[osint] Canada-OSage: Mac grad terror suspect

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 

 
Notes:

*   
Fahim Ahmad: A 21-year-old Muslim man from east-end Toronto with a
reputation as a nice person and a solid basketball player.


*   
Shareef Abdelhaleen: The 30-year-old son of an engineer who immigrated to
Canada from Egypt 20 years ago.


*   
Qayyum Abdul Jamal: A father of four boys, the 43-year-old drove a school
bus and was an active member of his Mississauga community. He is the eldest
of the suspects.


*   
Mohammed Dirie: Serving a two-year sentence in a Kingston jail for
attempting to smuggle a gun across the U.S. border. The 22-year-old
previously worked as a carpenter and was working toward a college diploma
and Canadian citizenship.


*   
Yasim Abdi Mohamed: Serving a two-year sentence on weapons-smuggling charges
at the same jail as Dirie. The 24-year-old lived in his mother's Toronto
home before his arrest.


*   
Amin Mohamed Durrani: Described as outgoing and generous by a younger
brother, the 19-year-old was barely known to his neighbours. Family members
say he used to disappear for weeks at a time without explanation.


*   
Steven Vikash Chand: A recent convert to Islam, Chand had begun to use name
Abdul Shakur. A member of his mosque said he often visited schools to reach
out to troubled youth through his new-found faith.


*   
Ahmad Mustafa Ghany: A recent health sciences graduate of McMaster
University. The 21-year-old is the son of a doctor who immigrated to Canada
from Trinidad and Tobago more than 40 years ago.


*   
Zakaria Amara: The 20-year-old man lived with a multigenerational family in
Mississauga, but was a virtual unknown to his neighbours.


*   
Asad Ansari: The 21-year-old lived in Mississauga with a family of four or
five people, but neighbours couldn't recall anything about him.


*   
Saad Khalid: Few details available about the 19-year-old.


*   
Jahmaal James: The 23-year-old lives in Toronto.

 
 
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/L
ayout/Article_Type1

&c=Article&cid=1149460819235&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1014656511815

Mac grad terror suspect


 
Jim Wilkes, the Toronto Star 

Omar Farouk, president of the International Muslims Organization in Toronto,
examines glass shards of a broken window at a mosque in Etobicoke. The
backlash came after the arrest of terrorism suspects.


 
Special to The hamilton Spectator 

McMaster University graduate Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, left, Qayyum Abdul Jamal,
Amin Mohamed Durrani and Jahmaal James appeared in a Brampton court
Saturday. At the courthouse, family members tried to get a glimpse of the
men chained together by leg irons and cuffs under the watchful eye of
sharpshooters.


 
  

Hamilton Muslims distressed over arrests

By Sharon Boase, Dana Borcea and Barb McKay
The Canadian Press
(Jun 5, 2006) 

Leaders in Hamilton's Muslim community are distressed and embarrassed over
the arrest of 17 terrorism suspects this weekend and fear a renewed backlash
against Canada's burgeoning Muslim population.

"As a spiritual leader, I am so disappointed," said a clearly shaken
Abdul-Rauf Sanni, imam at Hamilton Mosque, the city's largest Islamic
worship centre.

"I saw the names (of those charged) and they all sound like they are from
Muslim countries. It is very sad," Sanni told The Spectator.

"This is not helping our efforts to build lives here. It makes it very
difficult. When you build something and someone comes and destroys it, it
can take ages but you have to continue building. This can't stop us from
expressing an Islam that is tolerant and peaceful."

In Toronto yesterday, Police Chief Bill Blair called on Muslims and
non-Muslims alike to let cooler heads prevail.

The 17 suspects who were arrested Friday were allegedly "motivated by an
ideology based on politics, hatred and terrorism, and not on faith," Blair
told a gathering of Muslim leaders and concerned community members.

The suspects will be considered innocent until proved guilty, said Blair,
who noted that any anger or fear spawned by allegations of a homegrown
terrorist ring should not be directed at the Muslim community.

Blair's message of "peace and harmony" came after dozens of windows were
smashed overnight at a west-end Toronto mosque in an attack Blair
acknowledged may have been motivated by hate.

Saturday night, the president of the Muslim Association of Hamilton called
an emergency meeting of the organization's board members.

Ejaz Butt said he wanted to gather the group to discuss the impact of the
arrests of the terrorist suspects on Hamilton's Muslim population.

Following the evening prayer, the board reconvened around a table in the
office of the

[osint] A recruiter in every house

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft

 
A recruiter in every house
Jun. 4, 2006. 08:52 AM
OLIVIA
 WARD
TORONTO STAR
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Artic
le_Type1

&c=Article&pubid=968163964505&cid=1149371435586&call_page=TS_TerrorArrests&c
all_pageid=1149329604487&call_pagepath=Special/TerrorArrests

In March 2004, a 16-year-old Spanish high school dropout helped provide 20
kilos of stolen explosives to Islamic terrorists who used it to bomb
commuter trains in Madrid that month, killing 191 people. 

In November of the same year, Dutch-born Mohammed Bouyeri shot filmmaker
Theo Van Gogh eight times, slit his throat and stabbed him through the chest
in an Amsterdam suburb, leaving behind a note in which he threatened to
destroy Holland, Europe and the United States. 

In July 2005, a group of four young British Muslims attacked the London
transit system, killing 52 people in bus and subway bombings. "Until you
stop bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not
stop this fight," vowed one in a video testament. 

These deadly attacks traumatized Europe. And they were all the more
distressing because the perpetrators were young Western men who had not
travelled hundreds of kilometres to fight foreign governments but killed
their own compatriots in cold blood. People alongside whom they lived, and
whose paths they may have crossed in the European cities they call home. 

Canada has so far been immune to post-9/11 terror attacks. But yesterday's
news of sweeping arrests of suspected Canadian terror recruits, many of whom
were tracked through their Internet activity, has sent a chill through a
country that has managed to stand aloof from the mayhem that has devastated
both the United States and Europe, as well as countries throughout the
Middle East and Asia. 

"We are seeing ... the emergence of homegrown second- and third-generation
terrorists," Canadian Security and Intelligence Service director Jack Hooper
told a senate committee last week. He warned of young Canadians who become
radicalized and "are virtually indistinguishable from other youth ...
(appearing), for all intents and purposes, well assimilated." 

Some may shake their heads in disbelief that ordinary Canadian youths would
mount a terrorist attack on a Canadian city, in spite of the fact police
seized enough chemicals and equipment to make a bomb larger than the one
that destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and killed 168
people. 

The vast majority of Muslims would be equally shocked. "As Canadian Muslims,
we unequivocally condemn terrorism in all of its forms," Karl Nickner,
executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada, said
yesterday. "Canada is our home and we are deeply concerned about the safety
of our country." 

But those who track international terrorism say that Islamic recruitment of
the young and restless is a growing Western phenomenon. 

And it is one that has changed dramatically over the past decade as the
Internet makes it increasingly easy for anyone with a home computer to
connect to militant groups, ideologues, trainers and technical experts who
can supply information on the targeting and bombing of victims. 

A recent report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center says the number of "terror
and hate websites, newsgroups, blogs, chat rooms and online clubs has surged
above 6,000, representing a 20 per cent spike over last year." 

"The Internet has become a `virtual university' for terrorists, with manuals
from how to build a `dirty bomb' and poisons, to tutorials on how to use
global-positioning devices or attack a motorcade," the report concluded. 

Although international security forces have been baffled by the growth of
middle-class recruitment in Western countries, it is well established that
access to computers and the Internet is higher in middle-class households
than in poor ones, allowing otherwise ordinary young people to make contact
with militants they would not normally encounter. 

It is no longer necessary for international terrorist recruiters to
infiltrate ethnic communities, earmarking likely young men for training. Nor
do would-be radicals have to risk arrest by traveling to far-flung training
camps, when the information they need to carry out operations is at hand. 

A study by the California-based Kaiser Family Foundation showed that since
1999 the number of 8- to 18-year-olds who have a home computer has escalated
from 73 per cent to 86 per cent in the United States. 

Furthermore, 74 per cent now have Internet access, compared with 47 per cent
seven years ago. Consequently, many parents find it diff

[osint] Take a Good, Hard Look at What's Going on Here

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 
It's the Islam, stupid!
 
Bruce
 

http://tinyurl.com/mva87
   
  Take a good, hard look at what's going on here
  Jun. 4, 2006. 08:51 AM
  ROSIE DIMANNO
  CITY COLUMNIST
  

  Be sickened. Be frightened. Be angry. But don't you dare be shocked.   
Unless you've been had.   
Either way, the time has long passed for domestic bliss born of ignorance,
virtue and wilful denial.   
For everyone who thought Canada could cower in a corner of the planet,
unnoticed and unthreatened by evil men - even when the most menacing of a
very bad lot has twice referenced this country as a target for attack - take
a good, hard look at what's been presented and what's being alleged.   
Three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, thrice the amount used by Timothy McVeigh
to demolish a government building in Oklahoma City. Cellphone detonators.
Switches. Computer hard drive. A 9-mm pistol. Soldering gun. Camouflage
gear.   
And 17 males - born here or reared here, certainly settled here, some of
them little more than children - formally remanded yesterday on
terrorism-related charges.   
If the accusations prove true, this isn't just slumming with jihad. For the
benighted who claim that the war on terrorism is terrorism: Here is your
war.   
Could be, of course, all a wild misunderstanding, colossal police
blundering, systemic racism, nothing more sinister than a barbeque in the
country.   
Could be the thing it appears, though - evidence of an enemy within.   
And not just those accused who allegedly plotted to blow things up in
southern Ontario - maybe the CN Tower, perchance the baseball stadium; most
likely venues of large gathering, because the objective of terrorism, which
this may or may not be, isn't merely to slaughter but to bludgeon the living
with fear, to silhouette in gore one's utter vulnerability.   
These accused wanted, if intelligence experts are correct (and they've been
wrong before), to kill you.   
Your children, your parents, your lovers, your neighbours.   
Wouldn't matter, the colour of your skin, your mother tongue, the God that
you pray to or if you pray at all. Wouldn't matter even if you happen to
equate George W. Bush with Osama bin Laden.   
The Jihad Generation - nothing alleged about it - makes no distinctions.   
Come such a day, Toronto will look like London ... Madrid ... Bali ... New
York City.   
Blood streaming, mangled metal, severed limbs, inchoate rage and
immeasurable grief.   
"This group posed a real and serious threat," said Mike McDonell, assistant
RCMP commissioner in charge of criminal intelligence and national security.
"It had the capacity and intent to carry out the attacks. Our investigation
and . . . arrests prevented the assembly of any bombs and the attacks from
being carried out."   
Further: "We must remain vigilant. Canada is susceptible to criminal
terrorist activity as much as any other country."   
If such a thing had occurred, if it were still to occur, many would have
cheered, if not overtly here in Canada, then without shame in distant
places. And others, innumerable others, would turn themselves inside out to
rationalize, exculpate, mitigate, mock, shift the blame to something
societal or political or self-inflicted.   
It takes no sophistication to connect non-existent dots, from Mississauga to
Afghanistan, from grievances nurtured in the suburbs of Toronto to a
so-called global crusade against Islam, as if the West is responsible for
the oppression inflicted upon Muslims, in Muslim nations, by Muslim leaders.

It requires, increasingly, little empirical evidence to excuse the
radicalism of pupa militants, including those who enjoy the benefits of our
own generous, inclusive and hyper-tolerant society. This is the constituency
that protects - tacitly encourages - the nihilism of those driven to violent
distraction by what they see as endless victimization of their tribe, a
purported world-wide Islamaphobia that can only be redressed by random
atrocities.   
How quickly, do you think, will these arrests - the judicial process only in
its infancy - cease to be about them and become primarily about us?   
It's not so difficult to grasp, how the phenomenon of homegrown terrorism
has arisen, whether in Canada or Britain or any other democratic society
that allows - because it must be allowed; there's no acceptable alternative
- the free flow of ideas, the expression of hateful opinions.   
An open society is a safe haven for imported bitterness and cosseted
otherness, increasingly so among "micro-actors" operating in small,
autonomous groups, with only the most cursive ideological alliance to the
likes of Al Qaeda, if "inspired" by it.   
Vile principles take hold, a certain kind of retributive megalomania,
particularly in impressionable minds. And thus is nurtured the view that
they are entitled to strike back, as destructively as possible.   
In the United Kingdom, as the public discovered recently - following the
release of a report on last July's transit system bombings 

[osint] Bali-1: Mukhlas tells of bomber's UBL dream

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 
 
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bin-laden-vision-terrorist-tells-of-bombers
-dream/2006/06/04/1149359612981.html
 
Bin Laden vision: terrorist tells of bomber's dream 
Marian Wilkinson
June 5, 2006

ONE of the men who carried out the first Bali bombing dreamt that he flew to
Afghanistan and spoke with Osama bin Laden about the mission shortly before
being sent out to blow himself up in the attack, one of the chief
conspirators says.

The account of the bizarre dream is contained in a previously unpublished
manuscript written by the Jemaah Islamiah leader, Mukhlas, who is awaiting
execution in Indonesia for his part in organising the Bali bombing, in which
202 people died.

The manuscript attempts to present a religious and moral defence of the Bali
bombings as retaliation for the US-led war in Afghanistan. It explicitly
rules out that the bombers targeted the Sari Club or Paddy's Bar "because
they were places of immorality".

Mukhlas said his suicide bomber told him about his dream after Mukhlas had
instructed him on the operation. The young man dreamt he was flying to Mecca
in Saudi Arabia and about to land when he heard a voice in the sky ordering
him to continue to Afghanistan, where he was embraced by bin Laden and
"touched cheeks with him".

Bin Laden asked him, "Do you want to conduct a suicide bomb operation?" and
he answered, "Yes, God willing". Bin Laden then directed him to bathe "in a
beautiful river with clear water where many mujahideen were bathing" and to
put on clean clothes.

Mukhlas recruited two suicide bombers, known by their first names, Iqbal and
Feri, for the Bali operation. They struck the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar,
where 88 Australians died.

Mukhlas does not say which one of them told him about the dream but
indicates he took it as reassurance of "our holy and noble mission".

"After I heard his dream I said to him, 'Glad news my brother . God willing
glad news, your dream, God willing, is a True Dream'."

Extracts from Mukhlas's manuscript, called The Bali Bomb Jihad: A Defence
are included in a new book, Voices of Islam in South-East Asia: A
Contemporary Sourcebook, edited by the Australian academics Greg Fealy and
Virginia Hooker, which has just been published. While Mukhlas wrote his
account in 2003, Dr Fealy said many of its details have not previously seen
the light of day.

Significantly, for Australian and Indonesian intelligence, Mukhlas says his
motivation for the bombing was as a retaliation for the US-led invasion of
Afghanistan after September 11. The invasion, which Australia joined,
toppled the Taliban government and forced al-Qaeda's leaders, including bin
Laden, into hiding.

Like other Jemaah Islamiah leaders, Mukhlas had trained in Afghanistan with
al-Qaeda. In his manuscript he specifically compares the size of the
explosion at the Sari Club with the US bombs dropped on Afghanistan.

"The explosive at SC [Sari Club] weighed about one tonne . The terrific
power of one tonne of TNT dropped from the sky is unimaginable, and it
wasn't just once, but hundreds or thousands of times. Where is there greater
brutality than that? Such a brutal attack cannot be allowed to pass just
like that; it must be responded to."

Mukhlas then tries to explain why, under Islamic law, it is acceptable to
kill innocent civilians in response to the bombing in Afghanistan. In the
end, he falls back on rhetoric: "We say that if you have acknowledged that
our acts were part of jihad, then hasn't every jihad operation throughout
history always run the risk of sacrificing innocent civilians?"



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[osint] Muslim Terrorists Recruiting More, Faster In France

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1148482097826
 &pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


3 Jun 2006 17:51 GMT DJ 
Islamic Radicals Recruiting More, Faster In France-Report



Copyright C 2006, Dow Jones Newswires   

PARIS (AP)--Islamic extremists in France are speeding up recruitment and
reaching people younger and younger, according to a new intelligence report
cited by a French newspaper Saturday. 

The document said women are playing an increasing role in radicalizing
fellow Muslims, but noted that extremists remain a very small minority -
about 5,000 of the nation's 5 million Muslims - Le Figaro newspaper
reported. 

Radicalization is happening "faster and faster and younger and younger,"
said the document from the Renseignements Generaux, France's chief
intelligence agency, according to Figaro. 

Extremist groups are increasingly targeting educational establishments, the
report said. It cites a document by French doctors adhering to the rigorous
Salafist brand of Islam saying: "It is not permitted to abandon that which
is most dear to teachers who are nonbelievers." 

Recruiters often target disadvantaged youths of North African origin in
bleak suburban housing projects, offering "to help overcome difficulties of
daily life" before trying to convert them to radical Islam, the report was
quoted as saying. Such neighborhoods were hit by a wave of riots last year,
though police said Islamic extremists played no role in that unrest. 

Figaro said the intelligence agency expressed concern about the growing
proportion of converts to radical Islam, reporting that about a quarter of
the 1,600 people who officially converted to Islam last year adhere to the
Salafist faith, which produces many of today's radicals. 

The document said terrorist recruitment in prisons continues to rise, Le
Figaro reported, citing the example of an alleged terror cell built by
radical Islamist Safe Bourada while he was in prison for his role in 1995
terror attacks in Paris. Bourada was arrested again in September. 

It was not immediately possible to confirm the contents of the report
independently. 
(END) Dow Jones Newswires 

June 03, 2006 13:51 ET (17:51 GMT) 






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[osint] Muslims? Plotting Terrorism? You Don't Say ...

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft


 
Sunday, June 04, 2006

Muslims? Plotting Terrorism? You Don't Say ... [Andy McCarthy]

Well, no, you most certainly don't say.  Not if you're the New York Times
and not if your one of its serial imitators in the MSM.  Not in the story
referred to by Cliff and Roger Simon about the terrorist plot thwarted in
Canada yesterday.  And not in the reports that first arose on Friday about
the possible chemical bombing plot that was interrupted in London.
  This initial
report about the British plot, from Sky News on Friday, was careful to say
only that the two men arrested were "both of Bengali origin."  
Yesterday's
 report in the Times - which, by the way, makes the story about the fact
that one of the apparent plotters was shot by the police, not that mass
murder of British civilians was apparently being planned - mentions toward
the end that two of the men associated with what appears to be a "known
terrorist group" might both be members of a family "of Pakistani descent."
How do we know they are Muslims?  Because of sympathetic comments from a
friend, reported in the tenth and twelfth paragraphs at the end of the story
(italics mine):

Sky News broadcast what it said was an interview with two unidentified
friends of the man who was shot. They spoke with their backs to a camera,
their heads covered and faces hidden. One of the men prefaced the interview
by reciting a Koranic verse. "They shot an unarmed man because he wanted to
try and protect his family," one man said. 




He called the wounded man "a humble guy" who had gone "to your schools, your
workplaces and paid his taxes, and at 4 a.m. the police gave him a present -
they gave him a hole in the chest."  




The police carried out the raid, the man said, because "they want to give us
Muslims a bad name."


So here's my question:  if these groups in Canada and England are not
affilitated with al Qaeda, what could it possibly be that they have in
common with members of al Qaeda that might lead them to want to commit
bombing attacks against the West, just like al Qaeda?  Hmm ...
Posted at
 9:50 AM
 
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmUzNTQ2MTM5OTZjZjUyNjNmYTg0ZTQzOTU
0YmUwYTE=





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[osint] Only one way to go - Tenacity trumps capitulation in fight for world democracy

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 

 
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Jackson_Paul/2006/06/04/1613598.html
   
  Only one way to go  Tenacity trumps capitulation in fight for world
democracy  By Paul Jackson

  DENVER -- Fabulously rich speechmaker Bill Clinton was uttering some
balderdash last week as to how global warming is a bigger threat to humanity
than world terrorism. 
  The man who does passable imitations of Elvis Presley did say global
warming is a more "remote" threat than world terrorism, but suggested we
should see it for what it is. 
  Well, just wait until some radical Islamic movement gets its hands on
nuclear weapons -- only a matter of time, unless we get really tough -- and
after New York, Washington or San Francisco is turned into radioactive
rubble we'll see which really is the biggest threat. 
  Global warming in those cities will not then be quite so remote. 
  No one will care about the pseudo-science aspect of climatic global
warming then. 
  But Bill, one of the great womanizers of all time -- has never really been
up on world terrorism. 
  From the first Islamic attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 to the
assault on the USS Cole and a half-dozen assaults on U.S. bases or embassies
in between by Islamic radicals, Clinton just went breezily along. 
  He had other things on his mind. 
  And you can guess what those were. 
  And so, when 9/11 came along, the U.S. was almost totally unprepared for
the attacks. 
  The Democrats, naturally, tried to lay the blame for 9/11 on President
George W. Bush -- charging he had been lackadaisical -- yet Bush had been in
office only a handful of months when 9/11 swept across our TV screens. 
  In actuality, Bush responded with alacrity to 9/11 and is still
unrelenting in his fight against world terrorism, which the man with the
loose zipper figures is an overblown scare compared to burning fossil fuels
to run our cars and keep our homes warm. 
  Let's just hope if Clinton's long-suffering wife Hillary wins the
Democratic presidential nomination, she doesn't actually win the presidency.

  If she did, Bill might be whispering calming words in her ear. Most of us
understand Bill is fond of whispering in women's ears. 
  Right now, though, suggest one achievement -- aside from frolicking with a
young tart name Monica Lewinsky-- of Clintons during his eight-year term. 
  Just one. 
  If you can, call collect. 
  For instance, just days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in
Washington pleading for support for his nation. His visit follows many
previous attempts by Israel during the Clinton administration to get the
U.S. to safeguard that country from terrorist attacks. 
  Yet despite all of Clinton's assurances the Israeli-Palestinian -- and
Arab -- conflict would be solved, there was no progress whatsoever under his
tenure. 
  A week before Clinton's assessment that we worry too much about terrorist
bombs exploding in London, Madrid and on the island of Bali or the cowardly
attacks in Iraq on innocent civilians, two men who do know what the world
situation is like were on stage together in Washington. 
  They were Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. 
  For a half-hour, they spoke eloquently about world terrorism and the fight
to bring democracy to Iraq. 
  Both were calm, but precise. 
  These men, the targets of the Lib-Left media, and maligned by political
would-bes who are inferior in every way to Bush and Blair, have stuck it out
together while other wavering 'leaders' have slowly strayed away. 
  They are steadfast individuals who will not be cowed into capitulation. 
  Both know -- as do the Islamic terrorists and the sheiks of the Mideast
dictatorships -- that if democracy can be solidified in Iraq, there will be
a domino effect that will sweep the region. 
  Hundreds of millions of men, women and children now living under serfdom
in their oil rich dictatorships will rise up against their totalitarian
masters. 
  It will be like the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe all over again. 
  Blair made another assessment to which we should all pay immediate
attention: The United Nations needs "radical" reform. 
  Hardly an overstatement. 
  The UN is a corrupt outfit in several ways: Morally, financially and
structurally. 
  Morally, you have a bunch of African and Mideastern totalitarian states
holding sway over the western democracies. 
  That's part of the structural corruption, too. 
  Financially, as we have seen in any number of recent scandals, the "hands
in the pockets" by various officials make the scandals at Enron and Worldcom
and the like look like childish misdemeanors. 
  The UN is, Blair declared, as out of touch with the realities of today's
world as the British welfare state of the early 1940s would be with the
needs of 2006. 
  On so many issues, both Blair and Bush are perceptive. 
  As President Ronald Reagan, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John
Paul are carved in history as heroes who brought freedom and democracy to
hundreds

[osint] Details Emerge About Suspects in Canada Bomb Plot

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
This if for the very ignorant and academicians such as Richard Pape who
think poverty or anything else besides Islam has anything to do with Islamic
terrorism.
 
Bruce
 
 
Details Emerge About Suspects in Canada Bomb Plot 
By ANTHONY DePALMA and IAN
 AUSTEN
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2006/0

6/04/world/americas/05canadacnd.html&tntemail1=y&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print

MISSISSAUGA, Canada
 , June 4 — Several of the people arrested by
Canadian authorities in a huge counterterrorism sweep over the weekend
regularly attended the same storefront mosque in a middle-class neighborhood
of modest brick rental townhouses and well-kept lawns. 

The eldest of the 17 Canadian residents arrested in the sweep, Qayyum Abdul
Jamal, 43, was described by his lawyer as an active member of the mosque,
the Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, though not its leader. 

"He's on the board, he's there regularly, but he's not an imam," said Anser
Farooq, the lawyer representing Mr. Jamal and three other people from this
Toronto suburb who were arrested Friday night and who also attended the same
mosque. "He's one of about a half dozen people who lead prayers at the
mosque." 

Authorities in Canada and the United States continued today to piece
together information from the lengthy investigation that culminated in one
of the largest counterterrorism strikes in North America since the Sept. 11
attacks. 

Canadian officials said the arrests foiled a series of planned terrorist
attacks in southern Ontario. None of the targets were identified, but
Canadian authorities said the Toronto city subway system had not been among
them. 

Police and intelligence officials made the arrests late Friday night and
early Saturday morning after the group accepted delivery of three tons of
ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer than can be explosive if combined with
fuel oil. 

The same type of fertilizer was used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. In that
explosion, one ton of ammonium nitrate was used to make the bomb. 

American officials in Washington and New York said they had been aware of
the investigation and were informed of the arrests. American
counterterrorism officials believe that some of the Canadians arrested might
have had limited contact with two men from Georgia who were arrested earlier
this year and charged with supporting terrorism or providing false
information. 

At a news conference on Saturday, Luc Portelance, the assistance director
for operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said the men
"appear to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by Al
 Qaeda." But Canadian officials said there is no
evidence linking the two groups. 

Islamic community leaders in the Toronto area were surprised by the arrests
and raised concerns that some of the younger men picked up in the sweep may
have been led to participate in a suspected plot by older, more radical
Muslims, like Mr. Jamal. 

"I do not think of him as an imam," Tareeq Fatah, the communications
director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, said. "People like him are
freelancers. I don't fear imams. I fear freelancers who are creating a
Islamacist, supremacist cult."

The Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education that Mr. Jamal frequented
was locked and quiet this morning. A class on the Koran that was scheduled
for midday today was canceled. Located in a small strip mall between the
Hasty Market and the Café de Kahn, the mosque is one of several Islamic
centers that have sprung up in Mississauga in recent years. 

Neighbors said the Islamic Center had grown very popular in the last few
years. One neighbor said that on Friday nights there are so many pairs of
shoes lined up outside the entrance that it is difficult to walk on the
sidewalk to get into the stores in the strip mall. 

Inside the center, bookshelves line one wall. Announcements posted on
bulletin boards at the entrance announce regular prayer times, household
items for sale and the center's financial report. 

A back door, marked "Sister's Entrance," was locked. Alongside the door were
several prayer mats and carpets that had been left out in the heavy rain
that soaked the area on Saturday. 

At Mr. Jamal's home, only a few minutes from the mosque, a man who came to
the door refused to answer any questions. "Oh no, sorry," he said and shut
the door. A decal attached to the door read, "In the name of Allah we enter
and in the name of Allah we leave and upon our Lor

[osint] Terror cell 'was planning nerve gas attack on capital'

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=HCB2CA2ISPOQNQFIQMFCFF
WAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/06/04/nterr04.xml
 
  

Terror cell 'was planning nerve gas attack on capital'
By Andrew Alderson, Sean Rayment and Patrick Hennessy
(Filed: 04/06/2006)

Terrorists were planning a chemical attack in London similar to the outrage
on the Tokyo underground, according to police and the security services.

MI5 operatives suspect that al-Qa'eda sympathisers intended to produce a
nerve agent - probably sarin - and release it in a confined space, such as a
tube carriage, to maximise the number of casualties.


 Police on guard in Lansdown Road
 

Armed response: Police on guard in Lansdown Road

The sarin attack on three railway lines in the Japanese capital killed 12
people and injured more than 5,000 in March 1995. It was the world's first
major chemical attack and used sarin, a nerve agent which attacks the
respiratory system.

Security sources suspect that a new atrocity was planned on or close to the
anniversary of the July 7 attacks on London, when four terrorists killed
themselves and 52 others, and injured more than 700 people. This would have
provided a rallying call to al-Qa'eda sympathisers to carry on their "jihad"
- or holy war - against the West.

Officers were last night continuing to question two men after a raid
 on a house in Forest Gate,
east London. The men arrested are brothers: Mohammed Abul Kahar, 23, and
Abul Koyair, 20. Both deny any offences.

The elder brother was shot in the shoulder during a police raid at 4am on
Friday. He was later arrested under the Terrorism Act after being treated
for the gunshot wound in the Royal London Hospital, where he is still
recovering.

Senior police sources said they were searching for an "improvised device
rather than a sophisticated weapon" capable of releasing chemicals. The
Sunday Telegraph has learnt that intelligence obtained by MI5 suggested that
terrorists were trying to acquire material via the internet which could be
used to develop a nerve gas capable of killing and injuring thousands of
people. 

Security sources say that the terrorist threat facing Britain has developed
into a "covert conspiracy" involving hundreds of men and women living
ordinary lives in the nation's suburbs. They form an estimated 1,200 strong
"army" of terrorists believed to be involved in at least 20 major terrorist
plots.

Scotland Yard and MI5 sources were playing down reports in the media
yesterday that they were looking for a "chemical vest", which could be used
by a suicide bomber. The wearer would suffer a long and painful death.

Detectives believe it is more likely that sarin or an alternative nerve
agent would be released from a canister or flask.

Forensic experts are expected to spend several days at the house of the
British born Muslims, who live with their parents. 

A team from Porton Down in Wiltshire, the Government research establishment
that specialises in chemical and biological agents, is looking for evidence
of a so-called "viable weapon" or traces of it. 

Police were granted warrants of further detention for the two brothers
following a hearing at Bow Street Magistrates Court yesterday afternoon.

The warrants allow them to be detained and questioned until Wednesday.

The raid on the Victorian terraced house involved more than 300 officers and
was the largest anti-terrorist operation of the year.

It followed weeks of surveillance based on "specific" intelligence.



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[osint] Gunmen killed 21 people - many of them high school students

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060604/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_shooting;_ylt=ArtFzY
UGDzWQhlbhDl7h8ykLewgF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--
 
  

By YAHYA BARZANJI, Associated Press WriterSun Jun 4, 7:22 AM ET 

Gunmen killed 21 people - many of them high school students - after dragging
them off buses northeast of Baghdad, officials said. Four Sunni Arabs were
spared and the dead were all Shiites or Kurds.

Serwan Shokir, the mayor Qara Tappah, said the shooting occurred in the
early morning after three mini buses left his town headed for Baqouba -
located 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. One person was wounded.

He said the gunmen dragged 26 people from the buses, separated four Sunni
Arabs from the group, and shot the rest.

Shokir said 12 of the dead were high school student and of those killed, 19
were Shiite Turkomen and two were Kurds. The students were headed to another
town to take exams.

According to the joint operations center in Baqouba, the incident apparently
took place in Ain Laila. The town is between Qara Tappah and Baqouba, the
capital of Diyala province - which in recent weeks has been transformed into
a sectarian powder keg.

The four Sunni Arabs who survived were being questioned at Qara Tappah
police station.



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[osint] Iraq gunmen kill 24 civilians at checkpoint

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060604/ts_nm/iraq_gunmen_dc_2;_ylt=AsSkBkeqVF5k
8eYq8_RS2ENX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
 
  

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen dragged 24 civilians out of their cars at a
makeshift checkpoint in a town north of Baghdad on Sunday and shot them
"execution style," a senior police official said. 

The victims included students, children and elderly men, said the senior
police official in Diyala province.

The attack took place in Udhaim, 120 km (80 miles) north of Baghdad.

Insurgents are waging a campaign of bombings, shootings and kidnappings in a
bid to topple the U.S.-backed government and sectarian killings mostly
between Shi'ites and Sunnis are also tearing the country apart. 



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[osint] Malta named in alleged Al Qaeda links

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 
 
http://www.maltamedia.com/news/2005/ln/article_10238.shtml
 
Malta named in alleged Al Qaeda links   
By MaltaMedia News
Jun 4, 2006, 11:11 CET


The founder of a Muslim firm, who was accused of sending money to al Qaeda
through Malta and Switzerland to bank branches in the Bahamas, is suing the
Swiss government for financial losses incurred resulting from a three and a
half year investigation that was dropped exactly one year ago, NZZ online
reported. 

The Swiss government began investigating Youssef Nada's firm, which was set
up to provide banking services in Europe according to Islamic principles
(which forbids the paying of interest), shortly after the September 11
attacks. 

The US government had said that Nada Management, formerly known as al Taqwa,
had helped fund Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. The company was based
in Ticino until it was liquidated in December 2001.

But Switzerland was forced to drop the case against top officials of the
company on July 1, 2005 because they said authorities in the Bahamas had
failed to provide essential bank records by a court deadline, NZZ online
said. 

NZZ online also said the prosecutor's office never filed charges or made
arrests and company officials have repeatedly denied links to terrorism and
accused Swiss authorities of taking part in a US-led anti-Muslim campaign.

Although the prosecutor's office removed its block from the bank accounts of
the company and its officers, they remain frozen because of UN sanctions
targeting those on the US list.

In May 2005 the Federal Criminal Court ruled that prosecutors should have
given further reasons for the allegations made against Lugano-based Nada
Management and its director in 2001.

The court also said there was no reason for the prosecutor's office to have
taken so long to decide whether to hand the case over to a tribunal. It also
criticised prosecutors for claiming late in 2004 that they were about to
launch judicial proceedings.

Nada confirmed he is suing the Swiss government for "tens of millions of
Swiss francs", but would not specify the exact amount.

Source: NZZ online 


C Copyright 2006 - MaltaMedia Online Network




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[osint] FW: Wondrous Treatment Of Women In Islam

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft

 







http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate/women.html
 






Wondrous Treatment Of Women In Islam


T he purpose of this article is to show how the barbaric nature of Islam
manifests itself in the cruel treatment of women. 

1. Lets start with the "great" Mohammed himself, the founder of this
"fabulous" faith. Mohammed was married to Khadija Bibi, his employer and 15
years his senior. At that time Mohammed was 25 years old. He was Khadija
Bibi's third husband. Khadija Bibi was a widow when she married Mohammed.
For the first time in his life, Mohammed enjoyed a luxurious life. 

This shows the parasitic nature of Mohammed who married his employer so that
he can live a rich life without putting in a single day's work. 

2. Khadija Bibi died when Mohammed was 49 years old. Between the ages of 49
and 63 the "great prophet" married at least 11 times. 

This shows how he treated the institution of marriage. For him, women were
nothing but objects for sexual fulfillment. Marrying at least 11 women in 14
years throws light on his insatiable sexual appetite. 
Read on about the "greatness" of this prophet. 

3. Mohammed's favourite wife was Ayesha Bibi who was 6 years old when she
was married to him. 

Marrying a 6 year old baby clearly shows that Mohammed was not only a
womanizer but also a child molester. 

4. Mohammed's adopted son Zayed was married to Zainab, daughter of Jahsh.
But one day the prophet "beheld in a loose undress, the beauty of Zainab,
and burst forth into an ejaculation of devotion and desire. The servile, or
greatful, freeman (Zayed) understood the hint and yielded without hesitation
to the love of the benefactor." 

Mohammed was not satisfied with his own overflowing harem and had to marry
his son's wife. His son being a devoted follower of the "great" prophet was
more than happy to divorce his wife. What a great father-in-law Mohammed
was, a model for all Islamic father-in-laws! 

Mohammed preached what he practised. This is supported by the following
verses from Quran and Hadiths. 

Quotes from the "Holy" Quran on Women 

II/223: Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate). So go to your tilth
as ye will... 

Here you can clearly see how highly Islam treats women. Women in Islam are
referred to as fields that are to be cultivated by man. What an honour for a
Muslim woman! 

IV/34: Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them
to excel the other.. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them
and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them.

First point to notice here is that Quran clearly states that Men are
superior to women. Secondly, Islam instructs that a man should control his
women through brutal violence and fear. 

IV/15: (For women) If any one of your women is guilty of lewdness ...confine
them until death claims them. 

IV/16: (For Men) If two men among you commit indecency (sodomy) punish them
both. If they repent and mend their ways, let them be. Allah is forgiving
and merciful. 

As you can see, for women any sort of sexual exploration is punishable by
death. Whereas for a man, any form of perversion is pardoned by the all
merciful Allah. 

XXIV/6-7: As for those who accuse their wives but have no witnesses except
themselves , let the testimony of one of them be four testimonies... 

Here we see, that a husband can easily accuse his wife (or wives) and
eventually sentence her to death by merely declaring four times that the
accusation is true. On the other hand, women have no such right in Islam. 


Quotes from Hadith TIRMZI AND OTHERS 

1.  If a woman's conduct is mischievous or immodest, the husband has the
right to beat her up but must not break her bones. She must not allow
anybody to enter the house if her husband does not like him. She has the
right to expect sustenance of her husband. (TR. P 439) 

2.  It is forbidden for a woman to be seen by any man except her husband
when she is made up or well-dressed. (TR. P 430) 

3.  A woman is not a believer if she undertakes a journey which may last
three days or longer, unless she is accompanied by her husband, son, father 

4.  A woman must veil herself even in the presence of her husband's
father, brother and other male relations. (TR. P 432) 

5.  She is forbidden to spend any money without the permission of her
husband, and it includes giving food to the needy or feast to friends. (TR.
P 265) 

6.  A wife is forbidden to perform extra prayers (NAFAL) or observe
fasting (other than RAMADAN) without the permission of her husband. (TR. P
300) 

7.  If prostration were a legitimate act other than to God, woman should
have prostrated to her husband. (TR. P 428) 

8.  If a man is in a mood to have sexual intercourse the woman must come
immediately even if she is baking bread at a communal oven. (TR. P 428) 

9.  The marriage of a woman to her man is not substantive. It is
precarious. For example if 

[osint] Oil shale enthusiasm resurfaces in the West

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-06-01-oil-shale_x.htm



Oil shale enthusiasm resurfaces in the West 

 


Posted 6/1/2006 10:10 PM ET

USATODAY




By Ed Andrieski, AP





Workers check the size on pipes at the Freeze Wall test site at Shell Oil
Company's Mahogany Oil Shale Research Project near Meeker, Colo.

 

By Tom Kenworthy, USA TODAY

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - The headline on the newspaper that state Rep. Bernie
Buescher keeps in a box at home captures the allure of the vast petroleum
riches under the rolling hills and arid mesas north of this western Colorado
city.

"Oil Shale Development Imminent," the paper reads. That edition of the
defunct Grand Junction News, Buescher notes, was published at the dawn of
the 20th century.

More than a hundred years later, instability is roiling world oil markets,
and Americans are paying $3 a gallon for gas. And oil shale fever is again
rising in the geologic region known as the Piceance Basin, part of the Green
River Formation that stretches across the rugged plains of northwestern
Colorado and parts of Wyoming and Utah.

There is no dispute that a thousand feet below the isolated ranch country
here on Colorado's western slope lie almost unimaginable oil riches. It's
locked in sedimentary rock - essentially immature oil that given a few
million years under heat and pressure would produce pools of oil easy to
extract.

The Energy Department and private industry estimate that a trillion barrels
are here in Colorado - about the same amount as the entire world's known
reserves of conventional oil. The entire Green River Formation might hold as
much as 2 trillion barrels.

Pushed by the Bush administration and legislation from Congress last year,
and spurred by oil prices above $70 a barrel, the energy industry is
mobilizing to unlock the secret of oil shale. As it has before, oil shale
holds out the hope of a USA no longer dependent on foreign oil.

Testing a new approach 

In a remote area of Rio Blanco County, nestled between dusty ridges covered
with sagebrush and pinyon and juniper trees, Shell Oil is engaged in a
multiyear test of a new technology for extracting the oil. Previous efforts
that were uneconomical and environmentally destructive entailed mining the
rock, crushing it and heating it above ground to release the oil.

Shell's new process involves sinking heaters deep underground, cooking the
rock at 700 degrees and recovering the oil and natural gas with conventional
drilling.

For a decade, Shell has been ramping up its research on private property
here. It is also one of a handful of companies vying for research and
development leases on larger tracts of federal land nearby. That could lead
to full-scale development across 1,200 square miles of western Colorado.

Early results are promising, says Terry O'Connor, a vice president in the
oil giant's unconventional resource division. But, he admits, "no one has
been able to develop oil shale on a commercially sustainable basis." Shell
has four more years of research here before it will know if it has the
answer.

U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who heads the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee, was less cautious at a tour of Shell's test site
Wednesday: "This is not pie in the sky. It's real this time."

Such talk has swept this region before, most memorably in the wake of the
energy crisis of the 1970s. Longtime residents remember how it ended on May
2, 1982 - "Black Sunday" - when Exxon abruptly canceled its $5 billion
Colony Shale Oil Project, laid off more than 2,000 workers and left a trail
of home foreclosures and economic distress.

Now, said U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who accompanied Domenici on the
tour, "we have a tourism-based economy on the western slope, and we will not
do anything ... that will endanger that sustainability." Though oil shale
has "great potential," Salazar said, "there's also great risk."

A RAND Corp. study last year for the Energy Department said that "the
prospects for oil shale development are uncertain," though new technology
could make it competitive with conventional oil. Producing 3 million barrels
a day - about 15% of U.S. consumption - "is probably more than 30 years into
the future," the study said.

Among the possible negative effects cited by RAND were large scale land
disruption, air pollution, a large population influx in a rural area, and a
huge demand for water in a region where it's scarce and, as Salazar said,
"as precious as oil."

Randy Udall, of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency that promotes
energy conservation in Carbondale, Colo., pointed out another drawback: the
huge demand for electricity to cook the shale. "To do 100,000 barrels a day
... we would need to build the largest power plant in Colorado history."

'We ... need to get it right' 

This region's bitter experience with the boom-and-bust of oil shale was on
display Thursday as Domenici and Salazar held a hearing before an overflow
crowd at t

[osint] Iranians threaten Oil Weapon against world

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://story.northkoreatimes.com/p.x/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/d51e051c45
d17f65/
 
Khamenei: Wrong Move by US Will Affect Oil Flow 

By VOA News 
04 June 2006

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says oil
flows in the region will be endangered if the United
States makes what he calls a "wrong move" towards the
Islamic Republic.

The Iranian spiritual leader issued the warning Sunday
in a speech (broadcast live on state radio) marking
the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.  

He did not specify how oil supplies would be
disrupted, and insisted Iran would not start any war.

The comments come amid a continuing standoff between
the West and Iran over its nuclear program.  On
Saturday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said
Tehran would consider an incentive package meant to
stop its uranium enrichment program.

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security
Council plus Germany agreed Thursday to offer Iran
incentives and new talks, but are insisting that
Tehran first suspend uranium enrichment.  

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana is
expected to arrive in Tehran in the coming days to
present the proposal. 

Western countries suspect Tehran is enriching uranium
to make nuclear weapons.  Iran insists its nuclear
program is for peaceful purposes.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP,
AP and Reuters.

000.





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[osint] Compromise with Evil (er...Islam)

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 

 
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Mansur_Salim/2006/06/03/1612593.ht
ml
   
  Compromise with evil  By SALIM MANSUR

  We are all familiar with the opening lines of Hamlet, the Shakespearean
tragedy, telling us of something rotten in the state of Denmark. 
  Since September 2001, we have become familiar with something rotten in
Europe, and this rottenness threatens to wreak havoc on the civilization
that Europe nurtured and whose values in terms of science and democracy were
once sought by the rest of the world. 
  In Shakespeare's most famous drama the Danish prince tragically perishes
at the end in his effort to purge the kingdom of the evil of regicide with
which the court compromised when the queen, Hamlet's mother, wed the
murderer of the slain king. 
  In Hamlet's story, Shakespeare unravelled a microcosm of consequences that
follow when an individual or people, knowingly or unknowingly, compromise
with evil. 
  This is an abiding theme of the world's great literature, particularly
European literature reaching back to the Greek classic of Sophocles in the
story of Oedipus, the tragic king. 
  The rottenness alluded to in Hamlet and Oedipus, now found amply in
Europe, is the tendency to compromise with evil. It is based on the ultimate
utilitarian argument of weighing costs and benefits to conclude there is
nothing worth fighting for. 
  Hence, in this view prevalent in Europe, it is absurd to defend freedom or
believe that occasionally life might require preparedness to fight and
sacrifice for freedom to prosper. 
  The causes for this rotten view spreading are many. 
  But the dominant explanation lies in the blood-letting Europe precipitated
in two world wars. 
  In response to the deadliest wars of modern history, Europeans swore
"never" to allow their peace, however unsettled or fragile, to be undermined
by fighting for any cause irrespective of how worthy it might be. 
  The "never" would have been praiseworthy if it meant "never" to compromise
with the enemies of freedom. 
  Through the decades of the Cold War against Soviet Communism, Europe was
defended by the United States -- even though dishonest revisionists would
have us believe otherwise. 
  Meanwhile, a great many European intellectuals, such as Jean-Paul Sartre
or Gunter Grass, engaged themselves in support of Soviet Communism, made
apologies for Stalinism or remained quietly as fellow-travellers of a
mass-murdering global ideology, presented even today to new generations of
dupes as a progressive movement. 
  The rottenness in the heart of contemporary Europe is the view that
radical Islamism can be tamed, and diplomacy can bridge the difference
between the West (and its values of freedom and democracy) and the
hate-filled ideology of Islamism, espoused, for example, by the Iranian
regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 
  For the past few years EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) have engaged
themselves with Iran over the nuclear issue, believing ayatollahs in Tehran
and Qom, with their hand-picked politicians, can be appeased with carrots of
peaceful nuclear technology if they renounce their ambition of acquiring
nuclear weapons. 
  Iran instead has only raised the price for European surrender. Now
Ahmadinejad threatens Europe with untold consequences if Iran's nuclear
ambitions are thwarted. 
  The brazenness of Ahmadinejad's thuggish regime and that of the wide
phalanx of radical Islamists comes from their belief that Europe has become
unsettled by letting in the Trojan Horse of Islamism. The abject apology by
many Europeans over Danish cartoons to those who rage and murder in the name
of a religion was indicative of how greatly Europe is unsettled, and ready
to appease those who send suicide-bombers for half a loaf of a contemptible
peace. 




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[osint] "Our Discussions with Iran Have Reached an Impasse"

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 



Europe: "Our Discussions with Iran Have Reached an Impasse" Middle East
Quarterly Spring 2006 http://www.meforum.org/article/938

For more than a decade, the European Union has pursued economic engagement
with the Islamic Republic of Iran arguing that trade, rather than
confrontation or sanctions, could best reverse Tehran's terror sponsorship,
human rights abuses, and nuclear ambitions. Between 2000 and 2005, European
trade with Iran almost tripled.

Rather than moderate its behavior, the Iranian government used the influx of
hard currency from both trade and the rise in oil prices to further its
nuclear program. Two and a half years of diplomacy by Great Britain, France,
and Germany ("the EU-3") have little to show in terms of results. On
September 24, 2005, the board of governors of the International Atomic
Energy Agency found Iran to be in "non-compliance" with the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty but declined to refer the Islamic Republic to the
U.N. Security Council.[1]

On January 9, 2006, the Iranian government announced that it would resume
enrichment of uranium, ratcheting up the diplomatic crisis. On January 12,
2006, the EU-3 foreign ministers and European Union high representative
Javier Solana met in Berlin to discuss the Iranian government's decision to
resume uranium enrichment. Their statement, reproduced below, is the most
tacit admission by European officials to date that their engagement with the
Islamic Republic has failed. How European officials will alter their
strategy, though, after referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council remains
unclear.-The Editors.

===


E3/EU ministers met today to consider the situation following Iran's
resumption on January 9 of enrichment-related activity.

Iran's nuclear activities have been of great concern to the international
community since 2003, when Iran was forced to admit to the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it was building a secret installation to
enrich uranium, which could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons.

The IAEA Director General at the time found Iran's policy of concealment had
resulted in many breaches of its obligation to comply with the provisions of
its Safeguards Agreement.

Under the IAEA's rules, this should have been reported to the Security
Council then.

We launched our diplomatic initiative because we wanted to offer an
opportunity to Iran to address international concerns.

Our objective was to give Iran a means to build international confidence
that its nuclear program was for exclusively peaceful purposes, and to
develop a sound relationship between Europe and Iran.

Given Iran's documented record of concealment and deception, the need for
Iran to build confidence has been and continues to be the heart of the
matter. It was Iran's agreement to suspend all enrichment-related and
reprocessing activities while negotiations were underway that gave us the
confidence to handle the issue within the IAEA framework, rather than refer
it to the Security Council.

We had strong support from the IAEA Board, which repeatedly urged Iran to
suspend these activities and stressed that the maintenance of full
suspension was essential.

Last August, Iran resumed uranium conversion at Isfahan, in breach of IAEA
Board Resolutions and the commitments she had given us in the Paris
Agreement of November 2004.

The IAEA Board reacted by passing a resolution in September formally finding
that Iran was in non-compliance with its Safeguards Agreement, and declaring
that the history of concealment of Iran's program and the nature of its
activities gave rise to questions that were within the competence of the
Security Council.

Since then the IAEA has raised more disturbing questions about Iran's links
with the [rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist] AQ Khan network, which helped
build Libya and North Korea's clandestine military nuclear programmes.

Nonetheless, in response to requests from many of our international partners
and despite the major setbacks through unilateral Iranian actions, we agreed
to delay a report to the Security Council and go the extra mile in search of
a negotiated solution.

We held a round of exploratory talks in Vienna on December 21, 2005, to see
if we could agree on a basis for resuming negotiations. We made crystal
clear that a resumption of negotiations would only be possible if Iran
refrained from any further erosion of the suspension.

Iran's decision to restart enrichment activity is a clear rejection of the
process the E3/EU and Iran have been engaged in for over two years with the
support of the international community.

In addition, it constitutes a further challenge to the authority of the IAEA
and international community. We have, therefore, decided to inform the IAEA
Board of Governors that our discussions with Iran have reached an impasse.

The Europeans have negotiated in good faith. Last August we presented the
most far-reaching proposals for co-operation with Europe in the po

[osint] The Radical Indoctrination of Canadian Muslim Youth

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 

 
http://acage.org/news/?day=06042006
 &id=0004



 The Radical Indoctrination of Canadian Muslim Youth


Story Image 



  JUDEOSCOPE
 Open in New Window
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Version 


00   

dolphin says:   


Read the whole thing. The information conveyed therein is priceless.


01   
As the Ontario Education Ministry launches an investigation into the
Ottawa-area Abraar Islamic school at the centre of a controversy for the
alleged involvement of at least two of its teachers in a student's essay
glorifying the murder of Jews, public attention should be drawn to the fact
that Canadian Muslim youth are increasingly being exposed to radical
Islamist ideology outside of schools, be it in madrassas, at the mosque or
through youth associations. 
02   
One such association is the Ontario-based Young Muslims of Canada
(YMC) whose stated objective is no less than "the establishment of Islam in
North America in its entirety and comprehensiveness". The YMC, just as its
US-based sister association Young Muslims of North America, constitutes the
youth wing of the Islamic Circle of North-America (ICNA).   
03   
ICNA is the United States' second largest mosque federation. It
maintains a Canadian division as well, though it does not federate mosques
as in the US. Often called the North American branch of the al Qaeda-allied
Jama'at-I-Islami Pakistani jihadist group by leading experts on radical
Islam[1], ICNA is under investigation by FBI counter-terrorism agents[2] for
alleged terror ties and fundraising activities. ICNA is also listed among 24
other Islamic organizations suspected by the U.S. Senate Committee on
Finance of "finance(ing) terrorism and perpetuate(ing) violence" in a
December 23 2003 letter sent to the IRS requesting a thorough examination of
ICNA's financial records[3].
04   
Unsurprisingly, given its genealogy, YMC propagates a radical brand
of Islam among Canadian Muslim youth through Halaqas (youth study circles)
which serve as nodes in the association's network. In order to make its
message more attractive to its young audience, YMC publishes a wide array of
colourful brochures written in hip colloquial English and French. One such
brochure warns for instance against "Shaytan's arrows" (Satan's temptations)
and recommends young men living in "Temptation Island" (i.e. Canada) to
"step out only when you have to" to avoid throwing glances at "scantily
dressed girls"[4].  
05   
Downloadable lectures sponsored by YMC condemn the Western way of
life and warn Muslim youth not to stray from the path of virtuous Islamic
behaviour. For instance, a lecture entitled "Amusing ourselves to Death"
warning about nightlife and the perils it poses to Islamic youth describes
Yonge Street Friday night revellers as "cockroaches"[5]. YMC acknowledges
the difficulties tied to resisting the call of Western lifestyles and offers
this tip: "It is through sacrifice that you can truly learn to love Allah,
and to live and die for Him!"[6]. As if to bluntly overstate the ontological
irreconcilability between Muslims and Kafir (disbelievers) and inspire fear
of adopting non Islamic values or practices, YMC quotes Abul A'la Maududi,
founder of the Pakistani terror group Jama'at-I-Islami: "God is pleased with
Muslims and displeased with unbelievers. He promises award of Heaven to
Muslims and warns unbelievers that they will be consigned to Hell"[7].  
06   
Beyond the obvious teaching of contempt for non Muslims' lifestyles
and Canadian society as a whole, YMC props Jihadist radicals as role models
for Muslim youth. In a section of its website dedicated to "Great people of
Islamic revival", one comes across radical Islamists such as Hassan
al-Banah, founder of the seminal Islamist organization, the Muslim
Brotherhood, of which the terror group Hamas is a Palestinian "military"
branch, Pakistani Jihadist Abul A'la Maududi, or Palestinian-born Sheikh
Abdullah Azzam[8], one of the first "Afghan Arabs" and founder of the
Mujahideen Services Bureau, an organization whose structure would form the
base of Osama Laden's al-Qaeda[9].  
07   
YMC 's online library is virtually a who's who of radical Islamic
teaching. Young Canadian Muslims can delve into radical propaganda such as
al-Banah's Jihad[10] which teaches "Holy war is an obligation from Allah on
every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded" and to "prepare for jihad and
be the lovers of death". Young minds are encouraged to feel hostility for
their Canadian homeland in Sayyid Qutb's Milestones[11] which propounds that
"any place where the Islamic Shari'ah is not enforced and where Islam is not
dominant be

[osint] BACK TO THE BUNKER

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft

 

BACK TO THE BUNKER

By William M. Arkin
Sunday, June 4, 2006; B01

On Monday, June 19, about 4,000 government workers representing more than 50
federal agencies from the State Department to the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission will say goodbye to their families and set off for dozens of
classified emergency facilities stretching from the Maryland and Virginia
suburbs to the foothills of the Alleghenies. They will take to the bunkers
in an "evacuation" that my sources describe as the largest "continuity of
government" exercise ever conducted, a drill intended to prepare the U.S.
government for an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks.

The exercise is the latest manifestation of an obsession with government
survival that has been a hallmark of the Bush administration since 9/11, a
focus of enormous and often absurd time, money and effort that has come to
echo the worst follies of the Cold War. The vast secret operation has
updated the duck-and-cover scenarios of the 1950s with state-of-the-art
technology -- alerts and updates delivered by pager and PDA, wireless
priority service, video teleconferencing, remote backups -- to ensure that
"essential" government functions continue undisrupted should a terrorist's
nuclear bomb go off in downtown Washington.

But for all the BlackBerry culture, the outcome is still old-fashioned black
and white: We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on alternate
facilities, data warehouses and communications, yet no one can really
foretell what would happen to the leadership and functioning of the federal
government in a catastrophe.

After 9/11, The Washington Post reported that President Bush had set up a
shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work
outside Washington on a rotating basis to ensure the continuity of national
security. Since then, a program once focused on presidential succession and
civilian control of U.S. nuclear weapons has been expanded to encompass the
entire government. From the Department of Education to the Small Business
Administration to the National Archives, every department and agency is now
required to plan for continuity outside Washington.

Yet according to scores of documents I've obtained and interviews with half
a dozen sources, there's no greater confidence today that essential services
would be maintained in a disaster. And no one really knows how an evacuation
would even be physically possible.

Moreover, since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the definition of what
constitutes an "essential" government function has been expanded so
ridiculously beyond core national security functions -- do we really need
patent and trademark processing in the middle of a nuclear holocaust? --
that the term has become meaningless. The intent of the government effort
may be laudable, even necessary, but a hyper-centralized approach based on
the Cold War model of evacuations and bunkering makes it practically
worthless.

That the continuity program is so poorly conceived, and poorly run, should
come as no surprise. That's because the same Federal Emergency Management
Agency that failed New Orleans after Katrina, an agency that a Senate
investigating committee has pronounced "in shambles and beyond repair," is
in charge of this enormous effort to plan for the U.S. government's
survival.

Continuity programs began in the early 1950s, when the threat of nuclear war
moved the administration of President Harry S. Truman to begin planning for
emergency government functions and civil defense. Evacuation bunkers were
built, and an incredibly complex and secretive shadow government program was
created.

At its height, the grand era of continuity boasted the fully operational
Mount Weather, a civilian bunker built along the crest of Virginia's Blue
Ridge, to which most agency heads would evacuate; the Greenbrier hotel
complex and bunker in West Virginia, where Congress would shelter; and Raven
Rock, or Site R, a national security bunker bored into granite along the
Pennsylvania-Maryland border near Camp David, where the Joint Chiefs of
Staff would command a protracted nuclear war. Special communications
networks were built, and evacuation and succession procedures were practiced
continually.

When the Soviet Union crumbled, the program became a Cold War curiosity:
Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney ordered Raven Rock into caretaker status
in 1991. The Greenbrier bunker was shuttered and a 30-year-old special
access program was declassified three years later.

Then came the terrorist attacks of the mid-1990s and the looming Y2K
rollover, and suddenly continuity wasn't only for nuclear war anymore. On
Oct. 21, 1998, President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive
67, "Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government
Operations." No longer would only the very few elite leaders responsible for
national security be covered. Instead, every single government department
and agency was dir

[osint] Experts warn of another 'Summer of the Gun'

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
Why is it that only the criminals are allowed to have firearms in countries
like the UK, Australia and Canada?
 
Bruce
 
 
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060603/gun_violence_06
0603/20060603?hub=Canada
 
  

Experts warn of another 'Summer of the Gun'


Updated Sat. Jun. 3 2006 11:51 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Gun violence is on the rise in Canada's major cities, and police are bracing
themselves for another season of escalating casualties.

"Summertime months are peak months for gun violence, and the question is
will we face another 'Summer of the Gun,'" Bill Hubble, deputy director of
the Criminal Intelligence Service, a federal agency, told CTV News.

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, 52 of 78 homicides in 2005 had firearms
involved. A spate in late summer saw about 20 shootings in a two-week
period.

Gun violence isn't just a summer thing. In mid-November, a young man was
shot to death at a church while attending the funeral of a friend, who was
shot to death himself a week earlier.

Gun crime became a major election woman when a teenage girl died in the
crossfire between hoodlums as she was out shopping on Boxing Day on Yonge
St., the city's major thoroughfare.

Experts trace the problem to guns flowing into Canada from the United
States, although criminals also steal from legitimate gun owners.

The reason for the flow of illegal guns northward is quite simple: Gun
smuggling is highly profitable. A high-quality $300 pistol bought in
Philadelphia can fetch around $2,000 in Canada.

Criminal organizations like the Hells Angels and Asian triads, competing for
control over the lucrative trafficking, are willing to pay for firepower.

"They are fighting for money," said Insp. Paul Nadeau of the RCMP Drug
Squad. "It's profits, it's power and this is drug driven. Make no mistake
about it, this is drug-driven."

On the West Coast, Canadian criminals are buying weapons from the U.S. with
drugs. 

"We see marijuana going south and we see guns coming back," said Hubble.

Armed criminals are an increasing presence on Canada's streets -- a threat
all too familiar to police.

"Every day in the city of Toronto, my police officers are encountering armed
criminals in possession of loaded handguns," said Toronto Police Chief Bill
Blair.

This year, Toronto police have confiscated about 800 guns compared to , up
20 per cent from last year.

>From coast to coast, gang members prefer semi-automatic handguns.

"Having a gun is part of the scene, it's part of the image," said Nadeau.
"It's the gangster lifestyle."

Police are fighting the problem with undercover operations, trying to crack
the organized smugglers.

The Conservative government pledged $20 million in the federal budget to
fight gun crime.

Officials say the money and the Conservative government's promised
legislation to toughen penalties for gun crime will help, but they want more
people at the border for searches and increased funding to retrieve serial
numbers from guns used in crimes.

With a report by CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife



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[osint] Leaders condemn Toronto terrorist plot

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 Alleged?
 
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060603/arrests_reactio
n_060603/20060603?hub=Canada

Leaders condemn alleged Toronto terrorist plot


Updated Sat. Jun. 3 2006 11:51 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Prime Minister Stephen Harper praised police Saturday for arresting 17
suspects who allegedly planned attacks on Canadian soil, and warned that the
country is not immune to terrorism.

"Today, Canada's security and intelligence measures worked," said Harper.
"Canada's new government will pursue its efforts to ensure the national
security of all Canadians."

Later in the day, during an address to 224 new military recruits at the
Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, the prime minister said Canada's unique
values make the nation a target for terrorists.

"We are a target because of who we are, how we live, our society, our
diversity and our values -- values such as freedom, democracy and the rule
of law -- the values that make Canada great," Harper told the recruits.

Meanwhile, Toronto Mayor David Miller revealed that Police Chief Bill Blair
had kept him informed of the terror probe since January.

"I was very concerned, but I'm very relieved and pleased at the joint work
of the police services," Miller said.

"I think we can take a lot of reassurance from the fact their work not only
uncovered the actions as they were ongoing, but knew exactly when to step in
to prevent any serious harm from occurring."

In total, police arrested 12 men and five youths on terrorism charges
Friday.

The group is suspected of plotting to bomb targets in Southern Ontario.
Police found three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which can be used
to make explosives.

"It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," alleged RCMP
assistant commissioner Mike McDonell.

"If I can put this in context for you, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was completed with
only one tonne of ammonium nitrate."

"This group posed a real and serious threat," he added. "It had the capacity
and intent to carry out these acts."

Suspects appear in court

Fifteen of the 17 suspects appeared in a Brampton, Ont. court today, their
hands and feet shackled together. Some family members dodged questions from
reporters, but the father of one of the accused told the media he was
stunned by the developments.

"I'm shocked. It's crazy. It's just crazy. It has no meaning whatsoever,"
said Mohammed Abdelhaleen, father of accused 30-year-old Shareef
Abdelhaleen.

Imam Aly Hindy, from the Salaheddin Islamic Centre near Toronto, claimed
security agencies constantly monitor the centre's mosque and Muslims were
being falsely accused.

"It's not terrorism. It could be some criminal activity with a few guys,
that's all," Hindy told The Canadian Press.

Defence lawyer Rocco Galati is representing two of the accused, one of whom
was born in Canada and is a graduate of the medical sciences program at
McMaster University in Hamilton. The other arrived here when he was 10 years
old.

"My clients come from very respectful, long-standing residents of Canada,
all Canadian citizens," Galati told reporters. "Both of their families are
very well-established professionals, well-established families, (with) no
criminal past whatsoever."

The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) issued a
release praising police efforts to combat terrorism.

"As Canadian Muslims we unequivocally condemn terrorism in all of its forms.
Canada is our home and we are deeply concerned about the safety of our
country," said CAIR-CAN executive director Karl Nickner.

With a report from The Canadian Press



 


 



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[osint] The Fruits of Appeasement

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_2_the_fruits.html

The Fruits of Appeasement
Victor Davis Hanson 


Imagine a different November 4, 1979, in Teheran. Shortly after Iranian
terrorists storm the American embassy and take some 90 American hostages,
President Jimmy Carter announces that Islamic fundamentalism is not a
legitimate response to the excess of the Shah but a new and dangerous
fascism that threatens all that liberal society holds dear. And then he
issues an ultimatum to Teheran’s leaders: Release the captives or face a
devastating military response.

When that demand is not met, instead of freezing Iran’s assets, stopping the
importation of its oil, or seeking support at the UN, Carter orders an
immediate blockade of the country, followed by promises to bomb, first, all
of its major military assets, and then its main government buildings and
residences of its ruling mullocracy. The Ayatollah Khomeini may well have
called his bluff; we may well have tragically lost the hostages (151 fewer
American lives than the Iranian-backed Hezbollah would take four years later
in a single day in Lebanon). And there may well have been the sort of chaos
in Teheran that we now witness in Baghdad. But we would have seen it all in
1979—and not in 2001, after almost a quarter-century of continuous Middle
East terrorism, culminating in the mass murder of 3,000 Americans and the
leveling of the World Trade Center.

The twentieth century should have taught the citizens of liberal democracies
the catastrophic consequences of placating tyrants. British and French
restraint over the occupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss, the
absorption of the Czech Sudetenland, and the incorporation of Bohemia and
Moravia did not win gratitude but rather Hitler’s contempt for their
weakness. Fifty million dead, the Holocaust, and the near destruction of
European civilization were the wages of “appeasement”—a term that
early-1930s liberals proudly embraced as far more enlightened than the old
idea of “deterrence” and “military readiness.”

So too did Western excuses for the Russians’ violation of guarantees of free
elections in postwar Eastern Europe, China, and Southeast Asia only embolden
the Soviet Union. What eventually contained Stalinism was the Truman
Doctrine, NATO, and nuclear deterrence—not the United Nations—and what
destroyed its legacy was Ronald Reagan’s assertiveness, not Jimmy Carter’s
accommodation or Richard Nixon’s détente.

As long ago as the fourth century b.c., Demosthenes warned how complacency
and self-delusion among an affluent and free Athenian people allowed a
Macedonian thug like Philip II to end some four centuries of Greek
liberty—and in a mere 20 years of creeping aggrandizement down the Greek
peninsula. Thereafter, these historical lessons should have been clear to
citizens of any liberal society: we must neither presume that comfort and
security are our birthrights and are guaranteed without constant sacrifice
and vigilance, nor expect that peoples outside the purview of bourgeois
liberalism share our commitment to reason, tolerance, and enlightened
self-interest.

Most important, military deterrence and the willingness to use force against
evil in its infancy usually end up, in the terrible arithmetic of war,
saving more lives than they cost. All this can be a hard lesson to relearn
each generation, especially now that we contend with the sirens of the mall,
Oprah, and latte. Our affluence and leisure are as antithetical to the use
of force as rural life and relative poverty once were catalysts for muscular
action. The age-old lure of appeasement—perhaps they will cease with this
latest concession, perhaps we provoked our enemies, perhaps demonstrations
of our future good intentions will win their approval—was never more evident
than in the recent Spanish elections, when an affluent European electorate,
reeling from the horrific terrorist attack of 3/11, swept from power the
pro-U.S. center-right government on the grounds that the mass murders were
more the fault of the United States for dragging Spain into the effort to
remove fascists and implant democracy in Iraq than of the primordial
al-Qaidist culprits, who long ago promised the Western and Christian
Iberians ruin for the Crusades and the Reconquista.

What went wrong with the West—and with the United States in particular—when
not just the classical but especially the recent antecedents to September
11, from the Iranian hostage-taking to the attack on the USS Cole, were so
clear? Though Americans in an election year, legitimately concerned about
our war dead, may now be divided over the Iraqi occupation, polls
nevertheless show a surprising consensus that the many precursors to the
World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings were acts of war, not police
matters. Roll the tape backward from the USS Cole in 2000, through the
bombing of the Khobar Towers and the U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998,
the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, t

[osint] Ejected for Insulting Islam

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 

 
http://www.ewadah.com/2006/05/ejected-for-insulting-islam.html



Saturday, May 06, 2006


Ejected for Insulting Islam 

  

Three Swedish men have been thrown out of Egypt for making fun of Islam.

The three Swedes, together with two Norwegians, allegedly shaved their heads
and dressed as Muslim pilgrims. 

They then went to the square in the mainly Muslim town of Hurghada, where
they walked around a decorative statue similar to the one above chanting the
Muslim prayer, "Oh Allah, we obey you,". 

They then started taking off their clothes, an act that local media reported
provoked uproar among local people. Police then stepped in to arrest the
men.

The men were reportedly very drunk and on their way to a toga party.

Local prosecutors initially said the men would be charged with mocking
Islam, a serious crime in Egypt. However, they later decided to release the
men, who were immediately put on a plane out of the country according to a
Swedish foreign ministry spokesman.



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[osint] Muslims in China

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 





 
http://www.ewadah.com/2006/05/muslims-in-china.html




Thursday, May 25, 2006


Muslims in China 

  
Photo: Reuters

Comment on this article in our forum  

Ishmael is a big fan of Osama bin Laden.

"He is a hero," he said, stroking his beard. "He is a good Muslim." Maybe
not such a strange comment to hear from a Muslim in Iraq or Saudi Arabia,
but Ishmael is a Chinese citizen who lives in the remote, northwestern
province of Qinghai, in a country which is officially atheist and strictly
controls religion.

With just over 20 million adherents, according to the government, there are
as many Muslims in China as live in Syria, or Yemen, two predominantly
Islamic countries.

And Islam is alive and well in western China.

Ishmael -- who, like many other Muslims in Qinghai, prefers using his Arabic
name to the Chinese one stamped on his identity card -- is a student at an
Islamic school attached to a mosque in Xining, the provincial capital.

There he learns Arabic and Persian, as well as studying the Koran and other
Islamic teachings.

But politics is technically banned by law from being mentioned either in
Ishmael's school or mosque.

A large blackboard near the entrance to the mosque, on the dusty outskirts
of Xining, reminds worshippers of their duty to love the motherland and love
the Communist Party as part of being a good Muslim, an admonition that riles
some.

"The communists -- who are the Chinese -- are a godless people," said Ahmed,
from eastern Qinghai, who like Ishmael belongs to the Hui minority, Chinese
Muslims who trace their heritage back to the Middle East and central Asia.

That's a sentiment shared by Ishmael's hero, bin Laden, who in April slammed
the Chinese as "pagan Buddhists" in an audiotape accusing the United Nations
of being an "infidel" body.

Yet despite the official controls on religion and politics, the government
allows the Hui a great deal of autonomy and freedom in sparsely populated
Qinghai and neighbouring Gansu.

Although there may be occasional tensions, there is little parallel with the
far-western region of Xinjiang, where there have been riots and bomb attacks
by pro-independence groups.

"In places like Qinghai and Gansu, where Islam is less politicised, the
government is more open and more relaxed," said Dru Gladney, professor of
Asian Studies and Anthropology at the University of Hawaii.

"Particularly in very poor areas, there is a lot more flexibility," he said.

In many parts of China the Hui have blended in almost seamlessly into the
predominant Han culture, all but abandoning Islam except for some traditions
such as circumcising male children and avoiding pork.

In Qinghai, where around a fifth of the 5 million population follow Islam,
Muslim women cover their heads, many restaurants refuse to let alcohol be
consumed, and the men wear white skull caps and greet each other in Arabic.

A government ban on children under 18 attending Islamic schools in mosques
is, in reality, usually ignored, local Muslims say.

And they are well aware of what's going on in the wider Muslim world, even
if they dare not risk the wrath of the Chinese security forces by protesting
in the streets, and limit their political discussions to the home.

"We all listen to Voice of America and watch Al Jazeera here," said
Noureddin, 23, recently returned from religious school in Saudi Arabia.

During the storm over the publishing of cartoons caricaturing the Prophet
Mohammad, originally published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten last
September, China's Muslims made barely a peep of protest.

"We knew about the cartoons and felt furious," said Mohammad, 26. "But how
could we go and demonstrate?" Other times, though, tensions do bubble over.

At least seven people were killed and 42 injured in the central province of
Henan in 2004 after a car accident involving an ethnic Han Chinese and a Hui
sparked rioting.

In 1993, a cartoon ridiculing Muslims led to paramilitary police storming a
mosque taken over by Hui in northwest China.

Some Han in Qinghai say they resent the province's Muslims for their wealth,
but in the same breath will accuse them of petty theft. The Muslims say they
resent the Han for their ethnic chauvinism and political domination.

Even within the Muslim community, there is unease between different sects
and different ethnic groups who also follow the same religion, such as
Qinghai's Salar minority and the Uighurs of restive Xinjiang.

"The Uighurs dance too much," said Ali, who belongs to the more conservative
Ihwani sect which often looks to Saudi Arabia for guidance. "We are
different from them." - Reuters 


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[osint] Suspects arrested following filming around Toronto subway

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 

 

Suspects arrested following filming around Toronto subway
06/03/2006
http://www.eitb24.com/portal/eitb24/noticia/en/international-news/at-least-1
0-suspects-arrested-following-filming-around-toronto-su?itemId=D34931
 &cl=%2Feitb24%2Finternacional&idioma=en

Police said passengers reported the men were filming around the Keele subway
stop and beneath subway car seats.
At least 10 suspects were arrested in the Toronto area on terrorism-related
charges, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said late on Friday night.

The Canadian Press quoted an unnamed police source as saying the charges
were related to an explosives attack plot in Ontario, Canada's largest
province.

The arrests were made throughout the day and more were expected overnight,
with some 400 officers involved, in cooperation with the Integrated National
Security Enforcement Team, said RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Michele Paradis.

"The investigation is ongoing," Paradis said.

The Integrated National Security Enforcement Team is comprised of the RCMP,
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and other federal, provincial and
municipal police services.

Armed officers surrounded a police station east of Toronto as the suspects
were brought in unmarked cars.

The arrests could be tied to investigation of two men skulking around a
downtown Toronto subway stop with video cameras on May 23.

Police said passengers reported the men were filming around the Keele subway
stop and beneath subway car seats.



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[osint] Islam and Miniskirts

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft

 
http://www.ewadah.com/2006/05/islam-and-miniskirts.html




Thursday, May 11, 2006


Islam and Miniskirts 

  

Discuss this article in our forum  

Fauzia Damayanti stands to spend 10 years in prison unless she mends her
wicked ways. Her possible crime? The Jakarta housewife wears miniskirts. 

Under a draft anti-pornography bill being considered by Indonesian
lawmakers, Muslim women who wear clothes deemed to be revealing may be
jailed or fined as much as $111,000. Couples who kiss in public may face a
five-year sentence or a $55,000 fine. 

"It's ridiculous and extreme," said Damayanti, 27, a Muslim and mother of
two, who wore a denim miniskirt and a white tank top as she sipped iced
lemon tea in a restaurant. "People should be educated about what they wear,
not jailed."

The issue has ignited unprecedented debate in Indonesia, the world's most
populous Muslim country, over the role of Islam in public life. While 85
percent of the nation's 228 million people say they are Muslims, traditional
dress codes among more than 400 ethnic groups range from bare breasts in
West Papua to naked shoulders in Java. Indonesia's archipelago straddles the
equator and mostly has a tropical climate. 

"Indonesia has no tradition of covering all of the body; it's a tradition of
the Middle East," said Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, a law professor at the
University of Indonesia in Jakarta and chairwoman of the university's Human
Rights Study Center. "We have hundreds and hundreds of customs, so why
should we have a single type of clothing for every citizen?"

Conservatives are trying to introduce elements of Islamic law, or Shariah,
through the bill, Harkrisnowo said. Several regencies, or local governments,
have introduced similar bylaws. 

"There are some Muslims who are concerned about nightclubs and Indonesia
becoming more liberal," said Arief Budiman, an Indonesian and head of
Indonesian Studies at the University of Melbourne. "They are looking for a
role to play, and the only role they can play is the Islamic state".

-Bloomberg




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[osint] No amount of PR will stop suicide bombers

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://www.judeoscope.ca/article.php3?id_article=0093

>From the Archives: No amount of PR will stop suicide bombers


David Ouellette   

(originally published on July 25, 2005)
Four years after the 9-11 terrorist attacks and thousands of civilians
felled by Muslim terrorists later, it finally took the July 7 London
bombings to bring 120 Canadian imams to condemn terrorism ever so
ambiguously in a much ballyhooed joint statement
 sponsored by the
Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN). So why now?
One cannot help but suspect that the London bombings hit very close to home
for some Canadian Islamic leaders. Not geographically, mind you. Rather,
what differentiates the July 7 attacks from the Madrid bombings and 9-11,
was that they were not committed by foreigners but by born and bred British
Muslims. Add to this the fact that most public statements released by
Canadian Islamic organizations in response to the bombings projected fears
of an anti-Muslim backlash in Canada and you get a sense of the pre-emptive,
PR nature of the Canadian imams' statement on extremism. The joint
declaration starts off with self-congratulating statements on the "positive
contribution and near seamless integration" of Canadian Muslims and goes on
to say Canada has offered Muslims "a hope that can only be repaid with
thankfulness and sacrifice" while emphasizing that Canadian Muslims "care
deeply about Canada's prosperity, its growth and its safety and security".
That's just jim-dandy, but when the statement finally comes to the heart of
the matter, i.e. condemning terrosism, its ambiguous and imprecise wording,
despite the flaunting of seemingly resolute adverbs such as "categorically"
and "unequivocally", finally undermines the breadth and scope of the imams'
understanding of terrorism, and therefore, its unconditional repudiation:
"Any one who claims to be a Muslim and participates in any way in the taking
of innocent life is betraying the very spirit and letter of Islam". The use
of terms as relative as "innocent life" rather than, say, "unarmed,
non-threatening civilians", certainly leaves room for interpretation. And
there is reason to believe this was so intended when one recalls, for
example, Islamic leaders' statements on terror groups such as Hamas which
deliberately targets unarmed civilians. CAIR founder Nihad Awad, for one,
who has publicly stated he supports Hamas, does not very likely consider
mass-murdered Israeli commuters to be "innocent". Then again, Nihad Awad,
prior to founding CAIR in 1994, was a member of the Islamic Association for
Palestine, an organization created by senior Hamas leader Mousa Mohammed Abu
Marzook. Nor did, for that matter, Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) President
Mohammed Elmasry consider Israeli adult civilians to be "innocent", when he
argued in 2004 on the Michael Coren Live show that only Israeli children are
innocent and that Israelis aged 18 and over are legitimate targets for
Palestinian suicide-bombers. It would appear the application of the "spirit
and letter of Islam" discriminates strongly between London and Tel Aviv
commuters.
The description of the ideology which promotes much of Islamist terrorism is
equally shrouded in the vaguest of terms: "We will confront and challenge
the extremist mindset that produces this perversion of our faith". It is up
to Muslims to decide whether Salafism (itself divided in many strands), a
strain of Islam Ossama Ben Laden is believed to follow, constitutes or not a
perversion of Islam. Merely calling it a "mindset", as if the issue were
psychological, and making it appear to stand outside Islam is, however,
misleading. The Salafi doctrine has deep roots in the most rigorous of the
four Sunni schools of jurisprudence, the Hanbali School. Its foremost goal
is to prevent the Islamic world from reverting to pre-Islamic ignorance of
god by fighting the "corrupting" Western influence and accusing less
fundamentalist Muslims of takfir (apostasy).
With the backing of Saudi princes, Egyptian and Arab Gulf preachers have
spread Salafism to all corners of the world. In Canada, an
 Islamic youth
organization offers on its website a selection of works by top Salafi
ideologues celebrated as "great people of Islamic revival"; Salafism is
preached from coast to coast in prayer rooms, madrassas and mosques. More
specifically, the National
 Post reported on July 25 that Canadian
Muslim Congress president Naiz Salimi alleges that some of the signatories
of the CAIR-CAN-sponsored statement have "encouraged segregation, extremism,
misogyny and homophobia on an unparalleled scale" and revealed that one
signatory is known to have called for a jihad against U.S. forces in the
Middl

[osint] Canada Raid Breaks Cell: 3 Tons of Explosives Found

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft


 

Canada Raid Breaks Cell: 3 Tons of Explosives Found

http://inbrief.threatswatch.org/2006/06/canada-raid-breaks-cell-3-tons/

RCMP Raid Foils Plot by Jihadists to Bomb Canadian Targets as 17 Arrested,
Had Training Camp Near Toronto


By Steve Schippert


The Royal Canadian Mounted Police conducted a counterterrorism raid in the
Greater Toronto Area involving over 400 personnel and broke
 a Canadian terrorist cell planning to bomb
Canadian targets. Twelve adult Muslim jihadists and five juveniles were
arrested, some of them second-generation Canadian citizens and some of them
recent immigrants. They ranged in ages from in their 20's to teens. They
arrested group was described as
 "Muslims, but not Arabs" and unconnected to the UK

raid yesterday in attempts to break up a British chemical attack plot.

According to RCMP Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell, the group had
ordered and received into their possession over three tons of ammonium
nitrate, the fertilizer component used in making an explosive slurry.
Clearly a massive amount, probably intended to make several huge bombs, this
is three times the amount of ammonium nitrate used in the 1995 bombing of
the Murrah   Federal Building in
Oklahoma City.

Their intended targets are known to Canadian authorities, but they have not
identified them publicly. Police knowledge of targets lead to assurances
that the Toronto
 Transit
Commission systems were not targeted. With three tons of explosives,
buildings are a more logical conclusion without the knowledge known by the
RCMP. 

The authorities learned of the targets from captured documents and videos
made the Jihadists. At least some of the arrested attended
 a "training camp" north of Toronto, where they acquired and trained
with weapons, made videos and planned attacks, including a list of intended
targets. The Toronto Star reported that the group had been under
surveillance by Canadian intelligence since 2004. 

It was in 2004 that Internet
 monitoring sparked a CSIS investigation into the group, a Canadian
program not unlike the American NSA program currently under fire. The
Canadian surveillance found members of the group on Jihadist sites "vowing
to attack at home, in the name of oppressed Muslims here and abroad." Mullah
Dadullah, the Taliban military commander thought to be captured recently,
directly

threatened Canada as Canadian troops have been operating in Afghanistan
since 2001. American critics of the NSA surveillance program should take
note of the magnitude of the attacks the Canadian program has apparently
prevented.

The Counterterrorism Blog's Jeffrey Imm notes

the significance of Canada's growing Islamist threat. The threat of
homegrown terrorism is nothing new to Canada. But, as former Royal Canadian
Mounted Police jihadism expert Tom Quiggin notes, neither is Canadian
denial. "A clear sense of denial exists in Canada about the degree to which
terrorism activity occurs," he said in a Canadian National
 Post interview. "Political correctness is
wielded as a weapon against anyone who dares to speak out. Yet some of the
world's most infamous terrorists have operated in Canada almost unhindered
for years. Even direct threats against Canada and attacks against Canadians
with multiple deaths have not broken this denial. As a result of the highly
suppressed political discourse in Canada, the domestic response to this
growing problem has been limited."

One of the first local public reactions to the arrests was the organization
of a public meeting to bring various aspects of the community together,
specifically inviting Jewish and Muslim Canadians. Canada
 's News Talk Radio
580 CFRA reports, "Mayor Chiarelli says as more details come out, there's a
risk of blaming and finger-pointing. He hopes to address that quickly."

Jeffrey Imm also notes this Canadian
 INSAC Report (PDF) on
Islamists' desire to use Muslim converts in attacks, valuing their abi

[osint] Summary of Canadian Arrests (Web Touches U.S., UK, Denmark, Bosnia)

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 

 

Summary of Canadian Arrests - June 2, 2006 (Pics Attached)

 

 

Individuals Arrested

* On Friday, June 2, 2006, members of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police and the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team arrested 12
male adults and five youths on terrorism-related charges. 

* According to the RCMP, the arrested individuals are

o   1. Fahim Ahmad, 21, of Robinstone Drive, Toronto, Ontario

o   2. Zakaria Amara, 20, of Periwinkle Crescent, Mississauga, Ontario;

o   3. Asad Ansari, 21, of Rosehurst Drive, Mississauga, Ontario

o   4. Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, of Lowville Heights, Mississauga,
Ontario;

o   5. Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, of Montevideo Road, Mississauga, Ontario;

o   6. Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ontario;

o   7. Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston, Ontario;

o   8. Jahmaal James, 23, of Trudelle Street, Toronto, Ontario;

o   9. Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, of Stonehill Court, Toronto, Ontario;

o   10. Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, of Treverton Drive,
Toronto, Ontario;

o   11. Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, of Robin Drive, Mississauga, Ontario;

o   12. Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue, Mississauga, Ontario.

* According to Luc Portelance, assistant director of operations for
CSIS, the detained suspects are all males, Canadian residents "from a
variety of backgrounds" and followers of a "violent ideology inspired by al
Qaeda."

o   Speaking before the Canadian Senate on Monday, CSIS deputy director
Jack Hooper had warned: "We are seeing phenomena in Canada such as the
emergence of homegrown second- and third-generation terrorists. These are
people who may have immigrated to Canada at an early age who become
radicalized while in Canada. They are virtually indistinguishable from other
youth. They blend into our society very well, they speak our language and
they appear to be, for all intents and purposes, well assimilated."  He
added, "All the circumstances that led to the London transit bombing.are
resident here and now in Canada." 

 

Acquisition of Explosives and Weapons

* According to RCMP Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell, "This
group took steps to acquire three tons of ammonium nitrate and other
components necessary to create explosive devices. To put this in context,
the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed
168 people took one ton of ammonium nitrate."

* According to the RCMP, the men also acquired weapons.

o   McDonell noted: "[the group] had the capacity and intent to carry
out these attacks.Our investigation and arrests prevented the assembly of
explosive devices and attacks being carried out."

 

Attended Training Camp in Canada

* Open sources report the men traveled to a training camp in Canada
and made propaganda videos.

 

Possible Targets

 

* RCMP Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell stated, "[these]
individuals.were planning to commit a series of terrorist attacks against
solely Canadian targets in southern Ontario."

o   Open sources report that CSIS' Toronto headquarters was on the
terrorists' target list. 

* Media reports state that "the suspects allegedly planned to target
the spy service because many of them had encountered agents early in the
investigation, when they were interviewed and put under surveillance. They
also were allegedly angered by media reports accusing CSIS of racial
profiling of Muslims."

* Further, some of the group's members had even been spotted taking
notes around the building, and at least one had reportedly visited the
basement.

o   According to open source reporting, the Parliament Buildings in
Ottawa were also a possible target.

o   Additionally, press reports state that that the men had filmed
around the Keele subway stop and beneath subway car seats. 

o   The target list also reportedly included a "smattering of other
high-profile, heavily populated areas."

 

Role of the Internet

 

* According to open source reporting, the investigation began in
2004 when Canadian authorities tracked local teenagers on jihadist sites,
"reading and espousing anti-Western sentiments and vowing to attack at home,
in the name of oppressed Muslims."

o   The men were "allegedly spurred on by images of conflict in Iraq and
Afghanistan and angered by what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims at
home."


2005 Arrest for Weapons Smuggling at the Peace Bridge, Link to One of the
Suspects

 

* In August 2005, Fahim Ahmad, who was arrested in Friday's raids,
rented a car for Yasin Mohamed and Ali Dirie to go to the U.S.

* The licence plate was flagged for possible narcotics involvement
so it could be pulled over upon its return to Canada.

o   On August 13, 2005, the CBSA pulled over and searched the white
Buick.

* During the search, a customs officer discovered a loaded Highpoint
.380 caliber handgun inside 

[osint] British brigade of Islamists join Al-Qaeda foreign legion in Iraq

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2209957,00.html




The Sunday Times June 04, 2006  


British brigade of Islamists join Al-Qaeda foreign legion in Iraq

David Leppard

     




UP TO 150 Islamic radicals have travelled from Britain to Iraq to join up
with a "British brigade" that has been established by Al-Qaeda leaders to
fight coalition forces. 
Senior security sources say leaders of the Iraqi insurgency have set up a
"foreign legion" composed entirely of westerners to fight alongside the
insurgents in the war against British and American forces. Some are
preparing to carry out suicide attacks while others have received basic
combat training for attacks on western troops The so-called "British
brigade" is said to be operating under the direct command of Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Members of the unit are thought
to be in the Sunni triangle, a combat zone and Al-Qaeda hotbed west of
Baghdad. 
The flow of young Muslim men from western Europe to Iraq has increased
dramatically in the past two years. The "pipeline" of suspected terrorists
is being fuelled by growing resentment about American and British policy and
scandals such as the mistreatment of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison. 
A senior security source, confirming that between 120 and 150 Britons had
travelled to Iraq, said there was concern that the flow was increasing: "The
really worrying thing is that this has become a movement that people believe
in. It's not simply a matter of them joining a terrorist organisation." 
The latest demonstration of the trend came 10 days ago when anti-terrorist
police arrested eight men in a series of raids in Manchester, London and
Merseyside. 
Police said publicly that the men were being held on suspicion of
encouraging and financing Al-Qaeda's terrorist operations abroad. But
privately Whitehall officials said they believed that there may have been
links to the training and recruitment of volunteers for suicide missions in
Iraq. 
Earlier this year Charles Clarke, the former home secretary, imposed a
control order on an unnamed terror suspect who had been prevented from
boarding a plane at Manchester airport. 
Security sources say dozens of cases have been unearthed in recent months
where suspected would-be suicide bombers have been stopped at British
airports while they were en route to join the insurgency. 
One said: "Greater Manchester police frequently interdict individuals whom
they believe are going to Iraq and other locations in order to carry out
suicide attacks. Conventional charges, such as passport irregularities, are
used to prevent them leaving the country. But this leaves police with the
problem of returning potential suicide bombers to the Manchester community."

Zarqawi has boasted on his website about the British recruits who have
joined his "foreign legion". One Zarqawi video, with English subtitles,
issued last month, shows scenes of excited young recruits in Iraq. The
message is "They are fighting; you should be too". 
The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that one in 10
of the 20,000 insurgents in Iraq was foreign-born. 
However, Christopher Langton, editor of the institute's study The Military
Balance 2006, said he did not know how many of the estimated 2,000
foreigners were British. 
Last month Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, head of the DST, the French
domestic security service, said that about 15 young French people remained
in and around Iraq. At least nine had been killed. 
Muriel Degauque, 38, a white Belgian convert to Islam, blew herself up in an
attack on an Iraqi police patrol in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad,
last November. 
Wail al-Dhaleai, a Yemeni asylum seeker living in Sheffield, died when he
drove a car filled with explosives into a US army patrol in November 2003. 
The extent of the problem in this country began to emerge only last year
when Idris Bazis, 41, a French-Algerian who lived in Manchester, blew
himself up in a suicide attack on American troops. 
An investigation by Greater Manchester police soon uncovered an extensive
network for would-be "holy warriors" in Britain. A senior police source said
that some went to Pakistan while others went to Middle Eastern countries,
such as Syria, before being smuggled over the border. 
The Ministry of Defence said it was aware of the matter but could not
discuss it because it was an "intelligence issue". 
"It is too complicated to go into estimating numbers for this type of
thing," it said.
     


     


    
 


[osint] Notes on the Near Eastern Legacy of Islam

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4682 



Notes on the Near Eastern Legacy of Islam

by John Lewis    (June 4, 2006)

I just finished teaching an undergraduate university class on the Ancient
Near East: 15 weeks on Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. I read as many
original documents and modern histories-and looked at as much art-as I had
time to do. I became intrigued by the many parallels between radical Islam
and the ancient historical background. Here are just a few, in no particular
order, each of which needs more work:

1.  The idea that the world is divided into the realms of light and
truth (ruled by a god's favorite on earth), versus the realm of darkness and
lies (ruled by men). There are many parallels between Zoroastrianism (which
sees the world as divided into warring realms of light and dark), Manicheism
(similar views spread by a Persian mystic in the 3rd century A.D.), and
Islam, particularly the Dar-al-Islam versus Dar-al-Harb, or World of Light
and Submission versus World of Darkness and Chaos. From such views came Bin
Laden's war with the west, which can only end when the forces of Islam have
conquered the forces of Chaos. 


2.  The idea that the truth can only come from the authority of a higher
power, to be accepted by faith. The ancient Persian kings saw a "world of
truth" versus "world of lies," in which the Great King triumphs over those
who lie. Islamists today see enemies lying to them everywhere-while they
accept the grossest lies themselves (teaching their children, for instance,
that Jews are born of pigs and monkeys). See Elan
 Journo's article in The Objective Standard for the conspiracy
theory mentality that develops from the idea that myriad enemies are engaged
in organized lying. 


3.  The idea that evil is a powerful force in the world, to be opposed
by the forces of goodness derived from the divine. They see chaos whenever
there is no divine force bearing down on men to keep them in line. In such a
world, to be at war is natural-and good, if one is on the "good" side.
Morally, they claim, those who initiate war for the realm of light are good,
while those who defend themselves from such war are evil. Thus Palestinian
suicide bombers are said to be good when they blow up little children, while
the children are enemy occupiers who deserve death. 


4.  The idea that proper political rule is based on the sanction of a
divine power, whose commands are enforced by those who fight successfully on
earth. For the Persians, it was the god Ahuramazda, among others, who
legitimated the king's rule. The "peace" that follows when the king
establishes his rule is a distinct parallel to claims by Islamic
totalitarians that all will be well once Islamic law is imposed by a
totalitarian Caliphate or ruling council. For such mentalities, adherence to
divine commands is more important than the consequences on earth; thus the
Taliban brought misery to their people, but called it goodness. 


5.  The idea that man is unable to guide himself by reason means that he
must be controlled, by either an inner or an outer jihad. Reason was unknown
in the ancient world, but is today rejected by Islamists, who claim that
each one of us must submit to the power of a god in order to restrain the
emotions of rage that lead to chaos. From this follows a series of social
rules: women must cover themselves, for instance, else men will go wild and
dirty them. Palestinians must have a periodic "day of rage" to vent their
anger at the hostile world that does not grant their whims. 


6.  There is a need for an external enemy, as a point of focus for the
rage which would otherwise turn into civil war. The Arabic tribes were in
constant warfare, until Islam pointed their energies outwards, into
conquest. To this day, the civil wars return to such areas whenever there is
no external enemy, or no dictator to keep order by force. (There is a
parallel to countries in Medieval Europe, which warred constantly unless
they pointed their energies outward toward a Crusade against infidels.) 


7.  The wars of expansion-by which the Near Eastern kingdoms and, later,
Islam rose-continued until a dictator imposed his will. The ancient
Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Median and Persian Empires all expanded to
the limits of their power. For the Persians, the expansion to universal rule
was stopped by the Greeks. Similarly, Islamists today say that a Caliphate
will impose Islamic law over all, by force if necessary, under a
totalitarian dictatorship. 


8.  The demand by every ancient king for submission to his will
everywhere is a precise parallel to the demand by Mohammad, and the Islamic
totalitarians today, that people everywhere submit to the will of Allah.
Ancient Persians were all slaves to the Great King; now, they are all to be
slaves to Allah (as early Chris

[osint] Canada-OSage: The ties that bind 17 suspects?

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 
 
Notes:

*   Ghany and Amara are brothers-in-law, married to sisters, and were
wed by the same Scarborough Imam


*   Some of the unnamed minors attended the same high school together


*   Some met via the internet, as far back as 2004, where they were
recruited


*   Jamal is a bus driver, and attended a Mississagua Islamic Center


*   Mohamed and Dirie were arrested bringing wepons from the US to
Canada in a car rented by Ahmad


*   Steven Chand is a convert

 
 
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Artic
le_Type1

&c=Article&cid=1149371435839&call_pageid=968332188492
 
The ties that bind 17 suspects?
ANALYSIS | `They represent the broad strata of our community,' the RCMP
says.
Jun. 4, 2006. 04:27 AM
SURYA BHATTACHARYA, NASREEN GULAMHUSEIN AND HEBA ALY
STAFF REPORTERS

In investigators' offices, an intricate graph plotting the links between the
17 men and teens charged with being members of a homegrown terrorist cell
covers at least one wall. And still, says a source, it is difficult to find
a common denominator. 

Some of the students, who cannot be named because they are not yet 18 and
their identities are protected by Canadian law, attended the same high
school. 

The suspects are mainly teens and men in their young 20s, with the exception
of 43-year-old Qayyum Abdul Jamal, a bus driver and recognized figure at a
Mississauga Islamic centre. 

Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, a 21-year-old health sciences graduate from McMaster
University, was born in Canada, the son of a doctor who emigrated from
Trinidad and Tobago in 1955. He and Zakaria Amara, 20, are married to
sisters, and were wed by the same Scarborough imam. 

Yasin Abdi Mohamed, 24, and 22-year-old Mohammed Dirie were arrested
bringing weapons from the United States to Canada in a car allegedly rented
by Fahim Ahmad, 21. Ahmad was never charged in that incident but the two
others pleaded guilty last October. Both are serving two-year sentences in a
Kingston-area penitentiary. 

Some may have met through the Internet where, sources told the Star, the
investigation began in 2004 with concern over the views expressed. But that
group eventually moved away from cyberspace to allegedly meet, plot and
recruit. 

RCMP Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell said yesterday the suspects are
all Canadian residents and the majority are citizens. "They represent the
broad strata of our community. Some are students, some are employed, some
are unemployed," he said. 

"Some are actually recruited. Going out and looking for marginalized youth,
if we can call it that, and other ones it's common association within a
community." As police briefed the media, families, friends and neighbours
told stories of the men they believe are wrongly accused. 

Mohammad Attique couldn't believe the man who had been renting an apartment
in his basement for six months is suspected of being a terrorist. He
exchanged only brief greetings when he ran into his tenant, Steven Vikash
Chand, a 25-year-old Muslim convert who went by the name Abdul Shakur. 

For the boys who played basketball with Fahim Ahmad, they believed the
charges are simply wrong. And the mother of a 24-year-old who was already
dealing with the fact that her son was in jail on gun charges, was
devastated by the terrorism charges. "I did not bring up my children in
Canada to teach them to kill," Yasin Abdi Mohamed's mother said yesterday. 

As police transported suspects yesterday to the Brampton courthouse where
they made their first court appearances yesterday morning, they were linked
with handcuffs and leg irons, and were heavily guarded. 

Also loaded in the police vans with the young men were some of their
possessions, including a Grade 10 math text. 

With files from Michelle Shephard


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[osint] From London to Toronto: Dismantling Cells, dodging their ideology

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 

 
 
 

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/06/from_london_to_toronto_dismant.php 

 

Saturday 3 June 2006
In fact, it gets worse. In the joint CSIS/RCMP press conference held this
morning in Toronto, Luc Portelance, Assistant Director Operations with CSIS,
incredibly,
 spoke
of the ideology of terrorism: "Terrorism is a dangerous ideology". Why on
earth would a security professional such as Mr. Portelance publicly confound
a tactic (terrorism) with an ideology (radical Islam)?

 
  

>From London to Toronto: Dismantling Cells, dodging their ideology


By Walid Phares


Paris and London, June 3, 2006

Over the past nine months, speeches by Usama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri,
other Jihadi cadres and the documents found after the arrest of
Terror-architect Abu Mus'ab al Suri all put the West and democracies on
notice: the second generation al Qaida is marching. The "Jihad country-list"
includes those countries whose troops are engaged in battles against the
Terrorists around the world or whose police force is attempting to disrupt
the cells at home. Beyond the "regular" countries-targets such as the United
States, UK, Australia, Russia, India, Jordan and Israel, many others
"infidel" countries made it to the top 20: Denmark, Netherlands, Italy,
Spain, Norway, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Canada etc. The first type of
countries, those who are engaged directly in confrontations with Jihadi
networks on battlefields such as Afghanistan and Iraq, are "open targets."
This is the A list. However, countries on the B list are "enemies of the
cause" but decisions to strike them fall into the hands of the "local
emirs." 

This week two countries from the A and B lists witnessed ponctual counter
Terrorism operations leading to the arrests of dozens suspects and the
foiling, according to authorities, of potential future bombings: Great
Britain and Canada. The security moves were successful but were the public
statements as focused? 

London

In the British capital, dawn operations ended with the arrests of young men
accused of preparing for a "dirty bomb." Authorities asserted that an
ongoing campaign aimed at exploding the bomb on British territory. "We are
absolutely certain this device exists and could be used either by a suicide
bomber or in a remote-controlled explosion," one source told the Sun
newspaper. 

At a first glance, connoisseurs of Jihadism realize this finding was
strategically connected to the War waged on London last July. It goes
without hard analysis that the Ghazwa launched on 7/7 was a first round,
followed by a failed one during the summer, and most likely the most recent
discoveries were to be the 2006 follow up strikes to last year's. However,
one notices that UK spokespersons went to extra length just to underline
that "there are no evidence in last week's arrests that is linked to July 7
Terror attacks." A proposition if anything, shows how fearful are British
authorities from war statements. London's politicians theoretically mention
the War on Terror, but when push comes to shove, refuse to look political
reality in the eyes. 

Suggesting that "nothing" indicates that the Jihadi cell that was
accordingly about to massacre British citizens this year is linked to last
year's attacks is indicative of strategic failure in the war concepts. For
once an enemy is defined all its forces are linked to each other. Otherwise,
Londoners shouldn't have established a link between each wave of Stukas sent
by the Luftwaffe during the 1940 Blitz. As I am meeting with European and
British legislators, I realize that the debate about "Jihadism" is still
raging on this side of the Ocean. Despite the fact that al Qaida's two
generations are clear on the matter, yet officials are tip towing. If London
doesn't identify the overarching ideology of the war waged on its people, it
will hardly be able to connect any attack to another. 

Toronto

Canada is even more hesitant. While 17 suspects were arrested for plotting
Terrorist attacks in Toronto, Canadian authorities and some media are
struggling with "recognizing" the threat identity. "The men arrested
yesterday appeared to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired
by al-Qaida," said Luc Portelance, the assistant director of operations with
Canada's security agency. Hesitations in the rhetoric are impressive.
Despite the clarity through which al Qaida and the Jihadists worldwide
advance their doctrine designate their enemies, many in the West and now in
Canada are still nervous. Ottawa mentions a "violent ideology," but refrains
from citing its name, let alone its objectives. 

Some in the press are running in the opposite direction by digging "reasons"
for Terrorism. The Toronto Star reported Saturday that "Canadian youth in
their teens and 20s, upset at the treatment of Muslims worldwide, were among
those arres

[osint] Terrorists Target Milwaukee!

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 

 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201
516.html?nav=hcmodule




Terrorists Target Milwaukee!


And other headlines you're unlikely to see.


Saturday, June 3, 2006; Page A16

MICHAEL CHERTOFF took control of the Department of Homeland Security calling
for a more rational, risk-based allotment of federal resources to prepare
for and combat the threat of terrorist attacks. So where is the rationality,
and what is the risk, that would justify increasing homeland security grants
to Charlotte, Omaha, Milwaukee and Tampa and cutting those to New York and
Washington?

Unfortunately, Mr. Chertoff and his team aren't offering satisfying
explanations for those funding decisions, which were determined according to
a formula -- ostensibly risk-based -- whose details are secret. If there is
a sound reason why Louisville's grant has jumped by 70 percent while the
Washington area's and New York's have plummeted by 40 percent, we haven't
heard it. If there is any sense to rating the risk of catastrophe in
Washington in the bottom 25 percent of the nation's cities, while rating the
Washington metropolitan area in the top 25 percent, we haven't heard that,
either.



The temptingly cynical interpretation is that the changes in 2006 funding
are all about pork-barrel spending, but that's probably wrong. Texas is
about as red as states get, but homeland security grants to Houston, Dallas
and San Antonio have been slashed, in some cases severely, and they are
among the nation's 10 most populous cities. Nonetheless, the procedure by
which funding was determined -- 17 "peer review panels" composed of
representatives from 48 states and two U.S. territories reviewed grant
applications -- seems to have ensured that political balance trumped a
cool-headed assessment of real risk. That is exactly the problem that Mr.
Chertoff correctly identified when he entered office and promised to
address.

We take Mr. Chertoff's point that New York has been showered with federal
homeland security dollars since Sept. 11, 2001 -- $528 million at last count
-- and that has built a lot of security infrastructure there. Ditto
Washington, which has received more than $227 million. It is also true that
nearly half the Urban Areas Security Initiative grants for 2006 will go to
just five metropolitan areas -- New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago
and San Francisco -- while the increases for smaller cities are relatively
small in dollar terms.

But it remains the case, so far as intelligence experts can determine, that
al-Qaeda is intent on carrying out massive, showy, extravagantly lethal
attacks of the sort that are possible in Washington, New York and just a
handful of other American cities. And in those cities, there are clearly
unmet needs; for instance, the District remains without hospital emergency
capacity adequate to deal with a major terrorist attack. It seems folly,
therefore, to suppose that efforts to safeguard New York and Washington can
be eased while attention is turned to a dozen mid-sized cities, let alone to
270,000 potentially vulnerable bits and pieces of officially designated
critical infrastructure spread across the nation.

Virginia's Rep. Thomas M. Davis III is preparing to hold hearings to address
the funding decisions. Those should provide a forum for Mr. Chertoff and his
aides to explain fully what at first glance seems inexplicable.



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[osint] Former CSIS official David Harris interviewed on CTV on foiled Toronto terrorist plot

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://www.judeoscope.ca/breve.php3?id_breve=1643
 

Saturday 3 June 2006
Former CSIS official David Harris interviewed on CTV on foiled Toronto
terrorist plot


David Harris, Canadian Coalition for Democracies Senior Fellow for National
Security and former Chief of Strategic Planning for the Canadian Security
Intelligence Service (CSIS), was interviewed by CTV on the arrest of 17
terror suspects in Toronto last night.

View
 video



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[osint] Canada-OSage: Alleged Ontario terror plot has worldwide links

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft

 
NOTE: THIS CASE IS BEING RE-NAMED CANADA-OSAGE, after the CSIS investigation
name
 
 
Notes:

*   

At least 18 related arrests have taken place in Canada, the US, the
UK, Bosnia, Denmark, Sweden and Bangladesh
*   

Arrests in Operation OSage are linked to Operation Northern Exposure
in the US, and Operation Mazhar in the UK
*   

The Toronto interdiction is linked to arrests that began last August
at a Canadian border post near Niagara Falls and continued in October in
Sarajevo, London and Scandinavia, and earlier this year in New York and
Georgia.  The intricate web of connections runs between Toronto, London,
Atlanta, Sarajevo, Dhaka, and elsewhere.

*   


Linking the international probes are online communications, phone
calls and in particular videotapes that authorities allege show some of the
targets the young extremists considered blowing up


 

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=de3f8e90-982a-47af-8e5
e-a1366fd5d6cc
 &k=46849

Alleged Ontario terror plot has worldwide links

By Stewart Bell and Kelly Patrick   
CanWest News Service

Saturday, June 03, 2006



CREDIT: Canadian Press  
RCMP Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell speaks during a press conference
in Toronto. 

TORONTO - A Canadian counter-terrorism investigation that led to the arrests
of 17 people accused of plotting bombings in Ontario is linked to probes in
a half-dozen countries, the National Post has learned.

Well before police tactical teams began their sweeps around Toronto on
Friday, at least 18 related arrests had already taken place in Canada, the
United States, Britain, Bosnia, Denmark, Sweden, and Bangladesh.

The six-month RCMP investigation, called Project OSage, is one of several
overlapping probes that include an FBI case called Operation Northern
Exposure and a British probe known as Operation Mazhar.

At a news conference Saturday, the RCMP announced terrorism-related charges
had been laid against a dozen Toronto-area men and five teens under the age
of 18.

The group "took steps to acquire components necessary to create explosive
devices" including three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, commonly
used in terrorist bombs, police said.

By comparison, the truck bomb used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, contained a single
tonne of ammonium nitrate.

"It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," RCMP assistant
commissioner Mike McDonell said.

"This group posed a real threat. It had the capacity and intent to carry out
these attacks."

Police declined to identify the intended targets because the investigation
is ongoing but said they were all in southern Ontario and did not include
the Toronto transit system, as some media outlets had reported.

As senior RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials spoke to
reporters, some of the evidence seized during police raids was displayed on
a table guarded by police officers.

The materials included a bag of ammonium nitrate, a handgun and ammunition
clip, computer hard drive, and what appeared to be a cellphone activated
electronic detonator hidden inside a small black fishing tackle box.

Police also displayed bags of camouflage clothing and boots apparently
seized from a camp north of Toronto that some of the members of the group
had allegedly used for combat training.

In a speech to new Canadian Forces recruits and their families Saturday,
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canadians can't escape a dangerous world
by turning a blind eye to it.

"As we have said on many occasions, Canada is not immune to the threat of
terrorism," he said.

"Through the work and co-operation of the RCMP, CSIS, local law enforcement
and Toronto's Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET), acts of
violence by extremist groups may have been prevented."

The Ontario accused made brief court appearances in Brampton, north of
Toronto, on Saturday. They face charges of participating in the acts of a
terrorist group, including training and recruitment; firearms and explosives
offences for the purposes of terrorism and providing property for terrorist
purposes.

With the exception of two men, who are aged 43 and 30, the alleged
terrorists are all in their teens and early 20s.

They include men of Somali, Egyptian, Jamaican, and Trinidadian origin. All
are residents of Canada and "for the most part" all are Canadian citizens,
police said.

Charged are: Fahim Ahmad, 21, Zakaria Amara, 20, Asad Ansari, 21, Shareef
Abdelhaleen, 30, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mohammed Dirie, 22, Yasim Abdi
Mohamed, 24, Jahmaal James, 23, Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Steven Vikash
Chand, 25, and Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21. A twelfth man was a youth when some
of the alleged offences took place and can't be named, along with the other
f

[osint] Accused in terrorism plot from a "broad strata" of society

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
 
Notes:

*   Neighbours of Zakaria Amara saw men backing a U-Haul into Amara's
driveway on Monday, loading the vehicle, and saw a group of three unfamiliar
males leave with it the following morning


*   Dirie and Mohammed were unknown to the Muslim community of Kingston,
suggesting that they kept to themselves


*   Most of the suspects are bearded


*   Chand, aka Abdul Shakkur, rented a basement flat in a home owned by
Attique in East Toronto


*   Attique operated an Islamic bookstore from the home until last year,
when neighbours successfully petitioned to close it down

 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060603.wterrorfamilies0
603/BNStory/Front

Accused in terrorism plot from a "broad strata" of society


GREGORY BONNELL 

Canadian Press

>From an unmarried computer programmer to a university health sciences
graduate and the unemployed, the 17 suspects charged in a foiled terrorist
plot represent a "broad strata" of Canadian society.

"Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed," RCMP assistant
Commissioner Mike McDonell said Saturday. 

Family members wept as the 17 accused, five of whom were youths at the time
of the alleged crimes and cannot be named, were brought into a Brampton
courtroom in small groups, handcuffed and shackled at the feet.

One woman broke down, saying her son was yet to appear but that she was
upset at the sight of his friends in custody.

Most of the group, who were remanded into custody until their next court
appearance on Tuesday, wore street clothes although some appeared in white
jump suits.

The majority sported the traditional Muslim male beard.

Alvin Chand, brother of Toronto suspect Steven Vikash Chand, scoffed at the
charges outside the courthouse.

"He's not a terrorist, come on, he's a Canadian citizen" Mr. Chand said of
his brother. "The people that were arrested are good people. They go to the
mosque. They go to school, go to college."

Aly Hindy, an imam at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in nearby Scarborough,
said the centre's mosque had been monitored by security agencies for years.
He said Muslims were once again being falsely accused.

"It's not terrorism. It could be some criminal activity with a few guys,
that's all," said Mr. Hindy.

"We are the ones always accused."

Rocco Galati, lawyer for two suspects from Mississauga, said his client
Ahmad Ghany, 21, is a health sciences graduate from McMaster University in
Hamilton. He was born in Canada, the son of a medical doctor who emigrated
from Trinidad and Tobago in 1955.

Mr. Galati said neither of his clients have criminal records and are both
"model citizens."

"Both of their families are very well-established professionals,
well-established families, no criminal pasts whatsoever," Mr. Galati said.
"That's why we're anxious to see the particulars of the allegations against
them."

The father of accused Shareef Abdelhaleen, a 30-year-old computer programmer
from nearby Mississauga, said the charges made no sense.

"I am shocked," said the Egyptian immigrant who came to Canada with his son
20 years ago and is an engineer on contract with Atomic Energy of Canada.

"It's crazy. It has no meaning whatsoever."

The senior Abdelhaleen also confirmed that he posted bail for Mohammad
Mahjoub who is currently in Kingston, Ont., on a national security
certificate.

The middle-class east-end Toronto neighbourhood that terror suspect Steven
Chand calls home is filled with children, lined with two-storey homes and
rich green, well-maintained lawns.

Area resident Casey Grenier, 32, stood with two neighbours enjoying a beer
on a porch next door to Chand's residence were unmarked cars and police
officers were parked.

"It's a real quiet neighbourhood," Grenier said. "You get up in the morning
and you hear the crickets chirping." 

Grenier said police pulled up at the residence around 4 p.m. with forensics
trucks and a SWAT team and blocked off the street. Police were seen by
neighbours leaving the residence carrying sealed Ziploc bags containing
unspecified items. 

Neighbours said Chand, also known as Abdul Shakur, rented a basement
apartment in the home, owned by Mohammad Attique, a father of five. 

Attique operated an Islamic bookstore from the home, but neighbours drew up
a petition last year calling for the business to be shut down because it was
being operated in a residential neighbourhood. 

Residents of a Mississauga, Ont., neighbourhood knew little about Zakaria
Amara, 20. Neighbours said he was an in-law of the family who lived at the
home.

Neighbours said the family, a mother and her three daughters, had lived
there for two years. They had not noticed a male figure in the house.

Tony Sbrocchi, 38, a neighbourhood resident for 10 years said he saw
individuals backing a U-Haul into the driveway of the residence and loading
up the vehicle on Monday, and that a group of three unfamiliar males left
the next morning. 

"It was very suspicious," Sbrocchi sa

[osint] Canadian Terror Suspects Demand Korans

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=20875_Canadian_Terror_Suspects
_Demand_Korans
 &only
 
  

Canadian Terror Suspects Demand Korans 


Family members dressed in burqas are seething and whining
 , Muslim lawyers are already talking about suing the police, and the
suspects arrested on terror-related charges in Ontario are demanding to be
given copies of the Koran.

 
 

Family members of some of the men facing terrorism-related charges - wives,
mothers and fathers - met in the parking lot of a Brampton courthouse early
this morning.

Standing behind a metal barricade police put up to seal off the court
entrance, women dressed in burkas rubbed each other's backs to console one
another.

"I think there are a lot of people here today who should not be involved in
this," said Anser Farooq, a lawyer representing several of the accused. "I
think they (the police) cast their net far too wide. We've been talking
several lawsuits as a result of this action," he said.

Security at the Hurontario St. courthouse was high. More than two dozen
local and provincial police officers were guarding the courthouse when the
families arrived. Snipers wearing camouflage were posted on the roof of the
main building and on the roof of an adjacent building that normally houses
family court. Members of the Peel police tactical team tightly controlled
traffic entering the parking lot, and an officer with a submachinegun was
posted in front of a roundabout leading to the main entrance.

OPP bomb sniffing dogs were also on scene, and as early as 8 a.m., police
could be seen traversing the hallways of the courthouse sweeping the
building for explosives.

Pointing at snipers on the roof, Farooq, who would not name his clients,
said: "This is ridiculous. They've got soldiers here with guns. This is
going to completely change the atmosphere." ...

Handcuffed to one another and wearing leg irons the detainees stood silently
while the justice of the peace remanded them into custody until June 6 when
they are scheduled to reappear.

Through their lawyers, some complained about the conditions where they were
held Friday night and asked that they be given copies of the Qur'an while in
custody.

UPDATE at 6/3/06 3:20:10 pm:

The terror enablers in Canada are wasting no time getting out in front of
the cameras
 .

The arrests of two other men from Mississauga - brothers-in-law Ahmad Ghany
and Zakaria Amara - shocked neighbours and family who said they couldn't
believe the allegations.

"I think they have it wrong. Those guys have nothing to do with
(terrorism)," said Scarborough Imam Aly Hindy. Hindy has been a high profile
critic of the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service, accusing the
federal agency of targeting Muslims who criticize the foreign policies of
Western governments.

He believes this is what led to the arrests yesterday.

"Because they are young people, and they are Muslims, they are saying it's
terrorism," he said in an interview last night.

"This is a good community and we're very shocked by the news. We leave our
whole family here for the whole day, including our small children, and come
back to this," said local resident Qadeer Mohammed. "This very shocking, and
the whole community will be affected."



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[osint] How Homeland Made Its Antiterror Grants

2006-06-04 Thread Bruce Tefft
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13122390/site/newsweek/
 
  
Documents: How Homeland Made Its Antiterror Grants 
Newsweek

June 12, 2006 issue - Homeland security officials slashed antiterror funding
to New York City and Washington, D.C., while handing generous grants to
Omaha, Louisville, Ky., and Charlotte, N.C.-even though, according to
internal government documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, Homeland rated the New
York City region and the "National Capitol Region" in the top 25 percent of
urban areas at risk for possible terror attack. Why the cuts? One main
reason: Homeland evaluation committees gave poor marks to the regions' grant
applications, in which local officials spelled out how they'd use the
antiterror dollars. New York's and D.C.'s grant proposals were ranked in the
bottom 25 percent of all funding requests submitted-though the documents,
marked for official use only, offered only vague indications that the
proposals were inadequate with respect to "sustainability" and
"implementation approach."

A combination of secrecy, political tone-deafness and noble intentions gone
awry seems to explain how D.C. and New York City lost millions while
Charlotte gained (chart). According to Homeland Under Secretary George
Foresman, one object of the latest round of grants was to provide funding
for states with critical facilities, such as oil refineries on the Louisiana
and Texas gulf coasts. Homeland decided money would be handed out on the
basis of a "risk" score, in which Homeland bureaucrats rated the likely
exposure of a region to possible attack; and an "effectiveness" score, in
which secret "peer review" panels of homeland-security experts from around
the country-including state and local agencies-rated the quality of specific
grant proposals submitted by cities and states. The names of officials
enlisted to rate grant applications are being kept secret, the department
says, to insulate the peer-review process from politics.

The "risk" score sheets, based partially on classified data that included
"suspicious incidents," "FBI Cases" and "Intelligence Community Reports,"
said New York had no "national monuments and icons," four "banking and
finance" institutions with assets greater than $8 billion and two nuclear
facilities. (The D.C. region was rated as having 18 monuments or icons, 2
major banking or finance institutions and 7 nuclear facilities.) "It's
outrageous that these bean counters don't think the Statue of Liberty,
Brooklyn Bridge and Empire State Building are national monuments or icons,"
said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Homeland Assistant Secretary Tracy Henke, a former GOP Senate aide, told
NEWSWEEK that, in the Feds' assessment, the Empire State Building was
counted as a tall building and the Brooklyn Bridge as a vital transportation
facility. (The Statue of Liberty was counted as a New York state, rather
than NYC, asset.) Homeland Security officials defended the grant decisions,
saying they were the result of a sophisticated-and politically
neutral-review process and a dramatic improvement over the haphazard way the
department gave out money in its early days. New York GOP Rep. Peter King,
who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said he couldn't
understand why the New York Police Department's request for funding was
graded so poorly: "No one is better than NYPD. They have more Arabic
translators than the FBI does." Rep. Jim Moran, a Democrat whose district
includes the Pentagon, says the decision to cut D.C.'s funding was "absurd.
It's nutty. It's embarrassing." King says he intends to open a congressional
investigation; Moran signed a letter with several other D.C. area
representatives, including the House oversight com-mittee's GOP chairman,
Rep. Tom Davis, demanding that Homeland "reconsider" the grant awards. So
far, however, department officials are standing by their decisions.

-Mark Hosenball



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