Crisis looms: Emergency Suicide Bomber Talks Break Down In UK

I think i posted this before, but what the heck..This was hilariously funny when i received this in email. And don't forget to read the disclaimer at the bottom, which is even more funny.

=====================================

Muslim suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to
in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda management have so far failed to produce an agreement. The unrest began last Tuesday when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death will be cut by 20% next January from 72 to only 60. The rationale for the cut was the increase in recent years of the number of suicide bombings and a subsequent shortage of virgins in the afterlife.

The suicide bombers' union, the British Organisation of Occupational Martyrs (or B.O.O.M.) responded with a statement that this was
unacceptable to its members and immediately balloted for strike action. General secretary Abdullah Amir told the press, "Our members
are literally working themselves to death in the cause of jihad. We don't ask for much in return but to be treated like this by management
is a kick in the er um ah teeth."

Mr Amir accepted the limited availability of virgins but pointed out that the cutbacks were expected to be borne entirely by the workforce
and not by management. "Last Christmas Abu Hamza alone was awarded an annual bonus of 250,000 virgins," complains Amir. "And you can be sure
they'll all be pretty ones too. How can Al Qaeda afford that for members of the management but not 72 for the people who do the real
work?" Speaking from the shed in the West Midlands where he currently resides, Al Qaeda chief executive Osama bin Laden explained, "We sympathise with our workers' concerns but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are simply not accepting the
realities of modern-day jihad, in a competitive marketplace. Thanks to Western depravity, there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the
afterlife. It's a straight choice between reducing expenditure and laying people off. I don't like cutting wages but I'd hate to have to
tell 3,000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up."

He defended management bonuses by claiming these were necessary to attract good fanatical clerics. "How am I supposed to attract the best
people if I can't compete with the private sector?" asked Mr. Bin-Laden. Talks broke down this morning after management's last-ditch proposal
of a virgin-sharing scheme was rejected outright after a failure to agree on orifice allocation quotas. One virgin, who refused to be named, was quoted as saying "I'll be buggered if I'm agreeing to anything like that........it's too much of a mouthful to swallow".

Unless some sort of agreement is reached over the weekend, suicide bombers will down explosives at midday on Monday. Most branches are
supporting the strike. Only the North London branch, which has a different union, is likely to continue working. However, some members
of that branch will only be using waist-down explosives in order to express solidarity with their striking brethren.

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The fight between two Islams

Now this is where one gets confused. On one hand, we have these students and defenders of Islam, aka Taliban, claiming that they defend Islam and have carried out this suicide attack on the Pakistani Army mosque. On the other hand, we have the Pakistani Head of the Army saying:

"The nation, including the army, stands united in sharing their grief. Pakistan is our motherland. It is the bastion of Islam and we live for the glory of Islam and Pakistan. Our faith, resolve and pride in our religion and in our country is an asset, which is further reinforced after each terrorist incident."

Here’s what the spokesperson of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan said before:

"These are religiously legitimate targets…the targets of the Tehrik-i-Taliban have always been clear: those state organizations who at the behest of the Americans target the Tehrik-i-Taliban and have the blood of our martyrs on their hands."

Sort of confusing, no? I know Al Queda isnt the Taliban, but its quite instructive to read this story: I quote:

Between 2004 and 2008, for example, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for 313 attacks, resulting in the deaths of 3,010 people. And even though these attacks include terrorist incidents in the West -- in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 -- only 12 percent of those killed (371 deaths) were Westerners.

Fairly typical and as I have pointed out before, Muslims are at more danger from their compatriots rather than Non Muslims as proven by the fact (as I have referenced elsewhere on this blog) that more Muslims have been killed by their fellow religionists compared to all the rest of the Zionists, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus combined.

Perhaps the reason is that they are a tad confused like I am? Like two groups claiming the same religious justification for killing each other. Oh! Joy!. Then you have the Pakistani Interior Minister asking the mullah’s for a fatwa against these terrorist attacks.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Friday urged religious scholars to give a Fatwa against suicide attacks. Talking to the media at the Interior Ministry, Malik said no religion allowed suicide attacks and slaughter of innocent people, including children, elders and women. He said al-Qaeda, the TTP, the Sipah-i-Sahaba and some others were actively involved in incidents of terrorism in the country to make Pakistan a failed state.

Hmmm, even more confusing. So these Islamic terrorists who are using Islamic theology to justify their killing of Soldiers who are the bastion of Islam and then the head of the interior ministry is now asking Islamic scholars to release an Islamic ruling that the former be declared as Islamic persona-non-grata. BTW, what do you think are the chances of any Pakistani Scholar to go up against the taliban? This example or even this would be a nice little deterrent, no? On the other hand, what will happen if the Taliban ask Islamic Scholars to produce a fatwa saying that the army was doing wrong. Then?

Then again, if suicide attacks can happen in a mosque killing children, then I am sure we will see huge demonstrations around the world protesting against the Taliban’s desecration of a sacred place.

Hair hurting time.

Killing a city

The first time I heard this term, urbicide, was back when the Bosnian war was raging. Its a term reflecting the direction of utter violence on the city. I was reminded of the photographs of Berlin, Nagasaki and Hiroshima during the second world war for utter destruction. Here are some iconic photographs of Berlin.

And of Nagasaki:

And of Hiroshima:

You dont normally expect to see images of such devastation nowadays. But still it happens. See here for some photographs of Sarajevo.

But despite Sarajevo being in the doorsteps of Europe, we again saw another urbicide in Lebanon, aimed at those truly damned people, the Palestinians.

See the background to this conflict here. And this paper (from which I have shown the pictures above) which brought home the battle. I quote the abstract:

During the summer of 2007, Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon was the scene of a fierce battle between the Lebanese Armed Forces and a militant Islamist group called Fateh al-Islam. When Palestinian evacuees returned after the conflict, they found Nahr el-Bared utterly destroyed, houses smashed first by shells and bombs, then by vandalism and arson, possessions stolen and broken, offensive graffiti daubed on walls. I argue in this paper that the battle of Nahr el-Bared, and particularly the month of looting and arson that followed the battle, was a case of urbicide in a space of exception. The seemingly unrestricted destruction of homes, the theft of possessions and arson, went beyond any possible military necessity and became the deliberate and systematic erasure of the camp. This urbicide was made more possible by the very nature of the political spaces of the camp, which are in Lebanon but not of Lebanon, in which Lebanese sovereignty and law are not fully enforced, in which a whole range of non-Lebanese actors exercise political power outside the control of the Lebanese state. In these spaces of exception in which the rule of law is suspended, the looting, arson and vandalism took place without sanction. Palestinian homes and lives had become sacred in the sense that they could be destroyed without sanction, without recourse to legal redress, because there was no law.

Here’s a good clip of what the Lebanese Army did to the camp:

 

Some of the comments that Adam Ramadan makes are truly horrifying. I quote:

Nahr el-Bared was not the named target of Lebanese military action, nor was urbicide the stated aim. The war was against Fateh al-Islam, but that group quickly became conflated with Nahr el-Bared and Palestinian society (Neil Smith's (2001) analysis of the conflation of scales that allowed the events of 11 September 2001 to be seen as an attack on the American nation, and justifying an American attack on Afghanistan, is relevant here). Military actions against Fateh al-Islam blurred more easily with military actions against the fabric of the camp, while across Lebanon Palestinians were subjected to increased surveillance, stop-and-search procedures, and some even spoke of arbitrary arrests and torture. Indiscriminate shelling by the army hastened the evacuation of civilians which, in turn, allowed for more indiscriminate shelling. The Lebanese army sieged the camp for 16 weeks, shelling from the ground, firing air-to-ground missiles from helicopters, and ground troops leading seven assaults on the camp.¹³ In spite of this fierce siege, the Lebanese army was unable to win a fast and decisive victory against the well armed and well trained fighters of Fateh al-Islam, and army casualties reached 168 by the time the battle ended in early September. The camp was a hostage to the outsiders of Fateh al-Islam, and its houses and narrow alleyways provided the perfect terrain for the kind of urban warfare many of the militants might have experienced in Iraq. Driven to fear and fury by the deaths of so many soldiers by Fateh al-Islam actions, army actions were displaced onto the stones, the buildings, the streets and the infrastructure of the camp. And the state of exception in which the camp existed, coupled with Lebanese discourses of the camps as impenetrable security islands and threats to the Lebanese body, and Lebanese demographic anxieties, allowed a course of action that seemed to maximise the physical destruction of the camp. Particularly after the eventual defeat of Fateh al-Islam, when for a month the destruction continued with looting, arson and vandalism, Nahr el-Bared was erased by urbicide.

Martin Shaw (2004: 141) has argued that urbicide is a form of genocide, but I would not extend this argument to the case of Nahr el-Bared as there was no orchestrated or deliberate killing of civilians: “The deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group” (Oxford English Dictionary definition of genocide) did not occur. The camp was shelled widely in the first few days in spite of the presence of a very high and dense civilian population¹⁴ (perhaps this was “killing deliberately by mistake” – Amyreh, 2002, in Herold, 2004: 329) but there was an organised evacuation of civilians early in the conflict so that the army could freely target Fateh al-Islam fighters wherever they might or might not be in the camp. Most Palestinians from Nahr el-Bared were displaced to Beddawi, where they were forced to stay in improvised shelters, school classrooms, garages and storerooms, seriously disrupting not only the society of Nahr el-Bared but also that of Beddawi camp which had to host the displaced. And more than a year on, there is still no sign of the Nahr el-Bared being rebuilt, and this prolonged displacement is forcing Palestinians to choose whether to wait for the chance to return to Nahr el-Bared or to attempt to make a new life elsewhere in Lebanon or outside. Lebanon officially opposes Palestinian integration in the country, and unofficially encourages Palestinian emigration. When this agenda coincided with this battle against terrorists in a space without law, the result was urbicide and ethnic cleansing

This is what bewilders me, a son of a refugee myself, is this decades long dependency on being a refugee. These Palestinian refugee camps have constantly been kicked ferociously like Nabatieh in 1973, in Jisr el-Basha in 1976 and in Sabra and Shatila in 1982. These Palestinians have been betrayed by their leaders, their fellow Arabs, their allies (variously USSR, China, USA, you name it) and of course their enemy, Israel. The UN perpetuates their misery. Lebanon and Egypt make it difficult for them to live, breathe or prosper. And still they live on, in their ghettos and concentration camps. The New Jews indeed. And what a situation to be in.

See how the Lebanese celebrated after their victory over the Palestinians in the camp and the Saudi / other assorted terrorists of Fateh al-Islam.

And all this while the urbicide is quietly going on.

Help Pakistan’s Police instead of the Army

This report from Rand makes very good sense. Most terrorism is actually resolved by pretty much bog standard police work, counter terrorism is the same. Another benefit of better quality police work is to improve crime and reduce offshoots such as narco-terrorism etc. And frankly, pouring in money into the Pakistani Army hasnt helped much now, has it? More reasons here and I quote:

There are many reasons why the army can't fix what ails the nation. First, sustained use of the army against its own citizens goes against the grain. A number of Pakistani officers have told me that they did not join the army to kill Pakistanis; they joined to kill Indians. Officers themselves debate whether the army can successfully oust the militants, and even if it can, whether it could hold the area for long. The army's past and recent track record in clearing and holding territory is not encouraging.

Second, the army has resisted developing a counter-insurgency doctrine. It prefers to plan and train for conventional battles and views its struggle against insurgents as a "low-intensity" conventional conflict. Washington has been slow to understand that this is not a quibble over semantics but a serious difference in how the army intends to contend with the threat. The Pakistani army believes India is its principal nemesis, not the insurgents who have occupied the Swat valley and destabilized Pakistan and the region.

Third, the army's sledgehammer attempt to expel militants from their various redoubts has devastated much of Pakistan's Pashtun belt, flattening villages and forcing more than three million people to flee. The devastating blitzkrieg shows that the Pakistani army resists developing an effective counter-insurgency capability to secure, not dispossess, the local population.

A police force-led effort would be better than one led by the army, as the history of successful counterinsurgency movements in disparate theatres across the globe shows. Militants understand the potential power of the police even if Washington and Islamabad do not. Since 2005, insurgents and terrorists have killed about 400 police each year in suicide bombings, assassinations, and other heinous crimes, according to Hassan Abbas, a former police officer in Pakistan who is now a research fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The police make for easy targets because they are outgunned, under-resourced, inadequately equipped and poorly trained. Because most don't even have the same lucrative death benefits as army personnel, many have simply fled the fight to protect their families. Police officers in Swat have even taken out newspaper advertisements declaring that they have left the force in hopes that insurgents will spare them and their families. To take the lead in fighting the militants, Pakistan's police will need training, modern weaponry, personal-protection equipment, life insurance and access to civilian intelligence.

Police in Pakistan are admittedly widely reviled for being corrupt. However there are encouraging signs of change. Several policing organizations, such as the National Highways and Motorway Police, the Islamabad Police and the Lahore Traffic Police have all gained the trust of their citizenry through professional and courteous conduct. In these forces, police are paid a handsome salary and are subject to strict accountability for their performance. Their new salaries are too valuable to lose by taking small bribes.

Pakistan's police leadership seems up for the challenge. Since 2000, Pakistan's own police leadership has led the demand for police reform only to be stifled by military and civilian political leadership who benefit from a corrupt police force that does their bidding. It's time for the international community to support these unexpected reformers.

So far, only 2.2% of U.S. funding to Pakistan has gone to assisting the police — $268 million between 2002 and 2008 for narcotics control, law enforcement and border security. The U.S. has an enormous opportunity to help the one Pakistani institution that actually wants American help.
Should the Obama administration embrace this task, it will need to change its approach to police training, and it will need international partners. The State Department, which has traditional responsibility for this area, cannot do it alone. As the experience with police training in Afghanistan has shown, the Department of Defense has to step in to take the lead on police training. Unfortunately, the international community has resisted supplying trainers or resources to the Afghanistan effort and some contractors have not performed well.

Banned Pakistani groups 'expand'

Astonishing indeed and seriously bewildering. On one hand, the Pakistani Army is fighting what appears to be a pretty much full fledged war against Jihadi’s with gunships, armour and mechanised infantry in Swat. Just a few tens or hundred miles away, its encouraging the growth of these jihadi’s. Obviously, all jihadi’s are made equal but some are more equal than others. I quote:

 

Militant groups banned in Pakistan are expanding operations and recruitment in Pakistani-run Kashmir, according to a government report seen by the BBC. The observations are from a detailed secret report submitted to the region's government on the groups' activities in the city of Muzaffarabad and elsewhere.

And if you wanted more proof (dont know why, its pretty clear to everybody) that its the Pakistani Army and Intelligence Services who are in cahoots with them, here’s the kicker:

It then goes on to say that the authorities should take up the matter with the intelligence agency responsible for the militants. The report says officials from that agency should relocate the militants to some area near the border, otherwise clashes with locals could take place.

Lovely, solve the problem by shifting them to some other place. Which would either be in Afghanistan against the Americans, in Balochistan or in other places in Pakistan which means that poor state sinks further and further. Or best, why not in India? HA!

Blaming Al Queda unfairly

Looks like I owe Al Queda an apology, I thought that they were the perpetrators behind the killing of the French engineers in Pakistan. But it turns out that the reason is much more mundane. I quote:

High-ranking Pakistani officials were behind the killing of eleven French ship-building engineers in Karachi seven years ago, two French judges have ruled. Until now al-Qaeda had been blamed for the bomb attack on a bus in 2002 that killed 11 engineers and three Pakistanis . The judges suspected that the Pakistanis were retaliating over a decision by former French President Jacques Chirac, to halt payment to Pakistani officers of millions of pounds in secret commission from an 720 million pounds contract signed in 1994, for three French submarines, the Time reported today.

But this was the major WTF moment for me.

According to media reports, the French secret service retaliated after the 2002 attack, breaking the legs of two Pakistan navy admirals and killing a lower-ranking officer.

Shades of Operation Wrath of God, eh? Now that’s something that makes you go, hmmm, why ever not? although I realise that this is just very very dangerous indeed. If you think Indian media is biased, then check out AFP. I quote:

 

France's opposition called Thursday for a parliamentary inquiry into the 2002 killing of 11 French engineers in Pakistan, over allegations of a link to a corrupt submarine deal with Islamabad. According to a lawyer for the victims' families, the judicial probe under way into the Karachi attack -- initially pinned on Al-Qaeda -- is now focusing on a 1994 sub contract with French state firm DCN, the engineers' employer.

Anti-terrorism investigators now suspect it could have been ordered as punishment after Paris stopped paying commissions to Pakistani intermediaries for the contract won by French state firm DCN, said lawyer Olivier Morice. Magali Drouet, daughter of one victim, says the magistrates specifically believe the attack was ordered because payments were not made to Asif Ali Zardari, who is now Pakistan's president but was a minister at the time.

The May 8, 2002 attack saw a car packed with explosives ram into a minibus carrying the 11 French engineers for DCN, who were killed along with three Pakistanis. Two alleged members of an Al-Qaeda-linked group were convicted in Pakistan in 2003 over the Karachi attack, but both were acquitted last month after a court ruled there was insufficient evidence against them.

In a letter seen by AFP, the head of the DCN's international branch, Philippe Japiot, wrote to French investigators in September 2002 arguing that the attack was a direct result of its contract to supply the Agosta subs. But the Paris prosecutor's office said on Monday there were "no objective elements" linking the attack to the submarine deal.

Big question marks there!!! See this Pakistani news story as well.

Al Zwahiri, 2nd in Command, Al Queda being interviewed

 

and what the heck, merry Christmas :)

 

Technorati Tags: humour,terrorism

Asp in our own bosom

Here's something that is so bizarre that I cannot still understand it. So I am paying my tax money to support this man and his family who wants to destroy and kill me and my family? What about my right to security and my family's human rights are basically not counted then?

Technorati Tags: terrorism,al-Queda,jordan,united kingdom,human rights,legal system

Jihadi studies

A brilliant hard hitting essay on studying Militant Islam as a source for Islamist Terrorism. I quote some interesting titbits (he also discussed Pape's work, btw):

Bergen debunks the widespread conspiracy theory that Bin Laden collaborated with the CIA in the 1980s.....

He also settles the debate over al-Qaeda’s pre-1996 existence. Jason Burke and others (including myself) had questioned the view of al-Qaeda as a coherent and self-aware organization founded in the late 1980s, pointing to the near-absence of pre-9/11 textual sources containing the name “al-Qaeda”. Bergen, however, unearthed recently declassified minutes from the founding meetings of al-Qaeda in 1988, as well as testimonies from the early 1990s, confirming the organization’s existence

Since the early 1990s, Bin Laden has been screaming for attention, always declaring his intentions before putting them into practice. Yet it was not until 2005 that these declarations were made available to a broader Western public with the publication of Messages to the World, a reader of Bin Laden’s texts edited by Bruce Lawrence, a professor of religious studies at Duke University.

Bin Laden’s discourse is profoundly political and elegant in its simplicity. It is populism at its most effective and most frightening.

Osama bin Laden’s central theme is the suffering and humiliation of the Muslim nation (the umma) at the hands of non-Muslims. He conveys a pan-Islamic nationalist world view according to which the umma is facing an existential threat from outside forces led by the US. Bin Laden’s principal rhetorical device is the enumeration of symbols of suffering – examples of situations where Muslims have been humiliated or oppressed by non-Muslims, such as in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and, above all, his homeland, Saudi Arabia, where the US military “occupies” the holy places of Islam. The only way to defend against this onslaught, he argues, is to confront America militarily.

Today, only one movement is able to wage war on a global scale, namely Islamism. This movement owes its strength to its decentralized character and its ability to exploit religious, political and social grievances. It is an essentially modern phenomenon which uses terrorist tactics and sophisticated media.

The deeper cause of the growth of Islamism, Enzensberger argues, is the intellectual sclerosis of the Arab and Muslim world, as documented by the Arab Human Development Report.The hostility of medieval Islamic scholars to secular knowledge prevented progress and sent the Muslim world into a state of near-permanent civilizational backwardness. This economic and scientific inferiority has created a sense of humiliation which is particularly painful because it clashes with the age-old Arab sense of superiority towards other peoples. The result is a collective hypersensitivity to outside criticism and a tolerance for violence against others. This in turn creates a beneficial environment for Islamism and terrorism.

Technorati Tags: Islamists,Terrorism,Al-Queda

AL Queda opens new front in terrorism

first it was normal terrorism

then it was chemical terrorism

then biological terrorism

now its aurical terrorism

who is their patron saint? Saint Cacophonix


3/17/08Hussein al-Ahmadalarabiya.net, Retired Kuwaiti pop star joins al-Qaeda, 15 Mar 08, "The retired singer will soon appear in his new military outfit in Afghanistan, in a video expected soon on a website known to be affiliated with al-Qaeda extremists, according to the paper." There's a related video montage: "From superstar to Quran reciting"



All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Al-Qaida ' trick handicapped women' into suicide bombings

Now that's an interesting way to deal with mentally handicapped patients. Strap bombs on to them, shove them into a target and blow them up. I mean, brilliant technique, no? Look at the advantages

• You do not have to worry about their care any more
• They become martyrs in the eyes of Allah
• You dont have to worry about bringing them up the terrorism curve where you need to teach them, explain to them, etc. etc. before they go down the suicide bomber route.
• They act innocent because they are innocent so they make the best suicide bombers
• They do exactly what you tell them to do (mostly)
• Because they are women, they would not be searched.
• Everybody takes extra-special care of disabled people, and that too women, so turn their caring, charity and pity against those Zionist crusaders, eh?
• I think the Down's Syndrome people should be interested in this, no? think about the vast opportunities for publicity. These wonderful soldiers of the resistance seem to have an attachment to Down's Syndrome. They used a disabled Down's Syndrome child in January 2005 as well. 
• The actual leaders who are men sit back at home fingering the remote control and then boom, blow it up. I mean, it takes patriarchy to a new level. Previously, it was, "go woman, make me a cup of tea", now it is, "go woman, blow up some Zionist crusader infidels for me"
• See what the Guardian says? "Police said the woman wearing the bomb sold cream in the mornings at the market and was known to locals as ``the crazy lady.'' I suppose nobody cares about the crazy lady, do they?

How absolutely disgusting! Truly they are cannibals.

The Al-Queda/Israel Riddle

I spoke about the Arabs and their obsession with Palestine before. Here is an interesting another view, the author seems to say that there is no difference between the Arab commentators and Al Queda, both are obsessed and similarly unhinged! I quote:

Why hasn't Al-Queda launched a single operation against Israel despite all the pain and sympathy that Osama Bin Laden and his right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri boastfully harp on about when it comes to usurped, occupied Palestine?.....

The problem does not lie with Al-Zawahiri or in the Al-Qaeda discourse; it is in the state of verbal anarchy that is sweeping the Arab world. This anarchy does not enable anyone to distinguish between the language of Al-Qaeda and the language of the mass media. How can a person, a certain body, or a media institution be against Al-Qaeda and at the same time share with it the same vocabulary and language?.....

Isn't it time to shoulder responsibility? Isn't it time for us to tell our children who is the role model, is it Al-Sadat or those who killed him? Who is the hero? Is it really Osama Bin Laden or other Arab men who are categorized as state builders? Most probably when we say that these Arab media do not shoulder their responsibilities, those who seek false heroism reiterate that we unjustly lay the blame on the media and drown in self-rebuke, as if glorifying and holding oneself in high esteem means to be away from serious criticism when it comes to fundamental and important matters.

Then I read this. Perfect proof of the above about how mentally deficient these morons are. Think about it, this is an Arab commentator actually agreeing with an Al Queda Attack despite the 2 sentences condemning it. He is actually not doing it, he is encouraging these kinds of attacks. So he is immediately classified as a terrorist supporter of the ilk mentioned above at best or a basic idiot at worst. Now, if you take that argument forward, then he wouldnt mind if the embassies of UK, USA, China, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Columbia etc. are all attacked, no? What a blithering idiot. 

Technorati Tags: Al-Queda,Arabs,Media,Palestine,Terrorism

Al Queda against Muslims

As I keep on saying, terrorists cannibalise their own first and foremost. It is easier and more fun that way. See this recent situation and I quote:

in the wake of a suicide bombing on Sunday near Falluja in Anbar Province, local tribesmen burned the house of the young suicide bomber's family and prevented a female cousin from collecting the bomber's head for burial. In the attack on Monday, a suicide bomber in the village of Hajaj near the northern oil refinery town of Baiji entered a communal hall where a feast was under way, observing the end of the seven-day mourning period for the uncle of a high-ranking security official in the Salahuddin provincial government. The bomber detonated his explosive vest, demolishing the hall. Seventeen people were killed and 11 wounded, according to a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.The level of anger on Monday in Albo Issa, the village where the Sunday bombing took place, laid bare the intensity of the blood feuds and vengeance killings that often characterize the violence in the provinces. As women keened in the courtyard and men sat somberly in a separate house, family members talked about those they had lost. "After this crime, we will never allow any of those people to stay in our area," said Mohammed Hadi Hassan, 20, whose father was killed. "Not even their women and children. We will not permit anyone with such an ideology to stay in our village." The bombing took place at a celebratory lunch among members of the local Awakening Council, the American-backed movement of Sunni Arab tribes opposed to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. According to witnesses, the suicide bomber, a boy of 13 or 14 identified as Ali Hussein Allawi al-Issawi, detonated his vest just after handing chocolates to his host. Four people were killed, including the bomber. On Sunday night, some of the men who lost relatives in the bombing set his house on fire, Mr. Hassan said, setting off explosions because of the amount of ammunition stored there. Mr. Hassan, an AK-47 on his lap, spoke tearfully on Monday about his father, Hadi Hussein al-Issawi, and the split within the Issawi tribe to which he belongs. The tribe has long been divided between a majority who fiercely oppose Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and a minority who support the militants, he said. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is a homegrown militant group that American officials say has foreign leadership. The two tribal factions live close to each other in Albo Issa; the bomber's house lies about 500 yards from the house of Mr. Hussein, the victim.Soon after members of the tribe joined with the Americans to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, more than a year ago, the men in the area who supported the group fled north, leaving behind their women and children, Mr. Hassan said. "The bomber's father was one of the senior leaders in Al Qaeda, which here they call 'the Islamic State of Iraq,' " Mr. Hassan said. "He left his house a long time ago. The child disappeared 10 months ago, but he reappeared 10 days ago. We told the police forces about his return as soon as he got back, but they took no action." A boy, who was among those mourning the victims, said he remembered the bomber as a normal child."He was my classmate in school as well as in the neighborhood," said Dhaher Hussein Ali, 13. "He was very calm, and we used to play together. He joked with all of us. Ten months ago, he disappeared. When he came back recently, he kept to himself and he did not even say hello to us." Another cousin of Mr. Hussein's, Ghazi Feisal Hashem al-Issawi, 30, said Mr. Hussein had not recognized the young boy at the lunch gathering. He said that as the boy handed Mr. Hussein the chocolates, Mr. Hussein asked him who he was. "The bomber told him, 'I am Hussein Allawi's son,' then he detonated himself," he said. As the sun began to set on Monday, gunshots rang out in the village. Relatives of Mr. Hussein were trying to keep a female cousin of the bomber from approaching the house where the explosion occurred.She had wanted to retrieve the young boy's head so that it could be properly buried. But no one would allow her to approach.

Remember this, all the terrorists and fundamentalists eat and devour their own.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Gaza's American school attacked

Wonderful, more enlightened behaviour from the world's great educators in the Gaza City. Now this was as heinous an attack as any other as they are targeting education and future citizens.

I quote:

The school is run by Palestinians and has no American teachers, but is part of an association of American schools in the Middle East and uses a US-style curriculum.

Two foreign teachers from the school were kidnapped in 2005, prompting international staff to leave.

In a leaflet left after the attack, the gunmen claimed affiliation to al-Qaeda and vowed to attack similar targets.

"Polytheists and enemies of Islam are pursuing each day their work to destroy our youths, who are falling by the dozens into the swamps of vice and moral decadence," the statement said.

Technorati Tags: Schooling,Education,Palestine,Al-Queda,Terrorism

The Fourth Afghan War is ready to be cooked, this time between Pushtoons and USA

Do you remember the last time an imperial power tried to arm and bribe Afghan tribes? The Brits. Do you know what happened? they were wiped out to a man, not once, but many times. The Afghan / Pathan does not stay bought, and this mistake will be repaid in droves. Watch as they take the money, arms, ammunition and launch a bigger jihad against the Americans. The Frontier Corps refused to fight against Mullah Radio, you idiots, learn from that! and you want to give THEM money?

How spectacularly stupid of the americans to try to repeat that.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Dhiren Barot - A committed terrorist?

Dhiren Barot, a convert from Hinduism to Islam, has been charged with terrorism and sentenced to life in jail. He admitted guilt to conspiracy to murder people through a bombing campaign in the USA and UK. This is the background as the BBC reported it.

Dhiren Barot, 34, a Muslim convert, was a "member or close associate" of the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.

The UK citizen had been under MI5 surveillance and was arrested in London in August 2004 after police decided he was "simply too dangerous to leave" on the streets.

Barot received extensive terrorism training in the use of weapons and explosives for the first time in Pakistan in 1995.

Material recovered and used to form the prosecution case included documents, e-mails, DVDs and computer hard drives.

The most developed plot was the "gas limos project", a plan to blow up three limousines "packed" with gas cylinders and explosives next to or under target buildings in the UK.

Arson through hijacked petrol tankers and the use of an aircraft were among other possible methods of attack considered.

There were plans to detonate so-called dirty bombs - explosives devices containing radioactive material.

Barot carried out "substantial research" into the dirty bomb project, placing the details in computer files called "Brad Pitt" and "radioactive children".

He stated he wanted to "emulate" the Madrid train bombings, which killed almost 200 people in March 2004 with co-ordinated back-to-back attacks.

The US plans were drafted earlier and used to help to conceive the UK plot, headed by the gas limos project.

The plans were taken to Pakistan to be presented to senior al-Qaeda figures for approval and funding.

But the prosecution did not dispute a defence assertion that no funding had been received for the projects, nor any vehicles or bomb-making materials acquired.

UK plot

The plans for attacking the UK were contained in the presentation for the gas limos project discovered after a raid by the Pakistani authorities in Gujrat in July 2004.

Targets included the rail and underground network in London, with the Heathrow Express, or an explosion on a Tube train in a tunnel under the River Thames cited as possible incidents.

Other sites identified were London hotels, including The Ritz and The Savoy, and stations such as Waterloo, Paddington and King's Cross.

Barot assumed a number of identities in a bid to "cover his tracks" and had at least one false passport.

He once travelled from London to Swansea just to use an internet cafe.

He assumed a false identity to gain access to the library at Brunel University in north-west London for research and appeared to have accessed other specialist libraries.

US plot

Plans to carry out bombings on the US were initiated before the September 11 2001 attacks, then shelved, but still worked on as late as February 2004.

Specific targets in the US plot included the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington, the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings in New York, and the Prudential building in Newark, New Jersey.

The US plans were prepared after reconnaissance was carried out by Barot during visits in 2000 and 2001.

A video of the Bruce Willis film Die Hard With A Vengeance seized from a London garage was found to have footage shot in New York in April 2001 at the end of it.

The filmed showed various locations in New York - focusing on entrances, security cameras, barriers and side streets as well as Jewish buildings, including synagogues.

Film footage of the World Trade Center featured a voice making the sound of an explosion.

Prosecutors said the Crown was not suggesting Barot had "knowledge" of the 9/11 terror attacks, but it "does demonstrate a more than unhealthy and violent interest in attacks on iconic buildings".

Preparation

Material recovered in Barot's computer files used seemingly innocuous words to represent different topics such as "monty", "children" and "uncle" to cover research into explosives, gases and chemicals.

Deleted material uncovered on a hard drive revealed files containing research into topics such radioactive materials, homemade bombs, arson attacks and fire protection systems.

A handbook listing hazardous chemicals was found, as were notebooks containing references to books on subjects including explosives, chemical and biological warfare, and building structures.

"Shopping lists" of electrical items that could be used to construct an "improvised explosive device" were also seized, as was the text of a statement by Osama bin Laden "glorifying the September 11 attacks".

Barot set up temporary e-mail accounts to send coded messages and adopted anti-surveillance techniques.

This is pretty much the profile that fits a terrorist who is up to no good, but curiously, there have been quite a lot of noise and chatter on the internet and media about how he was innocent.

For example, this site casts doubt on a range of aspects relating to this case. Some very interesting conspiracy theories here as well (scroll down to the bottom for additional notes). Here is another article with some more arguments (if a bit more foaming!) on why he was innocent. The author fulminates against the Sun newspaper for scaremongering. And then here is another blog with more arguments about how the actual evidence didn't stack up (there is a pun here but you need to know more about the smoke detectors).

So what is the truth? A research paper came into my in-box and that seems to be a good detailed and sober effort to judge whether he was a saint or a sinner. Barot's book, The Army of Madinah in Kashmir. The company, Maktabah al-Ansaar, was raided by British police in 2000 for suspected links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks. Who owned the publishing company? Moazzam Begg. But the book itself is the most interesting of all to read and provides detailed understanding of the mind of this terrorist.

He prepares a professional presentation after research on what type of radiological bombs to use and the hazards thereof. He also makes a project document with more details, known as the gas limo project. In 2004, Pakistani police arrest one of his compatriots and find links between his computer and Barot. His confession spawns a range of investigations and arrests. I quote:

In many ways Dhiren Barot fits the profile of other Islamic terrorists who have carried out attacks in the West. A South Asian immigrant in Europe, he never lived in depravity and squalor; rather, he led a comfortable middle-class life, was intelligent and educated, and does not appear to have suffered any extraordinary hardships. He was a member of what David Jones has dubbed the "cybercaliphate" - the modern, high-tech, globalized jihad. Like the 7/7 bombers and the Hamburg cell of terrorists that included Mohammed Atta, Barot spoke fluent English, was familiar with the West, and was well-traveled. As Marc Sageman has demonstrated in his landmark study of Salafist terrorist organizations, most mujahideen come from upper- or middle-class families and are well educated. They tend, furthermore, to be "full-time mujahideen," their qualifications for legitimate employment notwithstanding.42 In spite of his background, a combination of religious devotion and outrage over what he perceived as attacks on Muslim civilization appear to have driven Barot to extreme lengths.

This is the worrying bit, he is your typical Muslim, as a matter of fact, he is what any country would love to have as a citizen. Perfect. So he is definitely a terrorist based upon his actions, motivations, people he was meeting and working with and ideology.

And that's where the ideologically twisted mind was born! Not that we can stop this from happening and the fact that he was an Indian and Hindu prior to his conversion seems to be a total aberration . So how many other Barot's are working in the UK? How are we going to keep track of these terrorists who get training and supplies from Pakistan? Difficult questions but eternal vigilance.

Carlisle, David, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, "Dhiren Barot: Was He an Al Qaeda Mastermind or Merely a Hapless Plotter?" 2007, 30, 12, 1057-1071
This article profiles Dhiren Barot, a convert to Islam who was convicted in Britain in October 2006 on charges of conspiracy to commit murder for planning terrorist attacks in the United States and the United Kingdom. Upon his conviction, much of the British press, and many other observers, claimed Barot was a high-level Al Qaeda figure whose plans were on the verge of execution. Other observers, and Barot's defense attorneys, however, argued that these allegations were exaggerated. Barot, they claimed, had done nothing more than sketch vague plans for which he had no funding and was merely being used by the British government as an example in the War on Terror. This article details Barot's life and terrorist activity. It argues that he was a committed jihadi, was likely an Al Qaeda member, and did indeed represent a security threat. Nonetheless, the lack of public information available on his life suggests that certain allegations about his status within Al Qaeda and the immanency of his plans should be treated skeptically. It concludes by considering to what extent Barot fits the profile of other Islamic terrorists.

Technorati Tags: Al-Queda , Terrorism , Pakistan , Islam , Muslims , United Kingdom , USA

A pacman bounty on Al Qaeda

I am sure if you are old enough, you will remember the pacman game. The pacman defense is so termed when the pursuer gets pursued in turn.

I talked before about Lars Vilks having the distinctly dubious pleasure of having a bounty on his head. So now these Muslims against Sharia, an Islamic Reform Movement, have announced a reverse bounty on Abu Omar Al Baghdadi who announced the previous bounty.

Very amusing even though the chances of them having to pay out the money is relatively low, relatively few bounties on Al Qaeda leaders have been claimed. But still, it is a novel form of counter-terrorism, you have to admit!

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!

Technorati Tags: Al Queda , Sweden , Terrorism

An Islamic Rage boy now

Just saw on BBC that Mohammed Atif Siddique was found guilty of terrorism related charges in Glasgow. His lawyer said, this is a bad judgement and being upset with global injustice was not a crime.

What does the Independent say?

Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, from Alva, Clackmannanshire, provided training material on booby-trap bomb making and threatened to become a suicide bomber.
A jury at the High Court in Glasgow took more than eight hours to convict him of possessing and distributing a range of terrorist material via websites and providing instructional material about guns and explosives over the internet.

When I get upset, I swear, go to a pub and ask for a large pint of Boddingtons. When this chap gets upset, he (this is from the BBC):

Siddique was found guilty of

• possessing suspicious terrorism-related items including CDs and videos of weapons use, guerrilla tactics and bomb-making.
• He was also guilty of collecting terrorist-related information,
• setting up websites showing how to make and use weapons and explosives,
• and circulating inflammatory terrorist publications,
• A further charge of breach of the peace related to claims that he showed students at Glasgow Metropolitan College images of suicide bombers and terrorist beheadings.
• A computer disc found hidden under a carpet in the accused's family home contained images including Islamic extremists looting the body of a dead US serviceman.
• Siddique's laptop had an al-Qaeda recruiting video urging young Muslim men to become suicide bombers.
• He also set up a website that had links on how to be a home-grown terrorist, including bomb-making advice and how to strip weapons.
• The accused, who did not give evidence, claimed that the material he collected was for research.

Bloody hell, if this is what he does when he is angry and looking for information on the internet, I do not want to meet him when he is really angry. Crikey, he might end up doing this.

 

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!

Update on Sweden's Salman Rushdie

Lars Vilks is now in hiding following the threats on his life. Thankfully, two European Muslim organisations, European Council for Fatwa and Research and the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe have condemned the bounty.

Curiously, the ECFR is headed by an Egyptian Yusuf al-Qaradawi, based in Qatar, usually broadcasting on Al Jazeera which is a Qatari owned channel. I am not so sure what's so European about it. Far too many people on this council are not from Europe.

Secondly, the Federation (which seems to be the daddy of the Council) seems to be all but defunct. Its website does not seem to have been updated for more than an year.

Also, I am not sure how much OBL and Al Qaeda will listen to them!, I have never come across any statement from Al Qaeda or OBL or his gang of terrorists that they do care about what other Muslim organisations say or do, but as I said before, very Pavlovian.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!

Technorati Tags: Sweden , Islam , Muslims , Europe

Filipino Thieves falling out

Hmmm, so this is quite curious, Moro Islamic Liberation Front has suggested vacating some of its camps, so that the largely catholic Filipino army can go after the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah groups.

Remember these two groups are suspected in a variety of terrorist offences, such as the Bali bombing of 2005, and the airline bombing of 1994. They also have deep links with Al Qaeda.

These groups are very amorphous, and members switch easily between the groups, so if I was the Philippines military and intelligence sources, I would agree totally in return for some intelligence on the other groups.

 

But why this offer? Are the thieves falling out? Did some personalities clash? Another alternative could be that the MILF is getting hammered so it wants to clear out, get protection for its own people and families and in return, get the army to knock the stuffing out of its enemies. Nothing like a spot of poking and prodding to get rid of these jihadi's.

 

Muslim separatists offer to vacate camps amid offensive
Posted September 16th, 2007 by Tarique Anwar
* Muslim World News
By DPA
Manila : The Philippines' largest Muslim separatist rebel group has offered to abandon some of its camps in the south to avoid hampering a military offensive against Al Qaeda-linked militants, a spokesman said Sunday.
Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said the rebel group's leadership has made the offer as a goodwill and confidence-building gesture ahead of the resumption of peace talks with the government.
He said MILF fighters were prepared to temporarily move out of their camps in Basilan province, 900 km south of Manila, to give way to the military's offensive against Abu Sayyaf rebels and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) operatives.
"We are prepared to leave the area, on the consideration that the security and livelihood of the families of our fighters are taken care of," he said.
More than 50 soldiers have been killed in Basilan and nearby Jolo island -another stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf - since July.
While the military continues to have suspicion that some MILF members have ties with Abu Sayyaf or JI militants, the rebel group has denounced terrorism and has vowed to help the Philippine government's hunt down suspected terrorists.
Peace talks between the MILF and the Philippine government have been stalled since September 2006 over disagreements on what areas would be included in a proposed Muslim homeland.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Technorati Tags: Philippines , Islamic Terrorism , Moro Islamic Liberation Front , Abu Sayyaf , Jemaah Islamiyah , Al Queda