass, al Qaeda-trained Algerian, was convicted of plotting to launch chemical and bomb attacks in London and there have been other such planned attacks broken up by British intelligence since then. Police had raided Bourgass’s small flat in north London in January 2003 after receiving the tip-off in December 2002. Inside, they found recipes and the raw ingredients for making the deadly toxins ricin, cyanide and botulinum with instructions on how to make nicotine poison, rotting meat poison and potato poison and details on making explosives. There were also instructions explaining how to turn the poisons into gases with the detail that once gaseous, rotting meat poison was 1,000 times more deadly than nerve gas. Bourgass?s fingerprints were found on a cup containing apple seeds and paper containing cherry stones. Both can be used to produce cyanide. His fingerprints were also found on a bottle of acetone, which can be used to extract poison from the seeds as detailed in instructions found in the flat at Wood Green. The search also found more than twenty castor beans, the base ingredient for ricin. Bourgass and other British plotters were keeping the deadly ricin poison in a jar of skin cream and planned to smear it on the handles of cars and buildings in North London. Although police did not find the poison, they did find recipes to make it and that was enough to cause a national stir. [3]
These fears became reality on April 13, 2004. On that day, Bin Laden?s terror network targeted a Jordanian Military Intelligence installation, a luxury hotel, and the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan for its first poison gas attack designed to kill thousands of people. Fortunately, Jordanian security authorities intercepted one of the pickups loaded with the explosives and poison gas containers as it crossed from Syria into Jordan. Their cargoes of explosives combined with twenty tons of nerve and blister agents could have killed an estimated 80,000 people within a half-mile radius had the cargo detonated as planned. [4] The cell was later identified to be linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda?s former terrorism ?contractor.?
With the knowledge that al Qaeda is also working to produce weaponized anthrax and other biological weapons, each moment that passes brings America or Europe closer to a national biological or chemical nightmare.[5] The Jordan episode sent shock waves through every Western capital. Warnings have been issued from the Director General of MI5 in Britain who spoke on the inevitability of such an attack in a Western city. It did not take long for the British to react. On April 22, 2004, Peter Hain, Leader of the House of Commons, told MPs that MI5 had issued a “clear intelligence” warning of the possibility of an anthrax or ricin attack on the heart of British democracy, and called on MPs to approve a permanent glass screen to prevent terror attacks on the chamber. Hain said, “If an al-Qaeda group managed to throw a phial of anthrax or ricin down into the chamber, or even worse a suicide agent released it without anybody noticing, which we have been advised is quite feasible, the particles would immediately begin spreading throughout the chamber.? In typical British understatement, he added: ?Within minutes total contamination could occur.” [6]
Designer Viruses
The fear of a biological or chemical attack in America or Europe also extends well-beyond the known range of known chemical and biological agents. Anne Applebaum writing in the Washington Post [7] analyzed the easy way in which ?designer viruses? could be constructed and the catastrophe that such viruses could cause if released on an unsuspecting population. She noted that ?there are already 20,000 labs in the world where a single person could synthesize any existing virus within the next decade. In the same 20,000 labs, five people with $2 million would be able to create an enhanced pathogen - a virus that could infect people who have been immunized with conventional vaccines - and kill perhaps a billion of them. With an additional $3 million, the same five people could build a lab from scratch, using equipment purchased online. The threat, then, is not merely from the diseases we know about - anthrax, smallpox, and plague - but from the diseases that haven’t been invented yet. It isn’t possible to distinguish “safe” lines of biological engineering research from “dangerous” ones, since they are identical.?
This is especially troubling in view of a recent report prepared by a panel of outside experts that warned the CIA that technology emanating from genomic research could produce diseases ?worse than any known to man? - a pandemic - and ?the most frightening? biological weapons. The report titled ?The Darker Bio-Weapons Future? summed up a January 2003 workshop which discussed with the CIA potential threats from new biological weapons. Growth in biotechnology and a knowledge explosion due to the genomic revolution have provided an understanding that genes can be used in unpredictable ways, say the experts.
Thus, the same science that may cure some of our worst diseases can also be used to create the world?s most frightening weapons - ?designer? diseases created to be antibiotic resistant or evade immune response. The experts warned that traditional intelligence methods could prove inadequate to deal with this development. Detection will increasingly depend on human intelligence and require a closer working relationship between the intelligence and science communities. Our nation desperately needs to bolster existing bio-defenses against these new pathogens especially since, on average, it takes more than a decade and over $800 million to create, approve and distribute a new drug.
Bio-Terrorism Preparedness
To prepare the nation for a possible bio-terror attack, a government-wide counter-terrorism exercise called TOPOFF2 (short for “top officers”) was initiated in May 2003 led by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. This was a national, full-scale, fully functional exercise intended to simulate two separate terrorist attacks - the detonation of a “dirty bomb” in Seattle and the aerosol release of plague in Chicago. The exercise involved participation from seventeen federal departments and agencies, the state governments of Washington and Illinois, the local governments of the affected cities, and the Canadian Government. [8] A FEMA Report issued following the exercise however found that there were significant communications problems, serious shortages of medical supplies and hospital rooms, a lack of information-sharing, uncertainties as to chains of command among U.S. agencies, and confusion over where the residue of a radiological attack would spread.
In addition, emergency response teams were unable to obtain vitally-needed equipment because it was unknown which agency was responsible for them. The Report also said that officials deployed emergency response personnel and equipment without notifying their superiors, that federal agents did not share intelligence because of a lack of security clearances and that there was widespread confusion over Homeland Security?s color-coded terrorist threat level. A government observer at the exercise said the extent of confusion was especially significant because it occurred despite extensive prior notice to the state and federal officials. Obviously, the United States was and is not yet prepared for such an attack. [9]
The failings of TOP OFF 2 led directly to an even more comprehensive exercise two years later in early April 2005 (another is planned for mid-2007 in Portland, Oregon and Guam). TOP OFF 3 involved more than 10,000 participants in Connecticut, New Jersey, the United Kingdom and Canada representing more than 200 federal, state, local, tribal, private sector, and international agencies and organizations and volunteer groups in a coordinated national and international response to a large-scale, multi-point terrorist attack. The New Jersey scenario involved a simulated biological attack in Union and Middlesex Counties and the Connecticut scenario involved a simulated chemical attack in New London. Personnel conducted search and rescue, hospitals treated the injured (played by role players), subject-matter experts analyzed the effects of the attack on public health, and top officials deployed resources and made the difficult decisions needed to save lives. The drill pointed out at least two specific problems. One was the difficulty in maintaining effective communication among state agencies and more than 560 municipalities. Another was the need for better facilities for handling thousands of dead bodies in a very short time.
In addition, the government’s performance on bio-defense came under criticism. In 2002, President Bush had called for millions of U.S. health workers to be immunized for smallpox, but only about 40,000 have actually been vaccinated. Another December 2003 study by the Trust for America’s Health found that while states now have better communications capabilities, improved bio-terrorism response plans and better-equipped laboratories than they had on 9/11, bureaucracy still prevents states from fully drawing on federal bio-terrorism funds, that only two states are fully prepared to distribute and administer emergency treatments from national stockpiles (Florida and Illinois) and that many states will soon be facing a shortage of trained public health personnel. Other concerns included the fear that hospitals had not done enough to prepare to handle mass casualties and that states were having trouble hiring specialists such as epidemiologists and laboratory technicians.
At the same time as the Trust for America’s Health was releasing its findings, an “Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction” (known as ?the Gilmore Commission?) released its findings [10] on improving bioterrorism preparedness. The Commission made a series of recommendations such as simplifying the funding applications process and improving communications among first responders, government representatives and law enforcement officials. Most importantly, the Commission recommended that Congress should re-establish a federal office specifically to support emergency medical service (EMS) operational and systems issues and sustain funding to enhance EMS response capacity for acts of terrorism (estimated at $462M).
Based upon the Gilmore Commission findings and recommendations, the Bush administration launched a new Initiative on April 28, 2004 designed to increase the nation?s preparedness for a chemical or biological attack by a terrorist organization. The “Bio-Defense for the 21st Century Initiative? was designed to correct numerous bureaucratic problems that had arisen in the bio-terrorism response system. The Initiative included boosting research into biological threats, expanding a network of sensors that continuously monitor air particles for potential chemical and biological agents in our major metropolitan areas, and increasing America’s capacity to respond to a catastrophe that could lead to widespread illness and casualties.
As a result, stockpiles around the nation now include large quantities of antibiotics, chemical antidotes, anti-toxins, life-support medications and many other surgical items and they are stationed in strategically located, secured warehouses ready for immediate deployment. These stockpiles contain enough smallpox vaccine for every U.S. resident and enough antibiotics to treat as many as 60 million people who might be exposed to the deadliest form of anthrax. But getting these supplies into the hands of the people who would need them remains one of the most vexing problems the government struggles with to prepare the nation for a possible bioterrorism attack. [11]
In effect, nearly six years after anthrax attacks in October 2001 killed five people and put the nation on alert, and despite a $20 billion government investment in bioterrorism preparedness since 2001, the nation remains woefully unprepared to respond to a bioterrorism attack. Not a single American city has a contingency plan on to handle crowd control following an attack or even how and what to do if health officials recommend quarantines that need to be enforced. Worse, the government may have created a national stockpile of medical equipment and supplies and can move the supplies to any city within twelve hours of an attack, but not a single American city is prepared to deliver the material to its citizens in time to save lives. Furthermore, a $5.6 billion, 10-year government program to spur pharmaceutical firms to develop new vaccines and antidotes has yet to produce the necessary drugs despite President Bush’s 2003 Project BioShield* promise that the government would purchase much of the new antidote drugs and treatments against small pox and anthrax, botulin toxin, E-bola plague and other possible agents of bio-terror if they met certain standards. Major pharmaceutical companies have simply ignored the program in large measure because of liability concerns. Moreover, the nation’s 5,000 hospitals are still unprepared to handle the surge of patients that can be expected in the event of biological or chemical attack.
Studies like the Markle Foundation’s Task Force on National Security in the Information Age issued in early 2004 and again in July 2006 also suggest that the Bush Administration has yet to improve upon how hospitals can share information on epidemics and act as early-warning systems in the event of a bio-terror attack.
Conclusion
Although a bio-terror attack on America is seen as a high consequence - low probability event, with the availability of chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological weapons on the international black market, the Bush administration has recognized that it faces the distinct possibility of mass civilian murder the likes of which this country has never known. The reconstituted al Qaeda organization has already established an affinity to attack large symbolic targets repeatedly (including New York, Yemen and Kenya) and on September 11th, it announced to the world that it meant to destroy the infidel, to expel it from Muslim lands, and to turn America into an Islamic Republic. Al Qaeda has openly claimed the right to kill four million people using biological and chemical weapons, and has posted instructions on how to make these weapons on its website. It is a threat this country must take seriously. Al-Qaeda’s global network, its proven capabilities, its deadly history, its desire to do the unthinkable and the evidence collected about its bio-terrorist ambitions, ominously portend a clear and present danger of the highest order that al-Qaeda will perpetrate a biological terrorist attack. We dismissed the warning signs prior to 9/11. The stakes are much higher now.
*Project BioShield directed government agencies to purchase 75 million doses of an improved anthrax vaccine for the strategic national stockpile. It approved spending for a safer, second-generation smallpox vaccine, an antidote to botulinum toxin, and better treatments for exposure to chemical and radiological weapons, including a children’s version of an anti-radiation pill. The government has already put in place advanced environmental detectors to warn of such an attack and has stockpiled enough smallpox vaccine for every American.
Endnotes
1. Jerome R. Corsi, ?Syria ready with bio-terror if U.S. hits Iran,? WorldNetDaily, March 5, 2007
2.
3. Joby Warrick, ?An Al Qaeda ‘Chemist’ and the Quest for Ricin,? The Washington Post, May 5, 2004; Page A01; See also: “Suspect and A Setback in Al-Qaeda Anthrax Case: Scientist with Ties to Group Goes Free,” October 31, 2006; A01 Joby Warrick, Reuters, April 13, 2005
4. DEBKAfile Exclusive Report, ?Al Qaeda Goes Regional: Basra, Riyadh Bomb Blasts - Coordinated with Thwarted Chemical Strike in Amman,? April 21, 2004
5. DEBKAfile Special Report, “UN: Al Qaeda Has Decided to Use Chemical and Bio weapons,” November 15, 2003
6. Ben Russell, ?MPs warned of al-Qa’ida terror threat to Commons,? The Independent, April 23, 2004
7. February 18, 2004
8. Phil Shenon, ?Terrorism Drills Showed Lack of Preparedness, Report Says,? New York Times, December 19, 2003, Section A, Page 32, Column 1
9. Robert Block, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 31, 2003; Global Security Newswire, October 21, 2003
10. December 15, 2003
11. For a detailed status report on national preparedness for biological attacks, see: ?News Release - HHS Fact Sheet: Biodefense Preparedness Public Health Emergency Preparedness “Transforming America’s Capacity to Respond” April 28, 2004
http://lionheartuk.blogspot.com/2007/06/islamic-warfare-strategy.html
18 June 2007
Islamic Warfare – The Strategy
Inside The Moslem mind
To the infidels of the West:
Constitution for the new Islamic Republic of EU and USA is under construction.
We will fight the infidel to the death.
Meanwhile American laws will protect us.
Democrats and Leftist will support us.
UNO will legitimize us.
CAIR will incubate us.
ACLU will empower us.
Western Universities will educate us.
Mosques will shelter us
OPEC will finance us
Hollywood will love us.
Koffi Annan will pass politically correct sympathetic statement for Jihadists.
Our children will immigrate from Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Indonesia and even from India to the US and to other Western countries. They will go to the West for education in full scholarships. America is paying and will continue to pay for our children’s educations and their upbringing in state funded Islamic schools.
We will use your welfare system. Our children will also send money home while they are preparing for Jihad.
We will take advantage of American kindness, gullibility, and compassion. When the time comes, we will stab them in the back. We will say one thing on camera and teach another thing to our children at home. We will give subliminal messages to our children to uphold Islam at any cost. Our children in America will always care more about Islamic Country’s interests than US interests.
We will teach our children Islamic supremacy from very early childhood. We will teach them not to compromise with the Infidel. Once we do that from the very early age our children won’t hesitate to be martyrs. We will take over Europe first and then the US will be our next target. We already have solid ground in the UK, Holland, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Germany, and now in the US.
Our children will marry Caucasians in Europe and in America. We will mix with the fabric of Western society but still will remember Jihad when the time comes.
Who are we?
We are the “sleeper cells”.
We will raise our children to be loyal to Islam and Mohammad only. Everything else is secondary.
At the time of the real fight we will hold our own children as our armor. When American or Israeli troops shoot at us the world will be watching. Imagine,… Imagine the World news “Death of Muslim babies by infidels”.
We know CNN, ABC, CBS are broadcasting live. Al-Jazeera will pour gasoline on the fire. The news will spread like wildfire. “Americans killed 6 babies, 10 babies”. “Jews killed two women”,
Keep your Nukes in your curio cabinets. Keep your aircraft carrier or high-tech weaponry in the showcase. You can’t use them against us because of your own higher moral standard. We will take advantage of your higher moral standard and use it against you. We won’t hesitate to use our children as suicide bombers against you.
Visualize the news flashes all over the world, …Moslem mother is sobbing, ….crying. ….Her babies are killed by Jews and Americans, the whole world is watching live. Hundreds of millions of Muslims all around the world are boiling. They will march through Europe. We will use our women to produce more babies who will in turn be used as armor/shield. Our babies are the gift from Allah for Jihad.
The West manufactures their tanks in factories. We will manufacture our military force by natural means, by producing more babies. That is the way it is cheaper.
You infidels at this site cannot defeat us. We are 1.2 billion. We will double again. Do you have enough bullets to kill us?
On the camera:
We will always say, “Islam is the religion of Peace.”
We will say, “Jihad is actually inner Jihad.”
Moderate Muslims will say there is no link between Islam and Terrorism and the West will believe it because the West is so gullible.
Moderate Muslims all over the world will incubate Jihadist by their talk by defending Islam.
Using the West’s Legal system we will assert our Sharia Laws, slowly but surely.
We will increase in number. We will double again.
You will be impressed when you meet a moderate Muslim personally. As your next-door neighbor, coworker, student, teacher, engineer, professionals you may even like us. You will find us well mannered, polite, humble, that will make you say, “wow, Muslims are good and peaceful people”, But, we will stab you in your back when you are sleeping as we did on 911.
There will be more 911’s in Europe and in America. We will say, “We do not support terrorism but America got what it deserved.”
Muslims, CAIR, ISNA, MPAC and other international Islamic Organization will unite. We will partner with Leftist, ACLU, with Koffi Annan, and the UN, and if we have too even with France. Fasten your seatbelt. The war of civilizations has just begun.
We will recite Quran and say Allah-Hu-Akbar before beheading infidels, as we have been doing. We will video tape those and send it to all the infidels to watch. They will surrender - ISLAM means surrender.
We will use your own values of kindness against you.
You are destined to loose.
Must be very depressing for you. Is it?
Allah-Hu-Akbar - as we say just before beheading people.
21st Century Islamic Warfare
Let’s see the effectiveness of Islamic warfare.
Muslims Vs. the West.
THE RULE HAS CHANGED. There is new game in town.
Bill Clinton ordered 50 Tomahawks Cruise missiles costing $100,000,000 each, to destroy $50 mud houses that belonged to Osama’s family. What stupidity? What a poor ROI
(Return On Investment)
In return Osama’s attack on the US. Cost: 19 martyrs and less than $500,000. Cost to the West: over 3,000 dead.
At least $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) dollars economical loss in one year. This includes the ripple effect.
Osama’s ROI with respect to: life = 3,000/19 = 158 fold. Dollar = $1 tr./500K = 2,000,000 fold
This is modern warfare. The West will loose.
Allah-Hu-Akbar. Islam will rule the world. There is nothing you can do. Even if the per capita GDP of the world drops to half of its present level as a consequence of Islamic laws in place all over the world. Islam will still rule the word.
From your point of view we bring the world into the dark ages, so be it. But still Islam wins and the West looses.
Are you sure you want to play this game?
Jihad, ..Jihad...Jeeehaaad...
You are destined to loose.
Allah-hu-Akbar
SOTT
[Sight of the Truth]
Saudi Arabia’s $100 billion investment over the last 3 decades on over 60 thousands Madrassas and schools all over the Islamic world is finally paying off. While the West was busy inventing medicine, increasing life expectancy, elevating human suffering, decoding the human gene to find a cure for Cancer, heart disease etc, launching space shuttles, inventing the internet, working on new laws/theory for human rights, developing better economical models for a more prosperous world, while ACLU was gaining control over common sense, while American ingenuity was benefiting the rest of the world, we Muslims were busy producing over 200 million out of 1.4 billion, Walking, Talking, Non-Thinking, West-Hating, Pre-Programmed, Suicidal, Parasitic, Terrorist Robots.You can’t win. The Genie is out of the bottle.
We will use American’s kindness, fairness, compassion, freedom of speech and non-discriminatory policy against them. We will stab them in the back.
What are you going to do?
You are doomed.
(Writer unknown)
Lionheart
http://lionheartuk.blogspot.com/2007/08/source-of-islams-elixir-of-jihad.html
03 August 2007
The source of Islam’s ‘Elixir’ of Jihad
I have written extensively about the Jihad with Heroin that is being conducted against British society on the streets of Luton & Dunstable - England by the Pakistani Moslem community within the confines of Fortress Bury Park.
This highly lucrative and destructive commodity in the hands of the Luton Al Qaeda trained and inspired Moslems is owned and controlled on the ground here by a large network of Islamic extremists who operate under the banner and leadership of “The Khan Mafia”.
Heroin is the number one source of finance for the street Jihad that is being conducted against local life and society within Great Britian.
This business that is owned and controlled by the Pakistani Moslem community of Luton is a well known fact to everyone who lives here and has developed pretty much unhindered for the last 20 - 25 years.
This article from Time exposes the source of the Heroin trail before ending up on British streets.
Taken from Time: Terrorism Harvest
U.S. forces on the trail of Osama bin Laden and the leaders of the Taliban in late 2001 didn’t worry much about elderly, pious-looking men like Haji Juma Khan. A towering tribesman from the Baluchistan desert near Pakistan, Khan was picked up that December near Kandahar and taken into U.S. custody. Though known to U.S. and Afghan officials as a drug trafficker, he seemed an insignificant catch. “At the time, the Americans were only interested in catching bin Laden and [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar,” says a European counterterrorism expert in Kabul. “Juma Khan walked.”
That decision has come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. Western intelligence agencies believe Khan has become the kingpin of a heroin-trafficking enterprise that is a principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. A Western law-enforcement official in Kabul who is tracking Khan says agents in Pakistan and Afghanistan, after a tip-off in May, turned up evidence that Khan is employing a fleet of cargo ships to move Afghan heroin out of the Pakistani port of Karachi. The official says at least three vessels on return trips from the Middle East took arms like plastic explosives and antitank mines, which were secretly unloaded in Karachi and shipped overland to al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Khan is now a marked man. “He’s obviously very tightly tied to the Taliban,” says Robert Charles, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. Mirwais Yasini, head of the Afghan government’s Counter-Narcotics Directorate, says, “There are central linkages among Khan, Mullah Omar and bin Laden.”
The emergence of Khan’s network reflects the challenges the U.S. still faces in Afghanistan as the U.S. struggles to hunt al-Qaeda’s leaders, disarm Afghanistan’s warlords and shore up President Hamid Karzai against a revived Taliban-led insurgency. The renewed trade in opium has worsened all those problems. The World Bank calculates that more than half of Afghanistan’s economy is tied up in drugs. The combined incomes of farmers and in-country traffickers reached $2.23 billion last year—up from $1.3 billion in 2002. Heroin trafficking has long been the main source of funds for local warlords’ private armies, which thwart Karzai’s attempts to expand his authority beyond Kabul. But the drug trade is becoming even more dangerous: U.S. and British counterterrorism experts say al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies are increasingly financing operations with opium sales. Antidrug officials in Afghanistan have no hard figures on how much al-Qaeda and the Taliban are earning from drugs, but conservative estimates run to tens of millions of dollars.
The Taliban and al-Qaeda don’t grow the opium poppies. Their involvement is higher up the drug chain, where profits are fatter, and so is their cut of the deal. Yasini says the terrorists receive a share of profits in return for supplying gunmen to protect labs and convoys. Recent busts have revealed evidence of al-Qaeda’s ties to the trade. On New Year’s Eve, a U.S. Navy vessel stopped a small fishing boat in the Arabian Sea. After a search, says a Western antinarcotics official, “they found several al-Qaeda guys sitting on a bale of drugs.” In January U.S. and Afghan agents raided a drug runner’s house in Kabul and found a dozen or so satellite phones. The phones were passed on to the CIA station in Kabul, which found that they had been used to call numbers linked to suspected terrorists in Turkey, the Balkans and Western Europe. And in March U.S. troops searching a suspected terrorist hideout in Oruzgan province found opium with an estimated street value of $15 million.
Antidrug officials say the only way to cut off al-Qaeda’s pipeline is to destroy the poppy farms. U.S. military commanders have been reluctant to commit the nearly 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to opium eradication, fearing that doing so would divert attention from the hunt for terrorists. The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has tapped top Drug Enforcement Administration official Harold Wankel to lead an intensified drive to nail kingpins, shut down heroin-production labs, eradicate poppy fields and persuade farmers to plant food crops. If the drug cartels aren’t stopped, the U.S. fears, they could sow more chaos in Afghanistan—which al-Qaeda and the Taliban could exploit to wrest back power. Miwa Kato, a Kabul-based officer for the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime, puts it this way: “The opium problem has the capacity to undo everything that’s being done here to help the Afghans.” Few outcomes would please America’s enemies more. —With reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Elaine Shannon/Washington
With reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Elaine Shannon/ Washington
As you will see from the Time article, one of the key Heroin traffickers on the ground in Afghanistan/Pakistan is another Khan.
Al Qaeda declared War on Great Britain on 7/7 and was facilitated on the ground in Great Britian by the Pakistani Moslem community within the confines of Fortress Bury Park Luton. The ‘recruiter’ of Mohamed Sidique Khan the ring leader of this act of War was a Pakistani Moslem from Luton called Mr Q Khan.
It is said that Mr Q Khan deals with the top echelons of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan and has recruited many more Western born fighters to fight the Jihad around the world for Al Qaeda.
The revelations came to light about Luton’s Mr Q Khan and his activites after information about operation crevice by British security services was released and the subsequent arrest and imprisonment of those involved in this the biggest planned terrorist campaign against Great Britian ever in our history - The ‘Fertiliser plot’. Mr Q Khan is said to have been the ‘Emir’ of this Al Qaeda campaign against mainland Britian, with this horrendous murderous plan being plotted and facilitated within the confines of Fortress Bury Park - Luton. The Al Qaeda trained bomb maker of this plot was also another Pakistani Moslem from within Fortress Bury Park.
The Pakistani Moslem community of Luton are using Heroin as a weapon of war against the infidel in our society and are swimming in the illegal proceeds that are earned through this trade throughout Great Britian.
This trade in death that is being pumped out against the innocent local community is controlled on the ground in Luton by the Khan Mafia who we know have Al Qaeda trained terrorists amongst them who deal direct with the top echelons of the Al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan/Afghanistan.
Heroin is the number one financial source of wealth for the street Jihad in the vacinity of where I live and has financed the establishment of an Ialamic paramilitary force on the streets of Luton & Dunstable that is large, well organised, extremly wealthy and heavily armed.
Is it any wonder Al Qaeda declared War on Great Britian from within the confines and vicinity of Fortress Bury Park - Luton?
Heroin is also the number one source of wealth for the Jihad on the ground in Afghanistan against coalition troops there.
An excellent article in the Daily Mail on the state of play with regards to our British troops and the poppy crop in Afghanistan, in the article the writer links the Heroin in Afgnistan to the Russians like what I mentioned in my post: Nuclear Terror in London
Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and ‘value-added’ operations.
It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.
Full article can be read here: Daily Mail
Has the time not come to stamp out the Golden Sword of Jihad..
Lionheart
Posted by LionHeart at 12:13 PM
Labels: afghanistan, bobby khan, dunstable, heroin, luotn, pakistani
2 comments:
Anonymous said...
Lionheart keep up the very intresting truthful informative site,it is soul lifting to read your page,to feel you are on our wavelengh and speak openly of the situation we all know exists daily on the streets of Luton with the approval of the Government at local and national level,just one question on the production of the opium growing ,why cant the US just napalm it all?and do the world a very big favour?
I understand the situation in Luton very well,as I live on your doorstep so to speak
05-Aug-2007 11:22:00
LionHeart said...
Thank you for visiting my blog anonymous.
Heroin has many positive sides within medicine aswell as being a highly addictive and destructive street drug.
if the worlds supply was to cease then we would have 10’s of thousands of drug crazed monsters that Al Qaeda have helped create, craving and going off their heads for their daily hit of Heroin across Great Britian.
there was an excellent documentary on channel 4 the other day called “The insider - Heroin on the NHS”, i am trying to get a link to it on the internet because it shows the reality of what is happening to young people in our society.
There are chemicals out there that can destroy the crop but our leaders are more concerned about the Afghan economy than the number one financial resource for the global Jihad that is destroying our society.
It is our individual responsibility to tackle this threat on the ground around us for the safety of our society. Our governments are not going to stamp this out so we must and they must help us.
Its is good to know that you understand the situation i write about because it is a very serious situation that our country faces.
We could ignore it, but where does that ultimately lead us.
God bless you
Lionheart
06-Aug-2007 11:49:00
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Luton & Dunstable - Reality Check UPDATE
I wrote the post: Luton & Dunstable - Reality Check last week as it was my first time back to where I live in a few months. As entering the Town doubt entered my mind as to the severity and scale of the problem under the surface of ...
Posted by LionHeart at 03-Sep-2007 10:15:00
http://fortressaustralia.blogspot.com/
Monday, October 01, 2007
One Good Marine
[U.S. Marine tribute]
A large group of Al-Qaeda fighters are moving down a road when they hear a voice call from behind a sand dune:
“One MARINE is better than ten Al-Qaeda fighters “.
The Al-Qaeda commander quickly orders 10 of his best men over the dune where upon a gun-battle breaks out and continues for a few minutes, then silence.
The voice once again calls out:
“One MARINE is better than one-hundred Al-Qaeda fighters.”
Furious, the Al-Qaeda commander sends his next best 100 troops over the dune and instantly a huge gun fight commences. After 10 minutes of battle, again Silence.
The MARINE’S voice calls out again:
“One MARINE is better than one-thousand Al-Qaeda fighters.”
The enraged Al-Qaeda commander musters 1000 fighters and sends them to the other side of the dune. Rifle fire, machine guns, grenades, rockets and Cannon fire ring out as a terrible battle is fought.... Then silence.
Eventually one badly wounded Al-Qaeda fighter crawls back over the dune and with his dying words tells his commander...................
“Don’t send any more men......it’s a trap. There are two of them.”
h/t: http://www.theodoresworld.net/
posted by 10men at 3:42 PM
[links in article]
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=27333_Thai_Jihadis_Home_Movies_Found&only&headline
The Web of American Jihadi Bloggers
Tue, Oct 2, 2007 at 2:18:14 pm PST
Dr. Rusty is shining light on a web of American jihad supporters, including Sarfaraz Jamal of ClearGuidance infamy, now running the Islamic Network discussion forum: The Web of American Bloggers and The Terrorists They Facilitate.
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/189600.php
[many hidden urls]
October 02, 2007
The Web of American Bloggers and The Terrorists They Facilitate
UPDATE: It gets worse: FBI Most Wanted Terrorist Has a US Hosted Website!
Is there a conection between online supporters of jihad and actual acts of terrorism? Yes there is. Another in a long line of case studies showing these connections: Inshallahshaheed (aka, “Abu Jabbal”), and his connections to convicted jihadis.
Inshallahshaheed just doesn’t know when to shut up. Remember, this is an American Muslim blogging this. You might expect this kind of pro-al Qaeda rhetoric coming from Riyadh, Quetta, or maybe even Londinistan, but it’s shocking to hear it from an American.
[Above: Inshallahshaheed’s banner at his website shows al Qaeda chief of operations Abu Yahya al Libi]
Not content with posting a video allegedly showing the downing of an Apache helicopter by al Qaeda forces that call themselves “The Islamic State in Iraq”, inshallahshaheed (derived from Insha’ Allah shaheed = A martyr soon if God is willing) feels it necessary to editorialize about the event at his website The Ignored Puzzle Pieces of Knowledge:
AllahuAkbar! Our brothers from the Islaamic State of ‘Iraaq down an American helicopter with the permission of Allah Ta’aala. We have lost count as to how many helicopters they have now downed in total.
Then there is this commentary about an English language al Jazeera video of Americans fighting in Afghanistan:
The most captivating moment in this video is when during the interview, the Americans get ambushed by the Mujaahideen and one of the Americans are killed. Alhamdullilah, what a blessing from Allah ‘Azza wa Jall that we are able to see the hell that these people are going through. You can even see an American soldier hiding during the ambush like a baby!! AllahuAkbar! AllahuAkbar!
And in this post he calls the producers of the most recent bin Laden video “brothers”. The video was produced by as Sahab, al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakisan’s media front run by another American traitor Adam Gadahn:
Our brothers from As-Sahab Media have created high quality links for the documentary
Here is what he has to say about an al Qaeda in Iraq video showing ‘martyrs’ who died in action against US and Iraqi forces:
Verily the pillars of the Islaamic State strengthens when men give their lives for Allah’s Cause; so each one of them is a precious gem who are now flying in the bodies of green birds within Paradise, getting a preview of what their eternal life would be like, inshaa’Allaah. They are truly deserving of the crown of dignity and we don’t praise anyone in front of Allah Ta’aala.
Inshallahshaheed is a self-described follower of Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama’ah, which makes him a devotee of the now exiled British cleric, Omar Bakri Mohammed, and a fellow-traveler with The Islamic Thinkers Society of New York.
He used to blog here, until we pwned him. And then he moved to a “Muslim” blogging platform here, which promised to allow Muslims to say whatever they wanted—until it was pointed out to the domain owner what he was saying. It appears that most American Muslims don’t want to have anything to do with this devotee of al Qaeda.
So now he’s blogging on another Muslim platform, Muslim Pad. I suspect this one will be a little more tolerant of inshallahshaheed’s pro-al Qaeda, pro-killing American troops stance.
Why? Because Muslim Pad is an extension of The Islamic Network, once run by another American, Daniel Aljughaifi. Daniel Aljughaifi (aka Abu Mohammed) is the name Daniel Maldonado took when he converted to Islam. He’s now serving 10 years in Federal prison after pleading guilty to charges that he trained with al Qaeda operatives for jihad in Somalia.
But the web of terror support goes even deeper. While parts of The Islamic Network were run by Maldanodo it is owned by a Muslim from Ohio, Sarfaraz Jamal. Jamal also owns Clear Guidance, who Charles Johnson once said is:
self-described as a “resource guide for Muslim American teenagers,” where Muslim kids traded decapitation videos and jihad talk.
A forum message at a private password protected area of the site, apparently posted by Jamal himself read:
We need youth to fight in the way of ALLAH in Kashmir, India, Chechniyah, Afghanistan, Philistine, and wherever we are being oppressed. Leave your plans of al wahn and adopt a new plan which will help the ummah, do not be selfish, this life is cheap, whereas the life of islam, will grant you your desires in this life and the next life.
The website was also instrumental in helping to radicalize and help 17 Canadian Muslims prepare acts of terrorism and two Georgia men accused of trying to help al Qaeda plan terror attacks on U.S. soil.
Which brings us full circle, because those 17 Canadians and two Americans were also in contact with Younis Tsouli—the father of Internet jihad. The man who called himself Irhabi 007, or in English, Terrorist 007.
So, we think inshallahshaheed will get along nicely at his new digs. It seems that he and Sarfaraz Jamal share the same thoughts: Hatred of America, support of her enemies in a time of war, and encouraging and inciting others to take up arms against her.
Today they call it free speech.
I think we used to call that treason.
Thanks to Laura Mansfield, Allahakchew, Howie, and our anonymous friend inside Zionist conspiracy headquarters for help with this post.
PS & personal note to “Abu Jabbal” who actually reads The Jawa Report on a fairly regular basis: I hear it that your friend Danny is having a good time in prison. And contrary to the letters he’s been sending, he actually enjoys getting pounded in the ass.
By Dr. Rusty “John Doe” Shackleford at October 2, 2007 11:56 AM | Comments (7)
[photos on site]
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/189605.php
October 02, 2007
FBI Most Wanted Terrorist Has a US Hosted Website!
A man on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list maintains a website hosted by a U.S. company. While checking through the FBI’s Rewards for Justice website, I came across a face that looked very familiar.
ramadan_shallah_fbi.jpg
Look familiar? Here’s another face seen on every page of a website I routinely monitor.
ramadan_shallah_PIJ_website.jpg
Dr. Ramadan Shallah is a founding member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and is wanted by the FBI. In fact, there is a $5 million dollar reward for information leading to his arrest.
From the FBI:
Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah is wanted for conspiracy to conduct the affairs of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a specially designated terrorist organization, through a pattern of racketeering activities such as bombings, murder, extortions and money laundering.
Shallah was one of the original founding members of the PIJ and since 1995 has been the secretary-general and leader of the organization, which is headquartered in Damascus, Syria.
Shallah was listed as a ‘Specially Designated Terrorist’ under United States law on November 27, 1995 and was indicted in a 53-count indictment in the United States District Court, Middle District of Florida, in 2003.
And his official website is hosted right here in the good ol’ USA.
http://www.falestiny.net/ = 67.18.114.106
ThePlanet.com
Dallas, Texas
abuse@theplanet.com
Registration provided by: Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, CA
DNS provided by Mydns.net in St Cloud MN
admin@mydnsnet.com
It’s not like we’re going to catch Shallah with this post—he’s alive and well and living in Damascus—but is it too much to ask that U.S. companies stop doing business with wanted terrorists?
By Dr. Rusty “John Doe” Shackleford at October 2, 2007 04:31 PM | Comments (8) |
02 October 2007
Saudi Arabia’s media influence
Riyadh’s use of its financial power and predominance to widen Saudi Arabia’s circle of influence in the media is beginning to pay off. From Arab Media & Society.
By Paul Cochrane for Arab Media & Society (02/10/07)
When Saddam Hussein’s forces rolled across the border into Kuwait in 1991, Riyadh kept the Saudi population in the dark for three days before realizing that most Saudis had tuned into CNN to find out what was going on with their Gulf neighbor. (See Marwan M. Kraidy, “Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Changing Arab Information Order,” International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), 139-156, p. 141.) This rude awakening was the beginning of a fundamental turning point in kingdom’s media strategy which until the early 1990s, had been largely confined to newspaper ownership.
Over the past seventeen years the Saudi establishment has used its deep pockets to influence the region’s media and minds, morphing from an approach that paid off and intimidated media that ran negative reports on the kingdom to become one of the Middle East’s most influential media owners. (See Said K Aburish’s The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (London: Bloomsbury, 1994), p 216).
As a result of the 1991 Gulf War, individuals close to the royal family decided to internationalize the kingdom’s media presence, launching the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) in London, backed by the then Saudi king’s in-law, Walid Ibrahim.
“In the first Saudi era there was more of a tendency to buy individuals,” said As’ad AbuKhalil, a politics professor at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of The Battle for Saudi Arabia. “Before 1990 there were competing ownerships of Arab media – Libya, Iraq, UAE and Saudi Arabia. These were the major contenders. Ever since that time it is fair to say the media came entirely open for Saudi Arabia and the multiplicity [of media outlets] reflects the multiplicity of princes [that own media outlets].”
The Arab Radio and Television Network (ART) came hot on the heels of MBC, founded by Saudi mogul Saleh Abdullah Kamel in 1993, with a line up of entertainment, music and sport.
ART was followed in 1994 with the then Rome-based Orbit Communications Corporation (the Orbit pay-per view network is now based in Bahrain), a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabian Mawarid Group, which ran a BBC Arabic Television channel from 1994 until 1996 when it was abruptly pulled off air. (Showtime Arabia, the region’s other leading pay-TV network, established in 1996, is not Saudi-owned. Kuwaiti company KIPCO has a 79 percent stake and the CBS Corporation has the remaining 21 percent).
In the same year that Orbit pulled the plug on BBC TV Arabic (which is set to restart soon, this time funded by the British taxpayer), ART’s Kamel bought 49 percent of the Cayman Islands-registered satellite channel Fada’iyya Al Lubnaniyya (the Lebanese Satellite Channel, LBC International), the pan-Arab version of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) TV channel. (See Marwan M Kraidy, “Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Changing Arab Information Order,” International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), 139-156, p 143.)
In 2000, Kamel sold his shares to the world’s now thirteenth richest man, Saudi prince Al-Walid Bin Talal, for US$100 million. Bin Talal is the Rupert Murdoch of media ownership in the Middle East, with his Kingdom Holding companies owning the region’s largest music label (Rotana Records), six music TV channels (Rotana Clip, Rotana Music, Rotana Gulf, Rotana Cinema, Rotana Tarab, Rotana Zaman), and a stake in Lebanese newspapers An Nahar and Ad Diyar in addition to his stake in LBCI (Bin Talal, incidentally, is the third largest shareholder in Murdoch’s News Corp, with 5.46 percent of voting shares). (Bin Talal announced in August that Rotana is to be merged with LBCI, although the two institutions will remain financially independent.)
Prince Khalid bin Sultan is also a shareholder in LBC and owner of pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat. Due to his position as Assistant Minister of Defense for Military Affairs, bin Sultan’s role as a shareholder is significant as he can be considered a state actor, and consequently able to exert certain pressure over LBC to pander to the Saudi establishment.
The only other political outlet in which the Saudi government has a reportedly direct stake, other than newspapers and domestic media outlets which are subjected to draconian laws within Saudi Arabia, is MBC’s all-news satellite channel Al Arabiya. This network was established in 2003 to counter Qatar’s Al Jazeera, a channel Riyadh has disliked ever since it went on air in 1996, rankled by investigative reports on corruption in many Arab countries and the airing of Osama bin Laden video statements. Al Jazeera was seen as so controversial that at one point Saudi Arabia banned men from watching television at cafes to prevent public discussions of what was on.
Although Saudi influence over the region’s newspaper business (particularly pan-Arab publications) still remains high, the significance of muzzling print press is not as great as it used to be. Like everywhere else on earth, the Middle East is tuning into TV news rather than picking up a paper.
“Newspapers are only important in so far as what intellectuals, journalists and politicians are reading. If you go to Arab countries and ask about a [newspaper] columnist, they won’t know who they are, but will know TV anchors,” said AbuKhalil.
The big issue
Saudi Arabia’s takeover of the region’s media is a reflection of what is occurring globally where a handful of multinational companies increasingly dominate the media. This spills over from entertainment into news coverage.
To Saudi Arabia such control is paramount in an era when the media is increasingly pervasive, because Riyadh’s political and economic clout – and the survival of the Royal family – depends on the kingdom retaining its position as a leading player in the region’s power politics. To retain this balance of power – held in the region by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia against an ascendant Iran and non-governmental actors – informative and potentially damning news on the kingdom needs to be squashed.
Saudi Arabia’s approach to media under its control, and the harsh punishments on those that do not portray a rose-tinted view of the royal family and the kingdom, is mirrored in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, which have similarly draconian media laws to retain monarchical power bases. Qatar can be considered somewhat of an exception with Al Jazeera, but when it comes to the channel applying the same exposure to governmental malfeasance and social issues in Doha as it does elsewhere in the region, Al Jazeera comes up short.
Although much of Saudi media ownership revolves around entertainment, as the Managing Editor of Beirut-based Middle East Broadcasters Journal, Habib Battah, pointed out: “MBC, Orbit, Rotana – all these companies have a big Saudi stake and are not really about Saudi Arabia, but about appealing to a pan-Arab audience,” that is perhaps the point, with Saudi shareholders - most linked to the royal family - being able to dictate what is, and what can be, aired to a pan-Arab audience, even if it is only entertainment.
As Marwan Kraidy of the American University noted: “Entertainment television is an active contributor to shaping what Arab publics discuss and do in both the social and political realms.” (See Marwan M Kraidy, “Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Changing Arab Information Order,” International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), 139-156, p 139.)
The fact that most channels in the region are not running at a profit is also indicative of certain motivations behind acquiring media outlets. “Channels are set up for different reasons, but one thing they’re not set up for is to make money,” said Hugh Miles, author of Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World. “A channel is a very economic way to influence people. Bang for your buck it’s much cheaper than guns. It is about controlling the discourse, and for Saudis about being in charge.”
Saudi Arabia’s strict domestic media laws have kept a lid on any criticism of the Saudi ruling elite in the country, and the kingdom uses its networks of ownership and informal influence to the best of its ability anywhere else. According to Said K Aburish, author of The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud, many Arab and foreign journalists were on the payroll of Riyadh in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s to produce positive articles and commentaries, as well as counter coverage that goes against the agenda of Saudi Arabia.
As noted, that started to change in the 1990s – although the practice still allegedly goes on – with the Saudis’ acquiring whole networks. Such concentrated media ownership, in addition to Saudis’ deep pockets and widespread economic and political influence, affects Arab journalists and the outlets that do not toe Saudi Arabia’s line.
“It is now a taboo in Arab culture to criticize Saudi. Even [Lebanon’s] Hizbollah media is careful, and in Qatar media criticism has been going down, it has been very sensitive [...].Whenever the Emir of Qatar meets [Saudi Arabia’s] King Abdullah, he always gets complaints about Al Jazeera,” AbuKhalil told Arab Media & Society.
Saudi influence is particularly apparent in more media independent Lebanon, which acts as a recruiting pool for many of the region’s journalists, editors and staff, and as such, means journalists will not run stories that could jeopardize their future careers, particularly if they aspire to work for the higher paying Gulf and Saudi networks.
“As a journalist today you cannot criticize Saudi – where would you work?” said AbuKhalil.
Equally, as some 40-70 percent of the region’s advertising is spent in Saudi Arabia (estimates differ), networks, TV channels and publications are not going to risk jeopardizing their cash flow by upsetting their prime advertising market in the region’s largest economy. Al Jazeera discovered this to their cost.
Al Jazeera was slated to be privatized in 2001, but according to Miles the channel’s attempts to raise enough advertising revenues were scuppered by Saudi pressure on major companies to pull advertisements from Al Jazeera or face advertising problems within the kingdom. “The Saudis have cost the channel dozens of millions in profits,” he said.
Judging by the fact that the channel is still state-funded and the lack of advertising on Al Jazeera today – largely confined to state-run Qatari companies – Riyadh succeeded in its aims, with Al Arabiya shooting ahead in advertising revenues.
No news is good news
An inkling of how Saudi influence affects news coverage was given in an article by Ian Richardson, who was charged with setting up BBC Arabic TV’s news department during the two-years the channel ran on Orbit:
“During the short life of BBC Arabic Television, there were several angry ‘liaison meetings’ with Orbit and the guarantees of editorial independence proved to be a sour joke, only barely obscured by a thin smokescreen about the BBC’s alleged failure to observe “cultural sensitivities” – Saudi code for anything not to the Royal Family’s liking. When it became clear to Orbit and Mawarid that it had, in their terms, created a monster not prepared to toe the Saudi line, it was only a matter of time before there would be a final parting of the ways.” (See Ian Richardson, The Arabic TV “Monster”, first published in The Independent and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, April 1997). As noted earlier, that parting of ways resulted in the channel being completely canned.
Richardson’s article was written a decade ago, but his insight regarding “editorial independence” was readily evident in early June this year when the London-based newspaper The Guardian broke the story of British Aerospace (BAE) and the British Ministry of Defense paying out some US$2 billion to Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia as a sweetener to secure a US$40 billion arms deal for BAE Systems back in 1985. The story caused a scandal in Britain and garnered coverage in the international media, but received relatively minimal coverage in the Middle East. The story was not given any airtime by Al Arabiya, with coverage largely confined to non-Saudi influenced outlets Al Jazeera and the London-based Arabic language newspaper, al-Quds al-Arabi. (See Ian Black. “Latest allegations ignored by a submissive media,” The Guardian 8 June 2007.)
“It was a huge story and should have got a lot of coverage as it affects the whole region, politically and economically. Minimal coverage seems to be a real injustice to the audience,” said Battah.
A further example of Saudi Arabia setting the media agenda, according to Reuters’ Andrew Hammond, is that “Arab media have largely gone along with a Saudi media campaign against Iran over its growing influence in the Arab world.” (See Andrew Hammond. “Saudi media empire tries to counter opposition,” Reuters, 9 August 2007.)
AbuKhalil also sees Saudi media - Al Arabiya in particular - as instrumental in stirring up fitna¬ (discord) between the Sunnis and Shias, which has been exacerbated by the occupation of Iraq, sectarian divisions in Lebanon, and the need for Saudi Arabia and Western allies to counter Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East and what certain commentators and politicians have called “the Shia crescent.”
Ultimately, Saudi influence over the media is having a negative effect on journalistic ethics, investigative reporting, balanced coverage and providing substantial information to the Arab public about issues that are important to the region. Furthermore, with criticism and insightful stories about Saudi Arabia off limits to most Arab journalists, the problem is compounded by non-Arab journalists not able to take up the slack due to onerous visa regulations and limited access to sources, particularly for stories that relate directly to the state, which is notoriously secretive in handing out information.
As Aburish summarizes in his book The House of Saud: “The ability to influence the Western press comes on top of total control of Saudi internal media and the elimination of opposition within the pan-Arab media. The combined effect produces a false picture which everywhere overlooks, ignores or distorts the House of Saud’s misdeeds. In prospect is a world waking up to a country in flames and wondering why things have gone so far without anybody knowing about them.” (See Said K. Aburish’s The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (London: Bloomsbury, 1994), p. 240 )
Paul Cochrane is a contributing editor for Arab Media & Society and a freelance journalist based in Beirut. He has reported for The Independent on Sunday, The Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, The Straits Times and Jane’s. He holds a MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the American University of Beirut and a BA in International Politics and International History from Keele University, England.
Arab Media & Society logo Reprinted with permission from Arab Media & Society, which is part of The American University in Cairo’s Center for Electronic Journalism. Copyright (c) 2007 113 Kasr El Aini St., PO Box 2511, Cairo, 11511, Egypt.
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http://emptyquarter.wordpress.com/2007/09/30/irans-state-of-the-art-hormuz-monitoring-system/
Iran’s State-of-the-Art Hormuz Monitoring System
Stepping up rhetoric on control of the Hormuz again. You would think if they could devise such an “advanced” monitoring system they could also figure out how to make airplane parts as well…
The Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corps (IRGC) said Saturday that its troops have launched a new monitoring system which brings all movements in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz under Iran’s control.
The system called ‘Hod Hod’ (Hoopoe) has been designed by the IRGC experts and makes it possible for Iranian troops to monitor even the slightest movement on the surface or in the air.
According to IRGC, Hod Hod which is equipped with the most advanced cameras and electronic devices transmit recorded films and photographs to different military centers round the clock.
Hod Hod which is capable of taking high resolution and high quality pictures and images even at nights, will provide the opportunity to the IRGC personnel - who are currently using different radar and electronic systems - to gain a better online control over the entire region.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 30th, 2007
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Analysis and commentary on southern Arabia and beyond
« Officers’ Protest Goes Tribal?
Suspicious Nuclear Deal Picking up Steam in Yemen Press.
Bahran shaking hands with Jeffrey in Sana’a (source: AP)
Powered Corporation Logo
Yemeni Papers are publishing reports that the nuclear deal that Yemen signed with US-based Powered Corp last month is really shady. The report first came out in the Mareb Press which ran an article a few days ago summarizing what Yemeni-American Munir al Mawri uncovered. Now the the Yemen Observer is running a complete translation of al Mawri’s allegations.
Armies of Liberation has a lot on this which you should check out. You can also see what al Ghani says about his fraud directly on the powered website. There SEC filing can be found here, and includes the same response as well as much of what al Mawri has said.
The recent announcement by the Minister of Electricity and Energy that the Yemeni Government had signed a $15 billion contract with the U.S.-based Powered Corporation to build five nuclear power plants in Yemen, has been met with suspicions of fraud and dishonesty.
I believe it is my duty as a Yemeni-American to make this information public and to reveal the mystery and controversy surrounding this deal. This comes out of my concern for Yemen and because I am convinced that reputable American companies do not get involved in activities that harm poor nations.
The information that I give here is verifiable and can be supported by documents in my possession. I am obliged to mention the names of those involved in the deal as they have direct relevance to this article.
I first learned about the Powered Corporation from its website and found that the main owner of the company and its executive director is a Yemeni immigrant named Jalal al-Ghani who works alongside his American partner named James Jeffrey. The legal cases of the company are taken care of by a Saudi lawyer named Khalid al-Sunaid.
The headquarter of the company is in Houston, Texas and it has two main branches; one in Dubai and one in Yemen in the Besbas Building in front of the Sana’a Trade Center.
After investigating the company I found that the main owner had changed his name when he first arrived in the US, from Jalal Abdul-Ghani to his current name, Jalal al-Ghani. Sources from within the Yemeni community in Houston say that al-Ghani had lived in Oklahoma before moving to Houston.
Looking at the résumé of the Electricity Minister Mustfa Yahya Bahran, which was published in some Yemeni newspapers during the last Cabinet reshuffle, I noticed a coincidence: Bahran had spent time in Oklahoma, studying Nuclear Physics in a university during the same time when al-Ghani was also living there. This suggests that a possible connection between al-Ghani and Bahran.
The papers and certificates proving that Bahran obtained his university degree in Oklahoma could not be accessed, as it is not allowed to check university certificates. Fortunately, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act allows anyone to access information about al-Ghani’s company; everything including his résumé for those who may want to buy assets in the company and to check the record of the owner and the register of the company.
According to the records, al-Ghani previously held a senior position with a public corporation called Adair for Gas and Fuel. Due to it being a public corporation and again thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, it was possible for me to locate dozens of documents about al-Ghani.
The documents indicate that al-Ghani was fired from the Adair Company because he had lied about his qualifications and was subsequently charged with fraud against shareholders of the company.
A Kuwaiti investor named Abdullah al-Mulla who has had business dealings with al- Ghani said that al-Ghani had stolen money from his company and announced bankruptcy in order to avoid paying back what he owed people. Some legal documents stated that he had also stolen $165,000 for a trip to Yemen for personal reasons. “There are many secrets and mysteries surrounding this man [al-Ghani], and there have been many lies told about his certificates, experience and his membership of some organizations and companies,” said al-Mulla.
I also have in my possession documents from an independent investigative committee that found that al-Ghani had misled shareholders of Adair and had misled the board about his experience and about certificates from universities. On the Powered Corporation website, al-Ghani denies all accusations against him and says that the disputes with his opponents from Adair have been settled and that in return they will drop the lawsuits filed against him.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has warned people against buying assets from the Powered Corporation because of its unbalanced budget and the fact that the company has never actually carried out a project in its field and was only registered two months ago. The Powered Corporations’s risk analysis mandatory advisory states that when investors buy their stock shares at $10, they instantly lose $9.95 of that money.
Minister of Electricity and Energy, Mustfa Yahya Bahran has assured Yemenis that al-Ghani’s company will provide all the necessities and requirements of the projects. In return, the company will sell the power units later after the reactor is built. The question is how can a small company provide $15 billion in services and equipment? The only possibilities are that it will contract the work to other companies or get the expenses of the project study from the Yemeni Government-expenses that should not be given to a company that has so many suspicious black marks in its reputation.
Bahran has yet to announce the details of the agreement to the public and let the people know about it. The Parliament also has the right to discuss all the details of the agreement before approving it. The president of Yemen, who undoubtedly has not looked at the negative information about the Powered Corporation and its financial position, should not be entrapped and fall victim for trying to solve the power problems that Yemen suffers from. There are other safer ways than giving the deal to a company that is owned by people who have been dishonest in their dealings with others.
It is worth noting here that the owner of the Powered Corporation, Jalal al-Ghani or Jalal Abdul-Ghani as he was previously known, has no connection or any kinship with Abdul-Aziz Abdul-Ghani, the Chairman of the Shoura Council.
The author tried phoning the Powered Corporation headquarters in Houston for more information. American partner James Jeffrey answered the call, but refused to give any comments. The author has never spoken to, met or even heard of al-Ghani before the beginning of the deal with the Yemeni Government.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details_print.cfm?id=18188
02 October 2007
Why the Kremlin likes the CIA
Through the use of state-controlled media, Moscow is engaging in a campaign to manipulate the political process. From RFE/RL.
By Robert Coalson for RFE/RL (02/10/07)
Even by the standards of late Putin-era Russian television, the recent “special report” by Rossiya television journalist Arkady Mamontov entitled “Barkhat.ru” (Velvet.ru in English) raised eyebrows. The half-hour diatribe charged bluntly that the CIA, through Western NGOs, was responsible for “velvet revolutions” in Serbia and Montenegro, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan - and that now it has set its sights on Russia.
Mamontov has had a colorful career reporting from conflict zones since the 1990s and was the only Russian reporter allowed on the scene of the efforts to save the doomed crew of the “Kursk” nuclear submarine in August 2000. He was also the journalist behind the notorious “spy-rock” report alleging that British agents had attempted to gather intelligence by placing a large stone rigged with recording equipment on a Russian street. His latest report charges that the US, having launched a war in Iraq that was ostensibly about democratizing the Middle East but was actually about oil, is engaged in an intricate campaign to snatch Russia’s natural resources under a covert effort masked by democratic slogans and rhetoric.
Moreover, Mamontov casts a wide net in his claims concerning who is abetting the CIA’s plot. Youth groups, opposition politicians, Russian and international NGOs, “pro-Western” mass media, and others are all depicted in slick graphics as embodying a vertical structure stretching from Langley to the US Embassy in Moscow to the streets of Nizhny Novgorod and other Russian cities. An unsuspecting Russia is depicted with bucolic images of Siberia, scenic flyovers of Orthodox monasteries, and glittering cascades of diamonds from the mines of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic.
Creating a climate for manipulation
But the fact that state-controlled television devoted a plum piece of Sunday evening prime time to this production should not be taken to mean that the Kremlin feels shaken or has lost confidence in its control of the political process. Instead, the authorities are using their iron control over the mass media to create a climate of public opinion and public expectation that will best facilitate their manipulation of the political process over the next six to eight months as Russia elects a new Duma and as the March 2008 presidential succession problem is resolved one way or another.
On a practical level, scare-mongering along the lines of Mamontov’s piece creates a climate of receptivity for actions that will almost certainly become necessary on both the local and national levels - actions such as eliminating candidates and parties from elections, arresting or opening investigations against opposition figures, pressuring or closing down media outlets, cracking down on demonstrations, and other typical machinations of “managed democracy.” The scattershot nature of Mamontov’s accusations shows that fostering such a climate is a primary goal of the piece.
In fact, Mamontov’s piece launches a preemptive justification for police violence against demonstrators by claiming that Western hirelings view being beaten as a badge of courage and therefore provoke police officers, who, after all, are only human and might sometimes exceed their orders.
In addition, media reports such as Mamontov’s will likely have a dampening effect on Western criticism of Russian political and civil-society developments. Western governments and bodies like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will likely tone down their already mild comments in the face of stepped-up accusations of interference in Russian domestic politics. And, if they don’t, Russian state media will have a ready-made friendly context in which to place their reports of such criticism.
Strategy of ‘managed instability’
On a broader level, however, pieces like “Barkhat.ru” play to a widespread feeling among many Russians that, indeed, the country is surrounded, and even infiltrated, by enemies that seek to destroy it as a country. Mamontov interviews a historian who says the West seeks to prevent Russia from “getting up off its knees” and hints that the US has sought the dismemberment of Russia for decades.
Similar fears played well during President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in late 1999, when the authorities launched the second war in Chechnya and a series of still-unexplained apartment-building bombings killed scores in Moscow and several provincial cities. Most concerns (both in Russia and abroad) about the prospect of a KGB product taking over the Kremlin were swept aside by the clamor for a strong hand to thwart an existential threat to the country.
In January, political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky wrote that the siloviki - the products of the state security organs who have come to preeminence under Putin - might resort to a policy of “managed instability” in a bid to make a third term for Putin more palatable and, even, inevitable.
In short, although the prospect of a velvet revolution in Russia is remote, the Kremlin feels the need to invent the threat of one. Doing so greatly increases its freedom of action and bolsters it mightily against critics at home and abroad.
Copyright (c) 2007. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036. Funded by the US Congress.
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02 October 2007
Iran: Sepah prepares for a ‘hot war’
In the second of a two-part series on the chances of US-Iran military conflict, ISN Security Watch looks at the preparations under way by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
By Kamal Nazer Yasin in Tehran for ISN Security Watch (02/10/07)
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or Sepah is a stepchild of the revolution. Created in 1979 to defend the nascent revolutionary government from its myriad enemies, it has been a dedicated and loyal defender of the Islamic order. Whether it was in street fighting in the revolutionary days, the bloody trenches of the Iran-Iraq War or in repulsing reformist encroachments, it was always Sepah at the frontlines of the struggle.
It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the Islamic Republic has been and remains closely woven to that of Sepah.
Today, in yet another historic juncture, the Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran is again being called upon to safeguard the revolution from threats no less dangerous and deadly to its existence: Iran’s arch-enemies, the US and Israel, are intent on destroying its hard-won nuclear infrastructures and, quite possibly, decapitating its political and military leadership.
Judging from the announcements and the momentous transformations underway inside Sepah, it is clear that the country’s leaders believe the group can rise to the occasion once again.
On 1 September, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei announced that Sepah Commander Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi would leave his post after 10 years in office. He was to be replaced with Brigader (now Major) General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the former head of Sepah’s Center for Strategic Policymaking. This was followed by two other, equally significant, appointments. Brigader General Mohammad Hejazi, the famously doctrinaire head of the Basij militia, was to be the new chief of Sepah’s Joint Forces Command. General Aliakbar Ahmadian was to take Jafari’s old job.
These are neither cosmetic nor routine changes. Although the changes are presently confined to Sepah’s command structure, several factors point to major transformations are in the works at the level of both strategic planning and organizational structure.
First, it is highly unusual that the Supreme Leader personally changes a military officer lower in rank than the top commanding officer. He can and, when necessary, does change the chief commander since no one else is above that position. But lower ranking commanders are replaced by the top commander himself and only later approved by the Supreme Leader.
Second, the job of the chief of Sepah’s Joint Forces, which is effectively the second most important post in Revolutionary Guards, is now part of the head of the Basij militia’s duties. Along with the militia, which is known for its revolutionary zeal, the joint forces consist of the navy, air force and Quds Army, but not the regular army.
This shift in job duties is both symbolic and significant. As Sepah’s new chief, Jafari, said in a major speech to the group’s commanders: “Sepah’s mission is now the same as the Basij’s mission.”
Thirdly, Jafari who is known to be a brilliant military strategist is regarded in Sepah as innovative and open to new ideas and military doctrines.
Finally, Jafari is younger and, although an Islamicist to the core, comes from a different milieu than his predecessor. Safavi, before the revolution, was a member of a small Islamic armed cell that fought the Pahlavi regime. His world outlook, political alliance-making and sensibilities were different than Jafari’s.
Welcome to a new Sepah
These transformations did not materialize in a vacuum. In general, changes in the Islamic Republic are never by volition; they have come about thanks to important shifts at both the domestic and international level.
Domestically, Sepah has seen - quite naturally - in the years following the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq war, a diminution of its fighting spirit and “steadfastness.” As the revolutionary wave has subsisted and everyone has been encouraged to enjoy life and prosper financially, Iranian society has become more lax and far less revolutionary. This societal change has impacted Sepah in ways more than one. The situation is so serious that the corps rarely recruits from Tehran, which is seen by traditionalists as hedonistic and lax.
In addition, Sepah’s move to the barracks following the revolution has severed ties with the populace. Reports of corruption, true or false, and the corps’ involvement in lucrative commercial and financial activities has also marred Sepah’s once-impeccably stellar image. To these must be added the possibility of social unrest or a rise in ethnic tensions. Jafari alluded to all these points in his 29 September speech.
Internationally, the US is considering naming Sepah or its Quds Army offshoot as “a terrorist organization.” Such a designation would be a serious blow to the corps’ reputation and self-esteem.
US President George W Bush is also seriously contemplating a surgical attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are formally under the protection of Sepah’s air force. Seymour Hersch in the 8 October issue of the US magazine The New Yorker gives a detailed description of White House plans for such an attentat. Hersch also says that Sepah’s command and communication centers may be targeted by US bombs and missiles as part of a counterterrorism campaign. The danger of a ground invasion, while rather improbable, cannot be discounted.
Finally, a US-instigated destabilization campaign may not be far from the horizon. To deflect criticism of Sepah’s foreign involvements, Jafari said in his press conference that Sepah’s chief responsibility was suppressing internal threats. This was a rather curious statement. Sepah’s involvement overseas - through the Quds Army - is extensive and is in fact a source of great pride for it. In Iraq, the Quds Army has been stunningly successful in achieving Iran’s strategy of establishing a forward political and military base and in tying the US down. In Lebanon, Sepah’s ties with Hizbollah were decisive in blunting 33 days of merciless Israeli bombing.
The changes for Sepah would begin at the national level, a process that may take a while. Only then would the group undertake a makeover of its international image. During this transitional period, the regular army would be given the official role of defending Iran’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty. A foreshadowing of this came this week when - for the first time since after the war - during the annual the Week of Sacred Defense, it was the army which was given wide prominence in official ceremonies and TV programs.
At this moment, Sepah is expected to attempt to begin a process of rejuvenation within its ranks. Under General Hejazi -former Basij chief - ideology, piety and the spirit of martyrdom will be emphasized far more strongly than before. Sepah would also take a more active part in civilian construction projects like building roads and dams. It has already undertaken many such projects - moves that were not publicized extensively.
Asymmetric warfare
Meanwhile, Sepah started preparing for a military showdown with the US even before Jafari’s recent appointment, and continues to do so. According to a 30 September report in the Iranian daily Kayhan, Safavi, Jafari’s predecessor, called the new war-fighting strategy a “mosaic” type of strategy.” On elaborating, he explained that under conditions of asymmetric military power, the best strategy to fight a technologically superior enemy is to form thousands of small irregular mobile units that can melt back into the population at a moment’s notice.
This strategy that is perfected in Lebanon relies heavily on the “spirit of martyrdom,” which, according to Safavi, is Iran’s most potent weapon against an invading army.
In the last three years, for instance, several thousand volunteers have signed up for suicide missions. In addition, the Basij militia itself is a unique fighting force in the world. Theoretically, Basij, which is a volunteer force, is present in every workforce, classroom and organization in the country. All members of Sepah are automatically Basij members.
Officially, there are 12 million Basijis in Iran. The actual number is between two million and 2.5 million. About half have military training with perhaps 15 percent being full-time Sepah members.
Iran’s second-strike capability
Iran’s deterrence power,which has so far given Bush, pause,comes from several sources:
* Missiles: Iran is in possession of between several hundred and 1,000 short- and medium-range missiles. These include Sahab-1 and Sahab-2, which are upgrades of Scud-B and Scud-C’s. Their range is from 300 kilometers to 600 kilometers. These can easily target US bases in Iraq, Qatar and other places. The Sahab-3 missile is a new version of the Korean Nodong. With a range of up to 1,500 kilometers, it is more accurate and can reach Israel. The Sahab-3 weighs more than one tonne and Iran claims it is in possession of 600 of them. The actual number is probably around 50. In addition, Hizbollah is in possession of an unknown number of short-range missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv.
* The Iraqi theater: Iran has important military and political assets in Iraq. The Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr is among these. Al-Sadr’s forces are the most popular among ordinary Shi’as in southern Iraq. So far, Iran has not given the cleric permission to use shoulder-held missiles or anti-tank missiles. An attack on Iran would definitely change that. In addition, according to Vincent Cannistraro, a retired US Central Intelligence Agency officer, most of US supplies - up to 90 percent - in Iraq come from Kuwait through southern Iraq. So far, neither Iran nor al-Sadr have tried to disrupt that line.
* Iran could wreak havoc on shipping routes in the Persian Gulf by using mines or attacking ships and tankers. It could also target selected oil installations. Under these circumstances, the price of oil could easily increase to the US$150- US$200 per barrel range. No one can predict with certainty if the sudden oil spike would cause a world recession.
The day after the attack
A successful aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear installations could set back the country’s nuclear program by several years. Ironically, such an attack could bring tangible benefits to Sepah and its clerical backers.
First, Iran’s popularity among Musilms, even Sunnis, would rise dramatically. After all, there is so far no evidence of nefarious activities behind the nuclear program. Iran and Hizbollah are certain to escalate the fight by getting Israel involved in the conflict - even if Israel does not take part in the initial bombings. Thus, Iran would be David standing up to a US-Israeli Goliath.
Both Khamenei and Iran’s Grand Ayatollahs would issue religious fatwas against Israel and the US. Iran would officially leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and announce that it would officially pursue nuclear arms to defend itself against future aggression.
The re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be assured and the neo-Rightist forces would consolidate their power for many years to come. Chances of a reformist comeback would be, perhaps permanently, annulled.
This would be accompanied with a general clampdown on the press, the dissidents - clerical or otherwise - and all civil society groups. A nationalist wave would sweep the country, and as far as Sepah is concerned, once it has launched its missiles and inflicted casualties on the “infidels,” it could infuse its depleted ranks with new and eager blood.
Kamal Nazer Yasin is the pseudonym of an Iranian journalist reporting for ISN Security Watch from Tehran.
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, not the International Relations and Security Network (ISN).
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28 September 2007
Intel Brief: Bulgaria-Macedonia intel scandal
Accusations against Bulgaria are highly likely to reveal more about current internal Macedonian political climate than interstate relations.
Intel Brief by Diane Chido for ISN Security Watch (28/09/07)
The Macedonian intelligence agency denies claims made by the country’s largest daily newspaper, Dnevnik, that one of its counter-intelligence analysts has stolen the agency’s database on undercover operatives, fled the country and sold the information to Bulgarian secret services.
Despite refuting the accuracy of the story, published on 31 August, the Macedonian government has launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the publication of the article. And regardless of the investigation’s findings, the case is likely to underscore the instability and corruption in Skopje.
The Dnevnik report claims that the alleged theft of counter-intelligence information has compromised the entire Macedonian intelligence network and is likely to take two decades to rebuild. The story quotes unnamed sources within the Macedonian Interior Ministry, underscores longstanding tensions between Bulgaria and Macedonia and highlights potential instability within the Macedonian government.
The daily also speculated that the alleged data thief is a relative of former Macedonian interior minister Dosta Dimovska, who is now the head of the Macedonian cultural center in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.
Dimovska resigned from her position as interior minister in 2001 in protest against an “unconstitutional” phone-tapping scandal allegedly initiated by the current president, Branko Crvenkovski, when he was prime minister.
Dimovska has claimed publicly to have no relatives in the intelligence services.
In response to the Dnevnik report, Macedonian Radio noted that Macedonian officials had emphasized the likely “potential negative implications for shaping the public view on the Macedonian security system,” and stressed that publishing unverified information “devalues the security structures’ work.”
Adding to the difficulties within the intelligence agency is the 29 August resignation of its director, Kire Naumov. Appointed by and reporting directly to the president, Naumov has only served in this post since June 2006.
Skopje’s daily Vecer reports that Naumov, a 35-year-old economics professor, was selected in order to “stop the chaos” undermining the effectiveness of the agency amid a climate of increasing tensions among the primary Albanian political factions within the government.
One manifestation of these tensions involves reports that the Albanian vice-director of the intelligence agency, Muhamed Ismaili, was illegally arming favored Albanian separatists through his associations with militant leaders. The leader of a rival Albanian party, Rafiz Aliti, threatened violence against the Ismaili faction - a move that culminated in several days of attacks against political figures and the death of Aliti’s son.
On 5 September, Vreme reported that Crvenkovski would likely replace Naumov with Tose Kosinovski, an officer from the military intelligence services. This announcement has caused some concern as the military has its own intelligence service. However, Crvenkovski has said Kosinovski was the right choice as he had not been a party member and as such would not give the impression that the new agency director was anyone’s “tool.”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reports that inter-Albanian tensions are likely to continue to affect the structure and sustainability of Macedonia’s security services.
President Crvenkovski has recently come under fire from the opposition in parliament for failing to shore up security in the country. This has been fueled by reports that Xhezair Shaqiri - a former lawmaker who headed an ethnic-Albanian guerilla group that led the bloody 2001 uprising - informed local media on 31 August that he and his supporters had driven back police after they tried to enter the border village of Tanusevci.
On 23 August, Shaqiri said that Tanusevci was preparing a referendum on seceding from Macedonia and uniting with neighboring Kosovo, arguing, according to a report in the daily Fakti, that “the government is showing absolutely no interest in this part of the country.”
Crvenkovski became president in 2002 and resigned his post as prime minister. From early 2004, however, his administration has been under a cloud of suspicion that he was involved in the death of his predecessor, Boris Trajkovski, who died in a plane crash on the way to an economic conference in Croatia. Rescuers did not reach the plane for 24 hours, but Crvenkovski’s public declaration of Trajkovski’s death within hours of the crash led to grave speculations. Trajkovski was known as a moderate reformer and a peace broker.
Vreme, citing the Pristina-based Lajm newspaper, reported that Macedonian authorities offered money for land to residents of the Kosovo village of Debalde, approximately one hundred yards from Tanusevci.
According to Balkan Update, the contested land covers 150 square miles and is the primary reason that the border between Macedonia and Kosovo there has not yet been demarcated.
On 30 August, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Agim Ceku visited Debalde, telling residents that “no one could deprive them of their property.” The statement is vaguely reminiscent of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic’s ominous 1989 war cries of “No one will be allowed to beat you” and “No one will ever humiliate the Serbian people again.”
While serving as prime minister in July 1996, Crvenkovski ordered the removal of Albanian flags in front of government buildings, which led to protests that left one person dead.
After the Ohrid peace accords that ended the 2001 conflict, Crvenkovski legalized use of the Albanian flag in 2005. In February this year, Crvenkovski became an early supporter of the UN-led Ahtisaari Proposal, an evolutionary path toward independence for Serbia’s Kosovo province, which is mainly populated by ethnic Albanians. This is likely due to the widespread belief that violence will follow any attempts at a resolution that does not entirely address all the demands of independence-minded Kosovo Albanians.
Bulgaria has significant geographic, historical and cultural interests in Macedonia. The decline of Turkish rule in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries led Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece to compete for influence in the region, giving rise to a Macedonian nationalist movement.
Former Yugoslav leader Josip Tito encouraged nationalism in Macedonia as a counterweight to Bulgarian and Greek ambitions in the region during his reign (while at the same time suppressing nationalist movements in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, including Croatia).
When Macedonia became independent from Yugoslavia in 1991, Bulgaria was the first country to recognize the Macedonian state, but not the Macedonian nation. Relations subsequently deteriorated further as many bilateral agreements negotiated between the two governments could not be signed, with the Bulgarians refusing to accept Macedonian-language documents, which they consider to be only a dialect of Bulgarian.
mercyhurst_banner Mercyhurst-ISN intelligence briefs offer foresight into issues that are likely to dominate news headlines and policy agendas. The briefs are a joint initiative of the ISN and Mercyhurst Institute for Intelligence Studies and are composed and referenced using open sources.
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http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL0237946420071002?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
AU outnumbered and outgunned in Darfur
Tue Oct 2, 2007 8:47pm BST
By Opheera McDoom
EL-FASHER, Sudan (Reuters) - African Union peacekeepers are outgunned and outnumbered by rebels and militias in Darfur, the AU force commander Martin Luther Agwai said on Tuesday.
He said this was one reason an AU base in Haskanita, southeast Darfur, was overwhelmed so quickly during the worst attack on the peacekeepers by suspected rebels on Saturday, killing and injuring at least 20 with three soldiers still missing.
“We are outgunned, we are outnumbered and we can be overrun very quickly,” he told a visiting delegation of elder statesmen and women in Darfur’s main town of el-Fasher.
He said attackers burnt the mosque, where many peacekeepers were praying during the Muslim fasting period and caught off guard during the attack at dusk prayers.
The injured waited some 18 hours until the AU could send in medical help, he said.
Nigerian Agwai, who will command a 26,000-strong joint U.N.-AU mission which is due to replace the struggling AU force by January 1, painted a grim picture for the deployment, which has been delayed by a lack of pledges of well-equipped troops.
He said he did not expect extra forces to deploy by then.
“From all indications ... we are not going to have any appreciable change from where we are today until Dec 31.”
continued..............
Singapore bank laws threaten EU pact
By John Burton in Singapore
Published: October 2 2007 19:20 | Last updated: October 2 2007 19:20
Singapore’s refusal to ease its bank secrecy laws could endanger a proposed pact with the European Union, EU parliamentarians said on Tuesday.
The warning came as Singapore faces increased scrutiny over its possible role as a financial haven for Burma’s military rulers who are involved in a crackdown on monks and other pro-democracy demonstrators.
“Bank secrecy is the sticking point in concluding the partnership and co-operation agreement with Singapore,” said Glyn Ford, a British member of the European parliament.
European parliamentarians who are visiting Singapore said their views were shared by the European Commission, which has been negotiating an agreement with the city-state since 2005.
Singapore’s bank secrecy laws are among the world’s toughest and are part of the city-state’s efforts to become a leading private banking and wealth management centre.
The Commission fears that Singapore will become a shelter for money fleeing the EU following the adoption of its savings directive, which requires countries to subject offshore savings held by EU citizens to withholding taxes.
The EU has asked Singapore to introduce financial transparency measures that would help identify suspected tax evaders but Singapore has resisted, fearing that could undermine its private banking business. The proposed EU-Singapore agreement covering trade and political issues is one of three that the Union is negotiating in south-east Asia; the others are with Thailand and Indonesia. The pacts are seen as building blocks towards a broader EU deal with the region.
The financial transparency issue is becoming linked with the Union’s tough stance on Burma’s crackdown against the pro-democracy movement. The country’s military rulers are suspected of hiding large sums in Singapore. Corien Wortmann-Kool, leader of the delegation from the EU parliament’s international trade committee, said Singapore could put more pressure on Burma’s leaders. Singapore chairs the Association of South East Asian Nations, which includes Burma. It is also one of Burma’s largest trading partners.
Ms Wortmann-Kool said: “[Singapore] is an economic centre, this is a financial centre. I think the government can think of measures.”
The US last week announced sanctions designed to increase pressure on the Burmese junta. Members of the EU delegation said Singapore should seize any Burmese generals’ assets as part of “smart sanctions”.
But George Yeo, Singapore’s foreign minister, dismissed the idea of regional sanctions. “What we have is moral influence as members of the Asean family. We can’t do what the big powers can do in terms of trade embargo or freezing of bank accounts,” he told the pro-government Singapore Straits Times this week.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ed28a024-7112-11dc-98fc-0000779fd2ac.html
Turkey blasts fuel fury over terror attacks
By Vincent Boland in Ankara
Published: October 3 2007 03:11 | Last updated: October 3 2007 03:11
One person was killed and 10 were injured in a series of bomb explosions in the Turkish city of Izmir on Tuesday amid mounting public, political and military anger about an upsurge in terrorist attacks in the country.
Two bombs exploded near a shopping centre in the Aegean port city, four days after a gun attack on a bus in south-east Turkey killed 13 people – all from the same extended family – in one of the worst such incidents for many months.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Izmir attacks. But the weekend atrocity was blamed on the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group deemed a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the European Union and the US.
It is likely Tuesday’s explosions were the work of the same group.
Turkey has been battling a domestic separatist threat from the PKK for at least two decades, fighting a 15-year war in the 1980s and 1990s that killed 30,000 people. More recently, Ankara claims that thousands of PKK militants are hiding out in northern Iraq and using it as a base from which to launch attacks inside Turkey.
On Monday, in what could be a sign of growing military frustration with the regularity of separatist attacks inside Turkey and the inability of the state to prevent them, General Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey’s top general, claimed the armed forces were the victims of “systematic and prejudiced attacks both inside and outside Turkey”.
He did not single out any enemy but diplomats and commentators said he was referring, at least in part, to the PKK. He may also have been alluding to the government’s refusal so far to authorise a large-scale Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq in pursuit of the PKK.
The Turkish and Iraqi governments signed an agreement last Friday aimed at cracking down on PKK activity around their border, where Turkey has stationed tens of thousands of troops. But Iraq rejects Ankara’s claim that Turkey has the right to engage in “hot pursuit” actions against PKK rebels there.
Any large-scale Turkish encroachment into northern Iraq is also strongly opposed by the US.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9ea92f52-713c-11dc-98fc-0000779fd2ac.html
Dissenters arrested and beaten in China
By Clifford Coonan in Beijing
Published: 03 October 2007
Human rights activists, free speech advocates, campaigning lawyers and political writers have been arrested and tortured as Chinese police crack down on dissent ahead of this month’s Communist Party congress, campaigners said yesterday.
“All of these things are happening because of National Day and the forthcoming congress,” said Hu Jia, a human rights and Aids activist who has been under house arrest since July last year.
Li Heping, a prominent lawyer, was reportedly abducted at the weekend by plain-clothed security officers who put a hood over his head and drove him in an unmarked car to a basement. He he was stripped and beaten for hours as his captors taunted him and told him to leave Beijing.
Mr Li was released later but, when he got home, he found his laptop had been reprogrammed and his identification card and other belongings were missing, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group claimed.
Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer, was taken from his home on 22 September, by state security agents, after writing to the US Congress to voice concern about rights abuses ahead of the Olympics. He has not been seen since. The writer Lu Gengsong was charged after a month in jail with inciting subversion, and another Beijing activist was threatened with being sectioned.
Western observers hope to use the Olympics to focus attention on rights abuses in China.
The Beijing government says human rights are a domestic matter – but claims they have improved dramatically.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3021340.ece
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/school-bus-terrorism-a-practical-analysis/
School Bus Terrorism - A Practical Analysis
In this paper I will discuss one specific aspect of terrorism: attacks including school buses as targets or weapons. I will assume a basic knowledge of terrorism and terrorist groups. Thus I will not discuss in detail the motivations or specific tactical movements of terrorists. I will be dealing in strategies and methods that apply to anti-terrorism in a particular area.
The premise of this paper is the very real threat of another terrorist attack on American soil carried out by a foreign terrorist group (or one with foreign roots). This is not to deny or ignore the existence of domestic terrorist organizations or the horror of their actions this study will in fact have implications for their attacks as well. Not only are foreign Islamist terrorists groups our current “main enemy”, they have also shown that they know no boundaries in their attacks. In an Institute for Counter-Terrorism paper, Monty Sagi writes:
“The Beslan atrocity showed that there are no “red lines” for Islamic terror; it is limited only by what it is capable of accomplishing, not by normal civilized constraints or human emotions. If the means are available, no magnitude of destruction and death is “too much” to joyfully carry out.”
And as Dr. Robert Friedmann, Director of the Georgia-Israel Law Enforcement Exchange program (GILEE) has stated, “To terrorists, schools are a very attractive target.”
My decision to focus on school buses is for two reasons: transportation is a preferred target of terrorists worldwide, and an attack on a school-related target would strike into the heart of America with unprecedented force. Recent congressional testimony has stated that 42% of international terrorist incidents have focused on transportation systems as targets, and the FBI has stated that 40% of international mass transit attacks from 1920 to 2000 used buses as targets. More specifically, a compilation of terrorist incidents with schools as targets shows that about 37% of school terrorist attacks have focused on buses as targets. While neither of these numbers makes up a solid majority of incidents, this is a large enough percentage for a single type of target to warrant serious concern.
Buses are preferred targets for a few reasons. There is a high concentration of people in a small place, and high numbers of pedestrians or people on nearby buses may also be caught in the blast (as seen in the 7/7 bombings in London, where one device was set off as two trains passed each other). In addition, during the summer and winter windows are kept closed on buses to maximize air conditioning or heat, and this also maximizes the blast effect. [5] <!–[endif]–> An article from the RAND Corporation graphically describes the effect:
As a hail of shrapnel pierces flesh and breaks bones, the shock wave tears lungs and crushes other internal organs. When the bus’s fuel tank explodes, a fireball causes burns, and smoke inhalation causes respiratory damage.
All this is a significant return on a relatively modest investment. Two or three kilograms of explosive on a bus can kill as many people as twenty to thirty kilograms left on a street or in a mall or a restaurant.”
Lastly, it is very difficult, because of practicality and cost, to screen all passengers, as compared to screening visitors to a building or event. Buses are far less secure because of their mobility and predictability – not only are buses exposed along miles and miles of routes with very little possibility of complete security, but it is also possible for terrorists to know their route in detail, since bus drivers are prided in consistency. In Israel the alertness of the public and improved screening techniques have led to a shift in tactics, but America is still on her learning curve and has yet to adopt the same level of preparedness for any type of terrorism as Israel. In addition, it is important to remember that many tactics that are used successfully in Israel may be considered too extreme for use on American soil (unless we begin to have large numbers of terrorist attacks).
While the tactical reasons for bus attacks are strong, the strategic rewards are possibly even stronger. Similar to the image of the two towers of the World Trade Center, a school bus would represent an unforgettable target to the parents of the 24 million school children who ride to school each day. Just like the image of the two towers brings back the memory of 9/11, after a school bus attack every big yellow bus in America would remind us of the horror of the incident. America is perhaps more vulnerable to this not only because of our “it can’t happen here” attitude, but because of the use of standard yellow school bus designs across the country, which would lend even more to the power of imagery.
Outlining the Paradigm Shift
For America, 9/11 signaled a shift to what is often referred to as “the new terrorism” – something that had long occurred in other parts of the world but had not yet been driven home in America. The hijackings that had previously been characterized by negotiations and tactical endings have been seemingly replaced by a combination of hostage taking and suicide bombing. Examples can be seen in the flights taken hostage and used as huge suicide bombs on September 11th, 2001, as well as in the Beslan school ‘hostage crisis’ of September 1-3, 2005.
Likewise, the Chechen terrorists in Beslan, Russia in September 2004 were not willing to negotiate. While their true intentions can never be known, it seems that they only spoke with authorities outside the school for the purpose of prolonging the incident as long as possible and to make the Russian government look as helpless and menacing as possible. After the first day of the crisis, for example, a videocassette was tossed out of a window to the assembled military perimeter. The footage showed the elaborate network of bombs connected to foot pedal detonators that would set off explosions if the terrorist controlling it moved his foot – a tactical nightmare for any team planning on storming the school.
At no point during the crisis were serious demands given, other than a desire to speak with President Putin. The other demands were too extreme to be serious – for example demanding for a full Russian retreat from Chechnya. While there is certainly a real desire for this on the part of the Chechens, this served more as a “stump speech” than a demand likely to be met. While the terrorists further confused matters by wearing masks – a sign of even the slightest chance of survival or escape – they stated repeatedly to the hostages that they came to the school planning to die. <!–[endif]–>
Implications for America
John Giduck, who chronicled his visit to the scene of the attack in Terror at Beslan, has stated that America needs to understand that in this type of attack, people will die, and there will be no happy ending. In a nation where we are relatively new to terrorism and accustomed to “happy endings”, such an attack would strike a heavy blow to America. While the Russian government can stonewall independent inquiries and shift attention elsewhere, the anguish and frustration of a no-win hostage situation with no feasible demands would bring America to its knees.
The effect would be even more intense than 9/11, because of the presumed safety & innocence of our children combined with the high level of safety that we are accustomed to in the school transportation industry. Out of the approximately 800 children killed in motor vehicles during school travel hours, only five of those are killed while a passenger on a school bus. School buses represent 25% of miles traveled by students, but less than 2% of the fatalities. [7] <!–[endif]–> With such a high success rate, anything but perfection is not accepted by the parents of America’s school bus riders, and a brutal terrorist attack as we have seen in other countries would have a huge effect.
Examining the Threat
It is clear that schools are a possible target for terrorists. Aside from Beslan and the dozens of other school attacks over the past 37 years, it has been reported that the U.S. military has found information in Iraq pertaining to U.S. schools, and in September 2004 the FBI notified school districts in six states that photographs, diagrams, and emergency plans had been found in the possession of unidentified individuals. With institutions as large and prepared as the Georgia Institute of Technology posting their entire emergency plans on the internet, this is not surprising.
In addition, there have been hundreds of thefts of school bus radios in two states, along with an increase in thefts and vandalism of school buses and equipment across the U.S. This has obvious implications, including but not limited to the possibility that unknown individuals may be able to monitor or interfere with school bus communications, and even feed them false and dangerous instructions during or before an attack. At the very least, this would allow terrorists to better understand and plan around the communications equipment of an intended target.
It is also clear that our school transportation systems are vulnerable to attack because of outdated equipment and lack of training. There have been countless incidents of violence and hostage taking on school buses across the country, including one where a student used a sword to hijack a bus and take it across state lines before he was stopped.
In another well-publicized incident, a Miami Special Needs bus driver was fooled into taking her bus and students on a 75-minute ride by a hostage-taker who forced his way on the bus but did not actually have a weapon. While she was praised in the media and by the school bus industry for handling the incident incredibly well, she apparently argued with and disobeyed the hostage-taker repeatedly, and if there was an actual weapon involved students may have been injured. [10] <!–[endif]–> While we cannot judge her actions without knowing all details of the situation, this type of approach would clearly result in disaster if the attacker was an Islamist terrorist either sent or influenced by a group such as Al Qaeda.
Mohamad El Zahabhi
The clearest direct threat to the nation’s school transportation system is the case of Mohamad Kamal El Zahabhi, a Lebanese national who has worked at various times as a Boston cab driver, a New York City auto mechanic, and a Minnesota school bus driver for First Student, a private contracting firm that provides bus service to schools across the country. While it is not clear whether his service as a bus driver was just one of many jobs that he held while in the U.S. or if it was part of an attempt to gain access to a school bus, his history gives us concern.
He first came to the U.S. in 1984, and paid a Texas woman to marry him so he could obtain his green card. After divorcing and admitting to fraud in 1988, he traveled to Afghanistan where he attended a terrorist training camp and later served as a sniper in combat in Afghanistan and Chechnya. He also told FBI agents that he had served as an instructor at a jihadist school. During this time he allegedly met with a few notable individuals, including Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, one of the originators of the 9/11 plot, and Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
After being injured in combat, el Zahabhi returned to New York City, where he worked with a relative at Drive Axle Rebuilders, a business that he used to order and ship to Afghanistan large quantities of heavy-duty field radios. While radios of the same type have been found by U.S. troops in Afghanistan, he denies knowledge of the shipments, saying that he never opened the packages that he was transferring. After serving as a cab driver in Boston from 1997 to 1998, he traveled again to Chechnya to serve in combat.
Returning to the U.S. in 2000, he moved to Minneapolis and on September 11, 2001 applied for a job as a bus driver with First Student. He had previously obtained his CDL and a HazMat certification under his Massachusetts driver’s license, and passed an FBI background check. The FBI declines to comment as to why he was cleared, since the case is under investigation. After starting as a driver in late 2001, el Zahabhi failed to report to work after the winter break and was fired in January 2002. He returned in February 2002 and asked for his job back, but was denied.
While his intentions are not clear, his ties to al Qaeda members and activities gives rise to concern – for example the assistance he gave to Raed Hijazi, the man convicted of the failed millennium bombing plot in Jordan, when he allowed Hijazi to use his address in Massachusetts to receive mail and obtain a drivers license. He is currently being charged with lying to the FBI about this incident, along with other details.
Even if el Zahabhi did not intend to assist with or carry out a school attack, the fact that a jihadist combat veteran was able to become a bus driver in the U.S. is a sign of severe security gaps.
Summary of the National Response to the Threat
Federal Level
The federal government has responded to the threat of terrorism with policy and publications intended for bus drivers. The first move was to designate school buses as “mass transportation systems” as part of H.R. 3162, the USA PATRIOT ACT. This extends federal jurisdiction and penalties to anyone who wrecks, attacks, uses as a weapon, or otherwise endangers bus employees or passengers. [11] <!–[endif]–>
They have also produced, through the Transportation Security Administration, the “Employee Guide to School Bus Security: Identifying Security Threats” along with a quick reference card detailing awareness, identification of suspicious behaviors or packages, and brief tips on how to respond to various situations.
In addition, the Department of Homeland Security has released three alerts notifying school buses of heightened states of danger, and the United States Department of Education released a letter to U.S. schools & buses after the attack at Beslan, suggesting that employees look out for suspicious behavior, and the letter outlines various methods of surveillance and planning that might be observable to school staff or drivers.
State Level
There has been a larger effort on the part of several states, but these actions are usually disjointed and restricted to the state in which they are implemented. New Mexico, Minnesota, California, New York and Iowa have all either released a training video or implemented a training program for bus drivers on preventing and responding to terrorism. Georgia, the state with the largest state school safety center and the most comprehensive school bus security training program, has conducted numerous training conferences for drivers since the year 2000. [13] <!–[endif]–>
Industry
It seems that the largest and most concerted efforts have been on the part of the school bus industry. The three largest trade associations (the National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT), the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation (NASDPT) and the National School Transportation Association (NSTA)) have partnered with the Department of Homeland Security’s “Highway Watch” program to extend coverage into a program called “School Bus Watch.” Under the program, training is provided for drivers, who receive an identification card and number that they can use to report suspicious behavior to a national hotline, where information is passed on to local law enforcement.
The NASDPT has released two position papers indicating a heightened awareness of the threat and the need for a response, recognizing that school bus drivers are the first line of defense against a school transportation attack. The National Conference on School Transportation has also discussed creating a school bus equipment guide for first responders, detailing the different types and designs of school buses and giving responding personnel a way to know how to deal with, enter, immobilize and operate a bus if necessary.
Proposals
While much progress has been made since 9/11, it is clear that efforts are currently too thin and disjointed across the country. While some states have prepared their drivers substantially, the federal efforts have been too weak to have much effect. In addition, while industry efforts have been more widespread and in depth, they lack the mandate that a state or federal law might have. This leaves preparation up to the individual states, districts, and even schools themselves. As the Transportation Research Board noted:
“Supervisors must set the example for compliance with the policies and procedures and must make sure that employees follow suit. Supervisors must foster an environment that
promotes awareness, preparedness, and due diligence by adhering to security policies and procedures daily.” [14] <!–[endif]–>
In addition to this lack of coverage and mandate, there has been a lot of focus on monitoring for unauthorized surveillance or suspicious activity. While this is obviously a very important step to take, schools may be too focused on this aspect, leading to a false sense of security – since schools are doing so much, they may feel that they are doing enough.
There is also a lack of effective education for the general public. As Beslan has shown us, the lack of a secure perimeter around an incident can hamper effective law enforcement response, and we have even seen incidents in the U.S. where medical personnel have been forced to park their ambulances miles from an incident because of the rush of parents and well-wishers to the scene. Education on procedures such as family reunification protocols needs to be disseminated to the public more thoroughly.
While there is a clear threat to American schools of terrorism, it is important to remember that statistically the likelihood of an attack on a particular school is very low, especially when compared to the very real occurrences of death and injury that we know will occur every year in our schools. Schools should of course prepare for terrorism, but with a balanced approach, using the federally endorsed “All Hazards” approach, which breaks planning down into four phases: Mitigation, Prevention, Response and Recovery.This type of approach deals with terrorism like any other incident – not minimizing its importance but placing it within the framework of current emergency response capabilities. This prevents the fragmentation of planning and response and the frivolous waste of funds that we have often seen in response to current events and threats that are on the forefront in the mind of the public.
Source - Chris Dorn Safe Havens International
Terror Website Offers How To Fly A Boeing 747 Video Set
September 28, 2007
A pro-terrorist web site last week posted a series of video links that reveal how to teach people to fly a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, an indication that terrorists are still planning to use hijacked aircraft in future attacks.
The web site posted a statement “On the Anniversary of Manhattan’s Attack, 18 Videos Teaching You How To Fly a Boeing 747.” The statement contains a link to Wikipedia.org to learn about the Boeing 747 aircraft and 18 links to videos teaching how to fly a Boeing 747 aircraft with narration in Arabic.
A translation of the web site stated that the “very important” videos will assist in learning “the rules and steps for take of an fly the famous Boeing 747 aircraft.”
The 18 videos were made available for downloading and were described as “high-quality.”
The videos include several sections including numerous Flight Management Computer videos, instruction on taxi, take off, ascending and autopilot, as well as gradual descent. Additional videos explain how to conduct an approach and landing, taxi to terminal, and turning off the engines.
“Then, to those who do not need to learn the last three parts, choose any target you wish and continue what the lion Sheikh Osama Bin Laden , God protect him, started,” the report said.
Source - World Tribune
[Has anyone found later or more detailed reports on this one?]
Suspicious Items Found In U-Haul Truck In Tempe Arizona
September 29, 2007
There were some tense moments at a U-Haul facility in Tempe on Friday.
A 15-foot truck was returned to the company’s Priest Drive location around 3 p.m.
When a manager opened it up, he spotted some items he thought looked suspicious.
According to Vice President of Product and Safety, “It didn’t take me long to call people let’s put it that way.”
Doug Matteson from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office explains what happened next.
“We opened it up, we saw some items that kinda looked linked to suspicious activity…we are not saying this is involved with terrorism…we saw some items that kinda bring some attention to our Deputies that work anti-terrorism. We called them out to make sure, have them go through everything.”
The Sheriff Office confirms there were no guns, explosives, or hazardous materials found in the truck.
They do say there was a messy pile of suspicious documents and files.
There were also some other items that the Sheriff’s Office said it was not prepared to comment on.
Investigators will continue combing through the documents and are trying to dig up more information about the person who last rented the truck.
Matteson would not divulge exactly what the other items were or what they were related to, only saying it was significant enough for the Maricopa County’s anti-terrorism group to be called out to investigate.
Authorities are currently checking where the truck came from and who last rented it.
Matteson said that he believes the truck has been at that U-Haul location for 3 to 6 months and that as far as he knows no one has had access to it during that time. The rental center is surrounded by fences and has a security unit, Matteson said.