Category Archives: al-Qaeda

Afghan Minister: Officials Assisting Taliban

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There’s some top-notch investigation. They also discovered that water is wet and fire is hot.

clouseau

 CBS NEWS      Afghan Interior Minister Muhammad Hanif Atmar on Sunday blamed government officials for assisting militant forces, as more than 78 civilians and policemen were killed and more than 172 wounded as a result of 126 incidents last week.

Talking to the media, Atmar claimed the attacks were planned and supported outside of Afghanistan’s borders. Some government officials were complicit in such strikes, he said, without giving further information.

He added that the fatal assault in which 176 fighters were killed and another 36 wounded, suggested a 70 percent surge in violence in 25 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

Militant funding and weather changes were among the principal factors fuelling the unrest, argued the minister, who identified drug money and extortionist tactics as the Taliban’s key income sources.

Atmar said the fighters received more than 70 percent of their funds from international terrorist organizations and apparently non-military outfits based in Muslim countries.

However, he stopped short of naming the countries where he believes extremist groups backing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan were active.

Last week, Atmar said, police recovered 190 improvised explosive devices used in roadside bomb attacks and 111 pieces of heavy and light weapons in different parts of the war-torn country.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujaid told CBS News that the increase in Taliban activity is the result of pubic support; Mujaid said Afghans are fed up with “so-called U.S. and NATO-adopted corrupt regime and Americans’ democracy.”

“We Taliban are getting funds but not from individuals or organizations,” he said. “It’s donations from Afghan and the Muslim world.”

Murder most foul in Yemen

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It would seem from this report that the women in question were killed in a separate location than the other murder victims. One may assume from this that their deaths were preceded by torture and rape as is the Islamic custom when dealing with Infidel women.

Yemen

FOX NEWS

9 Abducted Foreigners, Including 3 Children, Found Dead in Yemen

  SAN’A, Yemen —  Nine missing foreigners in Yemen have all turned up dead, a Yemeni official said Monday, apparently executed by their kidnappers in the impoverished nation in the Arabian peninsula.The nine foreigners, including seven German nationals, a Briton and a South Korean, disappeared last week while on a picnic in the restive northern Saada region of Yemen.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, announced the discovery of the remaining six bodies Monday after three others had been found mutilated earlier in the day.Yemeni authorities said the group included a German doctor, his wife and their three children, as well as a Briton and his South Korean wife and two other German nationals. They were all working in a hospital in Saada, the state news agency said.

Yemen, the poorest nation in the Middle East, is home to restive tribes, a Shiite rebellion, as well as a branch of Al Qaeda which operates in its remote regions and has often targeted foreigners as well as the U.S. embassy.

Shepherds roaming the area found the the remains of three of the women in the mountainous northern Saada province near the town of el-Nashour, known as a hideout for Al Qaeda militants, the official said.

 South Korea’s Foreign Ministry identified their national by her family name, Eom, and said she is a 34-year-old aid worker in Yemen. Continue Reading →

UK’s #4 Dispaches: From Jail to Jihad. Radicalization in UK jails

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From the good people who brought us Hidden Mosque. It would seem some in the British Media have an eye open after all.

Link: JailToJihad

H/T KitmanTV and Jdamn

U.S. Lawmaker Says Obama Administration Ordered FBI to Read Rights to Detainees

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FOX NEWS  A senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee is accusing the Obama administration of quietly ordering the FBI to start reading Miranda rights to suspected terrorists at U.S. military detention facilities in Afghanistan.

The move is reportedly creating chaos in the field among the CIA, FBI and military personnel, according to Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich. The soldiers, especially, he says, are frustrated that giving high value detainees Miranda rights — the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney — is impeding their ability to pursue intelligence on the battlefield, according to a story first reported by the Weekly Standard.

“What I found was lots of confusion and very frustrated people on the front lines who are trying to, well, make Afghanistan successful for the United States and its allies,” said Rogers, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent who served in the U.S. Army, just returned from Afghanistan and a visit to Bagram Air Base, where he said the rights are being read. Continue Reading →

Al Qaeda Commander Strapped for Cash, Asks Turkish Muslims to Send Money

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They then asked if anyone had George Galloways home phone number.

I’m sure Turkey will respond generously

CAIRO  —  Al Qaeda’s top commander in Afghanistan urged Turkish Muslims in a new audio message Wednesday to send money to militants fighting coalition troops in the country, saying they are low on funds.

Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed said many militants in Afghanistan are unable to fight because they lack the necessary equipment.

“And we, here in Afghanistan, are needy of money,” said al-Yazeed. “And the reason for the weakness of the operations here is the inadequacy of equipment.”

The authenticity of the audio message could not be verified, but it appeared on Web sites often used by Al Qaeda.

Experts believe Islamic militants in Afghanistan receive most of their funding from wealthy donors and charities in the oil-rich Gulf and from the illegal drug trade inside the country.

The U.S. has tried to crack down on those funding sources by urging Gulf governments to better police the flows of money and by engaging in counter-narcotic operations inside Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama plans to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan this year in an effort to reverse the momentum of Al Qaeda and Taliban militants

Russia losing the Islamist war in Dagestan

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From a Russian News source:

(Please click here for video of Dagestan capitol city)

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Daghestan’s interior minister shot dead in south Russia

Hat tip Jdamn:

MAKHACHKALA, June 5 (RIA Novosti) – The interior minister of the southern Russian republic of Daghestan was assassinated on Friday afternoon while at a wedding reception in the capital, Makhachkala.

Lt. Gen. Adilgerei Magomedtagirov, 52, was wounded in the heart and died in hospital without regaining consciousness, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

Preliminary reports said Magomedtagirov was shot when a sniper opened fire from the rooftop of a neighboring building at him and several other high-level officials as they walked out of the restaurant at approximately 1:00 pm [10:00 GMT].

Meanwhile, a source in the Interior Ministry said there could have been the second sniper who fired from a building on the opposite side of the street. The source said that Magomedtagirov’s bodyguards returned fire.

Several Interior Ministry officials were hospitalized after the incident, including the head of the anti-tax crime department, Abduldzhapar Magomedov, the father of the bride.

Abdurazak Abakarov, head of logistics at the ministry, also died in hospital while four other members of the group have undergone surgery and are said to be in a serious condition. One man was discharged after receiving treatment.

Security in Makhachkala has been tightened following the incident. Daghestan has seen a rise in violence linked both to militants based in neighboring Chechnya and local criminal groups. Continue Reading →

Canadian hunger striker being force fed in U.S. prison

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Stewart Bell, National Post 

Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, of St. Catharine's, Ont. in a photo was taken at Niagara Falls in April, 2002, just before he went to the U.S. to cooperate with the FBI.
Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, of St. Catharine’s, Ont. in a photo was taken at Niagara Falls in April, 2002, just before he went to the U.S. to cooperate with the FBI.

A Canadian serving a life sentence in the United States for terrorism is being force-fed through the nose after going on a hunger strike, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Mohammed Mansour Jabarah has refused to eat since mid-April and prison officials are allegedly pumping food into his stomach using a tube inserted in his nose.

The convicted al-Qaeda terrorist is protesting restrictions on his mail, his lawyer said, but his father said Jabarah and other Muslim inmates also want to pray together.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons declined to comment for privacy reasons. Prison officials can intervene when a hunger striker’s life is at risk but the force-feeding of inmates is controversial.

“They shove a tube up your nose down into your throat,” said Kenneth Paul, the lawyer who represented Jabarah at his trial in New York. “It’s like torture.” Continue Reading →

Article on funeral for GI killed by Muslim terrorist in Arkansaw missing key information

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Why is this man not given full military honors for a soldier killed in combat?

Funeral held for GI shot at recruiting center

Recruiters Shot

By Jon Gambrell – The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jun 8, 2009 17:40:23 EDT

CONWAY, Ark. — A white granite headstone will mark the grave of an Arkansas soldier shot to death outside a recruiting center. His family will decide whether the tombstone says Pvt. William Andrew Long was the first soldier to die at the hands of a terrorist since Sept. 11, 2001.

Mourners gathered Monday to remember Long, shot to death a week earlier outside a military recruiting center. A convert to Islam is charged with capital murder, and according to Little Rock police, targeted Army personnel “because of what they had done to Muslims in the past.”

Caretakers laid Long’s silver casket to rest alongside a Navy veteran of World War II, but how to chisel the private’s gravemarker will remain up to his parents — while federal prosecutors decide whether to press terrorism charges against his killer.

It appears Long was the first service member to die in the U.S. as a result of a terrorist attack since 9/11. Although others have perished during wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defense Department and a count by The Associated Press lists no domestic terror victims’ death in the more than seven years since.

“As bad as it is, people understand when a soldier is killed in combat in a war zone like Iraq or Afghanistan,” Gov. Mike Beebe said outside Harlan Park Baptist Church, where family held a funeral Monday for Long. “It’s a little different — shock I guess is the best way to say it — when one is killed right here at home; targeted because he had a uniform on.”

Daris Long, the private’s father, previously said he believed his son was a casualty of war. Long and his wife, Janet, will have the final say on what is etched into their son’s tombstone at the Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery in North Little Rock, said cemetery director Mitch Shelnut.

“It’s a unique situation,” Shelnut said.

At the funeral Monday morning, about 200 people sat as mourners remembered the 23-year-old, who lay in an open flag-draped coffin at the front of the sanctuary. Pastor John Harrington described him as sharp and gifted man with an infectious smile.

Long, known to his family as Andy, sought the right path for himself on his own, Harrington said. Long elected to serve in the Army like his brother, joining a family tradition of military service that extends back to his great-grandfather, the pastor said.

I “believe Andy found what he was seeking when he became a soldier,” Harrington said.

Long was due to ship out Monday to South Korea. During the service, Daris Long read a letter he’d planned to give to his son before his deployment.

Choking up at times, Long told his son to learn his skills quickly, as the chance remained that North Korea could invade South Korea.

“Your day only ends when you’ve done your duty,” the father said, tears in his eyes.

He placed the letter in the casket. His son was to have deployed on what turned out to be the day of his funeral.

William Long’s sister, Vanessa Rice, said she spent time with her brother the day before he was killed. They floated on the upper portion of the Buffalo National River in north Arkansas.

Rice said her brother made her pick between skydiving and the float trip.

“I told him I had to pass on that” skydiving, she said, laughing as she cried.

A procession of motorcycles led the hearse carrying Long’s body to the North Little Rock cemetery. There, Army Chaplain Jeremy Miller urged those there to cast aside thoughts of revenge, as God will have the “ultimate judgment.”

Miller also said Long, who was outside smoking a cigarette with Pvt. Quinton I. Ezeagwula at the time of the shooting, saved the lives of others inside the center. Ezeagwula was wounded, but survived.

“If he hadn’t been standing in the spot, things could have been worse,” Miller said.

In the distance, practice rifle fire could be heard from a nearby National Guard base.

Police arrested Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 23, of Little Rock shortly after the shooting. Muhammad faces state charges of capital murder in Long’s death and 16 counts of committing a terroristic act by shooting a rifle in a crowded place. Federal prosecutors have yet to say whether they’ll seek additional charges against Muhammad.

Muhammad, who could be executed if convicted, pleaded not guilty to the charges. Little Rock District Judge Alice Lightle issued a gag order in his case Monday, after a prosecutor complained about Muhammad’s lawyer talking about how his client was tortured while imprisoned at a prison in Yemen. Yemeni officials denied the claim.

New Mexico, Bubonic plague, Al Queda

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Two stories, probably unrelated but I felt I should point these two events out as if I thought of it someone else will and you may as well read it here and decide for yourself if it has any meaning. The first, a story from NM where two people have died of the Bubonic plague. Plague is not unheard of in the US. In fact, plague appears in a few spots around the world, including Algeria, where the second story comes from. An Al-Queda cell in Algeria last year is rumoured to have weaponized the plague for use as a terrorist bio WMD. That something like forty Al-Queda members died at the same time of the Black Plague is not a rumour but confirmed fact. That Al-Queda was weaponizing the plague is not confirmed but not denied. The connection between these two events I leave up to you.

death_black_plague_street_scene

From FOX News:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —  An 8-year-old New Mexico boy has died and his 10-year-old sister was hospitalized after both contracted bubonic plague, the first recorded human plague cases in the nation so far this year.

New Mexico health officials did not immediately say Thursday how the brother and sister contracted the infectious disease, but they are conducting an investigation at the family’s residence to determine if there is any risk to other people.

Plague is generally transmitted to humans through the bites of infected fleas, but also can be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals, including rodents, rabbits and pets.

Symptoms of the bubonic form of the plague in humans include fever, chills, headaches, vomiting, diarrhea and swollen lymph nodes in the groin, armpit or neck areas. Pneumonic plague, which is an infection of the lungs, can include severe cough, difficulty breathing and bloody sputum.

The Health Department, citing privacy concerns, would not release the name of the siblings or give a location for their home, other than saying it was in Santa Fe County. Spokeswoman Deborah Busemeyer said the boy died in the last couple of days but she declined to be more specific.

Fleas collected from the area are being sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing. Health workers also canvassed the neighborhood to tell other residents that plague had been confirmed in the area.

The CDC says an average of 10 to 15 persons contract the plague each year in the United States. Modern antibiotics are an effective treatment.

——————————- Stories below go from earliest to latest. I have only put a paragraph or two of each here, you may want to click each link and read the articles in full.

Eeyore

http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=4822

For the ‘maybe there is a god’ file an Al Queda training base is hit with bubonic plague. forty die and many more give themselves up as martyrdom suddenly didn’t seem nearly as good as it did before they got sick. Apparently even the fear of waterboarding is nothing compared to the rapid painful death of the black plague.

http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=4850

UPDATE Jan 21st 2009

According to stratfor:

Algeria is one of the many areas where plague occurs naturally, and the country experiences periodic outbreaks of the disease. In 2003, there was an outbreak of plague in Algeria’s Oran province. In that outbreak, there were 11 confirmed and seven suspected cases of plague. All the cases in that episode were bubonic, indicating it was likely spread by fleas.

That said, it is possible that AQIM members were experimenting with plague as a weapon, and plague could be employed on a limited scale by infecting some suicide operatives with pneumonic plague and then sending them around to hopefully cough or sneeze on victims, or perhaps to release some infected fleas against a target area. However, either scenario is unlikely to produce mass casualties. Y. pestis might be effectively delivered against a smaller number of people. The early symptoms of pneumonic plague can be mistaken for the flu, and if the victims do not seek immediate medical attention the disease can be fatal.

http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=4932

Al-Qaeda and The Plague
by Robert Maginnis
01/23/2009

The report that some forty al-Qaeda terrorists died after the bubonic plague swept through their Algerian training camp has been treated with some glee in the media. But that schadenfreude may be misplaced. One question being investigated is whether the North African fanatics fell victim to the naturally-occurring pathogen or the possibility the group mistakenly released the killer bug while brewing it for terror attacks. This incident provides the Obama administration the impetus to assess whether our nation is prepared for a bioterrorist attack.

The Algerian terrorist franchise, al-Qaeda in the land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is the largest al-Qaeda group outside the Middle East. AQIM has a deadly terrorism record and a declared intention to attack American targets which makes the potential bioterrorism threat credible but not a surprise for American experts.

http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=4996

Plague allegedly killed Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb terrorists Counter terrorism blog. org
By Olivier Guitta

On Monday, the Sun ran a story reporting that 40 terrorists from AQIM had died of plague in a terrorist training camp in Tizi Ouzou. Yesterday, Eli Lake from the Washington Times confirmed through one of his source in the U.S. intelligence community that an incident had taken place at a training camp that had to be shut down as a result. The deaths were not confirmed though.

A few observations at this point that give credence to this story, which has not received the coverage it deserves:
1- There has been a total black out from the Algerian media that has not even mentioned one line about this story.

Group Linked to Al Qaeda May Have Killed Minnesota Man Recruited in Somalia

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From the “serves you right” files comes this. At least this story will remind Americans that Muslim fanatics are actively recruiting U.S. citizens to join forces with those groups that are or support and collude with enemies of the state.

SOMALIA MILITIA

Mike Irvine FOX NEWS  A Minnesota man recruited to join an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group overseas may have been assassinated in Somalia by the very terrorist group he went there to help.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been investigating for several months at least 20 Somali-American men from the Minneapolis area who recently traveled to Somalia to train with the terrorist group al-Shabaab.

One of those men — 17-year-old Burhan Hassan — was killed in Mogadishu on Friday, his uncle, Osman Ahmed, told FOX News.

“Someone who claimed (to be) a member of al-Shabaab called Burhan’s mom Friday (afternoon) and said Burhan died Friday morning,” Ahmed said. “Burhan’s mom got shocked and (threw) the phone when she heard the story.”

“Al-Shabaab assassinated Burhan and shot (him in) the head,” the individual said, according to Ahmed.

A law enforcement official told FOX News on Sunday that one of the Somali-American men was recently killed in Somalia by artillery fire, but the official declined to release the man’s name. Continue Reading →

The Taliban will ‘never be defeated’

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An interesting read from  The Times Online

Colonel Imam’, the Pakistani agent who trained Mullah Omar and the warlords to fight the Soviets, says the US must negotiate with its enemiestaleban_522659a1 

Christina Lamb in Rawalpindi

THE Pakistani intelligence agent who trained Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, to fight has warned that Nato forces will never overpower their enemies in Afghanistan and should talk to them rather than sacrifice more lives.

“You can never win the war in Afghanistan,” said so-called “Colonel Imam”, who ran a training programme for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union’s occupation from 1979 to 1989, then helped to form the Taliban.

“I have worked with these people since the 1970s and I tell you they will never be defeated. Anyone who has come here has got stuck. The more you kill, the more they will expand.”

A tall, bearded figure, whose real name is Amir Sultan Tarar, he trained at Fort Bragg, the US army base where America’s special forces are stationed.

During the late 1970s and 1980s he controlled CIA-funded training camps for 95,000 Afghans and often accompanied his students on missions.

After the Soviet defeat and the collapse of communism, he was invited to the White House by the first President George Bush and was given a piece of the Berlin Wall with a brass plaque inscribed: “To the one who dealt the first blow.”

Today western intelligence agencies believe Imam is among a group of renegade officers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) who continued to help the Taliban after Pakistan turned against them following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Continue Reading →

Conservative Icon David Horowitz Praises Obama’s Cairo Speech

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Time for a little balance. I have read a lot of vitriolic attacks on Obama’s speech in Cairo all of which contained some truths and all of which where incendiary and some of which are so angry and over the top that they lose any actual value. Here is an analysis of Obama’s speech which makes a lot of sense. I plan to do my own sometime in the next few days as I have some thoughts on what the Obama methodology may be that need saying. for the moment, here at least is a possible analysis one can live with.

Eeyore for Vlad.

H/T GAR

By David Horowitz from Opposing Views.com

Yes he rewrote history, particularly the history of Muslim and Arab rapacity and bigotry, and he pandered a lot. But the pandering was in large part diplomacy and far less than conservatives were predicting, and far less than the pandering that characterized his previous attempts to mollify the Muslim world. He most pointedly did not apologize for American actions after 9/11, or seek to find excuses for the terrorist attacks in our policies and behavior before 9/11. On the contrary, he deliberately opened the wound of 9/11 to justify America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts…”

And Iraq! This is the war he had opposed as unnecessary and wrong, until now. In Cairo he did not apologize for “Bush’s war” or America’s “occupation.” He said that the Iraqis were better off without Saddam Hussein, which obviously could not have happened without the war – a truism, which for seven years Democrats failed to concede. Where Kennedy and Gore and Obama himself condemned America’s war as “unnecessary,” “illegal” “based on lies,” an aggression against a “fragile and unstable” country that could not defend itself, Obama, speaking in a Muslim capital, defended our presence in Iraq as driven by a desire to give Iraqis their freedom and their country. Bush could not have said it better.

As for the Middle East conflict, Obama began – began – by telling the Muslim world that the bond between Israel and the United States is unbreakable, and by opening the wound of the Jews that made a homeland for them a moral imperative: “America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.”

And then he characterized Holocaust deniers like Ahmadinejad as despicable, and identified them as a cause of war in the Middle East, and announced that he was going to Buchenwald the next day (clearly to underscore that fact): “Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews – is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.” Continue Reading →

Al Qaeda Beheads British Hostage in Mali

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I guarantee the last thing he heard as they sawed his head off was how great Allah is.edwin-dyer-feb-09mali1

from Fox News

A British man being held hostage in Mali has been executed, his captors said Wednesday, prompting strong condemnation from Britain of a “barbaric” act.

Edwin Dyer was one of four European tourists kidnapped on Jan. 22 as they returned from a music festival.

Messages posted on Islamic Web sites indicated that they were being held by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a 300-strong Islamist terror group that operates in the desert borderlands of Mali, Algeria, Niger and Mauritania.

Despite intense behind-the-scenes negotiations by British and local officials in Mali, the hostage-takers claimed that they had carried out their threat to kill Dyer.

Gordon Brown said there was “strong reason” to believe that this was true. “I utterly condemn this appalling and barbaric act of terrorism,” the Prime Minister said. “My thoughts are with Edwin Dyer’s family. I offer them the condolences of the whole country.”

Dyer, who had been working in Austria and spoke fluent German, was on vacation in West Africa with German travel operator Oase Reisen. He was abducted, along with Warens and Gabriela Greiner, a Swiss couple, and Marianne Petzold, a German woman, near the border with Niger after attending the “Festival in the Desert,” a celebration of music and nomad culture at Anderamboukane in Mali. Continue Reading →

Pajamas TV for June 1 well worth 9 mins 50 seconds of your time

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As usual PJTV does a good job of giving us the news the ah, news doesn’t seem to bother with anymore. I can’t help but notice that self funded groups like Pajamas Media and blogs seem to be the ones bringing important information to supposedly free nations while mass media news outlets are censored or self censor any news which may generate a complaint from groups which perpetrate the horrors being reported on. It’s also interesting that many groups are looking after their own security abandoning the notion that the state is using the tax money collected from us all for what it was intended. One begins to wonder of the writ of state itself is losing meaning as leftism and Islam subverts resources of the state leaving all basic requirements of civilization to the individual to fulfill. While the state achieves less and less of what the basic requirements are, the cost of operations continue to go up. There is no formula that can make this sustainable. I would watch the UK and parts of Scandinavia to see where this is likely to go.

‘If We Now Kill Schoolgirls, You Shouldn’t Be Surprised’ – Taliban

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WTF Muslims I would be surprised if you stopped. No one is surprised when you butcher women or pour acid on them.

From Der Spiegel:

By Matthias Gebauer and Shoib Najafizada in Kunduz, Afghanistan

Responding to threats from the Taliban, at least 10 girls’ schools have shut down near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Visiting the schools is a dangerous proposition — a trip leading directly into the heart of Islamist territory.

When the deputy director of Aqtash High School talks of the government, he isn’t referring to Hamid Karzai’s central government in Kabul. Nor does he refer to the provincial administration in Kunduz. “The Taliban are our government,” Bashir says. “They have taken over our region, their commanders give the orders here.”

PHOTO GALLERY: POWERLESS AGAINST THE TALIBAN

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (6 Photos)
Bashir is standing in a dusty classroom on the ground floor of his modern school, roughly half an hour from Kunduz by car. As recently as just one month ago, he says, some 400 girls were still coming to the school in three daily shifts to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Figures and formula are still scrawled across the blackboard.

But now, the girls’ classrooms have been left to deteriorate. The desks and chairs are still laid out in neat rows, but a film of dust has collected, and Bashir stands helplessly in the middle of the room. “Parents in Aqtash are afraid to send their girls to school anymore, after the death threats,” he explains. The school director speaks quietly and carefully. He too is afraid, and several of his teachers double as informants for the Taliban. The bearded fighters, he says, would certainly not like it if they knew a reporter was at the school in Aqtash. “You should leave quickly if you want to get out of Aqtash alive,” he whispers.

‘Apprehended and Killed’

Bashir’s warning is hardly an exaggeration. Not 30 minutes after our arrival in Aqtash, located 15 kilometers northeast of Kunduz just off the main north-south arterial, a group of a dozen Taliban fighters, armed with AK-47s, gathers in front of the blue arch at the entrance to the school. “What do you want here?” one of the fighters calls. “This is our region, the Islamic Emirate of North Afghanistan.” Continue Reading →