date:20050807

[osint] China and India bury hatchet

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"India's response to fear of encirclement is evident in recent summit
talks with the Chinese. First, it is boosting economic ties with
China. Second, it is emphasising relations with the US. Third, it is
stepping up ties with other east Asian countries to counter China's
growing commercial reach. New Delhi is in talks with Thailand and
Singapore to create free-trade agreements. It is also seeking to
counter China's close military relations with Burma by pushing its own
construction projects there. For many years China has run rings around
India diplomatically. Now India is learning how to play Mahjong."


http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1740862005

China and India bury hatchet

DAN MCDOUGALL
IN NEW DELHI

THE Nathu La pass pierces the heart of the Himalayas following the
precipitous path of the ancient silk route that for a millennium has
linked the two most populous nations on earth.

It was here in 1962, in the province of Sikkim, that a two-month war
broke out between India and China over their vast 3,500km border. A
subsequent ceasefire failed to resolve the conflict, and for the past
43 years both nations have bitterly contested their territories on the
roof of the world - until now.

In a significant gesture of cartographic diplomacy, the Chinese
premier, Wen Jiaboa, recently visited New Delhi and presented the
Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, with a beautifully crafted map
of the Himalayas that finally acknowledged Sikkim as a state of India.
New Delhi in turn, in a rehearsed display of compromise, reiterated
respect for China's sovereignty over Tibet and promised to prevent
anti-Chinese political activities by the community of Tibetan exiles
in India. Further border resolutions are in the pipeline.

The true symbolism of the accord was made clear by the public signing
of a groundbreaking Sino-Indian pact between the two nations which are
home to one-third of the world's total population. The 11 agreements
envisaged a galloping growth in bilateral trade, joint petroleum, gas
and space exploration, and additional agreements for co-operation
between China's 2.5-million-man People's Liberation Army and the
1.3-million-strong Indian Defence Force.

In short, Asia's oldest and most important relationship has undergone
a tectonic shift. Today the Nathu La pass is once again open for
business. But the re-establishment of meagre trade along the route is
merely symbolic, representing nothing more than yak butter, woollen
shawls and, most likely in these modern times, pirate DVDs.

On a global scale, of all the significant economies in the world,
China and India have been the fastest growing for the past decade, yet
barely a few years ago, trade between both nations was under $1bn per
year.

According to statistics released by the Indian government last week,
China has now come from nowhere to be New Delhi's second-biggest trade
partner after the US - trade between both countries in 2005 is
expected to exceed $13.6bn with both aiming for a trade turnover of
$20bn by 2008 and $30bn by 2010. India-US trade is currently worth
$19.8bn.

Premier Wen has declared that China and India will be the "two
pagodas" of economic power in the 21st century. He said: "Co-operation
is just like two pagodas - one hardware and one software," he said,
referring to India's computer software skills and China's growing
dominance in computer hardware. "Combined, we can take the leadership
position in the world. When that particular day comes, it will signify
the coming of the Asian Century of the IT industry."

Emulating China's economic success is obviously the aim among
reformists in India. Manmohan Singh has challenged Mumbai to
"transform" over the next five years so that "people will forget about
Shanghai".

While recent economic interest in the West has focused on the
blossoming relationship between Washington and New Delhi, according to
a recent study almost 2.5 million Indians visited China in 2004, and
although the majority were tourists, vast numbers of Indian
businessmen are also travelling to China to outsource contracts and
attract trade and inward investment from Shanghai and Beijing.

The world, and in particular America, is watching. A futuristic report
published last December by the US National Intelligence Council even
compared the parallel emergence of China and India to the rise of
Germany in the 19th century and America itself in the 20th century,
with potentially just as dramatic impacts on regional and world affairs.

"It's been about as good as it gets for India's foreign policy. This
is reflected in the growing economic ties with China and the US," said
Kalim Bahadur, head of Central Asian Studies at New Delhi's Jawaharlal
Nehru University.

So what exactly has changed? For a start the perception within the
Indian business community about China has undergone a dramatic
transformation over the past three to four years. The fears about the
Chinese dragon invading India with cheap manufac

[osint] Families Learn of Recruiters' Lists -- and How to Opt Out

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"Under the education bill signed by President Bush in 2002, military
recruiters must be granted the same access to high school facilities
as colleges and prospective employers â" from setting up informational
booths in the lunch room to handing out T-shirts to pique students'
interest. Additionally, schools must provide student contact
information, unless a parent has told the school not to. A school
district that fails to comply risks losing federal funding."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-recruit7aug07,1,6883654.story?coll=la-headlines-california

Families Learn of Recruiters' Lists -- and How to Opt Out
By Seema Mehta
Times Staff Writer

August 7, 2005

As the military struggles to meet recruitment goals, activists are
intensifying efforts to educate parents about how they can delete
their teenagers' names from directories that schools are required to
provide recruiters under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Their message is simple: All parents or students have to do is put in
writing that the school may not release their contact information â"
name, address and phone number â" to the military.

In Santa Ana, a group of women organized community meetings to alert
parents about opting out. In Sylmar, student protesters have mobilized
a delete-your-name campaign every time recruiters visit campus. And a
group of Pacific Palisades activists has visited more than a dozen
high schools throughout the region to distribute forms that students
can use to strike their names from lists provided to the armed forces.

"We're trying to inform people of their rights," said Erika Herran,
16, a member of the Young Political Activists at Sylmar High School.
"They definitely know more than before, but there's still a lot more
to be done."

Under the education bill signed by President Bush in 2002, military
recruiters must be granted the same access to high school facilities
as colleges and prospective employers â" from setting up informational
booths in the lunch room to handing out T-shirts to pique students'
interest. Additionally, schools must provide student contact
information, unless a parent has told the school not to. A school
district that fails to comply risks losing federal funding.

Recruiters use the lists to call students and visit them at home to
tout the benefits of enlisting in the military. Staff Sgt. Roberto
Sanchez, a Marine Corps recruiter in Los Angeles, said the lists were
essential to his job.

"It saves us a lot of time in finding the individuals," he said.
Without contact information, "everybody would be walking up and down
the streets" trying to find possible enlistees.

But critics say that releasing such personal information violates the
privacy of students and their parents â" most of whom, educators and
activists say, are unaware they can opt out.

"The whole purpose is to educate the parents and the students in our
country about what is going on in their campuses and what options are
available to protect themselves," said Deborah M. Vasquez, a member of
OC Mujeres en Accion, a Santa Ana woman's social justice organization
that holds community forums on what it calls the military's "predatory
practices."

Military officials said they were seeing more such activism, which
they call "counter-recruitment."

"We see that all the way up and down ... the Western states," said
Capt. Carolyn Nelson of the 12th Marine Corps District in San Diego,
which oversees West Coast recruitment efforts. "All individuals have a
right to know what's out there. We don't discourage it, we don't
encourage it. Everyone has freedom of speech."

The military pushed for the equal-access provision in the No Child
Left Behind Act to counter a growing hostility to recruiters at some
schools, especially on the coasts, and to deal with a shrinking pool
of potential enlistees, as more teenagers than ever â" two out of every
three, according to the Department of Labor â" go on to secondary
education. At some schools, it has long been a tradition to provide
student contact lists to colleges and, in some cases, employers.

Among the armed services, the Army is having the most difficult time
meeting its recruitment goals. The Army fell more than 7,800 soldiers
short of the nearly 55,000 enlistees it needed between Oct. 1 and June
30, while the Army National Guard fell more than 10,000 short of its
goal of nearly 45,000 enlistees, according to the Department of
Defense. The Army and Navy reserves and the Air National Guard also
fell short.

The Army's shortfall is due to an improving economy and the war in
Iraq â" not counter-recruitment efforts, said Douglas Smith, a
spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Ft. Knox, Ky.

"Is it hindering us? Not really," said Nelson, the Marine recruiter.

No one tracks how many students have opted out of the No Child Left
Behind Act's provision. But educators report, anecdotally, that they
are increasingly being asked to make an effort to inform parents and
stud

[osint] Al-Qaeda attack foiled

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"...Turkish security forces arrested the members of an al-Qaeda cell,
comprised mostly of Turkish citizens, in Alanya on Thursday.

They also found a boat docked in the harbour and loaded with 400kg of
TNT, which was to have been used against the Israeli tourists."

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1750403,00.html

Al-Qaeda attack foiled
07/08/2005 10:42 - (SA)

Tel Aviv - Turkish security forces prevented a mass attack the
al-Qaeda terrorist group intended launching against Israeli tourists
in the southern Turkish port of Alanya, the Israeli Yediot Aharanot
daily reported on Sunday.

According to the Israeli daily, Turkish security forces arrested the
members of an al-Qaeda cell, comprised mostly of Turkish citizens, in
Alanya on Thursday.

They also found a boat docked in the harbour and loaded with 400kg of
TNT, which was to have been used against the Israeli tourists.

Four Israeli cruise ships carrying 3 500 tourists to Alanya were
ordered to change their routes Friday and anchor in alternate
destinations following intelligence reports of a possible terror
attack at the port.

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[osint] Some Bombs Used in Iraq Are Made in Iran, U.S. Says

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"These are among the most sophisticated and most lethal devices we've
seen," said the senior officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because of the delicate intelligence reports describing the bombs.
"It's very serious."

Note that no one is willing to blame the Iranian government even
though they rule Iran with an iron hand and either are condoning
shipment of weapons reaching Iraq from Iran or are actively involved.
 But U.S. acknowledgement of that would require action against Iran
which could easily spiral into active combat involving Iranian forces
and the majority Shiite militias in Iraq against U.S. troops.

Meanwhile, the shaped charges keep coming...

David Bier

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/06/politics/06bomb.html?th&emc=th

August 6, 2005
Some Bombs Used in Iraq Are Made in Iran, U.S. Says
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 - Many of the new, more sophisticated roadside
bombs used to attack American and government forces in Iraq have been
designed in Iran and shipped in from there, United States military and
intelligence officials said Friday, raising the prospect of increased
foreign help for Iraqi insurgents.

American commanders say the deadlier bombs could become more common as
insurgent bomb makers learn the techniques to make the weapons
themselves in Iraq.

But just as troubling is that the spread of the new weapons seems to
suggest a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites
and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out - a possibility that the
commanders said they could make little sense of given the increasing
violence between the sects in Iraq.

Unlike the improvised explosive devices devised from Iraq's vast
stockpiles of missiles, artillery shells and other arms, the new
weapons are specially designed to destroy armored vehicles, military
bomb experts say. The bombs feature shaped charges, which penetrate
armor by focusing explosive power in a single direction and by firing
a metal projectile embedded in the device into the target at high
speed. The design is crude but effective if the vehicle's armor
plating is struck at the correct angle, the experts said.

Since they first began appearing about two months ago, some of these
devices have been seized, including one large shipment that was
captured last week in northeast Iraq coming from Iran. But one senior
military officer said "tens" of the devices had been smuggled in and
used against allied forces, killing or wounding several Americans
throughout Iraq in the past several weeks.

"These are among the most sophisticated and most lethal devices we've
seen," said the senior officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because of the delicate intelligence reports describing the bombs.
"It's very serious."

Pentagon and intelligence officials say that some shipments of the new
explosives have contained both components and fully manufactured
devices, and may have been spirited into Iraq along the porous Iranian
border by the Iranian-backed, anti-Israeli terrorist group Hezbollah,
or by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. American commanders say these bombs
closely matched those that Hezbollah has used against Israel.

"The devices we're seeing now have been machined," said a military
official who has access to classified reporting on the insurgents'
bomb-making abilities. "There is evidence of some sophistication."

American officials say they have no evidence that the Iranian
government is involved. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and
the new United States ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad,
complained publicly this week about the Tehran government's harmful
meddling in Iraqi affairs.

"There is movement across its borders of people and matÃ©riel used in
violent acts against Iraq," Mr. Khalilzad said Monday.

But some Middle East specialists discount any involvement by the
Iranian government or Hezbollah, saying it would be counter to their
interests to support Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgents, who have stepped up
their attacks against Iraqi Shiites. These specialists suggest that
the arms shipments are more likely the work of criminals, arms
traffickers or splinter insurgent groups.

"Iran's protÃ©gÃ©s are in control in Iraq right now, yet these weapons
are going to people fighting Iran's protÃ©gÃ©s," said Kenneth Katzman, a
Persian Gulf expert at the Congressional Research Service and a former
Middle East analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. "That makes
little sense to me."

One of Iran's top priorities is to get the United States out of Iraq,
which means keeping up the violence there. At the same time, that
clearly works against their other goal, which is to get religious
Shiites in power and keep them in power. Right now, popular support
for the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, which is
friendly toward Iran, is waning because it cannot deal effectively
with the Sunni-based insurgency.

And while American military intelligence officers believe Iranian
intelligence has a large pres

[osint] Inquiry Into Lobbyist Sputters After Demotion

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"In 2002, Abramoff was retained by the Superior Court in what was an
unusual arrangement for a public agency. The Times reported in May
that Abramoff was paid with a series of $9,000 checks funneled through
a Laguna Beach lawyer to disguise the lobbyist's role working for the
Guam court. No separate contract was authorized for Abramoff's work."

"The transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov.
18, 2002, according to a copy obtained by The Times. The subpoena
demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam
Superior Court, release records involving the lobbying contract,
including bills and payments.

A day later, the chief prosecutor, U.S. Atty. Frederick A. Black, who
had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news
release announced that Bush was replacing Black.

The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary
status, Black had held the acting U.S. attorney assignment for more
than a decade."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guam7aug07,1,5281180.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Inquiry Into Lobbyist Sputters After Demotion

The unusual financial deal between Jack Abramoff and officials in Guam
drew scrutiny.

By Walter F. Roche Jr.
Times Staff Writer

August 7, 2005

WASHINGTON â" A U.S. grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of
controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but
President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor and the
inquiry ended soon after.

The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal
grand jury in Washington that is investigating allegations that
Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.

In Guam, an American territory in the Pacific, investigators were
looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court
officials to lobby against a court revision bill then pending in the
U.S. Congress. The legislation, since approved, gave the Guam Supreme
Court authority over the Superior Court.

In 2002, Abramoff was retained by the Superior Court in what was an
unusual arrangement for a public agency. The Times reported in May
that Abramoff was paid with a series of $9,000 checks funneled through
a Laguna Beach lawyer to disguise the lobbyist's role working for the
Guam court. No separate contract was authorized for Abramoff's work.

Guam court officials have not explained the contractual arrangement.
At the time, Abramoff was a well-known lobbyist in the Pacific islands
because of his work for the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas
garment manufacturers, accused of employing workers in sweatshop
conditions.

Abramoff spokesman Andrew Blum said the lobbyist "has no recollection
of his being investigated in Guam in 2002. If he had been aware of an
investigation, he would have cooperated fully." Blum declined to
respond to detailed questions.

The transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov.
18, 2002, according to a copy obtained by The Times. The subpoena
demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam
Superior Court, release records involving the lobbying contract,
including bills and payments.

A day later, the chief prosecutor, U.S. Atty. Frederick A. Black, who
had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news
release announced that Bush was replacing Black.

The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary
status, Black had held the acting U.S. attorney assignment for more
than a decade.

The acting U.S. attorney was a controversial official in Guam. At the
time he was removed, Black was directing a long-term investigation
into allegations of public corruption in the administration of
then-Gov. Carl Gutierrez. The inquiry produced numerous indictments,
including some of the governor's political associates and top aides.

Black also arranged for a security review in the aftermath of Sept. 11
that was seen as a potential threat to loose immigration rules favored
by local business leaders. In fact, the study ordered by Black
eventually cited substantial security risks in Guam and the Northern
Marianas.

Abramoff, who then represented the Commonwealth of the Northern
Mariana Islands, alerted his clients in a memo about the expected
report and warned: "It will require some major action from the Hill
and a press attack to get this back in the bottle."

The lobbyist also wrote that he and his aides expected to meet in the
near future with Justice Department officials, according to Abramoff
billing documents released this year by the Marianas government.

A Justice Department spokesman previously dismissed Abramoff's
references to meetings with high level department officials as "a lot
of bluster to impress a client."

Abramoff also sought expanded lobbying business with the Pacific
island governments.

A lawyer for Gutierrez discussed hiring Abramoff to represent Guam's
territorial government in 2002 before the grand jury inquiry began.
The discussion

[osint] ISLAMIST TERRORISM IN THE SAHEL: FACT OF FICTION?

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"There are enough indications, from a security perspective, to justify
caution and greater Western involvement. However, the Sahel is not a
hotbed of terrorist activity. A misconceived and heavy handed approach
could tip the scale the wrong way; serious, balanced, and long-term
engagement with the four countries should keep the region peaceful. An
effective counter-terrorism policy there needs to address the threat
in the broadest terms, with more development than military aid and
greater U.S.-European collaboration." 

ISLAMIST TERRORISM IN THE SAHEL: FACT OF FICTION?

âº http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3347&f=1
âº International Crisis Group

Jul 27 2005 âº Mar 31. The Sahel, a vast region bordering the Sahara
Desert and including the countries of Mali, Niger, Chad and
Mauritania, is increasingly referred to by the U.S. military as "the
new front in the war on terrorism". There are enough indications, from
a security perspective, to justify caution and greater Western
involvement. However, the Sahel is not a hotbed of terrorist activity.
A misconceived and heavy handed approach could tip the scale the wrong
way; serious, balanced, and long-term engagement with the four
countries should keep the region peaceful. An effective
counter-terrorism policy there needs to address the threat in the
broadest terms, with more development than military aid and greater
U.S.-European collaboration. 
There are disparate strands of information out of which a number of
observers, including the U.S. military, have read the potential threat
of violent Islamist activity in the four Sahelian countries covered by
the Americans' Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI). There is some danger in
this, but in this region, few things are ex-actly what they seem at
first glance. Mauritania, which calls itself an Islamic republic,
harshly suppresses Islamist activities of any kind, while Mali, a star
pupil of 1990s neo-liberal democratisation, runs the great-est risk of
any West African country other than Nigeria of violent Islamist
activity. Those who believe pov-erty breeds religious fanaticism will
be disappointed in Niger, the world's second poorest country, whose
government has maintained its tradition of tolerant Sufi Islam by
holding to an unambiguous line on sepa-ration of religion and the state. 
The prospects for growth in Islamist activity in the region -- up to
and including terrorism -- are delicately balanced. Muslim populations
in West Africa, as elsewhere, express increasing opposition to
Western, especially U.S., policy in the Middle East, and there has
been a parallel increase in fundamentalist prose-lytisation. However,
these developments should not be overestimated. Fundamentalist Islam
has been present in the Sahel for over 60 years without being linked
to anti-Western violence. The Algerian Salafi Group for Preaching and
Combat (GSPC), which lost 43 militants in a battle with Chad's army in
2004 after being chased across borders by PSI-trained troops, has been
seriously weakened in Algeria and Mali by the combined efforts of
Algerian and Sahelian armed forces.
The U.S. military is a new factor in this delicate balance. Its
operations in the four countries are orches-trated by the European
Command (EUCOM) headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. In the absence of
Con-gressional willingness to fund a serious engagement by other parts
of the government, the Pentagon has become a major player by
emphasising the prospect of terrorism, though military planners
themselves recognise the inherent dangers in a purely military
counter-terrorism program. 
With the U.S. heavily committed in other parts of the world, however,
Washington is unlikely to devote substantial non-military resources to
the Sahel soon, even though Africa is slowly gaining recognition --
not least due to West Africa's oil -- as an area of strategic interest
to the West. The resultant equation is laden with risks, including
turning the small number of arrested clerics and militants into
martyrs, thus giving ammunition to local anti-American or anti-Western
figures who claim the PSI (and the proposed, expanded Trans-Saharan
Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) still under consideration in the
U.S. gov-ernment) is part of a larger plan to render Muslim
populations servile; and cutting off smuggling networks that have
become the economic lifeblood of Saharan peoples whose livestock was
devastated by the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, without offering
economic alternatives. To avoid creating the kinds of problems the PSI
is meant to solve, it needs to be folded into a more balanced approach
to the region, one also in which Europeans and Americans work more
closely together.

Recommendations to the U.S. Government:

1. Establish a healthier balance between military and civilian
programs in the Sahel, including by:
(a) opening USAID offices in the capitals of Mauritania, Niger and Chad;
(b) tailoring significant development programs to nomadic populations
in n

[osint] WHEN A BRITON BLOWS UP A BRITON

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"Israel is the immediate suspect in any mass terror attack in the
world. Either it initiated the attack itself, as is commonly claimed
in the Arab media, or it knew in advance but did not prevent it, as in
the conspiracy theories that abounded after September 11, or its bad
behavior in the territories fed the suicidal urges of Arabs and
Muslims, as suggested by Blair and his fellow-Europeans."


WHEN A BRITON BLOWS UP A BRITON

âº Haaretz / by Aluf Benn
âº Intelligence Digest / by Glenmore Trenear-Harvey / [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Jul 28 2005 âº Jul 27. When Britons blow up other Britons in the
Underground, Prime Minister Tony Blair blames "critical issues in the
Middle East" that need to be "taken care of and sorted out" - and
everyone understands to whom he is referring. When scores of people
are killed in Sharm el-Sheikh, an Egyptian commentator blames the
Mossad. Could this be the same commentator who accused Israeli
intelligence of blowing up the twin towers?

Israel is the immediate suspect in any mass terror attack in the
world. Either it initiated the attack itself, as is commonly claimed
in the Arab media, or it knew in advance but did not prevent it, as in
the conspiracy theories that abounded after September 11, or its bad
behavior in the territories fed the suicidal urges of Arabs and
Muslims, as suggested by Blair and his fellow-Europeans.

So what if the perpetrators of the terror attacks in London grew up in
the British welfare state and never knew what a roadblock, an
occupation or a Jewish settlement is? The important thing is that it
is possible to export the blame to the Jewish state.

These reactions are bothersome. It is not pleasant to hear that your
country bears such responsibility for the spread of international
evil, and the knowledge that these assertions are utter lies is no
consolation. Nevertheless, it is sometimes difficult to take the
defamers to task when Israel itself insists on butting in. Israel's
longing to be a part of the West and the enlightened world, and to
link Palestinian terror to some "international conspiracy" instead of
seeing it as a local problem oversteps the bounds of common sense and
reason. Sometimes it is best to remain silent and let others take care
of their own problems.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom went to pay a condolence visit in
London this week. Before he departed for Britain he announced that he
would discuss "the terror attacks in London, Sharm and Israel" with
Blair, as if there was a connection between the explosions in the
Underground and the murder of the Kols near Kissufim or the firing of
Qassams. True, all of them were committed by Muslims, but so far no
deeper con-nection has been discovered.

After every terror attack abroad, reports are published to the effect
that the Mossad intelligence service had known something, had tracked
the perpetrators and had issued a warning that was ignored. 

Pre-sumably the public relations people at the Mossad encourage such
reports, in the belief that the image of its "long arm" and
omniscience will encourage foreign services to cooperate and exchange
information with their colleagues in Israel. The problem is that one
who insists on appearing like the supreme fighter of international
terror is liable to create unnecessary enemies for himself.

The height of absurdity was reached by the front-page headline in the
mass circulation daily Maariv last Friday. The head of Military
Intelligence, Major General Aharon Ze'evi Farkash, told the newspaper
about a plan he had submitted to the government wherein, in return for
suitable funding, within three years he would cause 70 percent of
international terror activity to be thwarted, assisting many
countries, "mainly in Europe." In that same "closed discussion,"
Farkash also said that Israel was not an Al Qaida target.

These remarks give rise to a number of questions: If Israel is not an
Al Qaida target, why should it make itself one? How does Farkash know
how to thwart "70 percent" of terror attacks, and not 69 percent or 82
percent? What does Military Intelligence know about Bin Laden and his
colleagues that is being kept from the CIA? And perhaps there is
something to accusations that Israel does not reveal everything to its
friends abroad?

Here is a possible explanation: the Farkash plan was published on the
eve of the discussion of the security budget. The Israel Defense
Forces are required to make cuts and the army has run out of threats:
Iraq is occupied, Syria has been abandoned, Iran is under
international care and the Palestinians are worn out by the intifada.

When the local market is at a low, it's time to turn to the
international market for Israeli abilities to identify and thwart
terror. If Israeli help isn't effective, at least there will be fat
budgets, trips abroad and a strengthened image. What is a tiny and
superfluous taunting of Bin Laden compared to all this?





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2005-08-07 Thread sentto-412809-58972-1123445057-archive=jab . org

WHEN A BRITON BLOWS UP A BRITON
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"Israel is the immediate suspect in any mass terror attack in the
world. Either it initiated the attack itself, as is commonly claimed
in the Arab media, or it knew in advance but did not prevent it, as in
the conspiracy theories that abounded after September 11, or its bad
behavior in the territories fed the suicidal urges of Arabs and
Muslims, as suggested by Blair and his fellow-Europeans."


WHEN A BRITON BLOWS UP A BRITON

=E2=96=BA Haaretz / by Aluf Benn
=E2=96=BA Intelligence Digest / by Glenmore Trenear-Harvey / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
.com

Jul 28 2005 =E2=96=BA Jul 27. When Britons blow up other Britons in the
Underground, Prime Minister Tony Blair blames "critical issues in the
Middle East" that need to be "taken care of and sorted out" - and
everyone understands to whom he is referring. When scores of people
are killed in Sharm el-Sheikh, an Egyptian commentator blames the
Mossad. Could this be the same commentator who accused Israeli
intelligence of blowing up the twin towers?

Israel is the immediate suspect in any mass terror attack in the
world. Either it initiated the attack itself, as is commonly claimed
in the Arab media, or it knew in advance but did not prevent it, as in
the conspiracy theories that abounded after September 11, or its bad
behavior in the territories fed the suicidal urges of Arabs and
Muslims, as suggested by Blair and his fellow-Europeans.

So what if the perpetrators of the terror attacks in London grew up in
the British welfare state and never knew what a roadblock, an
occupation or a Jewish settlement is? The important thing is that it
is possible to export the blame to the Jewish state.

These reactions are bothersome. It is not pleasant to hear that your
country bears such responsibility for the spread of international
evil, and the knowledge that these assertions are utter lies is no
consolation. Nevertheless, it is sometimes difficult to take the
defamers to task when Israel itself insists on butting in. Israel's
longing to be a part of the West and the enlightened world, and to
link Palestinian terror to some "international conspiracy" instead of
seeing it as a local problem oversteps the bounds of common sense and
reason. Sometimes it is best to remain silent and let others take care
of their own problems.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom went to pay a condolence visit in
London this week. Before he departed for Britain he announced that he
would discuss "the terror attacks in London, Sharm and Israel" with
Blair, as if there was a connection between the explosions in the
Underground and the murder of the Kols near Kissufim or the firing of
Qassams. True, all of them were committed by Muslims, but so far no
deeper con-nection has been discovered.

After every terror attack abroad, reports are published to the effect
that the Mossad intelligence service had known something, had tracked
the perpetrators and had issued a warning that was ignored.=20

Pre-sumably the public relations people at the Mossad encourage such
reports, in the belief that the image of its "long arm" and
omniscience will encourage foreign services to cooperate and exchange
information with their colleagues in Israel. The problem is that one
who insists on appearing like the supreme fighter of international
terror is liable to create unnecessary enemies for himself.

The height of absurdity was reached by the front-page headline in the
mass circulation daily Maariv last Friday. The head of Military
Intelligence, Major General Aharon Ze'evi Farkash, told the newspaper
about a plan he had submitted to the government wherein, in return for
suitable funding, within three years he would cause 70 percent of
international terror activity to be thwarted, assisting many
countries, "mainly in Europe." In that same "closed discussion,"
Farkash also said that Israel was not an Al Qaida target.

These remarks give rise to a number of questions: If Israel is not an
Al Qaida target, why should it make itself one? How does Farkash know
how to thwart "70 percent" of terror attacks, and not 69 percent or 82
percent? What does Military Intelligence know about Bin Laden and his
colleagues that is being kept from the CIA? And perhaps there is
something to accusations that Israel does not reveal everything to its
friends abroad?

Here

[osint] FBI TRANSLATION BACKLOG GROWS

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"... Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in a report.
"The FBI's collection of audio material continues to outpace its
ability to review and translate all that mate-rial," Fine said. His
findings were similar in a July 2004 audit, except that he said the
FBI now does a bet-ter job prioritizing its translation work. Fine
released his report at an FBI oversight hearing by the Senate
Judiciary Committee.
There were 707,742 hours of unreviewed recordings at the end of March,
a 50 percent increase over the start of 2004, Fine said. The bureau no
longer is running behind on intercepts relating to al-Qaida cases. "

FBI TRANSLATION BACKLOG GROWS

âº AP / by Mark Sherman
âº Intelligence Digest / by Glenmore Trenear-Harvey / [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Jul 28 2005 âº Jul 28. The FBI's backlog of untranslated audio
recordings from terrorism and espionage investigations grew markedly
in the past year, the Justice Department's internal watchdog said
Wednes-day.
The FBI is capturing and reviewing more conversations than ever in
languages associated with terrorists, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine
said in a report.
"The FBI's collection of audio material continues to outpace its
ability to review and translate all that mate-rial," Fine said. His
findings were similar in a July 2004 audit, except that he said the
FBI now does a bet-ter job prioritizing its translation work. Fine
released his report at an FBI oversight hearing by the Senate
Judiciary Committee.
There were 707,742 hours of unreviewed recordings at the end of March,
a 50 percent increase over the start of 2004, Fine said. The bureau no
longer is running behind on intercepts relating to al-Qaida cases.
The FBI said those backlogged recordings include hundreds of thousands
of hours of white noise and other unintelligible audio, conversations
in closed cases and mistakenly captured exchanges. But even by its own
measure, the FBI's counterterrorism audio backlog more than doubled,
Fine said.
FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying at the same hearing, said much
of the backlog is in obscure lan-guages for which translators are hard
to find. He told senators that the bureau is able "to promptly address
all of our highest priority counterterrorism intelligence, generally
within 24 hours."
On a different topic, Mueller was unusually specific in describing a
case to illustrate the need for adminis-trative subpoena power, a
provision of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act that is up for renewal.
It allows law enforcement to subpoena records without permission from
a judge or grand jury.
At a time when authorities were scrambling to pursue leads on the men
who set off bombs in the London mass transit system on July 7, it took
the FBI two days to obtain records from an American university on a
one-time chemistry student who may have had ties to the four
attackers, Mueller said.
While Mueller did not use any names, the situation he described is
similar to the case of Magdy el-Nashar, an Egyptian-born academic who
recently taught chemistry at Leeds University. He is believed to have
rented one of the homes authorities searched in Leeds, where some of
the attackers lived.
El-Nashar studied chemical engineering at North Carolina State
University in 2000.
"The person had expertise in chemistry that would enable the person to
construct the bombs," Mueller said. But when the FBI first approached
the university, officials declined to turn over records.
"We had to go back with a grand jury subpoena. Now in my mind we
should not in that circumstance ... have to show somebody that this
was an emergency," he said.
North Carolina State spokesman Keith Nichols said the university
needed a subpoena or court order to comply with a federal education
privacy law. Nichols said the FBI eventually served three subpoenas on
the university "and we provided all the remaining documents."
El-Nashar was detained in Egypt. But after several days of
questioning, the Egyptian government said he had no links to the
attacks or to al-Qaida.
Mueller's example did not persuade Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,
who said there would not be sufficient checks on the FBI if it could
issue subpoenas in intelligence cases on its own.

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[osint] THE MUSLIM MIND IS ON FIRE

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"I fear those naÃ¯ve Muslims who think that they are beating the West
have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to
war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.
In this new cold and hot war, car bombs and suicide bombers here and
there will be no match for the arsenal that those Westerners are
putting together - an arsenal of laws, intelligence pooling,
surveillance by satellites, armies of special forces and indeed,
allies inside the Arab world who are tired of having their lives
disrupted by demented so-called jihadis or those bearded preachers
who, under the guise of preaching, do little to teach and much to
ignite the fire, those who know little about Islam and nothing about
humanity."


THE MUSLIM MIND IS ON FIRE
âº http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050726-073844-6818r

âº The Middle East Times / by Youssef M. Ibrahim [a former Middle East
correspondent for The New York Times and energy editor of the Wall
Street Journal, is managing director of the Dubai-based Strategic
Energy Investment Group]
âº CCISS / by Martin Rudner / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 

Jul 29 2005 âº Jul 28. The world of Islam is on fire. Indeed, the
Muslim mind is on fire. Above all, the West is now ready to take both
of them on.

The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die
every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers,
not by US or British soldiers. In fact, fewer than ever US or British
soldiers are dying since the invasion more than two years ago.
Instead, we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying
without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life. If
this is jihad someone got his religious education completely upside down.

Palestine is on fire, too, with Palestinian armed groups fighting one
another - Hamas against Fatah and all against the Palestinian
Authority. All have rendered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
impotent and have diminished the world's respect and sympathy for
Palestinian sufferings.

A couple of weeks ago London was on fire as Pakistani and other
Muslims with British citizenship blew up tube stations in the name of
Islam. Al Qaeda in Europe or one of its franchises proclaimed proudly
the killing of 54 and wounding 700 innocent citizens was done to
"avenge Islam" and Muslims.

Madrid was on fire, too, last year, when Muslim jihadis blew up train
stations killing 160 people and wounding a few thousands.

The excuse in all the above cases was the war in Iraq, but let us not
forget that in September 2001, long before Iraq, Osama Bin Laden
proudly announced that he ordered the killing of some 3,000 in the
United States, in the name of avenging Islam. Let us not forget that
the killing began a long time before the inva-sion of Iraq.

Indeed, jihadis have been killing for a decade in the name of Islam.
They killed innocent tourists and na-tives in Morocco and Egypt, in
Africa, in Indonesia and in Yemen, all done in the name of Islam by
Mus-lims who say that they are better than all other Muslims. They
killed in India, in Thailand and are now talk-ing of killing in
Germany and Denmark and so on. There were attacks with bombs that
killed scores inside Shia and Sunni mosques, inside churches and
inside synagogues in Turkey and Tunisia, with Muslim preachers saying
that it is okay to kill Jews and Christians - the so called infidels.

Above all, it is the Muslim mind that is on fire.

The Muslim fundamentalist who attacked the Dutch film director Theo
Van Gogh in the Netherlands, stabbed him more than 23 times then cut
his throat. He recently proudly proclaimed at his trial: "I did it
because my religion - Islam - dictated it and I would do it again if
were free." Which preacher told this guy this is Islam? That preacher
should be in jail with him.

Do the cowardly jihadis who recruit suicide bombers really think that
they will force the US Army and Brit-ish troops out of Iraq by killing
hundreds of innocent Iraqis? US troops now have bases and operate in
Iraq but also from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain
and Oman.

The only accomplishment of jihadis is that now they have aroused the
great "Western Tiger". There was a time when the United States and
Europe welcomed Arab and Muslim immigrants, visitors and students,
with open arms. London even allowed all dissidents escaping their
countries to preach against those countries under the guise of
political refugees.

Well, that is all over now. Time has become for the big Western vengeance.

Visas for Arab and Muslim young men will be impossible to get for the
United States and Western Europe. Those working there will be expelled
if they are illegal, and harassed even if their papers are in order.
Airlines will have to right to refuse boarding to passengers if their
names even resemble names on a pro-hibited list on all flights heading
to Europe and the United States.

What is more important to remember is this: When the

[no subject]

2005-08-07 Thread sentto-412809-58969-1123444083-archive=jab . org

THE MUSLIM MIND IS ON FIRE
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"I fear those na=C3=AFve Muslims who think that they are beating the West
have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to
war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.
In this new cold and hot war, car bombs and suicide bombers here and
there will be no match for the arsenal that those Westerners are
putting together - an arsenal of laws, intelligence pooling,
surveillance by satellites, armies of special forces and indeed,
allies inside the Arab world who are tired of having their lives
disrupted by demented so-called jihadis or those bearded preachers
who, under the guise of preaching, do little to teach and much to
ignite the fire, those who know little about Islam and nothing about
humanity."


THE MUSLIM MIND IS ON FIRE
=E2=96=BA http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=3D20050726-073=
844-6818r

=E2=96=BA The Middle East Times / by Youssef M. Ibrahim [a former Middle Ea=
st
correspondent for The New York Times and energy editor of the Wall
Street Journal, is managing director of the Dubai-based Strategic
Energy Investment Group]
=E2=96=BA CCISS / by Martin Rudner / [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Jul 29 2005 =E2=96=BA Jul 28. The world of Islam is on fire. Indeed, the
Muslim mind is on fire. Above all, the West is now ready to take both
of them on.

The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die
every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers,
not by US or British soldiers. In fact, fewer than ever US or British
soldiers are dying since the invasion more than two years ago.
Instead, we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying
without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life. If
this is jihad someone got his religious education completely upside down.

Palestine is on fire, too, with Palestinian armed groups fighting one
another - Hamas against Fatah and all against the Palestinian
Authority. All have rendered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
impotent and have diminished the world's respect and sympathy for
Palestinian sufferings.

A couple of weeks ago London was on fire as Pakistani and other
Muslims with British citizenship blew up tube stations in the name of
Islam. Al Qaeda in Europe or one of its franchises proclaimed proudly
the killing of 54 and wounding 700 innocent citizens was done to
"avenge Islam" and Muslims.

Madrid was on fire, too, last year, when Muslim jihadis blew up train
stations killing 160 people and wounding a few thousands.

The excuse in all the above cases was the war in Iraq, but let us not
forget that in September 2001, long before Iraq, Osama Bin Laden
proudly announced that he ordered the killing of some 3,000 in the
United States, in the name of avenging Islam. Let us not forget that
the killing began a long time before the inva-sion of Iraq.

Indeed, jihadis have been killing for a decade in the name of Islam.
They killed innocent tourists and na-tives in Morocco and Egypt, in
Africa, in Indonesia and in Yemen, all done in the name of Islam by
Mus-lims who say that they are better than all other Muslims. They
killed in India, in Thailand and are now talk-ing of killing in
Germany and Denmark and so on. There were attacks with bombs that
killed scores inside Shia and Sunni mosques, inside churches and
inside synagogues in Turkey and Tunisia, with Muslim preachers saying
that it is okay to kill Jews and Christians - the so called infidels.

Above all, it is the Muslim mind that is on fire.

The Muslim fundamentalist who attacked the Dutch film director Theo
Van Gogh in the Netherlands, stabbed him more than 23 times then cut
his throat. He recently proudly proclaimed at his trial: "I did it
because my religion - Islam - dictated it and I would do it again if
were free." Which preacher told this guy this is Islam? That preacher
should be in jail with him.

Do the cowardly jihadis who recruit suicide bombers really think that
they will force the US Army and Brit-ish troops out of Iraq by killing
hundreds of innocent Iraqis? US troops now have bases and operate in
Iraq but also from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain
and Oman.

The only accomplishment of jihadis is that now they have aroused the
great "Western Tiger". There was a time when the United States and
Europ

[osint] THE JIHADIST MOVEMENT AFTER LONDON

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"...the attacks in London suggest that a new generation of
Salafi-Jihadists is emerging which do not belong to any recognizable
networks and are not necessarily rooted in specific countries. There
are two contentions here: first, unlike the earlier generation of
Salafi-Jihadists, many of the new generation of terrorists may not
have the extensive experience of fighting in Algeria, Chechnya,
Afghanistan or Bosnia; second, the attacks on London present further
evidence that it is the Salafi-Jihadist movement, rather than
organiza-tions such as al-Qaeda, which draws upon a slightly different
network of support, that constitutes the cur-rent threat in Europe."

"...it is further argued here that the newly-emergent terrorist
networks are neither organized nor inspired by al-Qaeda." 

THE JIHADIST MOVEMENT AFTER LONDON

âº http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369754
âº Terrorism Monitor, Jamestown / by Cerwyn Moore, Murad Al-Shishani

Jul 29 2005 âº Jul 28. Few events have provoked such contradictory
assessments as this month's bomb attacks in London. Until recently,
the majority of research on terrorism since 9/11 has focused on
militants who may have had experience fighting in Afghanistan, thus
linking them directly to al-Qaeda. But, the attacks in London suggest
that a new generation of Salafi-Jihadists is emerging which do not
belong to any recognizable networks and are not necessarily rooted in
specific countries. There are two contentions here: first, unlike the
earlier generation of Salafi-Jihadists, many of the new generation of
terrorists may not have the extensive experience of fighting in
Algeria, Chechnya, Afghanistan or Bosnia; second, the attacks on
London present further evidence that it is the Salafi-Jihadist
movement, rather than organiza-tions such as al-Qaeda, which draws
upon a slightly different network of support, that constitutes the
cur-rent threat in Europe. Although many of these points have recently
been made in the Security, Terrorism and the UK Report (July 2005)
published through Chatham House, it is further argued here that the
newly-emergent terrorist networks are neither organized nor inspired
by al-Qaeda. [1]

A series of events, marked at the outset by the bomb attacks in
Casablanca, followed by the Madrid train attack and the detentions in
Spain thereafter, the murder of Theo van Gogh and finally the attacks
in Lon-don, highlight how a functional or even organizational reading
of the current terror threat is misleading.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that the series of attacks in Europe
and North Africa were largely over-shadowed by the reporting of the
war in Iraq. Thus, this instantaneous and wide-ranging coverage of the
attacks in London has added to the analytical confusion. Indeed, most
analysis on the UK attacks seems to be distorted by the assumption
that those involved in the incidents are part of homogenous groups and
linked to particular causes in specific countries.

Implications: Morocco and Madrid

In a series of arrests in Europe earlier this year, authorities are
reported to have detained a number of militant operatives. In April,
Spanish authorities detained twelve suspected terrorists including six
Moroc-cans, three of Syrian origin, an Egyptian, an Algerian and a
Palestinian. More recently in June, and again in Spain, at least a
further sixteen suspected extremists were detained. Significantly,
almost all of the de-tained suspects were described as extremists
rather than al-Qaeda operatives. Many of those detained appear to be
loosely linked to the Zarqawi network, which automatically
differentiates them from a genera-tion of recognized al-Qaeda leaders
such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

Analyzing the events in London in this context indicates a number of
issues and two of these are high-lighted here; on the one hand, those
in control of operations in Iraq and Europe, and those who have
or-chestrated the wave of attacks since the Casablanca bombings appear
to be linked to the Salafi-Jihadist movement, and on the other hand,
these incremental events and the jihadists associated with them are
drawing extensively upon links with North African militants. In the
case of the first attacks in London on July 7, even though the
attackers appear to be British-born Muslims (three of whom are of
Pakistani origin), some reports suggest that there are links between
handlers, clerics and bomb-makers associated with North African militants.

British newspapers reported that British "police had asked European
counterparts for information on Moroccan Mohammed al-Garbuzi, who
lived in Britain for 16 years before vanishing from his north London
home last year". [2] Initial reports also pointed to links with known
terrorists. As one newspaper report noted: "[F]ollowing detailed
examination of the timings of the explosions and early forensic
analysis of the four blast scenes... links between the terrorists and
the Continent are being activel

[no subject]

2005-08-07 Thread sentto-412809-58967-1123443032-archive=jab . org

PENTAGON CONFIRMS IRAN-CONTRA FIGURE IN SENIOR JOB
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"Earl destroyed and stole national security documents while working
for Lt. Col. Oliver North during a se-cret arms deal with Iran in
which the United States passed money from those weapons sales to
Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua, according to a report to Congress by
independent counsel Lawrence Walsh."

PENTAGON CONFIRMS IRAN-CONTRA FIGURE IN SENIOR JOB
=E2=96=BA Reuters
=E2=96=BA http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3D967927&C=3Damericas
=E2=96=BA Defense News
=E2=96=BA Dutch Campaign Against Arms Trade / by Frank Slijper /
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jul 29 2005 =E2=96=BA Jul 12. Robert Earl, who destroyed national security
documents during the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, is working as chief of
staff to acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, the Pen-tagon
said on July 11.
Earl destroyed and stole national security documents while working for
Lt. Col. Oliver North during a se-cret arms deal with Iran in which
the United States passed money from those weapons sales to Contra
guerrillas in Nicaragua, according to a report to Congress by
independent counsel Lawrence Walsh.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed Earl was a senior England
aide, a fact first reported in the Los Angeles Times on July 10. He
added, "I wonder why it's an issue now." "It was a long time ago,"
Whitman said. "He has served ably for many years in the department and
in industry." Earl was granted immunity for his testimony in the
Iran-Contra scandal and was never prosecuted.
John Ullyot, spokesman for Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John Warner, said the Penta-gon informed the committee about the
issue. He declined any further comment.=20
But congressional watchdog groups raised questions about the
administration's decision to give such a senior job to a person with a
record of tampering with the very kinds of classified national
security docu-ments he will now oversee. "That fact is that this is a
very sensitive and critical job," said Mary Boyle, spokeswoman for
Common Cause. "While it is true that people can pay their debts to
society ... this is a job that should be filled by someone who is
beyond reproach."






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[osint] THE GROWING LONDON-AFRICA CONNECTION

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"If people flee to southern Africa, it is because there is an
infrastructure there that can hide, move and protect them. One does
not wander into Zimbabwe and Zambia in the hope of finding those
things. The infrastructure exists as a safe harbor and arriving there
is not an accident. Zambia has surfaced in several other al Qaeda
cases, often with suspects tied to South Africa."

THE GROWING LONDON-AFRICA CONNECTION
=E2=96=BA http://www.douglasfarah.com/
=E2=96=BA Farah Douglas
Jul 30 2005 =E2=96=BA A prime suspect in the July 21 London bombing is
arrested in Zambia, after having earlier spent time in South Africa.
He reportedly entered Zambia through Zimbabwe. Two other suspects are
originally from East Africa. Seems like a disturbing pattern, again
highlighting the growing role of Sub-Saharan Africa in al Qaeda's
emphasis and infrastructure.
The passage of Haroon Rashid Aswat through Zimbabwe should be of
particular concern. The regime of Robert Mugabe is the successor to
the regime of Charles Taylor in Liberia, and is rapidly becoming a
functioning criminal enterprise that gives support and shelter to a
range of international criminal organiza-tions. If there is one state
that is ideal for harboring al Qaeda, like Liberia before it, it is
Zimbabwe, for all the same reasons: the ability of the regime to
control entry and exist points, access to government perks such as
diplmatic passports, protection by the security forces, and the other
reasons failed states with authoritarian regimes attract these groups.
As in Liberia, it is a serious mistake to think Mugabe (or Taylor) has
any ideological or religious affinity with al Qaeda or anyone else.
They deal with al Qaeda for money, to get back at the outside world
(par-ticularly the United States) and because they can. One of the
major misunderstandings of the FBI and CIA in the Liberia case was
their thinking and telling me and others that a Taylor-al Qaeda
convergence was impossible because Taylor was a Christian. Perhaps in
the loosest possible way, but he was primarily about money, not
religion. I hope the same misanalysis is not being applied in Zimbabwe.
Another important point: If people flee to southern Africa, it is
because there is an infrastructure there that can hide, move and
protect them. One does not wander into Zimbabwe and Zambia in the hope
of finding those things. The infrastructure exists as a safe harbor
and arriving there is not an accident. Zambia has surfaced in several
other al Qaeda cases, often with suspects tied to South Africa.
Not too long ago, my good friend Bobby Block, the intrepid Wall Street
Journal correspondent in Southern Africa for many years, wrote about
al Qaeda in Southern Africa and South Africa, as well as ties to the
tanzanite trade in Tanzania. Guess what happened next? He was
denounced not only by South Africa, but by the same agencies in this
country that dismissed my work. Interesting how, a few years later it
is clear that, had those warnings been heeded, perhaps the
infrastructure in an abandoned continent would not have grown to the
point of presenting a national security threat to the United States
and Europe.
See also:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/25/AR200507250=
1801_pf.html

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2005-08-07 Thread sentto-412809-58965-1123442697-archive=jab . org

THE GROWING LONDON-AFRICA CONNECTION
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"If people flee to southern Africa, it is because there is an
infrastructure there that can hide, move and protect them. One does
not wander into Zimbabwe and Zambia in the hope of finding those
things. The infrastructure exists as a safe harbor and arriving there
is not an accident. Zambia has surfaced in several other al Qaeda
cases, often with suspects tied to South Africa."

THE GROWING LONDON-AFRICA CONNECTION
=E2=96=BA http://www.douglasfarah.com/
=E2=96=BA Farah Douglas
Jul 30 2005 =E2=96=BA A prime suspect in the July 21 London bombing is
arrested in Zambia, after having earlier spent time in South Africa.
He reportedly entered Zambia through Zimbabwe. Two other suspects are
originally from East Africa. Seems like a disturbing pattern, again
highlighting the growing role of Sub-Saharan Africa in al Qaeda's
emphasis and infrastructure.
The passage of Haroon Rashid Aswat through Zimbabwe should be of
particular concern. The regime of Robert Mugabe is the successor to
the regime of Charles Taylor in Liberia, and is rapidly becoming a
functioning criminal enterprise that gives support and shelter to a
range of international criminal organiza-tions. If there is one state
that is ideal for harboring al Qaeda, like Liberia before it, it is
Zimbabwe, for all the same reasons: the ability of the regime to
control entry and exist points, access to government perks such as
diplmatic passports, protection by the security forces, and the other
reasons failed states with authoritarian regimes attract these groups.
As in Liberia, it is a serious mistake to think Mugabe (or Taylor) has
any ideological or religious affinity with al Qaeda or anyone else.
They deal with al Qaeda for money, to get back at the outside world
(par-ticularly the United States) and because they can. One of the
major misunderstandings of the FBI and CIA in the Liberia case was
their thinking and telling me and others that a Taylor-al Qaeda
convergence was impossible because Taylor was a Christian. Perhaps in
the loosest possible way, but he was primarily about money, not
religion. I hope the same misanalysis is not being applied in Zimbabwe.
Another important point: If people flee to southern Africa, it is
because there is an infrastructure there that can hide, move and
protect them. One does not wander into Zimbabwe and Zambia in the hope
of finding those things. The infrastructure exists as a safe harbor
and arriving there is not an accident. Zambia has surfaced in several
other al Qaeda cases, often with suspects tied to South Africa.
Not too long ago, my good friend Bobby Block, the intrepid Wall Street
Journal correspondent in Southern Africa for many years, wrote about
al Qaeda in Southern Africa and South Africa, as well as ties to the
tanzanite trade in Tanzania. Guess what happened next? He was
denounced not only by South Africa, but by the same agencies in this
country that dismissed my work. Interesting how, a few years later it
is clear that, had those warnings been heeded, perhaps the
infrastructure in an abandoned continent would not have grown to the
point of presenting a national security threat to the United States
and Europe.
See also:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/25/AR200507250=
1801_pf.html






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[osint] IS YOUR PRINTER SPYING ON YOU?

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"No law regulates what sort of documents the Secret Service or any
other domestic or foreign government agency is permitted to request
for identification, not to mention how such a forensics tool could be
developed and implemented in printers in the first place. With no laws
on the books, there's nothing to stop the privacy violations this
technology enables," the EFF warns."

IS YOUR PRINTER SPYING ON YOU?

âº http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/29/printer_spy_fears/

âº The Register / by John Leyden

Jul 30 2005 âº Jul 29. Secret codes enbedded into pages printed by some
colour laser printers pose a risk to personal privacy, according to
the Electronic Frontier Fundation. The US privacy group warns the
ap-proach - ostensibly only designed to identify counterfeiters - has
become a tool for government surveil-lance, unchecked by laws to
prevent abuse.
"In the current political climate, it's not hard to imagine the
government using the ability to determine who may have printed what
document for purposes other than identifying counterfeiters," the EFF
said. The ACLU recently issued a report revealing that the FBI has
amassed more than 1,100 pages of documents on the organization since
2001, as well as documents concerning other non-violent groups,
including Greenpeace and United for Peace and Justice.
EFF notes that only the privacy policy of your printer manufacturers -
rather than any legislative controls - stop the Secret Service from
using printer codes to secretly trace the origin of non-currency
documents. "No law regulates what sort of documents the Secret Service
or any other domestic or foreign government agency is permitted to
request for identification, not to mention how such a forensics tool
could be developed and implemented in printers in the first place.
With no laws on the books, there's nothing to stop the privacy
violations this technology enables," the EFF warns.
All this sounds like the stuff of black helicopter conspiracy theory
but the EFF wants to flesh out its pre-liminary research by gathering
information about what printers are revealing and how. It's asking
consum-ers to get involved by sending in test sheets from colour laser
printers. In addition to documenting what printers are revealing, the
EFF is filing a FOIA request over the issue. These research efforts
are a neces-sary precursor to any legal challenge from the EFF and
ammunition for possible lobbying on legislation to protect consumer
privacy.

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[osint] The soldiers who took part in the surveillance operation that led to de Menezesâ

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"The soldiers who took part in the surveillance operation that led to
de Menezesâs death included men from a secret undercover unit formed
for operations in Northern Ireland, defence sources said. 
Known then as 14 Int or the Det, it is reported to have formed the
basis of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, the newly created
special forces unit stationed alongside the SAS at Hereford. 

COULD STOCKWELL âPOLICE OFFICERâ BE A SOLDIER?

London Bombs â" SAS Link

âº http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1715880,00.html

âº Times / by Michael Smith

Jul 31 2005 âº Jul 31. British special forces soldiers took part in the
operation that led to the shoot-to-kill death of an innocent Brazilian
electrician with no connection to the London bombings, defence sources
said last week. 
Jean Charles de Menezes was tailed by a surveillance team on July 22
as he caught a bus to Stockwell Underground station in south London.
He was shot eight times when he fled from his pursuers at the Tube
station. 
The Ministry of Defence admitted last week that the army provided
âtechnical assistanceâ to the surveil-lance operation but insisted the
soldiers concerned were ânot directly involvedâ in the shooting. 
Press photographs of members of the armed response team taken in the
immediate aftermath of the killing show at least one man carrying a
special forces weapon that is not issued to SO19, the Metropolitan
police firearms unit. 
The man, wearing civilian clothes with a blue cap marked âPoliceâ, was
carrying a specially modified Heck-ler & Koch G3K rifle with a
shortened barrel and a butt from a PSG-1 sniper rifle fitted to it, a
combination used by the SAS. 
Another man, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and trainers, was carrying a
Heckler & Koch G36C. Although this weapon is used on occasion by SO19
it appears to be fitted with a target illuminator purchased as an
âur-gent operational requirementâ for UK special forces involved in
the war on terror. 
The soldiers who took part in the surveillance operation that led to
de Menezesâs death included men from a secret undercover unit formed
for operations in Northern Ireland, defence sources said. 
Known then as 14 Int or the Det, it is reported to have formed the
basis of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, the newly created
special forces unit stationed alongside the SAS at Hereford. The men
include SAS soldiers serving on attachment and are part of a team of
around 50 UK special forces that has oper-ated in London since the
July 7 bombings in which 56 people died. 
Special forces counterterrorist experts have been regularly used to
support police at Heathrow since the September 11 attacks. They moved
into London a day after the July 7 bombings and have been support-ing
the police and gathering intelligence to help snare the suspects. 
Members of SO19 (technically known as CO19) are trained by SAS and SBS
instructors. One key tenet of that training is to ensure that a
suicide bomber is killed rather than wounded, which would allow them
to trigger a bomb. 
The use of multiple shots to the head is the modus operandi of the
special forces, whether from the SAS, the SBS or the undercover
intelligence operators used in the Stockwell operation. Over the past
30 years the SAS has developed a reputation for never allowing gunmen
to remain alive, an attitude shown most graphically during the 1980
Iranian hostages siege and the Gibraltar IRA killings eight years later. 
âIt is vital to strike fear into the minds of the terrorists,â one
former SAS officer said. âIn an ongoing situa-tion such as we have now
the fear must be directed to the fact that we are watching them and
will eventu-ally (get) them. They need to know that they cannot escape. 
âWe know they are happy to kill themselves but that doesnât mean they
are happy to be killed by others. As long as they evade the police
they will think they are in control but the minute they are
intercepted they lose control.â 
The Ministry of Defence insisted last week that the military
involvement was limited in the operation that led to de Menezesâs
death. âWe would describe it as technical assistance as part of a
police-led operation under police control,â a spokeswoman said. âIt is
a particular military capability that the police can draw on if
needed. It was a low-level involvement in support of a
police-controlled operation.â 
The Det is made up of the armyâs best urban surveillance operators
using skills honed in Belfast against republican and loyalist
terrorists. Its speciality has always been close target
reconnaissance: undercover work among civilians, observing terrorists
at close quarters, and carrying out covert searches of offices and
houses for information and weapons. The unit was very egalitarian when
it operated in Northern Ire-land. An operatorâs rank was always
regarded as less important than his or her capabilities; it was also
the only UK special forces unit to use women

[osint] U.S. OFFERS NORTH KOREA EVIDENCE THAT NUCLEAR SECRETS CAME FROM PAKISTANI'S NETW

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"In February, North Korea declared for the first time that it was a
nuclear weapons state. It said it had re-processed 8,000 fuel rods,
turning them into weapons fuel."
"There has long been a dispute about a second nuclear program, one the
United States alleges that North Korea began in the 1990's, when the
Yongbyon plant was "frozen" under a 1994 accord. That program, the
United States alleges, aims at producing enriched uranium, a process
easier to hide than producing plutonium. American officials, who first
told North Korea that they had evidence of the program in 2002, say
North Korea initially admitted to it."

U.S. OFFERS NORTH KOREA EVIDENCE THAT NUCLEAR SECRETS CAME FROM
PAKISTANI'S NETWORK
âº
www.nytimes.com/2005/07/29/politics/29korea.html?ex=1123473600&en=e3776ca50ab99628&ei=5070&emc=eta1

âº The New York Times / by David E Sanger and Jim Yardley

Jul 31 2005 âº Jul 28. In negotiations with North Korea this week, the
Bush administration has for the first time presented the country with
specific evidence behind American allegations that North Korea
secretly obtained uranium enrichment technology from a founder of
Pakistan's nuclear program, two senior ad-ministration officials said.
The decision to share the intelligence with North Korean negotiators,
the officials said, was part of an ef-fort to convince North Korea
that any discussions about disarmament must cover not only the nuclear
weapons program it has boasted about, but a second one that it now
denies exists.
Putting on the table the evidence that North Korea obtained technology
from the network built by Abdul Qadeer Khan is significant because it
is an effort to break an impasse over the scope of North Korea's
nuclear program.
American officials were reluctant to describe the North Korean
response, but one official said that when presented with the evidence
- chiefly the testimony of Mr. Khan - "they argue with us about it."
American officials have never made public the details of Mr. Khan's
statements to Pakistani officials, who have declined to make him
available for direct interrogation. But they have shared the
information widely with Asian allies, and elements of it have leaked
out, including Mr. Khan's assertion - doubted by several specialists
in the American intelligence community - that the North Koreans once
showed him what they said were three fully assembled nuclear weapons.
The two Bush administration officials declined to speak on the record,
citing the delicacy of both the intelligence and the current
negotiations. They would not describe how much detail had been given
to the North Koreans. The presentation came in the first two days of
talks in Beijing, which American officials said may stretch into next
week. On Thursday, American negotiators, led by Christopher R. Hill,
moved past generalities in talks with North Korea and focused on the
specifics of their dispute over the nuclear program.
Later, Mr. Hill said he hoped the talks had advanced enough so that
the six nations taking part could soon start drafting a statement that
would advance the disarmament process. The other participants are
China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
Mr. Hill said North Korea and the United States found some "common
understanding" in their meeting Thursday, but added that "a lot of
differences" remained.
"I want to caution people not to think we are coming to the end of
this," Mr. Hill told reporters.
North Korea has long admitted to turning spent plutonium fuel from its
nuclear reactors into bomb fuel. That program is centered at the
Yongbyon complex.
In February, North Korea declared for the first time that it was a
nuclear weapons state. It said it had re-processed 8,000 fuel rods,
turning them into weapons fuel. Specialists inside and outside the
government say that fuel could be used to produce six or more nuclear
weapons, but there is no independent evidence to confirm that the
weapons have been produced.
There has long been a dispute about a second nuclear program, one the
United States alleges that North Korea began in the 1990's, when the
Yongbyon plant was "frozen" under a 1994 accord. That program, the
United States alleges, aims at producing enriched uranium, a process
easier to hide than producing plutonium. American officials, who first
told North Korea that they had evidence of the program in 2002, say
North Korea initially admitted to it. Since then, North Korea has
denied the program's existence.
A senior administration official told reporters Thursday evening that
any agreement must include disman-tling both programs. But
intelligence officials have said they do not know where the uranium
program is.
"We don't want to be inspecting every tunnel where it might be
hidden," the senior official said. "They've got to give it up. That's
how the Libyans did it," he said, a reference to Libya's decision to
dismantle its program.
Mr. Hill has recently emphasized it is unlikely that this fourth round
of talks will produce a br

[osint] ITALY BANS ISLAMIC BURQAS

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"In the course of the investigation, it has been possible to identify
a dense network of individuals from the Eritrean and Ethiopian
communities in Italy, believed to have helped the fugitive cover his
tracks," Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told the Senate.
"We have before us a grave threat that has to be con-fronted with all
the means of prevention and contrast that we have."

ITALY BANS ISLAMIC BURQAS

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16110721%255E2703,00.html

âº The Australian / by Natasha Bita
Jul 31 2005 âº Aug 1. Italy has banned Islamic burqas under tough
terrorism laws that provide two-year jail terms and E2000 ($3200)
fines for anyone caught covering their face in a public place.
The counter-terrorism package, passed by Italy's parliament yesterday,
doubles the existing penalty for wearing a burqa or chador --
traditional robes worn by Muslim women to cover their faces -- or
full-faced helmets or balaclavas in public.
Police can extract DNA samples without a suspect's consent, detain
them for 24 hours without a lawyer present, and deport foreigners
suspected of terrorism under the new legislation. Soldiers involved in
counter-terrorism have been given the same stop-and-search powers.
The changes, approved in a rare show of bipartisanship, came as
Italian police arrested a fugitive hunted by British police over the
bungled bombing attempt in London on July 21.
"In the course of the investigation, it has been possible to identify
a dense network of individuals from the Eritrean and Ethiopian
communities in Italy, believed to have helped the fugitive cover his
tracks," Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told the Senate.
"We have before us a grave threat that has to be con-fronted with all
the means of prevention and contrast that we have." Italian media
yesterday reported that the suspected terrorist, named by British
police as Somali-born Hussain Osman, was Hamdi Adus Issac, 27, born in
Ethiopia and allegedly granted British citizenship using false Somali
documents.
Osman, who reportedly lived in Rome for several years and speaks
fluent Italian, is fighting Britain's ex-tradition request via a
European arrest warrant. He slipped through Britain's security dragnet
last week by catching a train from London's Waterloo station to Paris.
He then moved to Milan and Rome, where Italian police arrested him
during a raid on a relative's apartment. They had been tracking him by
monitoring his mobile phone.
Italy's biggest newspapers reported that Osman had admitted to his
Italian police interrogator that he had carried a bomb on to a train
in his backpack.
Italy's opposition leader, former European Commission president Romano
Prodi, yesterday pledged to withdraw Italy's 3000 troops from Iraq if
his centre-left coalition wins elections due by June next year.
"We will withdraw them as a occupying force because our job will be to
aid in the reconstruction of Iraq," he said.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi -- who has said Italy will
progressively withdraw its troops starting in Sep-tember -- accused
his rival of putting Italian soldiers' lives at risk by defining them
as "occupying".
"He's breaking Western solidarity, justifying and enticing attacks
against our troops," Mr Berlusconi said.
Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini accused Mr Prodi of exposing Italy to
a terrorist attack.

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[osint] WHISTLE-BLOWER FACES FBI PROBE

2005-08-07 Thread David Bier

"Mike Lynn, a former researcher at Internet Security Systems, or ISS,
said he was tipped off late Thursday night that the FBI was
investigating him for violating trade secrets belonging to his former
employer.
Lynn resigned from ISS Wednesday morning after his company and Cisco
threatened to sue him if he spoke at the Black Hat security conference
in Las Vegas about a serious vulnerability he found while
reverse-engineering the operating system in Cisco routers."

WHISTLE-BLOWER FACES FBI PROBE

âº
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,68356,00.html?tw=wn_story_mailer
âº Wired News / by Kim Zetter

Jul 29 2005 âº Jul 29. The FBI is investigating a computer security
researcher for criminal conduct after he revealed that critical
routers supporting the internet and many networks have a serious
software flaw that could allow someone to crash or take control of them.
Mike Lynn, a former researcher at Internet Security Systems, or ISS,
said he was tipped off late Thursday night that the FBI was
investigating him for violating trade secrets belonging to his former
employer.
Lynn resigned from ISS Wednesday morning after his company and Cisco
threatened to sue him if he spoke at the Black Hat security conference
in Las Vegas about a serious vulnerability he found while
reverse-engineering the operating system in Cisco routers. He said he
conducted the reverse-engineering at the request of his company, which
was concerned that Cisco wasn't being forthright about a recent fix it
had made to its operating system.
Lynn spoke anyway, discussing the flaw in Cisco IOS, the operating
system that runs on Cisco routers, which are responsible for
transferring data over much of the internet and private networks.
Although Lynn demonstrated for the audience what hackers could do to a
router if they exploited the flaw, he did not reveal technical details
that would allow anyone to exploit the bug without doing the same
research he did to discover it.
Both companies knew in advance about Lynn's plan to talk and
originally supported it. But at the last minute, the companies tried
to halt the presentation or force Lynn to allow Cisco representatives
to speak as well. They threatened Lynn with a lawsuit if he talked and
made good on that threat after his appearance, when they filed a
restraining order to prevent him from saying anything else about the flaw.
The company said the vulnerability was not new and that it had already
patched the problem in April and sent revised software to customers.
Lynn said, however, that Cisco did not tell customers exactly why the
software was revised or indicate that the update was a critical patch.
As a result, he said, system administrators didn't understand the
urgency of the situation. Cisco denied that the flaw was as critical
as Lynn said it was.
Prior to the talk, Cisco, with agreement from the conference
organizers, hired temporary workers to rip out pages from a conference
book that contained images of the slides from Lynn's presentation.
They also replaced the conference CD-ROM with a new disc that was
absent the presentation. This hasn't stopped people from obtaining the
presentation, however: A site has posted it (.zip) for people to download.
The news of the criminal investigation came just hours after Lynn
signed a settlement with Cisco and ISS releasing him from civil
liability in exchange for meeting several conditions. Lynn was to
provide a mirror image of all computer data he has and give it to a
third party for forensic analysis. This was likely to determine if he
had stolen proprietary information from ISS or Cisco or broken any
other laws. His research material on the vulnerability would then have
to be erased. Lynn also was prohibited from discussing the bug in the
future.
"I was really mad at ISS before and now I'm extremely disappointed,"
Lynn told Wired News. "At this point, they're just trying to milk it
for punitive damages. We already had a standing agreement, and now
they're trying to attack me in some other way." The FBI declined to
discuss the case. "Our policy is to not make any comment on anything
that is ongoing. That's not to confirm that something is, because I
really don't know," said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson. But Lynn's
lawyer, Jennifer Granick, confirmed that the FBI told her it was
investigating her client.
Granick said, however, that she thought the agency was simply
following through on a complaint it recei-ved when Cisco and ISS filed
their lawsuit against Lynn and that the investigation wasn't initiated
after her client reached his settlement with the companies. She didn't
know the nature of the complaint but said it was probably something to
do with intellectual property and that it most likely came from Cisco
or ISS.
"The investigation has to do with the presentation," she said, "but
what crime that could possibly be is un-known because they haven't
found any (evidence against him)."
She hadn't spoken with the U.S. attorney in charge of the
inve

[osint] The Right Time for An Islamic Reformation

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2005080501
483_pf.html

The Right Time for An Islamic Reformation

By Salman Rushdie
Sunday, August 7, 2005; B07

When Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, admitted
that "our own children" had perpetrated the July 7 London bombings, it was
the first time in my memory that a British Muslim had accepted his
community's responsibility for outrages committed by its members. Instead of
blaming U.S. foreign policy or "Islamophobia," Sacranie described the
bombings as a "profound challenge" for the Muslim community. However, this
is the same Sacranie who, in 1989, said that "Death is perhaps too easy" 
for the author of "The Satanic Verses." Tony Blair's decision to knight him
and treat him as the acceptable face of "moderate," "traditional" Islam is
either a sign of his government's penchant for religious appeasement or a
demonstration of how limited Blair's options really are.

Sacranie is a strong advocate of Blair's much-criticized new
religious-hatred bill, which will make it harder to criticize religion, and
he actually expects the new law to outlaw references to Islamic terrorism. 
He said as recently as Jan. 13, "There is no such thing as an Islamic
terrorist. This is deeply offensive. Saying Muslims are terrorists would be
covered [i.e., banned] by this provision." Two weeks later his organization
boycotted a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in London commemorating the
liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best
Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem.

The Sacranie case illustrates the weakness of the Blair government's
strategy of relying on traditional, essentially orthodox Muslims to help
eradicate Islamist radicalism. Traditional Islam is a broad church that
certainly includes millions of tolerant, civilized men and women but also
encompasses many whose views on women's rights are antediluvian, who think
of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little time for real freedom of
expression, who routinely express anti-Semitic views and who, in the case of
the Muslim diaspora, are -- it has to be said -- in many ways at odds with
the Christian, Hindu, non-believing or Jewish cultures among which they
live.

In Leeds, from which several of the London bombers came, many traditional
Muslims lead inward-turned lives of near-segregation from the wider
population. From such defensive, separated worlds some youngsters have
indefensibly stepped across a moral line and taken up their lethal
rucksacks.

The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in these
young men's objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the closed
communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in which young
men's alienations can easily deepen. What is needed is a move beyond
tradition -- nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts
of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the
jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the
traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.

It would be good to see governments and community leaders inside the Muslim
world as well as outside it throwing their weight behind this idea, because
creating and sustaining such a reform movement will require above all a new
educational impetus whose results may take a generation to be felt, a new
scholarship to replace the literalist diktats and narrow dogmatisms that
plague present-day Muslim thinking. It is high time, for starters, that
Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event
inside history, not supernaturally above it.

It should be a matter of intense interest to all Muslims that Islam is the
only religion whose origins were recorded historically and thus are grounded
not in legend but in fact. The Koran was revealed at a time of great change
in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic
culture to an urban patriarchal system. Muhammad, as an orphan, personally
suffered the difficulties of this transformation, and it is possible to read
the Koran as a plea for the old matriarchal values in the new patriarchal
world, a conservative plea that became revolutionary because of its appeal
to all those whom the new system disenfranchised, the poor, the powerless
and, yes, the orphans.

Muhammad was also a successful merchant and heard, on his travels, the
Nestorian Christians' desert versions of Bible stories that the Koran
mirrors closely (Christ, in the Koran, is born in an oasis, under a palm
tree). It ought to be fascinating to Muslims everywhere to see how deeply
their beloved book is a product of its place and time, and in how many ways
it reflects the Prophet's own experiences.

However, few Muslims have been permitted to study their religious book in
this way. The insistence that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated
word of God render

[osint] Leak needs investigation, says Beazley

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Leak-needs-investigation-says-Beazley
/2005/08/07/1123353196241.html?oneclick=true
Leak needs investigation, says Beazley
August 7, 2005 - 12:29PM

A leak to a newspaper tipping it off to a major intelligence probe into a
radical Muslim group should be investigated by Australia's inspector-general
of security, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has said.

The Fairfax group's Sun-Herald reported the federal government has ordered
an urgent investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
(ASIO) into the Sydney-based Hizb ut-Tahir group.

Banned in the United Kingdom, the group describes suicide bombers as
martyrs.

Islamic community leaders have already complained the group, also known as
the Party of (Islamic) Liberation, distributes anti-Western literature.

The paper reports the group will be banned in Australia if the ASIO report
finds it poses a threat to security or encourages terrorist behaviour.

But Labor says an inquiry of such sensitivity should never have been made
public.

Mr Beazley says the inspector-general of intelligence and security should
investigate the leak to the paper.

Advertisement"How can you conduct a sensible intelligence operation when you
tell the terrorists that you're coming? They can read newspapers as well,"
Mr Beazley told the Nine Network.

"This is a government seeking to protect itself by leaking top secret
investigations. If I was an ASIO agent out there I would feel very disturbed
about this and I'd feel somewhat vulnerable.

"I call now for the inspector-general of security to do an investigation of
that leak.

"If that truly is a top secret investigation going on now ... then it ought
to be a top secret investigation, not blasted across the front pages of our
newspapers."

Mr Beazley also said it was time the government got on with the job of
implementing practical measures to combat terrorism ahead of a summit with
the states to address the issue.

Better checks at airports, more scrutiny of containers being shipped to
Australia and a uniform national response system for all law enforcement
authorities across the country were needed.

"I got on a plane in Davenport last night, flew over the MCG to land in
Melbourne, and there was no check on my baggage, no metal detectors on my
leaving Davenport," he said.

"These are simple, practical measures and they're not being dealt with.

"(But) the most important law change we can put in place at this moment ...
would be making uniform across the country the character of the police
response to any determined emergency in relation to terrorism.

"We've got about half a dozen state regimes applying here."

He supported Prime Minister John Howard's moves to meet with Muslim leaders
ahead of next month's summit, however.

But he said the federal government needed to take financial responsibility
for any anti-terrorism measures.

"When I hear them speak, I want to hear one thing only and that is this: the
buck stops with us. We are doing our darndest to stop a terrorist attack
occurring in this country," he said.

"The states can't afford it. The commonwealth can."

C 2005 AAP

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[osint] UK: Intelligence chiefs warn Blair of 'UK insurgency'

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10339562
Intelligence chiefs warn Blair of 'UK insurgency'

07.08.05 5.00pm

By Raymond Whitaker and Francis Elliott

Intelligence chiefs are warning Tony Blair that Britain faces a full-blown
Islamist insurgency, sustained by thousands of young Muslim men with
military training now resident in the country.

The grim possibility that the two London attacks were not simply a sporadic
terror campaign is being discussed at the highest levels in Whitehall, the
centre of the British government.

Fears of a third strike remained high this weekend, based on concrete
evidence supplied by an intercepted text message and the interrogation of a
terror suspect being held outside Britain, say US reports.

As police and the security services work to prevent another cell murdering
civilians, attention is focusing on the pool of migrants to Britain from the
Horn of Africa and central Asia.

Intelligence service MI5 is working to an estimate that over 10,000 young
men from these regions can use light weapons and military explosives.

A well-connected source said there were more than 100,000 people in Britain
from "completely militarised" regions, including Somalia and its neighbours
in the Horn of Africa, and Afghanistan and territories bordering the
country.

A very high proportion were Muslim men of military age.

"Every one of them knows how to use an AK-47 [automatic rifle]," said the
source.

"About 10 per cent can strip and reassemble such a weapon blindfolded, and
probably a similar proportion have some knowledge of how to use military
explosives. That adds up to tens of thousands of men."

Even though the vast majority had come to Britain to escape the lawlessness
of their homelands, the source added, there remained an alarmingly large
pool of trained men who could be lured into violent action here.

This threat had been largely neglected while attention focused on
British-born militants who had been through training camps run by al Qaeda
in Afghanistan.

"There has been a debate on whether we are facing an insurgency or
terrorism," said the source, "and the verdict is on the side of an
insurgency."

Against this background, as many as 400 more armed police may be recruited
in London. Concern has been expressed in the wake of the massive anti-terror
operations that the police are being overstretched.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, is to recruit hundreds
more officers. He warned that his armed officers were suffering from fatigue
after weeks of round-the-clock duty.

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, has ordered a government-wide drive to
neutralise opposition within the Muslim community to his package of proposed
anti-terror measures.

- INDEPENDENT

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[osint] "Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations"

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

 
Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations By Steve Coll and Susan B.
Glasser Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, August 7, 2005; A01

In the snow-draped mountains near Jalalabad in November 2001, as the Taliban
collapsed and al Qaeda lost its Afghan sanctuary, Osama bin Laden biographer
Hamid Mir watched "every second al Qaeda member carrying a laptop computer
along with a Kalashnikov" as they prepared to scatter into hiding and exile.
On the screens were photographs of Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta.

Nearly four years later, al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla movement in
history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs,
in secret hideouts and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing
jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and
preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations
on the Internet.

Al Qaeda suicide bombers and ambush units in Iraq routinely depend on the
Web for training and tactical support, relying on the Internet's anonymity
and flexibility to operate with near impunity in cyberspace.
In Qatar, Egypt and Europe, cells affiliated with al Qaeda that have
recently carried out or seriously planned bombings have relied heavily on
the Internet.

Such cases have led Western intelligence agencies and outside terrorism
specialists to conclude that the "global jihad movement,"
sometimes led by al Qaeda fugitives but increasingly made up of diverse
"groups and ad hoc cells," has become a "Web-directed"
phenomenon, as a presentation for U.S. government terrorism analysts by
longtime State Department expert Dennis Pluchinsky put it. Hampered by the
nature of the Internet itself, the government has proven ineffective at
blocking or even hindering significantly this vast online presence.

Among other things, al Qaeda and its offshoots are building a massive and
dynamic online library of training materials -- some supported by experts
who answer questions on message boards or in chat rooms -- covering such
varied subjects as how to mix ricin poison, how to make a bomb from
commercial chemicals, how to pose as a fisherman and sneak through Syria
into Iraq, how to shoot at a U.S. soldier, and how to navigate by the stars
while running through a night-shrouded desert.
These materials are cascading across the Web in Arabic, Urdu, Pashto and
other first languages of jihadist volunteers.

The Saudi Arabian branch of al Qaeda launched an online magazine in
2004 that exhorted potential recruits to use the Internet: "Oh Mujahid
brother, in order to join the great training camps you don't have to travel
to other lands," declared the inaugural issue of Muaskar al-Battar, or Camp
of the Sword. "Alone, in your home or with a group of your brothers, you too
can begin to execute the training program."

"Biological Weapons" was the stark title of a 15-page Arabic language
document posted two months ago on the Web site of al Qaeda fugitive leader
Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, one of the jihadist movement's most important
propagandists, often referred to by the nom de guerre Abu Musab Suri. His
document described "how the pneumonic plague could be made into a biological
weapon," if a small supply of the virus could be acquired, according to a
translation by Rebecca Givner-Forbes, an analyst at the Terrorism Research
Center, an Arlington firm with U.S.
government clients. Nasar's guide drew on U.S. and Japanese biological
weapons programs from the World War II era and showed "how to inject carrier
animals, like rats, with the virus and how to extract microbes from infected
blood . . . and how to dry them so that they can be used with an aerosol
delivery system."

Jihadists seek to overcome in cyberspace specific obstacles they face from
armies and police forces in the physical world. In planning attacks, radical
operatives are often at risk when they congregate at a mosque or cross a
border with false documents. They are safer working on the Web. Al Qaeda and
its offshoots "have understood that both time and space have in many ways
been conquered by the Internet,"
said John Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School who coined
the term "netwar" more than a decade ago.

Al Qaeda's innovation on the Web "erodes the ability of our security
services to hit them when they're most vulnerable, when they're moving,"
said Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA unit that tracked bin Laden.
"It used to be they had to go to Sudan, they had to go to Yemen, they had to
go to Afghanistan to train," he added. Now, even when such travel is
necessary, an al Qaeda operative "no longer has to carry anything that's
incriminating. He doesn't need his schematics, he doesn't need his
blueprints, he doesn't need formulas."
Everything is posted on the Web or "can be sent ahead by encrypted Internet,
and it gets lost in the billions of messages that are out there."

The number of active jihadist-related Web sites has metastasized sin

[osint] California:State boosts domestic intelligence

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

 

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_2921461?rss
State boosts domestic intelligence
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

Security officials say California slowly is turning the corner on domestic
intelligence, creating more useful information, moving it faster and
focusing it on international terrorism.
"There's been a sea change in this," said Gary Winuk, chief deputy of the
governor's Office of Homeland Security.

In the wake of the Madrid and London bombings, security experts say
intelligence and public awareness are the main defense again the likeliest
terrorist attacks.

Yet for almost four years, California wandered in a kind of
homeland-security- intelligence wilderness, its analysts regurgitating
largely useless information and preoccupied by gangs, drugs and left-leaning
activist groups, all easier intelligence targets than terrorists.

Police and sheriffs were convinced that federal agents were holding back
important information, and they set off on their own domestic intelligence
operations.

Turf wars broke out as the California Highway Patrol and this year, more
secretively, the California National Guard made power plays for their own
intel centers and control of some of the most sensitive information on
people, industry and government.

But that chaotic period seems to be ending, and law-enforcement officials
say they are getting more valuable information faster.

"I think the speed and quality of the information we receive has improved
and on the local level it's more filtered with more of a nexus to
terrorism," said Commander Maria White of the BART police.

"It's absolutely different and better than it was a few years ago," said
Michael Grossman, commander of the Office of Homeland Security at the Los
Angeles Sheriff's Department. "Mainly, the people who are doing it are
getting to know one another."

In the last 18 months, the California Highway Patrol, the Office of Homeland
Security and the California Department of Justice agreed to revamp the
state's immediate post-Sept. 11 intelligence creation, known as the
California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, into a more serious, joint
operation called the State Terror Threat Assessment Center, or STTAC, where
analysts from as many as 15 local, state and federal agencies work together.

"That isn't to say there aren't jurisdictional rivalries and everyone always
plays well in the sandbox," said Winuk, "but there's a lot of improvement."

Analysts stopped monitoring domestic political groups, as they did before
and in the combat stages of the Iraq invasion, and focused on international
terrorism.

Today, instead of filling the e-mail in-boxes of police chiefs with rehashed
news reports on drugs, gangs and crime, STTAC analysts try to pass along
terrorist tradecraft - indicators of terror financing, of target
surveillance, attack planning.

They pass along the latest designs for improvised explosive devices, the
roadside bombs found in Iraq.

They try to gauge the activities of Hezbollah in California. They study the
tactics in the Beslan school takeover, the Madrid train bombing and the Bali
nightclub bombing.
If a police officer finds someone photographing a chemical plant in early
morning hours, the officer now can run the photographer's name through the
STTAC, which keeps copies of the multiple terror watch lists. A report on
the incident is filed, and if the center's "Predictive Indicators Analysis
Unit" sees a spike in photographing of chemical plants, the center may
recommend higher security patrols.

California law-enforcement authorities say federal intelligence agencies and
the Department of Homeland Security also are doing a better job of removing
classified sources and spying methods from intelligence and sharing it
nationwide.

The state still has a hodgepodge of different intelligence entities, from
intel analysts in local police and sheriff's offices to regional Terror
Early Warning Groups to Los Angeles' Terror Threat Assessment Center to the
FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces to California's STTAC.

In September, local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies in Los
Angeles plan on putting all their anti-terror intelligence analysts under
one roof, the state's first true regional intelligence center.

"Having these fusion centers will allow us to take all these intelligence
boutiques and turn them into a mall," said John Miller, chief of
counter-terrorism and criminal intelligence for the LAPD. "It will start
connecting dots and turn out a product that makes sense."

Still, in more than a dozen interviews with people engaged in
homeland-security intelligence, most of them in California, no one expressed
confidence in being able to detect an attack beforehand and thwart it. None
was willing to offer measures or indicators of success.

When close friends and family said they didn't know the July bombers in
London had turned to violence, California intelligence officers say they
offer no promises that they can thwart an attack here.

"

[osint] Iran: Revolution, Unrealistic

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853001/site/newsweek/
Iran: Revolution, Unrealistic
Newsweek

Aug. 15, 2005 issue - A classified analysis by the U.S. intelligence
community warned top Bush administration officials last spring that the
theocratic reign of Iranian mullahs could be entrenched for years to come,
NEWSWEEK has learned. This National Intelligence Estimate, issued by a unit
of the new National Intelligence Director's office, reported that Iran is
not in a prerevolutionary state and that near-term regime change appeared
unlikely, say U.S. officials familiar with the report who asked not to be
named because of the sensitivity of the material. (The National Intelligence
Council, a committee of top analysts, produced the document at the same time
that it sent out a second classified report about Iran's nuclear program.)
The analysts also noted that Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who
was Tehran's mayor and a dark-horse presidential candidate at the time of
the NIE's publication, might have a surprisingly strong following among
poorer Iranians because of his reputation as an anticorruption campaigner.
The office of intel czar John Negroponte had no comment on the top-secret
document.

In briefings with reporters, intel officials have stressed recently that
they want contrary views to be taken into account when analyses are
presented to policymakers. But a White House spokesperson says President
George W. Bush had no intention of backing away from comments he made about
Iran just before its June election. In his June statement, Bush hinted at
regime change, telling the Iranian people, "As you stand for your own
liberty, the people of America stand with you." In July, Bush publicly
mentioned the case of an imprisoned Iranian journalist, Akbar Ganji, who has
become a cause celebre for U.S. neoconservatives who have been agitating for
more U.S. support of efforts to overthrow the mullahs; Sen. Rick Santorum
even introduced a bill to offer U.S. funding for exiles and
Iranian-Americans seeking peaceful regime change.

-Mark Hosenball

C 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

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[osint] All 7 Men Alive as Russian Submarine Is Raised

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

 

All 7 Men Alive as Russian Submarine Is Raised By C. J. CHIVERS and
CHRISTOPHER DREW A small Russian submarine was freed on Sunday from its
undersea entanglement by an unmanned British rescue vehicle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/international/europe/07russia.html?th&emc=
th

By C. J. CHIVERS and CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: August 7, 2005
MOSCOW, Sunday, Aug. 7 - A small Russian submarine was freed on Sunday from
its undersea entanglement off the Far East coast by an unmanned British
rescue vehicle that cut away the nets that had ensnared it. 

Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press
Vyacheslav Milashevsky, commander of the rescued submarine, talked to
reporters after his ordeal. 

In an image taken from television, members of the submarine crew and
rescuers are seen on the vessel's hull shortly after it surfaced. 
All seven crew members were alive and rushed aboard a Russian surface
vessel, where they were being reviewed by a medical team, Russian news
agencies and the United States Navy said.

The vessel rose to the surface before 4:30 p.m. local time, ending the
crew's ordeal in the cold and darkness more than 600 feet below the surface
off the Kamchatka Peninsula. There remained uncertainties about how the
submersible, a 44-foot rescue vessel, became disabled, and what exactly
immobilized it. 

Throughout the rescue operation, Russian officers spoke of cables and hoses
that had held the craft fast, while Western naval officials said fishing
nets had trapped it. The disentanglement and ascent of the small submarine,
trapped since Thursday, was an utterly different outcome from Russia's last
prominent submarine crisis, in 2000, when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank
after onboard explosions in shallow water in the Barents Sea. 

Russia resisted international assistance in that crisis and made a series of
false statements about its problems. Although many of the 118 crew members
survived the blasts and sinking, all ultimately died. Since then Russia has
participated in international undersea rescue exercises with Western
nations, and after the mishap on Thursday it quickly sought aid from
Britain, Japan and the United States.

But even as the small submarine rose to the Pacific surface, the rescue
underscored the persistent limits of Russia's Navy, which was unable to
muster either a second rescue vessel or the advanced divers or unmanned
vessels to free the trapped submarine on its own.

Its naval officers also issued a series of contradictory statements about
what had entrapped the vessel and often seemed uncertain how much air
remained onboard. 

The ascent ended a tense race against time, with British sailors operating
their unmanned vehicle, which had been hastily secured to a Russian ship and
had steamed for six hours from a nearby port to the scene. The unmanned
vessel, known as a Scorpio 45, then worked for several hours, trimming the
material that ensnared the submarine.

The Scorpio had to be briefly resurfaced after it developed a technical
problem, and then it descended again and freed the Russian vehicle within an
hour, according to Cmdr. Mark McDonald, a spokesman for the United States
Pacific Fleet. The vessel then quickly rose to the surface. 

Shortly before the snag developed, Commander McDonald said, the British
submersible had clipped one of possibly five sections of a discarded fishing
net that had fouled the propeller of the Russian submarine.

Commander McDonald also said British and American officials at the scene
indicated that it was just the fishing net that had ensnared the vessel, and
that it was not caught on the antenna and cables of an antisubmarine
surveillance system, as the Russians had announced.

Even before the British sailors set to work, Russian officials had said the
submarine's crew of seven men were alive. They had donned thermal suits and
huddled together in a single compartment, and were minimizing their
movements to conserve their remaining air.

Power had been all but shut down inside the sunken vessel, and its heater
had been turned off to save its dwindling energy reserves, rendering the
titanium-hulled craft a chilled, dark tube.

Two other Scorpio craft sent by the American Navy were still sitting on a
ship in port on the Kamchatka peninsula when the Russian submarine was
freed. Commander McDonald said Russian officials had been waiting for other
advanced American diving gear to arrive before setting out on the six-hour
voyage to the spot where the submarine was trapped.

The British reached the scene first in part because they had a shorter
flight to get their Scorpio to Russia. But it also took the Americans four
hours longer than expected Friday to load the Scorpios onto a cargo plane in
San Diego, with both the Air Force and the Navy citing each other for
contributing to the delay. 

Still, American officials said the rescue was a testament to the intense
efforts that had been made to increase cooperation among navies since the
Kursk sank. 



"The c

[osint] PAKISTAN: Intelligence agencies warn of terror attacks on 14th

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_7-8-2005_pg7_33
Intelligence agencies warn of terror attacks on 14th

ISLAMABAD: Intelligence agencies have unearthed terrorists and banned
militant organisations' plans to carry out terror attacks in major cities of
the country on Independence Day (August 14). Intelligence agencies on
Saturday submitted reports to the Interior Ministry, saying that activists
of banned militant and religious organisations had plans to carry out terror
attacks on the occasion of the country's independence day. Terrorists may
target Independence Day ceremonies, sources told Daily Times. Intelligence
agencies have also cautioned that there is a possibility of backlash from
banned outfits against raids on seminaries by law enforcement agencies,
sources said. The agencies have also warned of suicide attacks on
installations and key government figures in reaction to the government's
policies on Afghanistan and its support to the US, sources added. The
Interior Ministry has directed the authorities to cancel the leave of law
enforcement agencies' officials to maintain law and order on Independence
Day. Later, an emergency meeting was held to review the security situation
in the federal capital. Federal Capital Chief Commissioner Khalid Pervez
chaired the meeting, which was attended by Police Inspector General Iftikhar
Ahmed, Senior Superintendent of Police Sikandar Hayat and senior officials
of the district administration.

shahzad malik

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[osint] London's Politically-Correct Policing

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

August 6, 2005

The sensitivity threat

By MICHAEL COREN

The British police and security agencies seem to have responded very quickly
and, with one horrible exception, extremely efficiently to the recent
terrorist campaign in London.
But in spite of all this it seems that political correctness still finds a
way to break through and to make us all appear faintly ridiculous.
Police officers in southern England have been given instructions on how to
behave when entering the homes of Muslims suspected of having links to
criminal activities.
The instructions explain that "the Muslim community feels victimized and
suspicious of terrorist police operations and in the current climate a
search at a British Muslim household has the potential to become a critical
incident and come under intense scrutiny."
The point is well made and it is, of course, vital that in the struggle
against terrorism we remember that we fight to maintain freedom and respect.

More than this, any abuse of Muslims, apart from being intrinsically wrong,
would be exploited by extremists as an example of why Islam has to wage war
against the West and its values.
But sometimes we go just a little too far, and this case the "too far" is
reached to an absurd degree.
More than a dozen separate points are listed. In case any readers assume
this to be some sort of tasteless joke, be assured that it is in fact
serious:
"Rapid entry needs to be the last resort and raids into Muslim houses are
discouraged for a number of religious dignity reasons.
"Police should seek to avoid looking at unclad Muslim women and allow them
an opportunity to dress and cover their heads.
"For reasons of dignity, officers should seek to avoid entering occupied
bedrooms and bathrooms even before dawn.
"The use of police dogs will be considered serious desecration of the
premises.
"Advice should be sought before considering the use of cameras and
camcorders due to the risk of capturing individuals, especially women, in
inappropriate dress.
"Muslim prisoners should be allowed to take additional clothing to the
station.
"If people are praying at home officers should stand aside and not disrupt
the prayer.
"Officers should not take shoes into the houses, especially in areas that
might be kept pure for prayer purposes.
"In the current climate, the justification for pre-dawn raids on Muslim
houses needs to be clear and transparent.
"Non-Muslims are not allowed to touch holy books, Korans or religious
artifacts without permission."
So now, apparently any non-Muslim cop with shoes, a camera and a dog called
Rover is going to be severely out of luck.
Zafar Khan is Chair of the Council of Faiths in Luton in Bedfordshire, where
one of the alleged terrorists lived and where a car packed with explosives
was found. He welcomed the initiative.
"It's a question of being sensitive and informed and if that makes the
policing more effective and more sensitive, that has to be a good thing," he
said.
Quite so. Sensitivity is everything and who needs the Royal Marine commandos
when we can use Dr. Phil?
A police spokesman responded: "We take very seriously the culture
surrounding all faiths and feel it is important to respect those beliefs,
even while carrying out police business.
"We would like to reassure all communities that any current or perceived
tensions, which might be heightened as a result of recent events, will not
affect how police deal with Muslims or anyone else."
Sounds good, means nothing. Just another police bureaucrat speaking not for
frontline officers but for the politicians in charge.
All of which is extremely reassuring for us here in Canada. Because it
proves that we are not the only country in the world so obsessed with
appearing liberal, tolerant and understanding that we risk jeopardizing the
very security that makes these freedoms possible.

Accessed 6 Aug 2005,
http://torontosun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Coren_Michael/2005/08/06/1161335.
html

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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[osint] Inside the sect that loves terror

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

AN undercover investigation has caught leaders of a radical Islamic group
inciting young British Muslims to become terrorists and praising the Tube
bombers as "the fantastic four".
A Sunday Times reporter spent two months as a recruit inside the Saviour
Sect to reveal for the first time how the extremist group promotes hatred of
"non-believers" and encourages its followers to commit acts of violence
including suicide bombings.

The reporter witnessed one of the sect's leading figures, Sheikh Omar
Brooks, telling a young audience, including children, that it was the duty
of Muslims to be terrorists and boasting, just days before the July 7
attacks, that he wanted to die as a suicide bomber.

After the attacks that claimed 52 lives, another key figure, Zachariah,
justified them by saying that the victims were not "innocent" people because
they did not abide by strict Islamic laws. In the immediate aftermath the
sect's leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said: "For the past 48 hours I'm very
happy." Two weeks later he referred to the bombers as the "fantastic four".

The evidence compiled by The Sunday Times in hours of transcripts and tapes
will lend weight to moves, announced last week by Tony Blair, to proscribe
such organisations for providing a breeding ground for would-be terrorists.
The attorney-general's office said last night it would investigate the
recent comments by a number of Islamic radicals with a view to prosecution.

The Saviour Sect was established 10 months ago when its predecessor group
Al-Muhajiroun was disbanded after coming under close scrutiny by the
authorities. Its members meet in secret in halls, followers' homes and
parks. They are so opposed to the British state that they see it as their
duty to make no economic contribution to the nation. One member warned our
undercover reporter against getting a job because it would be contributing
to the kuffar (non-Muslim) system.

Instead, the young follower, Nasser, who receives £44 job seekers' allowance
a week, said it was permissible to "live off benefits", just as the prophet
Mohammed had lived off the state while attacking it at the same time. Even
paying car insurance was seen as supporting the system. "All the (Saviour
Sect) brothers drive without insurance," he said.

The reporter became a member of the sect three weeks before the July 7
bombings. From the start he was taught that it was his duty to destroy the
kuffar. Moderate Muslims who did not believe in the overthrow of the British
government and its replacement by an Islamic state were held in equal
disdain.

Within days of joining, he witnessed seven Saviour Sect members beating up a
member of the moderate Young Muslim Organisation in an East End street
because they believed he had insulted their version of Islam.

Last week Omar Brooks stirred controversy with televised comments, but they
were carefully chosen to avoid appearing to incite violence. On Saturday,
July 2 he had been more forthright.

Speaking to a group of teenagers and families, he declared it was imperative
for Muslims to "instil terror into the hearts of the kuffar" and added: "I
am a terrorist. As a Muslim of course I am a terrorist."

The 30-year-old, who claims to have had military training in Pakistan, said
he did not want to go to Allah while sleeping in his bed "like an old
woman". Instead: "I want to be blown into pieces with my hands in one place
and my feet in another."

In public interviews Bakri condemned the killing of all innocent civilians.
Later when he addressed his own followers he explained that he had in fact
been referring only to Muslims as only they were innocent: "Yes I condemn
killing any innocent people, but not any kuffar."

Yesterday Bakri said he had no connections to a group in east London but
said that he did attend prayers and preach to up to 15 people. He denied
using the words "fantastic four".

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1724541,00.html

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[osint] Convicted of Aiding Terrorist, Translator Prepares for Prison Cell, Still in Disbelief

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft



 

Typical NYTimes sob story.


 


Convicted of Aiding Terrorist, Translator Prepares for Prison Cell, Still in
Disbelief

By  
JULIA PRESTON
Published: August 7, 2005

Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic-language translator, has been practicing for life
in a prison cell. He closes himself into small spaces to meditate and combs
through his library for nonpolitical books he supposes his keepers will
allow him to read. 


But he still cannot quite believe that prison is where he is going. 


After working for nearly a decade as a translator for Lynne F. Stewart, a
New York defense lawyer, Mr. Yousry, 49, was convicted along with her on
Feb. 10 in Manhattan federal court of providing material aid to terrorism
and conspiring to deceive the government. Now free on bail and awaiting
sentencing, which is set for Sept. 30, he faces as much as 20 years behind
bars. 

Although months have passed since the verdict, Mr. Yousry remains shocked
and baffled by it. Throughout the grueling nine-month trial, Mr. Yousry and
his lawyers were convinced that he had a strong chance of acquittal. 

The charges hinged on Ms. Stewart's provocative legal strategy on behalf of
a convicted terrorist client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, in which she defied a
prison rule that restricted communications by releasing messages from him to
the international press and to his militant followers in Egypt. 

Mr. Yousry's lawyers, David Ruhnke and David Stern, showed in court that he
took no actions on his own to help the sheik politically and did his
translation work based on instructions he received from Ms. Stewart and
other lawyers for Mr. Abdel Rahman, a blind Muslim cleric who is serving a
life sentence in federal prison for conspiring to bomb landmarks in New York
City. 

Mr. Yousry's case seemed particularly solid, because unlike Ms. Stewart, he
never signed documents pledging to abide by prison regulations. Mr. Yousry's
lawyers specified that it was up to Ms. Stewart, as the lawyer, to see that
her staff complied with the rules. 

The prosecutors presented evidence that Mr. Yousry knew that Ms. Stewart was
at least bending the prison rules when she took messages from the sheik,
which had been translated by Mr. Yousry, out of jail. They argued that he
knew full well of the dangers of any communication between the virulently
anti-American sheik and his Egyptian followers.

Andrew Dember, an assistant United States attorney, assailed the defense
arguments as "nonsense!" in his closing summation. "He knew the
restrictions, what they consisted of, and he was aware of the fact that he
was doing wrong because of those restrictions. He knew full well that he was
bound by the restrictions himself." 

He added later, "Clearly, obviously, Ms. Stewart and Mr. Yousry know what
they're doing is improper, illegal, criminal." 

The jury agreed with the government, convicting Mr. Yousry on all three
counts he was facing. On Friday, the Justice Department gave its highest
award to the four prosecutors who tried the case.

"I still don't know what it is that I did that was even wrong, much less
illegal," said Mr. Yousry, alternately indignant and mournful, in an
interview in the Manhattan office of one of his lawyers, Mr. Stern. "I
followed a process that was designed by the lawyers. They said this is what
we're going to do, and I followed that. That's what lawyers do: They tell
you what's right and what's wrong legally.

"The fact that I now know that these lawyers were following a strategy that
the government didn't like, that makes me a criminal?" he asked.

What Mr. Yousry finds most confounding is that he was convicted of aiding
Mr. Abdel Rahman's fundamentalist Islamic cause even though the prosecutors
acknowledged that he was nonviolent, did not support the sheik's politics
and was not a practicing Muslim. 

In the courtroom Mr. Yousry was the quiet defendant, the one who attracted
the least public attention. Ms. Stewart, who is also out on bail, has
remained in the public eye as debate rages about her legal approach and as
she travels and speaks to raise support for her appeals. 

A third defendant, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a Staten Island postal worker and
paralegal aide for the sheik, faced the gravest terror charges and the most
startling government evidence: wiretaps of his home telephone that showed
him talking extensively with known terrorists in Egypt. He remains in prison
awaiting sentencing. 

Friends and colleagues describe Mr. Yousry, a mild-spoken man with a bushy
mustache and quick smile, as easygoing and not inclined to be militant about
much of anything. Born in Cairo, he served for five years in the Egyptian
armed forces before resigning and coming three decades ago to the United
States, where he became a naturalized American citizen. 

The only ties he maintained through the years with politics in Egypt were
throug

[osint] Rogue Guards tap spy center

2005-08-07 Thread Bruce Tefft

 

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_2921495?rss
Rogue Guards tap spy center
Secret unit, created without orders or budget, infiltrated state's
anti-terror operation Ian Hoffman and Sean Holstege, STAFF WRITERS

Soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the California National Guard
sent a captain with a top-secret clearance inside the state's civilian
anti-terror intelligence center, the first of several California guardsmen
to venture into the world of domestic intelligence analysis.
But last summer top Guard commander Maj. Gen. Thomas Eres had a grander
vision: He would create his own military "Information Synchronization
Center" to pull together intelligence from the military's classified network
and law-enforcement intelligence networks.

Guard documents described it as an intelligence outfit "on steroids,"
feeding up-to-the-minute threat information to senior Guard officers.

In a February memo, Eres said the information would be used in "preparation
of operations against threats directed against the United States, the State
of California, and their citizens and resources."

State Senate Budget Committee chairman Joe Dunn, the Ocean Grove Democrat
who is investigating the intelligence plans,said the Guard was stopped just
in time.

"I think what happened here is, if this unit and the involvement of the
California Military Department went unchecked for another 12 months they
would have been deep within surveillance activity on California citizens,"
Dunn said.

Eres had no orders from the Defense Department or approval from the state
Legislature, and he used money cloaked as pay for regular troops, Guard
insiders allege. As a state Senate investigation unfolds, the official line
is that Eres acted in relative isolation.

But new Guard documents show the military worked closely with the California
Anti-Terror Information Center from the beginning. With the tacit oversight
of Gov. Gray Davis' office and Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a growing
number of uniformed Guard officers worked side-by-side with state and local
law enforcement intelligence analysts.

"We do not and have not maintained a domestic surveillance unit with the
department, nor have done any surveillance of Californians as recently
alleged," said California National Guard spokesman Col. David Baldwin. "We
do not maintain illegal files on Californians or any other U.S. persons."

To his knowledge, repeated routine audits by the Army have found no
violations of any rules regulating how the Guard shares intelligence.

The soldiers' missions evolved from developing statewide target lists to
"predictive" intelligence, under direction from the governor's terrorism
advisers.

In large measure, the soldiers try to predict a terrorist attack by keeping
a database of suspicious and extraordinary events around likely California
terrorist targets. It is full of reports of people photographing bridges or
driving around refineries at odd hours, but with all names, license plate
numbers and other identifiers stripped out.

Officials at the Guard and CATIC, now revamped and renamed the State Terror
Threat Assessment Center, say the soldiers do not spy on Californians and
abide by state attorney general's guidelines that forbid collecting
information on any U.S. citizen without a reasonable suspicion of criminal
activity.

Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar said the Guard soldiers, known as the
Predictive Indicators Analysis Unit, "have nothing to do with" Eres' new
intelligence center, though they are in the same command.

"If any member of the Guard in the PIAU were engaged in human intelligence
gathering, that would be outside the boundaries, way outside the boundaries,
of their duties at STTAC. It would be cause for seriously grave concern for
the attorney general," Dresslar said.

The revelation that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's press office and National
Guard intelligence commanders shared an e-mail notification of a Mother's
Day protest by peace groups, first reported by the San Jose Mercury News,
prompted Dunn to launch an investigation.

The e-mails were reminiscent of an April 2003 bulletin by CATIC analysts,
warning of possible violence at an upcoming anti-war protest at the Port of
Oakland. It turned violent when police fired wooden dowels into the crowd.

Two years later, a top Guard commander received a heads-up e-mail about the
Mother's Day protest from the governor's office and passed it to several
Guard officers.

He wrote that he would forward the information "to our intel folks who
continue to monitor." But Guard officials said he apparently was referring
to regular operations personnel who watched TV news reports on the protest.

Eres stepped down, and his newly hired chief of intelligence fusion, Col.
Robert O'Neil retired.

Dunn predicts investigators will find misappropriation of state or federal
money.

Eres' attempts to create a state military intelligence system took flight
when he hired O'Neil and took advantage of the National Guar

[osint] China and India bury hatchet

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[osint] Some Bombs Used in Iraq Are Made in Iran, U.S. Says

[osint] Inquiry Into Lobbyist Sputters After Demotion

[osint] ISLAMIST TERRORISM IN THE SAHEL: FACT OF FICTION?

[osint] WHEN A BRITON BLOWS UP A BRITON

[no subject]

[osint] FBI TRANSLATION BACKLOG GROWS

[osint] THE MUSLIM MIND IS ON FIRE

[no subject]

[osint] THE JIHADIST MOVEMENT AFTER LONDON

[no subject]

[osint] THE GROWING LONDON-AFRICA CONNECTION

[no subject]

[osint] IS YOUR PRINTER SPYING ON YOU?

[osint] The soldiers who took part in the surveillance operation that led to de Menezesâ

[osint] U.S. OFFERS NORTH KOREA EVIDENCE THAT NUCLEAR SECRETS CAME FROM PAKISTANI'S NETW

[osint] ITALY BANS ISLAMIC BURQAS

[osint] WHISTLE-BLOWER FACES FBI PROBE

[osint] The Right Time for An Islamic Reformation

[osint] Leak needs investigation, says Beazley

[osint] UK: Intelligence chiefs warn Blair of 'UK insurgency'

[osint] "Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations"

[osint] California:State boosts domestic intelligence

[osint] Iran: Revolution, Unrealistic

[osint] All 7 Men Alive as Russian Submarine Is Raised

[osint] PAKISTAN: Intelligence agencies warn of terror attacks on 14th

[osint] London's Politically-Correct Policing

[osint] Inside the sect that loves terror

[osint] Convicted of Aiding Terrorist, Translator Prepares for Prison Cell, Still in Disbelief

[osint] Rogue Guards tap spy center

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