Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bomber died in blasts, police say
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bomber died in blasts, police say
A news report a few hours old I think.
A news report a few hours old I think.
Telegraph | News | BBC edits out the word terrorist
Telegraph | News | BBC edits out the word terrorist: "BBC edits out the word terrorist"
BG: Not sure what this means.
BG: Not sure what this means.
Space Shuttle
I'm just now watching CNN. They are doing a tremendously negative / downer report on Challenger: death, Ian the motherless son of (a deceased) crew member, father who doesn't think everything has been done for safety. What is going on?
Lessons of London: What's next in war on terror? - Yahoo! News
Lessons of London: What's next in war on terror? - Yahoo! News"We have had some great successes in that effort. We have arrested perpetrators and plotters, and we have foiled planned attacks. We have reduced the power and scope of those who despise freedom and democracy."
After Flagging Support, a Second Wind for Bush
After Flagging Support, a Second Wind for Bush
"...A surge in public concern about terrorism means a probable boost in support for President Bush..."
"...A surge in public concern about terrorism means a probable boost in support for President Bush..."
World Tribune.com -- Advanced bombs were so powerful that none of 49 dead have been identified
World Tribune.com -- Advanced bombs were so powerful that none of 49 dead have been identified
Al Qaida employed light but advanced bombs detonated by timers in last week's bloody strike on London's mass transit system.
Al Qaida employed light but advanced bombs detonated by timers in last week's bloody strike on London's mass transit system.
India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor - New York Times
India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor - New York Times
The New York Times
July 10, 2005
India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor
By SALMAN RUSHDIE
IN honor-and-shame cultures like those of India and Pakistan, male honor resides in the sexual probity of women, and the "shaming" of women dishonors all men. So it is that five men of Pakistan's powerful Mastoi tribe were disgracefully acquitted of raping a villager named Mukhtar Mai three years ago. Theirs was an "honor rape," intended to punish a relative of Ms. Mukhtar for having been seen with a Matsoi woman. The acquittals have now been suspended by the Pakistan Supreme Court, and there is finally a chance that this courageous woman may gain some measure of redress for her violation.
Pakistan, however, has little to be proud of. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that there were 320 reported rapes in the first nine months of last year, and 350 reported gang rapes in the same period. The number of unreported rapes is believed to be much larger. The victim pressed charges in only one-third of the reported cases, and a mere 39 arrests were made. The use of rape in tribal disputes has become, one might say, normal. And the belief that a raped woman's best recourse is to kill herself remains widespread and deeply ingrained.
For every Mukhtar Mai there are dozens of such suicides. Nor is courage any guarantee of getting justice, as the case of Shazia Khalid shows. Dr. Khalid was raped last year in the province of Baluchistan by security personnel at the hospital where she worked. A Pakistani tribunal failed to convict anyone of the crime.
Dr. Khalid says that she was subsequently "threatened so many times" that she was forced to flee Pakistan. "I was hounded out," she says, expressing dissatisfaction that the government neither brought her attackers to justice nor protected her from the threats that followed.
That is the same government, led by President Pervez Musharraf, that confiscated Mukhtar Mai's passport because it feared she would go abroad and say things that would bring Pakistan into disrepute; and it is the same government that has allied with the West in the war on terrorism, but seems quite prepared to allow a war of sexual terror to be waged against its female citizens.
Now comes even worse news. Whatever Pakistan can do, India, it seems, can trump. The so-called Imrana case, in which a Muslim woman from a village in northern India says she was raped by her father-in-law, has brought forth a ruling from the powerful Islamist seminary Darul-Uloom ordering her to leave her husband because as a result of the rape she has become "haram" (unclean) for him. "It does not matter," a Deobandi cleric has stated, "if it was consensual or forced."
Darul-Uloom, in the village of Deoband 90 miles north of Delhi, is the birthplace of the ultra-conservative Deobandi cult, in whose madrassas the Taliban were trained. It teaches the most fundamentalist, narrow, puritan, rigid, oppressive version of Islam that exists anywhere in the world today. In one fatwa it suggested that Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Not only the Taliban but also the assassins of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were followers of Deobandi teachings.
Darul-Uloom's rigid interpretations of Shariah law are notorious, and immensely influential - so much so that the victim, Imrana, a woman under unimaginable pressure, has said she will abide by the seminary's decision in spite of the widespread outcry in India against it. An innocent woman, she will leave her husband because of his father's crime.
Why does a mere seminary have the power to issue such judgments? The answer lies in the strange anomaly that is the Muslim personal law system - a parallel legal system for Indian Muslims, which leaves women like Imrana at the mercy of the mullahs. Such is the historical confusion on this vexed subject that anyone who suggests that a democratic country should have a single, unified legal system is accused of being anti-Muslim and in favor of the hardline Hindu nationalists.
In the 1980's, a divorced woman named Shah Bano was granted "maintenance money" by the Indian Supreme Court. But there is no alimony under Islamic law, so orthodox Indian Islamists like those at Darul-Uloom protested that this ruling infringed the Muslim Personal Law, and they founded the All-India Muslim Law Board to mount protests. The government caved in, passing a bill denying alimony to divorced Muslim women. Ever since Shah Bano, Indian politicians have not dared to challenge the power of Islamist clerical grandees.
In the Imrana case, the All-India Muslim Law Board has unsurprisingly backed the Darul-Uloom decision, though many other Muslim and non-Muslim organizations and individuals have denounced it. Shockingly, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has also backed the Darul-Uloom fatwa. "The decision of the Muslim religious leaders in the Imrana case must have been taken after a lot of thought," he told reporters in Lucknow. "The religious leaders are all very learned and they understand the Muslim community and its sentiments."
This is a craven statement. The "culture" of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies, its origins lying in the unchanging harshness of a moral code based on the concepts of honor and shame. Thanks to that code's ruthlessness, raped women will go on hanging themselves in the woods and walking into rivers to drown themselves. It will take generations to change that. Meanwhile, the law must do what it can.
In Pakistan, the Supreme Court has taken one small but significant step in the matter of Mukhtar Mai; now it is for the police and politicians to start pursuing rapists instead of hounding their victims. As for India, at the risk of being called a communalist, I must agree that any country that claims to be a modern, secular democracy must secularize and unify its legal system, and take power over women's lives away, once and for all, from medievalist institutions like Darul-Uloom.
Salman Rushdie is the author of "The Satanic Verses" and the forthcoming "Shalimar the Clown."
The New York Times
July 10, 2005
India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor
By SALMAN RUSHDIE
IN honor-and-shame cultures like those of India and Pakistan, male honor resides in the sexual probity of women, and the "shaming" of women dishonors all men. So it is that five men of Pakistan's powerful Mastoi tribe were disgracefully acquitted of raping a villager named Mukhtar Mai three years ago. Theirs was an "honor rape," intended to punish a relative of Ms. Mukhtar for having been seen with a Matsoi woman. The acquittals have now been suspended by the Pakistan Supreme Court, and there is finally a chance that this courageous woman may gain some measure of redress for her violation.
Pakistan, however, has little to be proud of. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that there were 320 reported rapes in the first nine months of last year, and 350 reported gang rapes in the same period. The number of unreported rapes is believed to be much larger. The victim pressed charges in only one-third of the reported cases, and a mere 39 arrests were made. The use of rape in tribal disputes has become, one might say, normal. And the belief that a raped woman's best recourse is to kill herself remains widespread and deeply ingrained.
For every Mukhtar Mai there are dozens of such suicides. Nor is courage any guarantee of getting justice, as the case of Shazia Khalid shows. Dr. Khalid was raped last year in the province of Baluchistan by security personnel at the hospital where she worked. A Pakistani tribunal failed to convict anyone of the crime.
Dr. Khalid says that she was subsequently "threatened so many times" that she was forced to flee Pakistan. "I was hounded out," she says, expressing dissatisfaction that the government neither brought her attackers to justice nor protected her from the threats that followed.
That is the same government, led by President Pervez Musharraf, that confiscated Mukhtar Mai's passport because it feared she would go abroad and say things that would bring Pakistan into disrepute; and it is the same government that has allied with the West in the war on terrorism, but seems quite prepared to allow a war of sexual terror to be waged against its female citizens.
Now comes even worse news. Whatever Pakistan can do, India, it seems, can trump. The so-called Imrana case, in which a Muslim woman from a village in northern India says she was raped by her father-in-law, has brought forth a ruling from the powerful Islamist seminary Darul-Uloom ordering her to leave her husband because as a result of the rape she has become "haram" (unclean) for him. "It does not matter," a Deobandi cleric has stated, "if it was consensual or forced."
Darul-Uloom, in the village of Deoband 90 miles north of Delhi, is the birthplace of the ultra-conservative Deobandi cult, in whose madrassas the Taliban were trained. It teaches the most fundamentalist, narrow, puritan, rigid, oppressive version of Islam that exists anywhere in the world today. In one fatwa it suggested that Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Not only the Taliban but also the assassins of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were followers of Deobandi teachings.
Darul-Uloom's rigid interpretations of Shariah law are notorious, and immensely influential - so much so that the victim, Imrana, a woman under unimaginable pressure, has said she will abide by the seminary's decision in spite of the widespread outcry in India against it. An innocent woman, she will leave her husband because of his father's crime.
Why does a mere seminary have the power to issue such judgments? The answer lies in the strange anomaly that is the Muslim personal law system - a parallel legal system for Indian Muslims, which leaves women like Imrana at the mercy of the mullahs. Such is the historical confusion on this vexed subject that anyone who suggests that a democratic country should have a single, unified legal system is accused of being anti-Muslim and in favor of the hardline Hindu nationalists.
In the 1980's, a divorced woman named Shah Bano was granted "maintenance money" by the Indian Supreme Court. But there is no alimony under Islamic law, so orthodox Indian Islamists like those at Darul-Uloom protested that this ruling infringed the Muslim Personal Law, and they founded the All-India Muslim Law Board to mount protests. The government caved in, passing a bill denying alimony to divorced Muslim women. Ever since Shah Bano, Indian politicians have not dared to challenge the power of Islamist clerical grandees.
In the Imrana case, the All-India Muslim Law Board has unsurprisingly backed the Darul-Uloom decision, though many other Muslim and non-Muslim organizations and individuals have denounced it. Shockingly, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has also backed the Darul-Uloom fatwa. "The decision of the Muslim religious leaders in the Imrana case must have been taken after a lot of thought," he told reporters in Lucknow. "The religious leaders are all very learned and they understand the Muslim community and its sentiments."
This is a craven statement. The "culture" of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies, its origins lying in the unchanging harshness of a moral code based on the concepts of honor and shame. Thanks to that code's ruthlessness, raped women will go on hanging themselves in the woods and walking into rivers to drown themselves. It will take generations to change that. Meanwhile, the law must do what it can.
In Pakistan, the Supreme Court has taken one small but significant step in the matter of Mukhtar Mai; now it is for the police and politicians to start pursuing rapists instead of hounding their victims. As for India, at the risk of being called a communalist, I must agree that any country that claims to be a modern, secular democracy must secularize and unify its legal system, and take power over women's lives away, once and for all, from medievalist institutions like Darul-Uloom.
Salman Rushdie is the author of "The Satanic Verses" and the forthcoming "Shalimar the Clown."
The "Koran Quotation Error" Meme
The "Koran Quotation Error" Meme
The "Koran Quotation Error" Meme
By
Jamey Hecht
© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.
MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes, who said that a copy of the message was later posted on a secular Web site, noted that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony, he said.
"This is not something al-Qaida would do," he said.
July 11, 2005 1400 PST (FTW): Without more information about this potentially critical transcription "error" by the message's author, we can only establish that the quoted verse containing the error does indeed mean essentially the same thing as the correct verse. Sure enough, recourse to a posted translation of the message alongside a web-based searchable Koran translation shows that the error, if it exists, does not materially impair the meaning. It must be a mistake in spelling or orthography, or the use of a synonym. The apparent source of the "error" claim, MSNBC Cable TV translator Jacob Keryakes, turns out to be a signatory to an October 2004 endorsement of the Bush-Cheney ticket by "THE MIDDLE EASTERN AMERICAN NATIONAL CONFERENCE."1 That organization includes notable non-Muslim and / or non-Arabic Americans from the Middle East; Mr. Keryakes is a Coptic Christian from Egypt. Keryakes is also the key person used to translate video releases allegedly from Osama bin Laden,2 and read those translations into the broadcast news.
The passage in question is from the Koran, the Sura [i.e., "Book"] of Muhammad, Chapter 47 verse 7. This is the (commonly used) scholarly translation by M.H. Shakir:
Muhammad [47.7] O you who believe! if you help (the cause of) Allah, He will help you and make firm your feet.
And this is yesterday's rendering from the Arabic, by Michigan professor Juan Cole:
God, may He be exalted, said, "If you aid God, God will aid you, and will plant your feet firmly."
The only difference is in the English idiom. For that reason, scrutiny of Mr. Keryakes' assertion requires both access to the original Arabic web posting and a knowledge of Arabic adequate to make a comparison between that document and the verse M47.7 in a standard Arabic Koran. So I contacted Mr. Keryakes, who told me the following:
* Immediately after the posting of the claim of responsibility by "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe," readers of the posting whom Mr. Keryakes described as "Islamic radicals" posted their own responses to it (on the same Arabic-only site) alleging an error in its quotation of the Koran, and that therefore the claim was bogus.
* Those "Islamic radicals," who ought to know better, were mistaken: there is no such error. There are, however, errors in the grammar of the Modern Arabic in the body of the message.
* Other journalists, too, propagated as fact the report of an error in the Koran quotation, casting doubt on the message's authenticity.
* Although it is now well known inside the media that there is no error in the message's Koranic portion, as of 12:10 pm July 8, 2005 no news agency has issued a retraction of the report or clarified its origin.
It would seem that somebody in a position to do so has inserted into the news machine a false meme whose effect is to cast doubt on the authenticity of the only claim of responsibility for the London bombings that has emerged so far. Today at 3:54 p.m., an MSN video report from Evan Kohlmann says:
I'm not exactly sure which U.S. counterterrorism official said this is potentially credible but it's not at all. In fact this message was even dismissed by supporters of al-Qaida immediately deleted off of the Web forum that it was posted on yesterday morning. Only within minutes really of it having been posted originally.
Why was it taken offline? Because the Jihad sympathizers that run that message board determined that it was a hoax, it was illegitimate. Many such messages like that get posted on a regular basis especially since last summer when we saw a flurry of such threats potentially targeting Denmark, Britain and Italy. The same three countries that were targeted in this communiqué. None of these communiqués were legitimate. All of them were hoaxes. The same languages were used in the communiqué. The same targets. It seems this is a hoax as well. It's impossible to be certain but this did not come from a legitimate source of information about terrorist groups like saying the videos and communiqués we see from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
This, too, comes from the Microsoft Network, and yet there is no mention of any quotation from the Koran nor any mention of the "grammatical errors" of which Mr. Keryakes told me on the phone.
Meanwhile, the original story remains prevalent:
Islamic group claims London attack
Previously unknown group says blasts in retaliation for Iraq, Afghanistan
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 1:37 p.m. ET July 7, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8496293/
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
CAIRO, Egypt - A group calling itself "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe" posted a claim of responsibility for Thursday's blasts in London, saying they were in retaliation for Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The authenticity of the message could not be immediately confirmed.
The statement, which also threatened attacks in Italy and Denmark, was published on a Web site popular with Islamic militants, according to Elaph, a secular Arabic-language news Web site, and Der Spiegel magazine in Berlin, which published the text on their Web sites.
"Rejoice, Islamic nation. Rejoice, Arab world. The time has come for vengeance against the Zionist crusader government of Britain in response to the massacres Britain committed in Iraq and Afghanistan," said the statement, translated by The Associated Press in Cairo. The AP was unable to access the Web site where it was posted, which was closed quickly after the reports.
But MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes, who said that a copy of the message was later posted on a secular Web site, noted that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony, he said.
"This is not something al-Qaida would do," he said.
The group al-Qaida in Europe claimed responsibility for the last major terror attack in Europe: a string of bombs that hit commuter trains in Madrid, Spain in March 2004, killing 191 people. Two days after that attack, a video was found in a trash can outside a Madrid mosque with a statement purported to be from the group's spokesman, called by the nickname "Abu Dujan al Afghani."
In the new statement, the group said "the heroic mujahedeen carried out a blessed attack in London, and now Britain is burning with fear and terror, from north to south, east to west."
"We warned the British government and the British people repeatedly. We have carried out our promise and carried out a military attack in Britain after great efforts by the heroic mujahedeen over a long period to ensure its success."
"We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all crusader governments that they will receive the same punishment if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan," the statement went on.
It was signed "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
IMAGE: Claim of responsibility
1 October 27th published version of the Middle Eastern American National Conference Bush endorsement Press Release:
http://www.aina.org/news/20041027001230.htm
2 "Arab TV airs alleged bin Laden tape." September 10, 2003 - MSNBC's Jacob Keryakes translates a portion of the Al-Jazeera tape purportedly from Osama bin Laden.
http://www.moun.com/Articles/sep2003/9-18-10.htm
The "Koran Quotation Error" Meme
By
Jamey Hecht
© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.
MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes, who said that a copy of the message was later posted on a secular Web site, noted that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony, he said.
"This is not something al-Qaida would do," he said.
July 11, 2005 1400 PST (FTW): Without more information about this potentially critical transcription "error" by the message's author, we can only establish that the quoted verse containing the error does indeed mean essentially the same thing as the correct verse. Sure enough, recourse to a posted translation of the message alongside a web-based searchable Koran translation shows that the error, if it exists, does not materially impair the meaning. It must be a mistake in spelling or orthography, or the use of a synonym. The apparent source of the "error" claim, MSNBC Cable TV translator Jacob Keryakes, turns out to be a signatory to an October 2004 endorsement of the Bush-Cheney ticket by "THE MIDDLE EASTERN AMERICAN NATIONAL CONFERENCE."1 That organization includes notable non-Muslim and / or non-Arabic Americans from the Middle East; Mr. Keryakes is a Coptic Christian from Egypt. Keryakes is also the key person used to translate video releases allegedly from Osama bin Laden,2 and read those translations into the broadcast news.
The passage in question is from the Koran, the Sura [i.e., "Book"] of Muhammad, Chapter 47 verse 7. This is the (commonly used) scholarly translation by M.H. Shakir:
Muhammad [47.7] O you who believe! if you help (the cause of) Allah, He will help you and make firm your feet.
And this is yesterday's rendering from the Arabic, by Michigan professor Juan Cole:
God, may He be exalted, said, "If you aid God, God will aid you, and will plant your feet firmly."
The only difference is in the English idiom. For that reason, scrutiny of Mr. Keryakes' assertion requires both access to the original Arabic web posting and a knowledge of Arabic adequate to make a comparison between that document and the verse M47.7 in a standard Arabic Koran. So I contacted Mr. Keryakes, who told me the following:
* Immediately after the posting of the claim of responsibility by "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe," readers of the posting whom Mr. Keryakes described as "Islamic radicals" posted their own responses to it (on the same Arabic-only site) alleging an error in its quotation of the Koran, and that therefore the claim was bogus.
* Those "Islamic radicals," who ought to know better, were mistaken: there is no such error. There are, however, errors in the grammar of the Modern Arabic in the body of the message.
* Other journalists, too, propagated as fact the report of an error in the Koran quotation, casting doubt on the message's authenticity.
* Although it is now well known inside the media that there is no error in the message's Koranic portion, as of 12:10 pm July 8, 2005 no news agency has issued a retraction of the report or clarified its origin.
It would seem that somebody in a position to do so has inserted into the news machine a false meme whose effect is to cast doubt on the authenticity of the only claim of responsibility for the London bombings that has emerged so far. Today at 3:54 p.m., an MSN video report from Evan Kohlmann says:
I'm not exactly sure which U.S. counterterrorism official said this is potentially credible but it's not at all. In fact this message was even dismissed by supporters of al-Qaida immediately deleted off of the Web forum that it was posted on yesterday morning. Only within minutes really of it having been posted originally.
Why was it taken offline? Because the Jihad sympathizers that run that message board determined that it was a hoax, it was illegitimate. Many such messages like that get posted on a regular basis especially since last summer when we saw a flurry of such threats potentially targeting Denmark, Britain and Italy. The same three countries that were targeted in this communiqué. None of these communiqués were legitimate. All of them were hoaxes. The same languages were used in the communiqué. The same targets. It seems this is a hoax as well. It's impossible to be certain but this did not come from a legitimate source of information about terrorist groups like saying the videos and communiqués we see from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
This, too, comes from the Microsoft Network, and yet there is no mention of any quotation from the Koran nor any mention of the "grammatical errors" of which Mr. Keryakes told me on the phone.
Meanwhile, the original story remains prevalent:
Islamic group claims London attack
Previously unknown group says blasts in retaliation for Iraq, Afghanistan
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 1:37 p.m. ET July 7, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8496293/
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
CAIRO, Egypt - A group calling itself "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe" posted a claim of responsibility for Thursday's blasts in London, saying they were in retaliation for Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The authenticity of the message could not be immediately confirmed.
The statement, which also threatened attacks in Italy and Denmark, was published on a Web site popular with Islamic militants, according to Elaph, a secular Arabic-language news Web site, and Der Spiegel magazine in Berlin, which published the text on their Web sites.
"Rejoice, Islamic nation. Rejoice, Arab world. The time has come for vengeance against the Zionist crusader government of Britain in response to the massacres Britain committed in Iraq and Afghanistan," said the statement, translated by The Associated Press in Cairo. The AP was unable to access the Web site where it was posted, which was closed quickly after the reports.
But MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes, who said that a copy of the message was later posted on a secular Web site, noted that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony, he said.
"This is not something al-Qaida would do," he said.
The group al-Qaida in Europe claimed responsibility for the last major terror attack in Europe: a string of bombs that hit commuter trains in Madrid, Spain in March 2004, killing 191 people. Two days after that attack, a video was found in a trash can outside a Madrid mosque with a statement purported to be from the group's spokesman, called by the nickname "Abu Dujan al Afghani."
In the new statement, the group said "the heroic mujahedeen carried out a blessed attack in London, and now Britain is burning with fear and terror, from north to south, east to west."
"We warned the British government and the British people repeatedly. We have carried out our promise and carried out a military attack in Britain after great efforts by the heroic mujahedeen over a long period to ensure its success."
"We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all crusader governments that they will receive the same punishment if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan," the statement went on.
It was signed "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
IMAGE: Claim of responsibility
1 October 27th published version of the Middle Eastern American National Conference Bush endorsement Press Release:
http://www.aina.org/news/20041027001230.htm
2 "Arab TV airs alleged bin Laden tape." September 10, 2003 - MSNBC's Jacob Keryakes translates a portion of the Al-Jazeera tape purportedly from Osama bin Laden.
http://www.moun.com/Articles/sep2003/9-18-10.htm
Tucker Carlson talks - PittsburghLIVE.com
Tucker Carlson talks - PittsburghLIVE.com: "
A: It's just not nasty enough. It's just not unpleasant enough. Yeah, one of our major problems."
BG: Yes, Mr. Carlson, that's exactly why I haven't be watching you, you sick man.
A: It's just not nasty enough. It's just not unpleasant enough. Yeah, one of our major problems."
BG: Yes, Mr. Carlson, that's exactly why I haven't be watching you, you sick man.
Los Angeles Times: When? (Use of Nuclear Weapons)
Los Angeles Times: When?
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-osamanuke10jul10,0,6017089.story
When?
The idea of an 'Islamic bomb' is not new. Extremists would love one.
By Pervez Hoodbhoy
Pervez Hoodbhoy is a member of the Pugwash Council and is professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
July 10, 2005
One wonders what Osama bin Laden and his ilk learned from Hiroshima.
The decision to incinerate the Japanese city and another, Nagasaki, was not taken in anger. White men in gray business suits and military uniforms, after much deliberation, decided that the United States could not give the Japanese any warning, that although it could not concentrate on a civilian area, it should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many inhabitants as possible. They argued that it would be cheaper in American lives to release the nuclear genie.
Crowds gathered in Times Square to celebrate: There were fewer of the enemy left. Rarely are victors encumbered by remorse. Declared President Truman: "When you have to deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true."
Not surprisingly, six decades later, even U.S. liberals remain ambivalent on the morality of nuking the two Japanese cities. But terrorists are not ambivalent.
The New York Times reported that before the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States had intercepted an Al Qaeda message that Bin Laden was planning a "Hiroshima" against America. In a later taped message, released before the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, Bin Laden said, "When people at the ends of the Earth, Japan, were killed by their hundreds of thousands, young and old, it was not considered a war crime; it is something that has justification."
In a recent televised debate between myself and Hameed Gul — an influential Islamist leader, retired general and former head of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency — my opponent snarled at me: "Your masters [the Americans] will nuke us Muslims just as they nuked Hiroshima. People like you want to denuclearize and disarm us in the face of a savage beast set to devour the world."
Gul then vented his anger at those — like myself — who opposed Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. He sees us as agents of America, apostates and enemies of Islam and the Pakistani state.
This extremist general was making a point that resonates around the globe. The United States has bombed more than a dozen countries since 1948, and recently killed tens of thousands on the pretext of chasing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It claims to be a force for democracy and the rule of law despite a long history of supporting the bloodiest of dictators, rejecting the International Criminal Court and continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
But the nuclear monopoly is breaking down. The making of atomic weapons — especially crude ones — has become vastly simpler than at the time of the Manhattan Project. Basic information is freely available in technical libraries throughout the world, and surfing the Internet can bring anyone a staggering amount of detail.
Advanced textbooks and monographs contain details that can enable reasonably competent scientists and engineers to come up with "quick and dirty" designs for nuclear explosives. The physics of nuclear explosions can be readily taught to graduate students.
By stealing fissile materials in the thousands of former Soviet bombs marked for disassembly, or even a fraction of the vast amounts of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium in research reactors and storage sites the world over, it is unnecessary to go through complex processes for uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing.
Anger in Muslim countries at the United States has never been higher. The desire for an atomic weapon to seek vengeance — utterly immoral, foolish and suicidal though it be — is becoming ever more popular.
The notion of an "Islamic bomb" existed long before Sept. 11. Addressing posterity from his death cell in a Rawalpindi jail, where he would be hanged two years later, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, wrote in 1977: "We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it, but that position was about to change."
Addressing an Islamic conference in Tehran in 1992, the Iranian vice president, Sayed Ayatollah Mohajerani, said, "Since Israel continues to possess nuclear weapons, we, the Muslims, must cooperate to produce an atomic bomb, regardless of U.N. efforts to prevent proliferation."
In the celebrations following Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests, the decades-old religious party Jamaat-e-Islami paraded bomb and missile replicas through the streets of Pakistani cities. It saw in the bomb a sure sign of a reversal of fortunes and a panacea for the ills that have plagued Muslims since the end of the Golden Age of Islam. In 2000, I captured on video the statements of leaders of jihadist, right-wing political parties in Pakistan who also demanded a bomb for Islam.
It is impossible, however, to conceive of any Muslim state risking retaliation by declaring that it has an Islamic bomb that would be used for defense of the ummah — the Islamic community of believers — against the United States or Israel. The danger of a nuclear conflict comes from radicalized individuals within the states.
Although Pakistan's military government insisted that there was no danger of any of its nuclear weapons being taken for a ride by some radical Islamic group, it wasn't taking any chances. Shortly after the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began in October 2001, several weapons were reportedly airlifted to safer, isolated locations within the country, including the northern mountainous area of Gilgit.
This nervousness was not unjustified — two strongly Islamist generals of the Pakistan army, close associates of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, had just been removed. Dissatisfaction within the army concerning Pakistan's betrayal of the Taliban was (and is) deep. Almost overnight, under intense U.S. pressure, the Pakistan government had disowned its progeny and agreed to wage a war of annihilation against it.
Fears about Pakistan's nuclear weapons were compounded by revelations that a high-ranking nuclear engineer, Bashiruddin Mahmood, and a materials specialist, Chaudhry Abdul Majid, had journeyed several times into Afghanistan in 2000. Both scientists espouse radical Islamic views. Mahmood had even been photographed with Bin Laden.
Today, the United States lives in fear of the bomb it created, because the decision to use it has already been made. Pious men with beards will decide when and where on U.S. soil atomic weapons are to be used. Shadowy groups, propelled by fanatical hatreds, scour the globe for materials. They are not in a hurry. Time is on their side. They are doubtless confident they will one day breach Fortress America.
The possibilities for nuclear attack are not limited to the so-called suitcase bomb stolen from the arsenal of a nuclear state. In fact, getting and exploding such a bomb is far more difficult than the use of improvised nuclear devices fabricated from highly enriched uranium, constructed in the very place where they will eventually be detonated. Still more likely is an attack on a vulnerable nuclear reactor or spent fuel repository.
Some nuclear weapons experts say privately that it is not a question of if but when the attack will happen.
This may be too pessimistic, but tighter policing and monitoring of nuclear materials (and rapid reduction of stockpiles) and nuclear weapons knowledge must be the first step. There should not be the slightest delay in moving on this. But this is far from sufficient.
If nuclear weapons continue to be accepted by nuclear weapon states as legitimate instruments of deterrence or war, their global proliferation — whether by other states or non-state actors — can only be slowed at best. Coercive nonproliferation will only serve to drive up demand. Nonproliferation by cooperation and consent cannot succeed as long as the United States insists on retaining and improving its nuclear arsenal. By what reasonable argument can others be persuaded to give up, or not acquire, nuclear weapons?
So what will happen when religious fanatics succeed in a nuclear attack? The world shall plunge headlong into a bottomless abyss of reaction and counter-reaction in a horror the human mind cannot comprehend.
Who will the United States retaliate against? Will the United States nuke Mecca? The capitals of Muslim states? What will the United States and its allies do as their people fear more attacks? Will they expel Muslims from the United States and Europe, or herd them into internment camps as was done to Japanese Americans in World War II? Hiroshima signaled a failure of humankind, not just of the United States. The growth of technology has far outstripped our ability to use it wisely. Like a quarrelling group of monkeys on a leaky boat, armed with sticks of dynamite, we are embarked on an uncertain journey.
Humanity's best chance of survival lies in creating taboos against the manufacture of nuclear weapons — such as those that already exist for chemical and biological weapons — and to work rapidly toward their global elimination.
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-osamanuke10jul10,0,6017089.story
When?
The idea of an 'Islamic bomb' is not new. Extremists would love one.
By Pervez Hoodbhoy
Pervez Hoodbhoy is a member of the Pugwash Council and is professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
July 10, 2005
One wonders what Osama bin Laden and his ilk learned from Hiroshima.
The decision to incinerate the Japanese city and another, Nagasaki, was not taken in anger. White men in gray business suits and military uniforms, after much deliberation, decided that the United States could not give the Japanese any warning, that although it could not concentrate on a civilian area, it should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many inhabitants as possible. They argued that it would be cheaper in American lives to release the nuclear genie.
Crowds gathered in Times Square to celebrate: There were fewer of the enemy left. Rarely are victors encumbered by remorse. Declared President Truman: "When you have to deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true."
Not surprisingly, six decades later, even U.S. liberals remain ambivalent on the morality of nuking the two Japanese cities. But terrorists are not ambivalent.
The New York Times reported that before the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States had intercepted an Al Qaeda message that Bin Laden was planning a "Hiroshima" against America. In a later taped message, released before the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, Bin Laden said, "When people at the ends of the Earth, Japan, were killed by their hundreds of thousands, young and old, it was not considered a war crime; it is something that has justification."
In a recent televised debate between myself and Hameed Gul — an influential Islamist leader, retired general and former head of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency — my opponent snarled at me: "Your masters [the Americans] will nuke us Muslims just as they nuked Hiroshima. People like you want to denuclearize and disarm us in the face of a savage beast set to devour the world."
Gul then vented his anger at those — like myself — who opposed Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. He sees us as agents of America, apostates and enemies of Islam and the Pakistani state.
This extremist general was making a point that resonates around the globe. The United States has bombed more than a dozen countries since 1948, and recently killed tens of thousands on the pretext of chasing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It claims to be a force for democracy and the rule of law despite a long history of supporting the bloodiest of dictators, rejecting the International Criminal Court and continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
But the nuclear monopoly is breaking down. The making of atomic weapons — especially crude ones — has become vastly simpler than at the time of the Manhattan Project. Basic information is freely available in technical libraries throughout the world, and surfing the Internet can bring anyone a staggering amount of detail.
Advanced textbooks and monographs contain details that can enable reasonably competent scientists and engineers to come up with "quick and dirty" designs for nuclear explosives. The physics of nuclear explosions can be readily taught to graduate students.
By stealing fissile materials in the thousands of former Soviet bombs marked for disassembly, or even a fraction of the vast amounts of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium in research reactors and storage sites the world over, it is unnecessary to go through complex processes for uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing.
Anger in Muslim countries at the United States has never been higher. The desire for an atomic weapon to seek vengeance — utterly immoral, foolish and suicidal though it be — is becoming ever more popular.
The notion of an "Islamic bomb" existed long before Sept. 11. Addressing posterity from his death cell in a Rawalpindi jail, where he would be hanged two years later, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, wrote in 1977: "We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it, but that position was about to change."
Addressing an Islamic conference in Tehran in 1992, the Iranian vice president, Sayed Ayatollah Mohajerani, said, "Since Israel continues to possess nuclear weapons, we, the Muslims, must cooperate to produce an atomic bomb, regardless of U.N. efforts to prevent proliferation."
In the celebrations following Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests, the decades-old religious party Jamaat-e-Islami paraded bomb and missile replicas through the streets of Pakistani cities. It saw in the bomb a sure sign of a reversal of fortunes and a panacea for the ills that have plagued Muslims since the end of the Golden Age of Islam. In 2000, I captured on video the statements of leaders of jihadist, right-wing political parties in Pakistan who also demanded a bomb for Islam.
It is impossible, however, to conceive of any Muslim state risking retaliation by declaring that it has an Islamic bomb that would be used for defense of the ummah — the Islamic community of believers — against the United States or Israel. The danger of a nuclear conflict comes from radicalized individuals within the states.
Although Pakistan's military government insisted that there was no danger of any of its nuclear weapons being taken for a ride by some radical Islamic group, it wasn't taking any chances. Shortly after the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began in October 2001, several weapons were reportedly airlifted to safer, isolated locations within the country, including the northern mountainous area of Gilgit.
This nervousness was not unjustified — two strongly Islamist generals of the Pakistan army, close associates of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, had just been removed. Dissatisfaction within the army concerning Pakistan's betrayal of the Taliban was (and is) deep. Almost overnight, under intense U.S. pressure, the Pakistan government had disowned its progeny and agreed to wage a war of annihilation against it.
Fears about Pakistan's nuclear weapons were compounded by revelations that a high-ranking nuclear engineer, Bashiruddin Mahmood, and a materials specialist, Chaudhry Abdul Majid, had journeyed several times into Afghanistan in 2000. Both scientists espouse radical Islamic views. Mahmood had even been photographed with Bin Laden.
Today, the United States lives in fear of the bomb it created, because the decision to use it has already been made. Pious men with beards will decide when and where on U.S. soil atomic weapons are to be used. Shadowy groups, propelled by fanatical hatreds, scour the globe for materials. They are not in a hurry. Time is on their side. They are doubtless confident they will one day breach Fortress America.
The possibilities for nuclear attack are not limited to the so-called suitcase bomb stolen from the arsenal of a nuclear state. In fact, getting and exploding such a bomb is far more difficult than the use of improvised nuclear devices fabricated from highly enriched uranium, constructed in the very place where they will eventually be detonated. Still more likely is an attack on a vulnerable nuclear reactor or spent fuel repository.
Some nuclear weapons experts say privately that it is not a question of if but when the attack will happen.
This may be too pessimistic, but tighter policing and monitoring of nuclear materials (and rapid reduction of stockpiles) and nuclear weapons knowledge must be the first step. There should not be the slightest delay in moving on this. But this is far from sufficient.
If nuclear weapons continue to be accepted by nuclear weapon states as legitimate instruments of deterrence or war, their global proliferation — whether by other states or non-state actors — can only be slowed at best. Coercive nonproliferation will only serve to drive up demand. Nonproliferation by cooperation and consent cannot succeed as long as the United States insists on retaining and improving its nuclear arsenal. By what reasonable argument can others be persuaded to give up, or not acquire, nuclear weapons?
So what will happen when religious fanatics succeed in a nuclear attack? The world shall plunge headlong into a bottomless abyss of reaction and counter-reaction in a horror the human mind cannot comprehend.
Who will the United States retaliate against? Will the United States nuke Mecca? The capitals of Muslim states? What will the United States and its allies do as their people fear more attacks? Will they expel Muslims from the United States and Europe, or herd them into internment camps as was done to Japanese Americans in World War II? Hiroshima signaled a failure of humankind, not just of the United States. The growth of technology has far outstripped our ability to use it wisely. Like a quarrelling group of monkeys on a leaky boat, armed with sticks of dynamite, we are embarked on an uncertain journey.
Humanity's best chance of survival lies in creating taboos against the manufacture of nuclear weapons — such as those that already exist for chemical and biological weapons — and to work rapidly toward their global elimination.
E-Commerce News: Space: Shuttle Investigator Gives NASA the Green Light
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BG: This is news from a few weeks ago. Seems like the message went out to not talk about this any more....
BG: This is news from a few weeks ago. Seems like the message went out to not talk about this any more....
Al-Qaeda and the Real Trinity of Terror
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