Virtual Jihad - Commentary
Posted: 20 May 2008 02:56 AM CDT
The United States has been threatened and attacked by organized, equipped and trained foreign terrorist groups on many occasions. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, bombings of U.S. embassies abroad, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have resulted in a focus on the prevention of the “outsider” or foreign terrorist threat. Terrorist planning, training and operations abroad are widespread and ever-evolving.
The counter-terrorism community is now doubling its efforts to detect and prevent a more recent trend–homegrown terrorists–violent extremist who live legally in Western countries. The threat of homegrown extremists commands pre-emptive action by corporate America.
Michael McConnell, the nation’s Director of National Intelligence, addressed the importance of this threat before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February. “Attacks by ‘homegrown’ extremists inspired by militant Islamic ideology but without operational direction from al-Qaeda will remain a threat to the United States or against U.S. interests abroad,” McConnell testified, adding, that “the spread of [terrorist] Internet sites that provide religious justification for attacks and increasingly aggressive and violent anti-Western rhetoric … all suggest growth of a radical and violent segment among the West’s Muslim populations.”
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UK Plans To Store Details of Every Phone Call, Email and Web Page Visited by British Citizens
Posted: 20 May 2008 02:36 AM CDT
The Home Office will create a database to store the details of every phone call made, every email sent and every web page visited by British citizens in the previous year under plans currently under discussion, it has emerged.
The Government wants to create the system to fight terrorism and crime. The police and security services believe it will make it easier to access important data as communications become more complex.
Telecoms firms and internet service providers (ISPs) have already been approached by the Home Office, which would be given customer records if the plans were realized.
The security services and police would then be able to access records for any individual over the previous 12 months by gaining permission through the courts.
The plans will raise concern from data protection and civil liberty campaigners and fuel objections to the perceived rise of a “Big Brother” state. There will be worries about the Home Office’s ability to safeguard the data from loss or theft, after recent incidents such as when the child benefit information of every family in Britain with a child under 16 were mislaid.
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Morocco Arrests 11 Over Planned Terror Attacks
Posted: 20 May 2008 02:01 AM CDT
Moroccan police have broken up a “terrorist network” of 11 people with links to Al-Qaeda that was planning attacks in Morocco and Belgium, the MAP national news agency said Monday.
The 11, who include a Moroccan resident in Belgium, were picked up in the central city of Fes and in Nador, in the north of the country, MAP said.
They had links with “groups sending volunteers to Iraq and camps of Al-Qaeda’s branch in North Africa,” the agency added, giving no names.
A source close to the government told AFP that the 11 were not connected to another group arrested earlier this year allegedly led by Abdelkader Belliraj, who has dual Moroccan and Belgian nationality.
That group faces charges including murder and attempted murder with firearms, robbery, money laundering, criminal association with terrorist intent and forging official and identity documents.
Belliraj is also reported to have been in the pay of Belgium’s domestic intelligence service for years, but Moroccan authorities said he had confessed to several unsolved murders committed in Belgium in 1989.
Belgian radio station VRT in Brussels reported Monday evening that the Moroccan suspects that day had targeted a European Union building and a hotel in the Belgian capital, without citing its sources.
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Man Charged With Impersonating Naval investigator at Palm Beach International Airport
Posted: 20 May 2008 02:01 AM CDT
A former Navy officer was arrested at Palm Beach International Airport after he tried to get on a plane with a .40-caliber magazine in his carry-on baggage.
Christian Louis, 32, told security officials he is a Naval law enforcement investigator and showed them a badge. However, the Navy has no record of him being an investigator, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
His bail was set this morning at $5,000 on charges of impersonating a law enforcement officer.
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Indianapolis - Police Find Grenades During Traffic Stop
Posted: 20 May 2008 02:01 AM CDT
Metro police found much more than they expected during a traffic stop on the city’s west side.
Monday morning, police stopped a car during a drug investigation. They say the driver had two grenades in a coat pocket.
It happened at around 10:30 a.m. on West Washington Street at Belleview.
Bomb experts came out, got the grenades, and put them in a metal box. They will take them to a safe place and blow them up.
“We evacuated the businesses and made sure the customers and everybody stayed off the street. Those do have a blast area so we made sure that was cleared. But yes, they are very, very dangerous,” said Major Brian Mahone of the Indianapolis Metro Police Department.
Grenades can take many forms: smoke, tear gas, or hard the traditional hard explosives meant to blow up and hurt someone. Police believe the grenades found were very dangerous and not legal to carry around.
Officers won’t say at this point what charges the driver faces, for the grenades or the initial drug case they were working when they pulled him over.
They said they’ll work to figure out why the man had them and whether that means others are out on the streets as we speak.
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Venezuela Denounces U.S. After an Airspace Violation
Posted: 20 May 2008 02:01 AM CDT
The defense minister said Monday that an American fighter plane violated Venezuelan airspace over the weekend, prompting the government here to summon the United States ambassador to explain the incident and other recent statements about Venezuela by senior American officials.
The denunciation, issued on state television Monday morning, suggests that political relations between Venezuela and the United States may be set to deteriorate further after Washington explicitly sided with Colombia in a dispute over a trove of computer files that tie Colombia’s largest guerrilla group to Venezuela’s government.
Gen. Gustavo Rangel, the Venezuelan defense minister, said the authorities on Saturday detected an S-3B Viking aircraft piloted by United States Navy personnel over La Orchila, a Caribbean island with a Venezuelan military base. An exchange of words ensued, General Rangel said, and the plane departed in the direction of Curaçao, in the Dutch Antilles.
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Violence Escalates In South Africa - Foreigners Burned Alive In Street
Posted: 20 May 2008 12:42 AM CDT
Mob violence against foreigners in Johannesburg and elsewhere in South Africa is raging despite police efforts to end killing sprees of which Zimbabweans are a prime target. Sources estimated that some 20 people have died since the latest outburst, most violently as the following articles detail.
News reports and direct sources say mobs continue to roam the city’s poorest neighborhoods, burning shacks, looting stores, and attacking immigrants.
Since beginning this blog some 5 years ago, I’ve had a number of gruesome pictures and articles come across my desk. Jim, over at Gateway Pundit has posted one of the most disturbing articles I’ve seen in some time. It’s shocking to realize what level man can deteriorate to.
Before you click over, I caution you that these photos are extremely disturbing.
WARNING ON CONTENT– VERY DISTURBING PHOTOS
Gateway Pundit
More - Anti-immigrant violence rages on in South Africa
The man certainly looked dead, lying motionless in the dust of the squatter camp. His body seemed almost like a bottle that had been turned on its side, spilling blood. His pants were red with the moisture.
Nearby was evidence of what he had endured. A large rock had been used to gouge his torso. Embers remained from a fire that had been part of some torture. Shards of a burned jacket still clung to the victim’s left forearm.
Then, as people stepped closer, there was the faintest of breath pushing against his chest. “This guy may be alive,” someone surmised. As if to confirm it, the man moved the fingers of his right hand.
The jaded crowd neither rejoiced nor lamented. After all, the horrific attacks against immigrants around Johannesburg had already been going on for a week, and in their eyes the victim was just some Malawian or Zimbabwean, another casualty in the continuing purge.
This nation is undergoing a spasm of xenophobia, with poor South Africans taking out their rage on the poor foreigners living in their midst. At least 22 people had been killed by Monday in the unrelenting mayhem, the police said.
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