Category Archives: AQAP Al Queda Arabian Peninsula

UN Watch: Israel and the Apartheid Slander

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Below is an important New York Times op-ed published by Judge Richard Goldstone against the demonization of Israel. This follows his April retraction in the Washington Post of the core charge of the infamous 500-page U.N. report that bears his name: the accusation that Israeli leaders deliberately targeted civilians during the 2009 war with Hamas.

Not surprisingly, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s pro-Hamas Richard Falk, who previously lavished praise on Goldstone, has now launched a vicious personal attack on his former hero.

While it is impossible to undo even a fraction of the Goldstone Report’s catastrophic harm to basic principles of international human rights and humanitarian law, and to Israel’s ability to defend itself from terrorism, UN Watch congratulates Judge Goldstone’s welcome actions. We hope that he will continue to speak out against demonization and double standards, especially as practiced by too many U.N. bodies, including the Human Rights Council that had appointed him.

Israel and the Apartheid Slander

Nov. 1, 2011

By RICHARD J. GOLDSTONE

THE Palestinian Authority’s request for full United Nations membership has put hope for any two-state solution under increasing pressure. The need for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians has never been greater. So it is important to separate legitimate criticism of Israel from assaults that aim to isolate, demonize and delegitimize it.

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a “hearing” on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is not a “tribunal.” The “evidence” is going to be one-sided and the members of the “jury” are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.

While “apartheid” can have broader meaning, its use is meant to evoke the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.

I know all too well the cruelty of South Africa’s abhorrent apartheid system, under which human beings characterized as black had no rights to vote, hold political office, use “white” toilets or beaches, marry whites, live in whites-only areas or even be there without a “pass.” Blacks critically injured in car accidents were left to bleed to death if there was no “black” ambulance to rush them to a “black” hospital. “White” hospitals were prohibited from saving their lives. Continue Reading →

African children trafficked to UK for blood rituals

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I had to create a whole new category for this one.

From The BBC

By Chris Rogers BBC News, Kampala and London

Children in Uganda wearing "Pray to end child sacrifice" t-shirts Some 9,000 children have gone missing in Uganda over the past four years, according to a US report

Over the last four years, at least 400 African children have been abducted and trafficked to the UK and rescued by the British authorities, according to figures obtained by the BBC. It is unclear how they are smuggled into the country but a sinister picture is emerging of why.

Whether it is through leaflets handed out in High Streets or small ads in local newspapers, witch-doctors and traditional African spiritual healers are becoming ever more prominent in Britain.

The work many of them do is harmless enough, but there is evidence that some are involved in the abuse of children who have been abducted from their families in Africa, and trafficked to the UK.

According to Christine Beddoe, director of the anti-trafficking charity Ecpat UK, a cultural belief in the power of human blood in so-called juju rituals is playing a part in the demand for African children.

“Our experience tells us that traffickers can be anybody. They can be people with power, people with money or people involved in witchcraft,” she explains.

“Trafficking can involve witch-doctors and other types of professionals in the community who are using those practices.”

Violent and degrading

Figures compiled by Ecpat, combined with those of the Metropolitan Police and Ceop, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, show that at least 400 African children have been abducted and trafficked to the UK and rescued by the British authorities.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I would have no problem to get a child officially or there is a way of doing it secretly, abduct a child”

Yunus Kabul

Testimonies from many of these children have revealed that once they arrive in Britain, they are exposed to violent and degrading treatments, often involving the forced extraction of their blood to be used for clients demanding blood rituals.

Some of these victims agreed to share their experiences on the promise of anonymity because they still fear their abusers.

One boy explained how witch-doctors took his blood to be used in such rituals: “The traffickers or witch-doctors take your hair and cut your arms, legs, heads and genitals and collect the blood. They say if you speak out I can kill you.”

Another victim feared for her life, saying the “witch-doctor told me that one day he would need my head.

For the rest click through to the BBC

India: Huge explosives haul in Ambala foils terror plot

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This time, the Sikhs join in with the Muslims to try and kill random Hindus

From The Deccan Herald:

New Delhi/Chandigarh, Oct 13, DHNS:
Security agencies on Thursday claimed to have foiled a ”major terror operation” with the detection of 5 kg RDX from an abandoned car at the Ambala cantonment railway station.
“All angles are being probed, including the involvement of Sikh terrorist outfits and Pakistan-based groups”, sources told Deccan Herald.

The car with the RDX was reportedly heading towards Delhi before it was abandoned for the fear of being trailed by the Delhi Police. Sources said, based on specific information, Delhi Police sleuths were trailing the vehicle and it was said to have passed on Wednesday from the Lakhanpur toll barrier along Jammu-Pathankot barrier.

The Delhi Police alerted their Haryana counterparts about the car after which Haryana police officers, Government Railway Police and the Railway Protection Force personnel rushed to the spot.

Sources did not confirm whether any military installation was the intended target of the alleged terror groups.

Preliminary investigations indicated that the explosives seemed to be meant to target Delhi during the festive season. Delhi Police Special Cell officials said that the explosives appeared to have originated from Jammu and Kashmir. Continue Reading →

Police tell cafe owner: Stop showing Bible DVDs, or we will have to arrest you

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From The Daily Mail:

By Ross Slater and Jonathan Petre

Last updated at 1:32 AM on 25th September 2011

 

Inquisition: Jamie Murray, owner of Salt and Light cafe, has been threatened with arrest, for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screenInquisition: Jamie Murray, owner of Salt and Light cafe, has been threatened with arrest, for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen

Police have threatened a Christian cafe owner with arrest –for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen.

Continue Reading →

Fascinating movie. Got some time? Settle in for this one.

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I hope this isn’t one of those things people with TV have seen a million times and is brand new to me. Someone was kind enough to send me an email with a complex ‘get’ for this video, and I made it a bit more available. If you haven’t already seen it, settle back and watch. It is quite interesting indeed. Some browsers do not like my video plug-in from this site, so if you do not see the video below, or if it won’t play, click here to go directly to the video where it lives. Opinions on this, as always, welcome below.


 

Muslim community leader ‘made up story he was kidnapped by BNP’, court told

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From The Telegraph: 

A Muslim community leader, Noor Ramjanally, who claimed he was kidnapped by members of the British National Party was caught out lying by covert surveillance cameras designed to protect him, a court heard.

A Muslim community leader who claimed he was kidnapped by members of the British National Party was caught out lying by covert surveillance cameras designed to protect him, a court heard yesterday: Muslim community leader 'made up story he was kidnapped by BNP', court told.

Noor Ramjanally falsely claimed he was kidnapped by members of the British National Party, the court heard. Photo: MICHAEL FRESCO

8:00AM BST 09 Jun 2010

The 36 year-old falsely claimed he was abducted at knifepoint by racist thugs from the far-right wing political party after being subjected to hate mail and an arson attack, Chelmsford Crown Court was told.

He had told police he had feared for his life when he was kidnapped in broad daylight from his home in Loughton, Essex on August 24 last year and bundled into a car, it was claimed.

Ramjanally then claimed he was driven to nearby Epping Forest where he was threatened and warned to stop holding prayer sessions he had organised.

But he was caught out lying after detectives viewed CTTV footage from secret cameras installed to protect him after his previous claims that he was being targeted by racist opponents, prosecutors said.

The court heard that at the time of his alleged abduction he was actually “wandering around Homebase”.   Continue Reading →

Egyptians deploy 2000 soldiers to Sanai to thwart potential Islamic terror

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From Al Masri Al Youm

 Egypt’s military deployed to Sinai to defend from potential terror attacks

Flames rise after an explosion near the town of El-Arish, Egypt, 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the border with Israel, July 4, 2011. Unidentified assailants blew up the Egyptian pipeline that carries gas to Israel and Jordan early on Monday, starting a fire and disrupting the flow of the gas, security officials said.

Photographed by other
Egyptian authorities on Friday deployed over 2000 soldiers to the Sinai Peninsula to thwart possible attacks by Islamist militants, security sources said.

“More than 2000 policemen and several military armored vehicles were stationed around security premises in North Sinai’s Arish city,” the sources said.

“The security deployment is for defense purposes only,” said Abdel Wahad Mabrouk, the governor of North Sinai. “We are not chasing anyone in Sinai’s mountains,” Mabrouk added, referring to the peninsula’s caves, which have been traditionally used as special hideouts for Bedouin smugglers and Islamist militants.

On Thursday, the American television station CNN reported that Egyptian authorities were preparing to launch an operation against Al-Qaeda cells that had recently been established in Sinai. Continue Reading →

So what are the (UK) laws with regards to guns?

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Another example of how selective enforcement is the tool of modern totalitarianism. That governments pass harsh laws meant to lull the people into a false sense of security, by seeming to trade liberty for safety, then only enforcing the laws against the majority culture.

British people, if you are not angry yet, you really should be.

From British Resistance.

Written by Green Arrow    Sunday, 31 July 2011 10:01

gun-knifeThis is a strange story from the Bury Times and it raises an interesting point that we will come to later.

According to the report that you can read here, some enricher by the name of Hassan Hussain was found lying in the street with a gunshot wound to his foot and taken to hospital for treatment.

On being questioned by the police, Hussain informed them that he had been accosted by people wearing balaclavas, one of whom then shot him. The police quickly launched a major manhunt – they usually do when one of the enrichers has been attacked – and also reassured the local (more enrichers no doubt) community that they were treating the shooting seriously. How else are you supposed to treat a shooting?

However all was not what it seemed.  Because forensic experts discovered that the gun that wounded the enricher had been fired at extremely close range and the truth was, that Hussain had deliberately shot himself in the foot – why not the head I asked myself?  But it was his choice and he chose his foot to shoot – mores the pity.

Police then charged Hussain with wasting police time.  A charge to which the enricher pleaded guilty to at the Bury Magistrates Court where he was sentenced to a paltry 18 weeks.  By the time I finish typing this article, he will probably have been released for good behaviour.

Now there are actually a couple of points to be made here.  Given that section 287 of the Criminal Justice act states that the minimum sentence for possessing illegal firearms are as follows:

  • 3 years detention under section 91 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 where the offender is aged 16 or 17 at the time of the offence and under 18 at the date of conviction(s 29 (3) (b) and s 29 (6)).
  • 5 years imprisonment for offenders aged 18 or over at the time of conviction. Section 29 (5) makes express provision for offenders aged 18 to 20 inclusive to receive the mandatory sentence, by requiring a reference to a sentence of imprisonment to include a sentence of detention in a young offender institute.

More here at the original news site:

 

Al Qaeda’s New Video: A Message of Defeat

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“Al Qaeda’s New Video: A Message of Defeat is republished with permission of  STRATFOR.”

Al Qaeda's New Video: A Message of Defeat

 

By Scott Stewart

A new video from al Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahab, became available on the Internet on June 2. The video was 100 minutes long, distributed in two parts and titled “Responsible Only for Yourself.” As the name suggests, this video was the al Qaeda core’s latest attempt to encourage grassroots jihadists to undertake lone-wolf operations in the West, a recurrent theme in jihadist messages since late 2009.

The video, which was well-produced and contained a number of graphics and special effects, features historical footage of a number of militant Islamist personalities, including Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abdullah Azzam and Abu Yahya al-Libi.

In addition to al-Libi, who is considered a prominent al Qaeda ideological authority, the video also features an extensive discourse from another Libyan theologian, Sheikh Jamal Ibrahim Shtaiwi al-Misrati. Al-Misrati (who is from Misurata, as one can surmise from his name) was also featured in a March 25 As-Sahab message encouraging jihadists in Libya to assume control of the country and place it under Shariah once the Gadhafi regime is overthrown. The still photo used over the March message featuring al-Misrati was taken from the video used in the June 2 message, indicating that the recently released video of al-Misrati was shot prior to March 25. The video also contains a short excerpt of a previously released Arabic language Al-Malahim media video by Anwar al-Awlaki and an English-language statement by Adam Gadahn that is broken up into small segments and appears periodically throughout the video.

Despite the fact that many of the video segments used to produce this product are quite dated, there is a reference to bin Laden as a shaheed, or martyr, so this video was obviously produced after his death.

Unlike the As-Sahab message on the same topic featuring Adam Gadahn released in March 2010 and the English-language efforts of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s “Inspire” magazine, this video is primarily in Arabic, indicating that it is intended to influence an Arabic-speaking audience.

To date, much of the media coverage pertaining to the release of this video has focused on one short English-language segment in which Adam Gadahn encourages Muslims in the United States to go to gun shows and obtain automatic weapons to use in shooting attacks. This focus is understandable given the contentiousness of the gun-control issue in the United States, but a careful examination of the video reveals far more than just fodder for the U.S. gun-control debate.

 

Contents of the Video

 

The first 36 minutes of the video essentially comprise a history lesson of militants who heard the call to jihad and then acted on it. Among the examples are individuals such as ElSayyid Nosair, the assassin of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane; Abdel Basit (also known as Ramzi Yousef), the operational planner of the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the thwarted Bojinka plot; Mohammed Bouyeri, the assassin of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh; and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. Others include the leader of the team of assassins who killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the militants behind the Mumbai attacks.

Then, after listing those examples, the video emphasizes the point that if one is to live in the “real Islamic way,” one must also follow the examples of the men profiled. Furthermore, since the “enemies of Islam” have expanded their “attacks against Islam” in many different places, the video asserts that it is not only in the land of the Muslims that the enemies of Islam must be attacked, but also in their homelands (i.e., the West). In fact, the video asserts that it is easy to strike the enemies of Islam in their home countries and doing so creates the biggest impact. And this is the context in which Gadahn made his widely publicized comment about Muslims buying guns and conducting armed assaults.

Now, it is important to briefly address this comment by Gadahn: While it is indeed quite easy for U.S. citizens to legally purchase a wide variety of firearms, it is illegal for them to purchase fully automatic weapons without first obtaining the proper firearms license. This fixation with obtaining fully automatic rifles instead of purchasing readily available and legal semi-automatic weapons has led to the downfall of a number of jihadist plots inside the United States, including one just last month in New York. Therefore, aspiring jihadists who would seek to follow Gadahn’s recommendations to the letter would almost certainly find themselves quickly brought to the attention of the authorities.

When we look at the rest of Gadahn’s comments in this video, it is clear the group is trying to convey a number of other interesting points. First, Gadahn notes that jihadists wanting to undertake lone-wolf activities must take all possible measures to keep their plotting secret, and the first thing they should do is avail themselves of all the electronic manuals available on the Internet pertaining to security.

A few minutes later in the video, Gadahn remarks on a point made in a segment from a U.S. news program that the Hollywood perception of the capabilities of the National Security Agency (NSA) is nowhere near what those capabilities are in real life and that, while the NSA and other Western intelligence agencies collect massive amounts of data, it is hard for them to link the pieces together to gain intelligence on a pending attack plan. This is true, and the difficulty of putting together disparate intelligence to complete the big picture is something STRATFOR has long discussed. Gadahn notes that the downfall of most grassroots operations is loose lips and not the excellence of Western intelligence and urges aspiring grassroots jihadists to trust no one and to reveal their plans to no one, not even friends and family members. This claim is also true. Most thwarted grassroots plots have been uncovered due to poor operational security and sloppy tradecraft.

The video also contains lengthy theological discussions justifying the jihadist position that jihad is a compulsory, individual obligation for every able-bodied Muslim. As the video turns to the necessity of attacking the enemies of Islam in their homelands, Gadahn notes that Americans are people who crave comfort and security and that terrorist attacks scare them and take away their will to fight Muslims. According to Gadahn, terrorist attacks also cause the people to object to leaders who want to attack Islam, and the people will not vote for those leaders. Continue Reading →

New Al Queda video

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Thanks to Mullah Catfur for this, but really, why the Men in Black clips? (I have been informed by multiple sources this is not ‘Men in Black’ but is from Enemy of the State. Thanks P Nach and Tundra T.)

I do like the Koran quote at 8:34. Islam has a god that feels the need to plot against its own creation.

Here is the link to a working version of the video

Al-Qaida takes over several government buildings in south Yemen: official

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From XINHUANET:

SANAA, May 27 (Xinhua) — The Yemen-based al-Qaida branch on Friday took over several government buildings, including two state- run banks, in the southern province of Abyan, a provincial government official told Xinhua.

“Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula defeated government forces on Friday following fierce clashes in Zinjibar, the provincial capital city of Abyan, and controlled almost the whole strategic city including the government facilities,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

“They (AQAP) seized the headquarters of the General Security Camp, the building of Civil Status, and two state-owned banks of Al-Ahli and the Agricultural Cooperative Credit Bank,” he said, adding that they also seized several privately-owned companies.

He also affirmed that fighters of AQAP are now controlling almost the whole city of Zinjibar and setting up their own checkpoints at all three entrances of the city. Continue Reading →