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Fawaz A. Gerges writes: Islamic State's Islamist utopia has taken hold of the imagination of small Sunni communities almost everywhere, including in Brussels, where suicide bombers killed 32 people last month.
Its worldview, Salafi jihadism, is perhaps the most powerful weapon in its deadly arsenal. A traveling and expanding ideology, Salafi jihadism, or religious totalitarianism, has evolved into an influential social movement with a repertoire of ideas, iconic leaders, far-flung supporters, networks of recruiters and theorist enablers who provide members with theological sustenance.
Regardless of what happens to Islamic State, Salafi jihadism is here to stay and will likely gain more converts in politically polarized Arab and Muslim societies. The challenge is to shine light on this growing ideology and make sense of it.
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi and his inner circle rely particularly on three Salafi jihadist manifestoes to justify what they do. The most well-known is "The Management of Savagery." Circulated in PDF format under the pseudonym Abu Bakr Najji in the early 2000s, the manifesto provides a strategic road map of how to create an Islamic caliphate.
The second book is "Introduction to the Jurisprudence of Jihad" by Abu Abdullah Muhajjer, which calls on Salafi jihadists to do whatever it takes to establish a purely unified Islamic state.
The final book is "The Essentials of Making Ready" (for Jihad) by Sayyid Imam Sharif, aka Abdel-Qader Ibn Abdel-Aziz or Dr. Fadl. This massive work focuses on the theological and practical meanings of jihad in Islam, and it has become a central text in jihadist training. Fadl admitted that he wrote the book in the late 1980s as a manual for training camps of what subsequently became known as Al Qaeda. [Continue reading…]
The three manifestos that paved the way for ISIS
The gap between jihadism and the prevailing linear narrative of radicalization
Kenan Malik writes: In Britain, the government's flagship counterterrorism program, Prevent, includes surveillance of schoolchildren and college students. Official guidelines suggest that signs of radicalization include changing one's "style of dress or personal appearance" or using "derogatory names or labels for another group." Another sign, according to leaked teacher training materials, is an overt interest in Palestine or Syria. Among nearly 4,000 people identified last year as supposedly exhibiting signs of radicalization was a 4-year-old boy.
In France, mass closures of mosques and organizations suspected of enabling radicalization are underway.
Yet the evidence suggests that the concept is flawed and that such anti-jihadist measures are ineffective, even counterproductive. A secret British government memorandum leaked in 2010 dismissed the idea that there was "a linear 'conveyor belt' moving from grievance, through radicalization, to violence." A 2010 American study sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security similarly noted that radicalization "cannot be understood as an invariable set of steps or 'stages' from sympathy to radicalism."
Many studies show, perhaps counterintuitively, that people are not usually led to jihadist groups by religious faith. In 2008, a leaked briefing from Britain's domestic security service, MI5, found that far from being religious zealots, many involved in terrorism were not particularly observant.
This view is confirmed by Marc Sageman, a former officer with the Central Intelligence Agency who is now a counterterrorism consultant. "At the time they joined, jihad terrorists were not very religious," he observed. "They only became religious once they joined the jihad."
The paradox is that the concept has become central to domestic counterterrorism policy even as government agencies discover it's wrong. There is a gap between the reality of jihadism and a political desire for a simple narrative of radicalization.
In recent years, the official view of the process has become more nuanced. An F.B.I. website aimed at teenagers acknowledges that "no single reason explains why people become violent extremists." Updated British strategy also accepts that "there is no single cause of radicalization."
Yet the idea of a conveyor belt and telltale signatures of radicalization continue to be influential.
For many, though, the first steps toward terror are rarely taken for political or religious reasons. As the French sociologist Olivier Roy, the pre-eminent scholar of European jihadism, puts it, few terrorists "had a previous story of militancy," either political or religious. Rather, they're searching for something less definable: identity, meaning, respect. [Continue reading…]
How Denmark's unexpected killer slipped through the net
Reuters reports: On Valentine's Day, two weeks after his release from prison, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein walked up to a Copenhagen cafe hosting a debate on freedom of speech and sprayed it with bullets.
As a manhunt began, the 22-year-old went to ground. Nine hours later he launched a second assault, this time on a synagogue. Police eventually shot him dead, ending a rampage that left Danish filmmaker Finn Noergaard and security guard Dan Uzan dead, and six people wounded.
The attacks on Feb. 14 and 15 shocked Danes, who prize their country's openness and sense of security. The country was further confounded when it emerged that prison officials had warned Denmark's domestic intelligence agency that Hussein was at risk of being radicalized. If Denmark's prison system – famed for its focus on rehabilitation and education over punishment – could not prevent a young man from turning into an Islamist killer, then perhaps it was not the model that many Danes believe it was. Parliament demanded an inquiry into the attacks and how both the prison system and the municipality had handled Hussein's case.
In interviews with dozens of people, including a former cellmate and a source familiar with the as-yet unpublished official investigation, Reuters has learned new details about Hussein and his final months. His story seems to show how quickly people can be radicalized and how easily they can slip through the net, even a net as supportive and ostensibly secure as Denmark's. [Continue reading…]
Are more Arabs becoming extremists or are extremists becoming more extreme?
Koert Debeuf writes: With the humiliating defeat of the Arabs in the 1967 War against Israel, most non-Islamist ideologies died. Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arabism, socialism and secularism died on the battlefield, as well as the liberalism of his predecessors. The Arab world fell into an identity crisis, opening the way for the only remaining ideology: Islamism or conservative political Islam.
Saudi Arabia used this momentum and its newly gained petrodollars after the oil crisis in 1973 to spread Salafism or Islam without modernity. The Muslim Brotherhood too regained ground. It was founded in 1928, four years after Turkey's Atatürk abolished the Caliphate. Its main goal was (and continues to be) reinstalling this Caliphate. This could only be achieved by getting rid of the Western-backed Arab dictators.
The Arab revolutions of 2011 were a golden opportunity for the Islamists. Knowing that the young revolutionaries were too unorganized and idealistic, Islamists took the power. The entire Arab World looked to Egypt, where for the first time, the Muslim Brotherhood had the leverage to execute their plan and organize an Islamist society. They miserably failed.
The psychological effect on the Arab World cannot be underestimated. With the exception of Ennahda in Tunisia that moderated its course, but still lost the elections, it turned many Islamists in other Arab Awakening countries more extreme. The failure of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt convinced them that democracy and Islamism are not the way forward. The Arab World fell into a new identity crisis.
The Islamic State offered one answer to this crisis by going further, reinstalling the Caliphate and abolishing this other European decision, the national borders of the Middle East. It is an appealing project to disillusioned Islamists and adventurers trying to escape from their own personal identity crisis. But after all, the numbers of foreign fighters and supporters are rather small.
Much more important is what is happening to the silent majority in the Arab World. And here the opposite trend slowly starts becoming clear. Fewer taxi drivers place a copy of the Koran visibly in their car. More women are taking off their veil. The young revolutionary generation is also attending prayers at the mosque less often. Most of them only denounce the political Islam preached at many mosques. Others go further and flirt with atheism. The Egyptian government doesn't like this trend and in Alexandria even a special police taskforce has been created to arrest atheists. [Continue reading…]
The human cost of jihad
What is the religion-terrorism connection?
John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed write: The religious language and symbolism that terrorists use tend to place religion at center stage. Many critics charge that global terrorism is attributable to Islam — a militant or violent religion — and terrorists who are particularly religious folks. For example, in a Washington Times commentary, author Sam Harris writes:
It is time we admitted that we are not at war with "terrorism". We are at war with Islam. This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims, but we are absolutely at war with the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran. The only reason Muslim fundamentalism is a threat to us is because the fundamentals of Islam are a threat to us. Every American should read the Koran and discover the relentlessness with which non-Muslims are vilified in its pages. The idea that Islam is a "peaceful religion hijacked by extremists" is a dangerous fantasy — and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge.
Lawrence Auster of FrontPage magazine echoes this sentiment. He writes: "The problem is not 'radical' Islam but Islam itself, from which it follows that we must seek to weaken and contain Islam…"
What do the data say? Does personal piety correlate with radical views? The answer is no. Large majorities of those with radical views and moderate views (94% and 90%, respectively) say that religion is an important part of their daily lives. And no significant difference exists between radicals and moderates in mosque attendance.
Gallup probed respondents further and actually asked those who condone and condemn extremist acts why they said what they did. The responses fly in the face of conventional wisdom. For example, in Indonesia, the largest Muslim majority country in the world, many of those who condemn terrorism cite humanitarian or religious justifications to support their response. For example, one woman says, "Killing one life is as sinful as killing the whole world," paraphrasing verse 5:32 in the Quran.
On the other hand, not a single respondent in Indonesia who condones the attacks of 9/11 cites the Quran for justification. Instead, this group's responses are markedly secular and worldly. For example, one Indonesian respondent says, "The US government is too controlling toward other countries, seems like colonizing". The real difference between those who condone terrorist acts and all others is about politics, not piety.
How then do we explain extremists' religious rhetoric? As our data clearly demonstrate, religion is the dominant ideology in today's Arab and Muslim world, just as secular Arab nationalism was in the days of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Palestinian Liberation Organization — from its inception, a staunchly secular group — used secular Palestinian nationalism in its rhetoric to justify acts of violence and to recruit. Just as Arab nationalism was used in the 1960s, today religion is used to justify extremism and terrorism.
Examining the link between religion and terrorism requires a larger and more complex context. Throughout history, close ties have existed among religion, politics, and societies. Leaders have used and hijacked religion to recruit members, to justify their actions, and to glorify fighting and dying in a sacred struggle. [Continue reading…]
The birth of an international jihadi social movement?
Dual claim in Paris suggests some jihadis relate to IS/AQ like football teams. You can support different clubs and still watch game together
— Thomas Hegghammer (@Hegghammer) January 12, 2015
Clint Watts writes: The jihadi movement may have finally become what its original luminaries always wanted it to be – and in Paris of all places. The amorphous connections between the Charlie Hebdo attackers, the Kouachi brothers – who attributed their actions to "al Qaeda in Yemen" – and kosher market attacker Amedy Coulibali – who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a recently released online video – may reflect exactly what some early jihadi strategists intended: broad based jihad via a loose social movement. Terrorism researchers, obsessed with the writings of their academic adversary in jihad, Abu Musab al Suri, have for years suggested the social movement approach represented the ultimate vision of al Qaeda's founding leadership.
This vision, however, does not seem to be shared by today's al Qaeda chief, Ayman al Zawahiri, who for nearly a decade has sought to rein in the group's disobedient affiliate in Iraq, which now also controls much of Syria in the guise of the Islamic State. Al Zawahiri also questioned the value of goofy self-recruits perpetrating attacks on behalf of al Qaeda without formal membership or direction from the group. Zawahiri's resistance to freelance members may not be sufficient to quell the zeal witnessed by last week's Charlie Hebdo attack. The manifestation of al Qaeda social movement theory may finally be realized by three forces: the growing development and global proliferation of social media, an unending call for jihad due to the intractable Syrian civil war, and the West's failure to adapt to the wicked problem of non-state threats in a networked world.
Today's jihadi threat, blended between al Qaeda and ISIS, networked by Facebook, and evolving based on conditions in hundreds of locations, produces attacks on three or more continents every day. On the surface this seems to indicate a stronger, unprecedented emerging jihadi threat to the West. Media coverage of the Charlie Hebdo attack and others suggest as much. We analysts and followers of jihadi activity, though, often give terrorists too much credit. Many, if not most, Western jihadis are deeply troubled souls, at times more confused about their intentions and motivations than we are – Omar Hammami, Zachary Chesser, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau are three of many such examples. Counterterrorism pundits, myself included, try to tease out order from chaos. But today's counterterrorism landscape does not lend itself to such linearity. [Continue reading…]
The Arab world has no counterforce to the murderers in our midst
Hisham Melhem writes: There is something malignant in the brittle world the Arab peoples inhabit. A murderous, fanatical, atavistic Islamist ideology espoused by Salafi Jihadist killers is sweeping that world and shaking it to its foundations, and the reverberations are felt in faraway continents. On the day the globalized wrath of these assassins claimed the lives of the Charlie Hebdo twelve in Paris, it almost simultaneously claimed the lives of 38 Yemenis in their capital Sana'a, and an undetermined number of victims in Syria and Iraq. Like the Hydra beast of ancient Greece this malignancy has many heads: al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Sunni Salafists and Shiite fanatics, armies and parties of God and militias of the Mahdi. This monstrous ideology has been terrorizing Arab lands long before it visited New York on 9/11, and its butchers assassinated Arab journalists and intellectuals years before committing the Paris massacre of French journalists, cartoonists and police officers.
The devil's rejects of this ideology engage in wanton ritualistic beheadings while intoxicated with shouts of Allahu Akbar, oblivious to the fact that most of their victims are Muslims. They are perpetuating mass killings and rapes, uprooting ancient communities, declaring war on the great pre-Islamic civilizations and religions of the Fertile Crescent, and managing to turn large swaths of Syria and Iraq into earthly provinces of hell.
The time of the assassins is upon us. And the true tragedy of the Arab and Muslim world today is that there is no organized, legitimate counterforce to oppose these murderers—neither one of governments nor of "moderate" Islam. Nor is there any refuge for those who want to escape the assassins. [Continue reading…]
Boko Haram now appears intent on governing
The Wall Street Journal reports: After seizing another village in Nigeria's northeast last month, Boko Haram militants took a step in their transition from terror group to governing authority. They rounded up the men and ordered them to wear pants as the prophet Mohammed did, several inches above the ankle.
Otherwise, a Boko Haram commander told a crowd of men, they would be killed. "So we folded our trousers," said Birgamus Kadams, a 26-year-old who was among the group of several hundred residents of Garkidi village the militant addressed.
Like 1.5 million other Nigerians, Mr. Kadams fled his home, in his case to the government-held town of Yola. But the world he left behind is changing.
After years of sowing chaos—bombing mosques, gunning up markets, kidnapping children, and leaving thousands dead, Boko Haram now appears intent on establishing order in towns it holds.
Fighters are imposing rigorous Islamic law in a bid to carve out a corner of a strategic, oil-rich country—just as its fellow jihadists in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are doing. [Continue reading…]
The context of the Eilat attacks and the threat to Gaza
Israelis who today for some reason feel safer because Gaza is getting bombed, might pause to consider this question: why would a member of the group that launched attacks outside Eilat yesterday — a group supposedly based in Gaza and sworn to the destruction of Israel — today blow himself up in an attack on Egyptian soldiers?
Many Israelis might avoid attempting to answer such a question and respond that it's a jungle out there beyond Israel's borders, as does commentator Yigal Walt, who writes:
The halcyon days of Oslo and dreams of a "New Middle East" and open borders between Israel and its neighbors are long gone; instead, we are facing a Mideast that is crueler and more dangerous than ever. As it did in the face of Palestinian murderousness in the past decade, Israel's government must embark on a national project aimed at building large, effective fences around much of the country.
The notion of fences may be unsavory to many of us, but ignoring reality would not be a wise move. Should we fail to protect our villa by all means necessary, we shall find ourselves increasingly vulnerable to the Arab jungle around us.
As for those who have an interest in evidence, rather than taking comfort in deeply ingrained prejudice, the evidence suggests that the men who attacked Israelis yesterday and Egyptians today are in conflict with both states. More than likely, this has much less to do with Gaza or the Palestinian national cause than it has with the aspirations of radical groups based in the Sinai.
Those responsible for maintaining Israel's security quickly claimed they knew exactly who was behind yesterday's attacks in Eilat and duly dispatched the Israeli air force to rain down missiles on Gaza. No one explained why, if Israeli intelligence was so good, they had not prevented the attacks. Even so, the domestically perceived legitimacy of a security state depends less on its ability to thwart terrorism than its willingness to make a timely show of force. Indeed, the occasional tragedy has obvious political utility. The attacks in Eilat serve to remind Israelis that the state created as a safe haven for Jews can only remain safe so long as everyone remains afraid.
The problem with fear though, is that it inhibits curiosity — a population that lives in fear has a visceral need for security that overrides the cognitive need for understanding. Once hit, the reflex to hit back marginalizes the need to understand who, how and why.
In attempting to understand attacks that took place on the edge of the Sinai, the likelihood is that the explanation about who launched the attacks and why, would be found not elsewhere but in the Sinai itself.
The day before the attacks, CNN reported:
The Egyptian army and police are cracking down in an "anti-terror" operation in the Sinai area of Egypt, state-owned media reported on Tuesday, as reports emerge of Osama bin Laden's doctor surfacing in the area.
Police said they found hand grenades, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition in the operation that targets Sinai "terror cells" suspected in attacks on a gas pipeline to Israel and a police station in the border town of el-Arish.
One person was killed and 12 were arrested on Monday, the first day of the operation, said Hazem al-Maadawi, a police officer involved in the offensive.
Citing an unnamed security official, state news agency EgyNews said authorities are targeting 15 more people who participated in attacks at an el-Arish police station — some of whom are members of the extremist Jaish el-Islam group, which is affiliated with al Qaeda.
The crackdown comes amid new developments on the whereabouts of a bin Laden associate.
Ramzi Mahmoud Al Mowafi, the doctor of the late al Qaeda leader, escaped from a Cairo prison during the Egyptian revolution earlier this year and has resurfaced in the country's North Sinai area, an official said.
"Al Mowafi, also known among his fellow Jihadists as the 'chemist,' escaped from a maximum security prison in Cairo on January 30 while serving a life sentence," Maj. Yaser Atia from Egyptian General Security told CNN Monday. According to prison records, Al Mowafi was sentenced to life for a "military case" — but more details were not immediately known.
Bin Laden's longtime personal doctor and an explosives expert, Al Mowafi was born in Egypt in 1952. He left for Afghanistan to join al Qaeda, according to the data listed in his prison records.
"Al Mowafi was seen in Sinai by several Jihadist(s) according to witness testimonials," Gen. Sameh Seif Al Yezen said. "I know he is very dangerous and that he had set up his own laboratory in Tora Bora with bin Laden. A full report will be published on this matter in the upcoming week."
A general in Egypt's intelligence service, who did not want to be identified because he is not authorized to speak with the media, told CNN that "Al Mowafi surfaced in el-Arish and communicated with several 'terrorists' from the Egyptian Takfir wal-Hijra and the Palestinian Islamic Army."
Takfir wal-Hijra is a militant Islamist group.
The general added, "Al Qaeda is present in Sinai, mainly in the area of Sakaska close to Rafah."
Andrew McGregor provides more historical background on the region.
As the meeting point of Asia and Africa, the Sinai has always been important to Egypt's security. Though the Sinai has been, with brief interruptions, a part of Egypt in one form or another since the time of the First Egyptian Dynasty (c. 3100 – 2890 B.C.E.), it has also been regarded as something apart from the Egypt of the Nile and Delta, a remote wasteland useful for mineral exploitation and strategic reasons but otherwise best left (outside of Egyptian security outposts) to the unruly Semitic and Bedouin tribes that have called the Sinai home since ancient times. The effect of these policies is that the Sinai Bedouin form only a tiny minority of Egypt's total population, but retain an absolute majority in the Sinai.
In recent decades, however, Cairo has attempted to impose the deeply infiltrated security regime that existed in the rest of the country up until last January's revolution. Many Bedouin involved in traditional smuggling activities found themselves in Egyptian prisons serving long sentences in often brutal conditions. The attempt to impose a security regime on the freedom-minded Bedouin led to a greater alienation of the tribesmen from the state, and the Egyptian uprising presented an opportunity to quickly roll back decades of attempts to impose state control on life in the Sinai. Most importantly, it opened the door for those influenced by the Salafist movements of neighboring Gaza to begin operations.
There are roughly 15 Bedouin tribes in the Sinai. In the politically sensitive northeast region (including al-Arish and the border area) the most important are the Sawarka and Rumaylat. There are also significant Palestinian populations in al-Arish and the border towns of Rafah and Zuwaid.
Local Bedouin took the opportunity of storming the Sinai's prisons, freeing an unknown number of Bedouin smugglers and Palestinian militants. In nearly all cases they were unopposed by prison staff. One of the escapees was Ali Abu Faris, who was convicted for involvement in the Sharm al-Shaykh bombings that killed 88 people in 2005. Others freed included Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners convicted more recently of planning terrorist operations in Egypt (see Terrorism Monitor, June 12, 2009). Since emptying the prisons the tribesmen have warned the police to stay out of the main smuggling centers on penalty of death and the region has been effectively operating without any type of government.
But even if Israel faces a threat emanating from Egypt, Gaza presents a more convenient target of retaliation — even if this now opens a new risk of escalation.
Tony Karon writes:
There was a time when attacks such as those in southern Israel on Thursday might have been assumed to be the work of Hamas, out to torpedo the peace process. But there is no peace process to torpedo; it sank without trace some years ago without any help from Hamas. And Hamas is facing a potential crisis because its Syrian patron, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, may be on its way out of power, jeopardizing the status of the Hamas political leadership and headquarters in Damascus. The situation in Syria, and the new possibilities opened up by the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the growing influnence of Hamas' Egyptian founding organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, give Hamas nothing to gain and much to lose by making life difficult for the military leadership in Cairo. Attacking Israel from Egyptian soil makes little sense for Hamas given its current political and diplomatic needs.
And a new crisis in Gaza hardly suits the agenda of President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority: They plan next month to seek U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood on the 1967 lines, and it hardly helps their case to have the fact that they have no control over events in Gaza — a substantial part of the state they are claiming — so graphically demonstrated.
But for a bit player like the PRC [Popular Resistance Committees] — if, indeed, it was responsible — or any other smaller groups challenging Hamas' authority and pressing their own claims, the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in February and the weakening of his police state created a new opportunity to slip the shackles of Hamas' cease-fire by leaving Gaza and launching an attack from Sinai. As our own Abigail Hauslohner has reported, Sinai has become a playground for Bedouin smugglers and various jihadists since Mubarak's fall, with salafist groups (who share an ideology with al-Qaeda) believed to have been behind repeat attacks on the natural gas pipeline that runs through Sinai to Israel.
Thursday's attacks came just days after 1,000 Egyptian troops launched an operation in northern Sinai against Islamist cells believed to be inspired by al-Qaeda, which had challenged Hamas in Gaza. Israel gave its approval for the operation — the 1979 Camp David Agreement requires Israeli approval for Egypt to deploy significant numbers of troops in Sinai — and so did Hamas.
The fall of Mubarak had created a vacuum in Sinai into which some of Hamas' rivals have been able to move to provoke a confrontation that Hamas had been trying to avoid. But once the Israelis are bombing Gaza, Hamas may find it difficult or impolitic to restrain its own armed wing, or other groups from firing at Israel. So the danger of escalation becomes more acute. On the Israeli side, too. Defense Minister Ehud Barak seemed to hint that Israel may be planning a more sustained attack on Gaza, warning on Thursday that Israel sees the territory as "a source of terror, and we will take full-force action against them."
The terrorism recruiting myth
After almost a decade of a US-led global war on terrorism, America's approach to the issue has barely advanced from being a deadly game of Whack-a-Mole.
On CBS, Scott Pelley asked Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton: "I wonder if there's anything about U.S. foreign policy that needs to change in your estimation to put more pressure on these terrorist groups where they live, like in Pakistan?"
"Well, we are doing that. And we're increasing it. We're expecting more from it. This is a global threat. We have probably the best police work in the world. But we are also the biggest target. And therefore, we just have to be better than everybody else," Clinton replied.
Earlier in the interview she said: "We've made it very clear [to the Pakistani government] that, if, heaven forbid, that an attack like this [in Times Square], if we can trace back to Pakistan, were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences."
The US will start bombing Pakistan? Special Forces will start conducting operations in North Waziristan? Clinton would not specify what form these severe consequences might take.
In response to the Times Square incident, Richard Clarke, former counter-terrorism coordinator for the Bush administration writes:
The reason such attacks are hard to stop is rooted in the identity of the attackers. They often seem to be successful or well-educated members of society, uninvolved in any form of radicalism. But then, the drip-drip of terrorist propaganda — either on the Internet or circulated through friends — has its effect. They quietly make contact with radical groups overseas, perhaps even traveling abroad for training and indoctrination. They throw away the life they have made in the West and agree to stage an attack. Faisal Shahzad, the alleged Times Square terrorist, fits that profile, as have others in the United States and Europe.
For U.S. intelligence and law enforcement authorities, these newly minted terrorists are the hardest to stop. They may not be part of any known cell; there is no reason for their phones or e-mail accounts to come under surveillance. When they buy rifles, handguns, tanks of propane gas or fertilizer, they are doing nothing out of the ordinary in American society.
If they succeed in inflicting harm on us with terrorist acts designed to rivet media and public attention, our political debate may once again be as wrongheaded as it will be predictable. Some elected officials will claim that their party would have done a much better job protecting the country. Critics of America's Middle East policy — or our energy policy, or our foreign policy writ large — will also fault whatever administration is in power.
Likewise, in a 60 Minutes report that aired last night, the prism through which the issue is filtered is one in which individuals are turned into the tools of a deadly ideology. Vulnerable young men are in jeopardy of being recruited by merciless ideologues and terrorist planners.
But as Scott Atran points out, the idea that Shahzad and those like him have to be recruited, does not fit the evidence.
Shahzad was also apparently inspired by the online rhetoric of Anwar al-Awlaki, a former preacher at a Northern Virginia mosque who gained international notoriety for blessing the suicide mission of the failed Christmas airplane bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallib, and for Facebook communications with Major Nadal Hasan, an American-born Muslim psychiatrist who killed thirteen fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in November 2009. Although many are ready to leap to the conclusion that Awlaki helped to "brainwash" and "indoctrinate" these jihadi wannabes, it is much more likely that they sought out the popular Internet preacher because they already self-radicalized to the point of wanting reassurance and further guidance. "The movement is from the bottom up," notes forensic psychiatrist and former CIA case officer Marc Sageman, "just like you saw Major Hasan send twenty-one e-mails to al-Awlaki, who sends him back two, you have people seeking these guys and asking them for advice."
The CBS report, stuck on the track that recruitment is a central issue, homes in on the role of the internet. The would-be terrorist is someone whose deadly intent is sure to be triggered by something he sees online.
Phillip Mudd, who until a few months ago was the senior intelligence advisor to the FBI and its director says:
They're seeing images, for example, of children and women in places like Palestine and Iraq, they're seeing sermons of people who explain in simple, compelling, and some cases magnetic terms why it's important that they join the jihad. They're seeing images, and messages that confirm a path that they're already thinking of taking.
CBS helpfully provides such an image, but predictably neglects to add any commentary.
What are we seeing? An Israeli soldier terrorizing a Palestinian mother and her two girls.
And there we have it: exactly the kind of image the foments terrorism.
Viewed through the American counter-terrorism lens, the problem lies with the propagation of the image and the violent reaction such an image can provoke. Why? Because any serious consideration of the foreign policy issues that the image signals is still off-limits.
But here's what everyone in the Middle East sees: An Israeli Jew brandishing an American-made weapon, serving America's closest ally in the Middle East, is threatening a Muslim family. This is the narrative that no amount of spin or cleverly fought battles in a war of ideas, can undo.
Yet here is the foreign policy dilemma for Washington: How can the United States adopt a posture in the Middle East that acknowledges the role America has played in fueling terrorism, without appearing to capitulate to terrorist demands?
The answer is to trust in the universally recognized truth: actions speak louder than words.
What Obama does in Pakistan matters more than what he said in Cairo.
In April 2003, the Bush administration made a step in the right direction when it withdrew American troops from Saudi Arabia. The moved turned out to be of little consequence since it was triggered by utterly false expectations about the war in Iraq. Yet there was an implicit recognition: the presence of American soldiers in close proximity to Islam's holiest sites sends an ugly message to the Muslim world.
Seven years later, as the Obama administration puts increased pressure on the Pakistani government to launch a major offensive in North Waziristan — an operation that would yet again result in the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians — and as the CIA continues to expand a drone war that has resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, what kind of signal is this sending to those who might now contemplate following in the footsteps of Faisal Shahzad?
Did The American Conservative just get hacked by Zionists?
Did The American Conservative just get hacked by Zionists?
Philip Weiss drew my attention to an article that caught Andrew Sullivan's eye: Jihadism, anti-Jihadism and Palestine by Daniel Larison. It appears at Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative. But if you follow the link at this time (1.20 PM Eastern) you won't find much — just a GoDaddy.com placeholder.
TAC got hacked. By who?
This is where it gets interesting. The Google cache page shows this — a statement by an ostensibly Turkish pro-Palestinian hacker/group. Here's a screenshot:
If that looks familiar it's probably because you read about the hacking of The Jewish Chronicle in Britain a week ago. The text and image appear to be the same:
There is one difference — the claim of authorship. The hackers of the Chronicle identified themselves as "PALESTINIAN MUJAHEEDS" whereas the TAC hackers used this name: "HaCKeD By CWD@rBe".
So what can we infer? Some Turkish pro-Palestinians don't know much about the American media? Perhaps.
The American Conservative is certainly a counter-intuitive target to pick. It's one of the few American publications that acknowledges the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause and it is by no stretch of the imagination an Israel-friendly publication.
So who might the Palestinian Mujaheeds be? A Google search indicates that the name had never shown up until the Jewish Chronicle attack.
The equation between Palestinians and Mujahadins is a strange one to make — unless that is you happen to be an anti-Jihadist of the type that figures in Daniel Larison's article. He writes:
The Palestinian cause generates remarkable reactions in Western anti-jihadists. For most of them, it is an article of faith that Palestinians, or at least the organized factions that speak for them, are just about as bad and hostile to "the West" as Al Qaeda itself, and so there is no point in attempting to make any deal with them. As far as they are concerned, the correct response is to back Israeli policies to the hilt, and to throw up as many obstacles to anyone here at home who would attempt to use U.S. influence to change those policies. The Bush-era habit of lumping together every Islamic revolutionary, militant and terrorist group under some catch-all term of "Islamofascism" made it easier to lump all these causes together, which is oddly enough exactly what jihadists would like, and once they were lumped together they could be that much more easily demonized together.
Now is that the kind of statement that a pro-Palestinian Turk believes should be blocked from public viewing? It's conceivable but rather improbable. Much more plausible is the idea that a pro-Israeli hacker finds the expression of such views particularly unpalatable.
It's not always possible to judge who you are dealing with simply by seeing the colors on the flag that they choose to waive.
Meanwhile, as TAC deals with the damage done by "HaCKeD By CWD@rBe", be sure to look at Daniel Larison's piece which I've reposted here. It's essential reading.
Jihadism, anti-Jihadism and Palestine
Jihadism, anti-Jihadism and Palestine
A lot of ink has been spilled since 9/11 trying to argue that bin Laden doesn't really care about Palestine. But that's always been silly — nobody knows what he "really" cares about, and it doesn't especially matter since he talks about it a lot and presents it as a major part of his case against the United States. An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement surely would not convince bin Laden or al-Qaeda and its affiliated movements to give up their jihad — but it would take away one of their most potent arguments, and one of the few that actually resonates with mass publics. Marc Lynch (via Andrew)
One of the reasons there has been a consistent effort to deny that Bin Laden has any "real" interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that such an interest, sincere or not, suggests jihadist groups are fueled by U.S. and allied policies, or at least that they successfully exploit U.S. and allied policies for propaganda purposes. Washington would then be faced with at least one of two unpalatable truths. Either our policies are correct and necessary, but strategically disastrous in their effects on Arab and Muslim public opinion and jihadist recruiting, or they are and incorrect and unnecessary while also being strategically disastrous. Washington would then have to decide if it wants to live with perpetual, low-level conflict occasionally exploding into major military campaigns every decade, or if it wants to make enough policy changes (and push our allies to make similar changes) to reduce that conflict to a bare minimum.
For most of the last decade, our preference in and out of government has been to deny that U.S. and allied policies had anything to do with jihadist attacks and their ability to recruit and win sympathizers. This acknowledgement would be to "blame the victim," so that even if it were the correct analysis it was politically incorrect to say it out loud. Instead we have been treated to a whole host of explanations for why jihadist violence exists and why it tends to be directed at the U.S. and our allies. The lamest of these has been rather popular, namely the claim that "they hate us for our freedom," or modernity or secularism or whatever it is that the person making the argument finds worthwhile about the West and sees lacking in Muslim countries. Then, of course, there is the trusty appeal to the enemy's insanity. Unlike us, they are not really rational, and so their actions cannot be explained by referring to anything so mundane and normal as political grievances.
Finally, there is the religious essentialist argument that jihadism is what Islam requires at its core, and therefore there is no way to weaken it without some dramatic transformation of the entire religion. This last argument has won more sympathizers because the people trying to challenge it inevitably go to the opposite extreme and simply ignore or dismiss past Islamic conquests as having nothing to do with Islam. If the essentialist argument really held up, however, Algerians would still be attacking France, Central Asian Muslims would still be warring against the Russians, and Saudis would have been attacking American targets long before the 1990s. We do see cases where separatist movements involving Muslim populations' breaking away from non-Muslim states become intertwined with and dependent on jihadist groups, because these are the groups providing assistance and because they lend an extra religious and ideological veneer to the conflict that wins the separatists more sympathy abroad. As a general rule, when the cause of the political grievances has disappeared, violent resistance also disappears.
Anti-jihadists like to invoke one or more of these arguments. I am reminded again of a quote from George Kennan in which he described the flaws of the popular anticommunism of his day. His words apply to popular anti-jihadism almost perfectly:
They distort and exaggerate the dimensions of the problem with which they profess to deal. They confuse internal and external aspects of the communist threat. They insist on portraying as contemporary things that had their actuality years ago [bold mine-DL]….And having thus incorrectly stated the problem, it is no wonder that these people consistently find the wrong answers.
Even when anti-jihadists are willing to acknowledge that Al Qaeda uses the grievances of Muslim populations in Iraq or Palestine for propaganda purposes, they will usually hold that changing policy or addressing those grievances to minimize the effectiveness of the propaganda is a form of capitulation. We are supposed to be engaged in "global counterinsurgency," but we must take little or no account of the stated motivations of jihadists and the reasons why many millions more sympathize with their immediate goals while often deploring the means they use.
The Palestinian cause generates remarkable reactions in Western anti-jihadists. For most of them, it is an article of faith that Palestinians, or at least the organized factions that speak for them, are just about as bad and hostile to "the West" as Al Qaeda itself, and so there is no point in attempting to make any deal with them. As far as they are concerned, the correct response is to back Israeli policies to the hilt, and to throw up as many obstacles to anyone here at home who would attempt to use U.S. influence to change those policies. The Bush-era habit of lumping together every Islamic revolutionary, militant and terrorist group under some catch-all term of "Islamofascism" made it easier to lump all these causes together, which is oddly enough exactly what jihadists would like, and once they were lumped together they could be that much more easily demonized together.
On the whole, it seems that the more sympathetic to or at least understanding of Palestinian grievances a Western observer is, the less willing he is to endorse standard anti-jihadist arguments. Likewise, the more one agrees with anti-jihadist arguments, the more reflexively hostile to Palestinian grievances one tends to be. When most Western anti-jihadists hear that Bin Laden has tied the Christmas bomber attack to the cause of Palestine and specifically to the treatment of Gaza, or when they learn that the bomber who killed the seven CIA operatives claimed that the Gaza operation early last year had driven him to jihadism, the conclusion they draw is not that there was and is something wrong with U.S. and Israeli policies with respect to Palestinians. There is no sudden revelation that the inexcusable blockade of Gaza is politically unwise as well as morally wrong.
On the contrary, the support Bin Laden expresses for the Palestinian cause makes that cause seem to most Western anti-jihadists to be that much more indistinguishable from Al Qaeda's goals and therefore that much more antithetical to Western interests. This might very well be another purpose in Bin Laden's exploitation of Palestinian grievances: to harden Western audiences against Palestinian claims even more by linking his cause to Palestine, which will make Americans in particular less interested in supporting an administration that tries to exert pressure in support of a peace settlement. Bin Laden would like to appropriate the Palestinian cause, which Palestinians definitely do not want, and most Western anti-jihadists would like nothing more than to let him have it. So while Lynch is right that resolving this conflict would deprive jihadists of one of their great sources of effective propaganda, our own anti-jihadists will do their utmost to thwart all efforts to that end.
Cracks in the jihad
"Get ready for all Muslims to join the holy war against you," the jihadi leader Abd el-Kader warned his Western enemies. The year was 1839, and nine years into France's occupation of Algeria the resistance had grown self-confident. Only weeks earlier, Arab fighters had wiped out a convoy of 30 French soldiers en route from Boufarik to Oued-el-Alèg. Insurgent attacks on the slow-moving French columns were steadily increasing, and the army's fortified blockhouses in the Atlas Mountains were under frequent assault.
Paris pinned its hopes on an energetic general who had already served a successful tour in Algeria, Thomas-Robert Bugeaud. In January 1840, shortly before leaving to take command in Algiers, he addressed the French Chamber of Deputies: "In Europe, gentlemen, we don't just make war against armies; we make war against interests." The key to victory in European wars, he explained, was to penetrate the enemy country's interior. Seize the centers of population, commerce, and industry, "and soon the interests are forced to capitulate." Not so at the foot of the Atlas, he conceded. Instead, he would focus the army's effort on the tribal population.
Later that year, a well-known military thinker from Prussia traveled to Algeria to observe Bugeaud's new approach. Major General Carl von Decker, who had taught under the famed Carl von Clausewitz at the War Academy in Berlin, was more forthright than his French counterpart. The fight against fanatical tribal warriors, he foresaw, "will throw all European theory of war into the trash heap."
One hundred and seventy years later, jihad is again a major threat—and Decker's dire analysis more relevant than ever. War, in Clausewitz's eminent theory, was a clash of collective wills, "a continuation of politics by other means." When states went to war, the adversary was a political entity with the ability to act as one body, able to end hostilities by declaring victory or admitting defeat. Even Abd el-Kader eventually capitulated. But jihad in the 21st century, especially during the past few years, has fundamentally changed its anatomy: Al Qaeda is no longer a collective political actor. It is no longer an adversary that can articulate a will, capitulate, and be defeated. But the jihad's new weakness is also its new strength: Because of its transformation, Islamist militancy is politically impaired yet fitter to survive its present crisis. [continued…]
Yemen offers to strike a deal with al-Qaeda fighters
The President of Yemen said yesterday that he was willing to strike a deal with al-Qaeda if militants laid down their weapons, amid warnings that dozens of foreign fighters were streaming into the country.
Ali Abdullah Saleh's offer to negotiate with members of the terror network came as officials said that several al-Qaeda operatives, including Saudis and Egyptians, were travelling from Afghanistan to join fighters in the lawless tribal lands in central and southern Yemen.
Among those said to be in hiding in the area is Anwar al-Awlaki, the influential Yemeni preacher. The US-born imam preached to two of the 9/11 bombers in California and had links to the US army psychiatrist charged with the Fort Hood shootings and the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a Christmas Day flight to Detroit. [continued…]
Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again
Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again
As the summer arrives and London begins to swelter, I sit with most of the "out" ex-jihadis in a slew of Starbucks across the city. We sip iced lattes and discuss how, not long ago, they tried to destroy Western civilisation.
They have different backgrounds: one is a Yorkshire girl with Hindu parents, another is a Northern boy whose father was a Conservative ultra-Thatcherite. Yet they are startlingly similar: they have all retained the humourless intensity of their pasts. And when they describe their Islamist former selves, they are distant and cold, as if describing a rather unpleasant acquaintance they did not entirely understand.
They wreath their stories in clouds of pointless detail: they talk for hours about the intricacies of seventh-century Meccan society, or the fine distinctions in the hierarchy of HT, willing you to understand it. It's a way of avoiding answering the hardest question – why? But from their scattered stories, I can trace something that seems genuinely new: an ex-jihadi way of looking at the world, that carries lessons about how to stop Western Muslims sinking into jihadism.
As children and teenagers, the ex-jihadis felt Britain was a valueless vacuum, where they were floating free of any identity.
Ed Husain, a former leader of HT, says: "On a basic level, we didn't know who we were. People need a sense of feeling part of a group – but who was our group?" They were lost in liberalism, beached between two unreachable identities – their parents', and their country's. They knew nothing of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or the other places they were constantly told to "go home" to by racists.
Yet they felt equally shut out of British or democratic identity. From the right, there was the brutal nativist cry of "Go back where you came from!" But from the left, there was its mirror-image: a gooey multicultural sense that immigrants didn't want liberal democratic values and should be exempted from them. Again and again, they described how at school they were treated as "the funny foreign child", and told to "explain their customs" to the class. It patronised them into alienation.
"Nobody ever said – you're equal to us, you're one of us, and we'll hold you to the same standards," says Husain. "Nobody had the courage to stand up for liberal democracy without qualms. When people like us at [Newham] College were holding events against women and against gay people, where were our college principals and teachers, challenging us?"
Without an identity, they created their own. It was fierce and pure and violent, and it admitted no doubt.
To my surprise, the ex-jihadis said their rage about Western foreign policy – which was real, and burning – emerged only after their identity crises, and as a result of it. They identified with the story of oppressed Muslims abroad because it seemed to mirror the oppressive disorientation they felt in their own minds. Usman Raja, a bluff, buff boxer who begged to become a suicide bomber in the mid-1990s, tells me: "Your inner life is chaotic and you feel under threat the whole time. And then you're told by Islamists that life for Muslims everywhere is chaotic and under threat. It becomes bigger than you. It's about the world – and that's an amazing relief. The answer isn't inside your confused self. It's out there in the world."
But once they had made that leap to identify with the Umma – the global Muslim community – they got angrier the more abusive our foreign policy came. Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11 – from Guantanamo to Iraq – made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. Hadiya Masieh, a tiny female former HT organiser, tells me: "You'd see Bush on the television building torture camps and bombing Muslims and you think – anything is justified to stop this. What are we meant to do, just stand still and let him cut our throats?"
But the converse was – they stressed – also true. When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: "How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?" asks Hadiya.
Britain's foreign policy also helped tug them towards Islamism in another way. Once these teenagers decided to go looking for a harder, tougher Islamist identity, they found a well-oiled state machine waiting to feed it. Usman Raja says: "Saudi literature is everywhere in Britain, and it's free. When I started exploring my Muslim identity, when I was looking for something more, all the books were Saudi. In the bookshops, in the libraries. All of them. Back when I was fighting, I could go and get a car, open the boot up, and get it filled up with free literature from the Saudis, saying exactly what I believed. Who can compete with that?"
He says the Saudi message is particularly comforting to disorientated young Muslims in the West. "It tells you – you're in this state of sin. But the sin doesn't belong to you, it's not your fault – it's Western society's fault. It isn't your fault that you're sinning, because the girl had the miniskirt on. It wasn't you. It's not your fault that you're drug dealing. The music, your peers, the people around you – it's their fault."
Just as their journeys into the jihad were strikingly similar, so were their journeys out. All of them said doubt began to seep in because they couldn't shake certain basic realities from their minds. The first and plainest was that ordinary Westerners were not the evil, Muslim-hating cardboard kaffir presented by the Wahabis. Usman, for one, finally stopped wanting to be a suicide bomber because of the kindness of an old white man.
Usman's mother had moved in next door to an elderly man called Tony, who was known in the neighbourhood as a spiteful, nasty grump. One day, Usman was teaching his little brother to box in the garden when he noticed the old man watching him from across the fence. "I used to box when I was in the Navy," he said. He started to give them tips and before long, he was building a boxing ring in their shed.
Tony died not long before 9/11, and Usman was sent to help clear out his belongings. In Tony's closet, he found a present wrapped and ready for his little brother's birthday: a pair of boxing gloves. "And I thought – that is humanity right there. That's an aspect of the divine that's in every human being. How can I want to kill people like him? How can I call him kaffir?"
Many of the ex-Islamists discovered they couldn't ignore the fact that whenever Islamists won a military victory, they didn't build a paradise, but hell.
At the same time, they began to balk at the mechanistic nature of Wahabism. Usman says he had become a "papier-mâché Muslim", defining his faith entirely by his actions, while being empty inside. "Wahabis are great at painting themselves [an Islamic] green on the outside, but when it comes to that internal aspect, it's not there. You pray five times a day, but why? Because God's told you to pray five times a day. You pay your charity – why? Because God's told you to pay your charity. This God of yours is telling you a lot. And why does he tell you to do that? Because if you don't do it, you'll end up in a fire. It's all based on being frightened. There's nothing to nourish you."
They had to go looking for other Islams – and often they found it in the more mystical school of the Sufis. "Wahabi Islam is totally sensory: eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth," Usman says. "It lays out a strict set of rules to be followed here on earth, every moment of the day. Sufi Islam teaches instead that the realm of Allah is wholly separate and spiritual and nothing to do with the shadow-play of mere mortals. It is accessible only through a sense of mystery and transcendence." In this new Sufi Islam, Usman found something he had never known before: a sense of calm.
Ed Husain insists: "There are a lot of Muslims who agree with us. A lot. But they're frightened. They see what's happened to us – the hassle, the slander, the death threats – and they think: it's not worth it. But you know what? When I first spoke out, I was alone. I had no idea that, a year on, there would be this number of people speaking out, and many more who are just offering resources and support. Once a truth is spoken, it takes on its own life." [continued…]
Post-jihadism and the inevitability of democratization
Major 'Abbud al-Zumur, the former military intelligence officer who served on the governing bodies of both the Jihad organization and al-Gama'a al-Islammiyya (Islamic Group – IG) in Egypt, published a book entitled The Third Alternative: Between Authoritarianism and Surrender in August 2009. In the book, which analyzes the causes of violent radicalism and prescribes ways of ending political violence within Arab- and Muslim-majority states, al-Zumur strongly argues for the necessity of electoral participation as well as for alliances with the ideological "other."
The book is the latest development in what can be called a second wave of modern Islamist de-radicalization. The leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood began the first wave by authoring Preachers not Judges in 1969, during an attempt to dismantle the Brotherhood's armed wing and de-legitimize takfiri ideology (which can legitimize violence against nonbelievers, including Muslims who are deemed apostates). The IG began the second wave in July 1997, and in recent years has produced some 25 books to de-legitimate violence against the state. Those ideological revisions were followed by similar ones from various organizations including al-Jihad, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), and several other Islamist leading figures in the Arab-majority countries. [continued…]


text:
Viewing Tattoo Tag: bats
Frankenstein by rigo at zodiac tattoos in moreno valley ca08/26/15
My Family Sleeve
My left arm has 6 individual tattoos that represent my dad, mom and lil' bro. The skull is because we both love the horror genre, the rose with it was his first tattoo, and he's a bad ass drummer so… [ read more ]04/11/15
Bats Biomech
I love the beauty of strange things. Biomechanical has always been interesting to me, I'm working on getting my sleeve completed. I absolutely love bats! I have always been drawn to them and the lore of Vampires.06/28/14
It doesn't have much for an actually significance, me and my tattoo artist who is also my husband thought it would look pretty cool03/05/14
Why So Serious
My love for comics, especially the Dark Knight12/26/13

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Skip to comments.Reuters Admits Photo Fakery!
Posted on 08/06/2006 4:35:24 AM PDT by CraziemanEdited on 08/06/2006 5:09:15 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
click here to read article
Looks like the same false fotergraph to me.
Especially not when there is a war raging, and their side is losing.
I still don't think it is right. Look at the areas of lightness. Why fake lightness, unless it is a mushroom shape he was going for?
I agree.
Al Reuters .....
'"Little Green Footballs had a run-in with Reuters, so they modified their site meter to record visits from Reuters... they had four online when I looked a few minutes ago."
Lol. Good idea.'
That was the great "Bungholio ( yes, means like it sounds ) or Bunga, Bunga, Bunga! affair:
They can't afford to damage one of their top allies.
Thanks. When I first seen that picture, I thought, "WOW! I didn't know Beirut was as populated as Hong Kong."
And what agenda is that? Looking at the photos side by side, I don't see how one makes any political point more forcefully than the other. One of my favorite maxims is "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence," and this seems like a good case for that.
I once noticed -- and pointed out to the AP -- a pair of faked photos that were later retracted. They were faked by the U.S. Army. They were photos of two soldiers killed in Iraq, and appeared to be the photos from their ID badges. The soldiers had been photoshopped in front of a U.S. flag. There were harsh jagged lines around the silhouette job, and the flag background was pixel-for-pixel identical in both.
My best WAG -- and it's a pretty weak one, but as good as any I can come up with -- is that some newbie screwed up cropping the photo, and in a vast overestimation of his photoshop skills, thought he could fake the cropped-out parts rather than embarrass himself by asking someone up the line to resend.
The more I see, the more I'm inclined to believe that it was not the photographer, because Reuters had the unaltered version readily at hand. In any case, at least two people screwed up -- the person who doctored the image and the person who approved it.
The editors begin with bias in favor of Hezbollah and against the US. They are getting exactly what they want from their stringers.
Since Reuters has the original, I am betting that it was an editor who modified the photo rather than the photographer.
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Friday, May 26, 2006
A Death Threat from Reuters (Bumped)
See below for important updates...
Early yesterday morning at about 3:00 am on the West Coast, someone in Sweden Britain connected to the Internet and browsed over to this article at the Guardian by Inayat Bunglawala, media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain: This code could open doors.
Bunglawalas piece (about the Da Vinci Code) is in the section of the Guardian site where readers can comment, and someone posted a link to LGF as a rebuttal to Bunglawala. Our Swedish British visitor clicked that link, leading him/her/it to this post: Swedish Muslims Demand Sharia.
At 3:23 am, this creature used our contact form to send the following message with the obviously phony Hotmail address firstname.lastname@example.com and the subject line, You bunch of wankers.
I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut....
Well, isnt that tolerant.
But this particular death threat is a bit different from the run of the mill hate mail we get around here, because an IP lookup on the sender reveals that he/she/it was using an account at none other than Reuters News
The Viet Cong was virtually wiped out, and the N. Vietnamese regular army was so badly defeated that the #1 general told Ho Chi Minh that they should give it up and come to terms.
I created a negative of the image and then adjusted the gama and it looked to me as though the entire smoke was "layered" over the buildings.
In May, a Reuters employee E-mailed a death threat to LGF.
Three months later, LGF busts Reuters for doctoring photos.
Ha. Ha.
I don't know what you mean by "areas of lightness," and it's not easy to do any sophisticated photo analysis on a low-resolution, heavily compressed version of the image from Yahoo. If there were any shenanigans on the refed photo, it's subtle enough that it would take a higher-res, less-compressed version to nail down.
Sorry, but I still don't see the argument for bias or the motive here. Why risk your job to make a cloud of smoke look vaguely more mushroom shaped? I don't doubt the widespread existence of bias in the media (several different biases, actually), but some of the arguments are reminiscent of the folks looking for skull-shapes in the ice cubes in liquor ads.
Since AP, AFP, and Rooters were the media outlets allowed at Qana, maybe we should be going back and looking at a lot more photogs and their photos....
The photographer was the same one that took the pics of green helmet guy at Qana.
So when/how does that "photo kill" actually get served to a news consumer?
Why did Leni Riefenstahl ruin her reputation to shill for Hitler?
Giant Eddy of Iron Maiden fame is destroying Beirut!
Women and minorities were the primary victims.
"Could the pacifier on the baby be photo-shopped???"
Odd how the pacifier is so blue and clean when everything else is covered in dust.
If it weren't for FreeRepublic, who would have known? And who will pick this story up and get it in front of more people? Reason #1,299 to send a little cash during the next fundraiser.
If it fits the template the media is going by they're less likely to question it's veracity.
That is why I asked the experts to check on it. It could have been physically added or photo-shopped. We need to see other photos showing this child.
"Beats me why a photographer or editor would risk his job over that"
Thats just it, they haven't risked their job. The guy was only suspended.
Good point. Plus, when you use stringers, you have no idea how many masters he/she is serving.
I guess next we can look forward to pics babies being bayonetted by evil jews/ Maybe mushroom clouds over hospitals? Maybe an evil jew chewing on a babies detached arm? Reuters, you can do so much better! How bout a pic of Isreal soldiers gang raping a 12 your old girl?
A lousy fake at that.
Common sense says the person who doctored the photo was trying to make a political statement through selective amplification.
Thanks. I meant to ask for more info on that before I clicked "post," but forgot.
I would certainly hope that if the IP wasn't spoofed, if the message did in fact come from inside Reuters, the party responsible was canned with extreme prejudice. I've known of people fired for far less.
The Reuters IP address that LGF tracked was probably a Reuters firewall. But armed with that address, Reuters might be able to track it back to a MAC address. If they did find and fire the sender, I doubt they'd ever publicize it.
It seems to me that the pacifier should be a lot more dirty in the other picture given it's position in this picture. Odd.
That picture is so obviously staged, I would like to see someone Photoshop a movie set slate over it with the caption something like, "Qana Propoganda Photo - Take One."
Makes one wonder how many other Reuters photos have been doctored and never challenged.
Like I mentioned earlier it could have been placed on the child too.
Perhaps it was also done at a Kinko's.
I'm sure they're launching a thorough internal investigation. /s
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Randy Travis Makes Rare Appearance at Dolly Parton Concert
Randy Travis stepped out in public -- a rarity since his 2013 stroke -- for his friend Dolly Parton's concert.
Randy Travis stepped out in public -- a rarity since his 2013 stroke -- for his friend Dolly Parton's concert.
The road to recovery is a long one -- especially after suffering from a stroke. Randy Travis is still on that bumpy path following a stroke in July of last year, despite making lots of progress since then.
Randy Travis put his cowboy boots on and moved into the public eye for the first time since a stroke last summer. A photo shared by a fellow country singer is another positive sign for fans of the country legend.
It's been nearly six months since Randy Travis suffered a stroke due to congestive heart failure, which was then followed by a string of complications. Although it's been a long road to recovery -- and it's still not over -- the legendary singer is anxious to get back to work, according to his father.
A raw demo of Randy Travis singing a song called 'Childhood Sweethearts' has surfaced on YouTube. The song was co-written by singer Bonnie Paul, the woman who previously provided updates on Travis' health.
Friday night's (Nov. 22) Playing Possum: The Final No Show concert was all about George Jones, except for a few minutes in the middle that were dedicated to beleaguered singer Randy Travis. Actor Jon Voight took the stage to ask fans to create a human chain of love for the 'Tonight I'm Playing Possum' singer, who was a longtime friend to Jones.
Randy Travis' 'Tonight I'm Playin' Possum' video is incredibly simple, letting the lyrics speak for themselves.
After several medical scares that included hospitalization due to congestive heart failure and a stroke (which required emergency surgery and found him in critical condition), singer Randy Travis has been released from the hospital.
While the golden age of the music video didn't come until halfway through Randy Travis' storied career, the singer released a number of mini clips that proved he knew how to work a camera and a microphone.
Well-wishes have been pouring in since Randy Travis was hospitalized almost two weeks ago for heart issues and a subsequent stroke. Now fans have the opportunity to send Travis a personal message, too.
While Randy Travis is in the hospital recovering from a heart problem and a stroke, his brother, David Traywick, is in the Union County (North Carolina) jail on charges of conspiracy to traffic methamphetamine and trafficking methamphetamine.
Randy Travis' heart troubles began with a viral infection, but at the root of his troubles is something more chronic. The singer has been hospitalized for eight days, much of which he's spent on life support.


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This stunning 19th-century, mock-Elizabethan mansion is set in 40 acres of beautifully landscaped gardens and forest. Bedrooms are spacious and great consideration is given to guest comfort. The elega...More about Rhinefield House Hotel
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Healthnotes offers comprehensive, science-based health and lifestyle information.
Written with you in mind, Healthnotes answers the most commonly asked questions
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Because most of the nutrients are contained in the outer layers of the grains, use only whole-wheat products. Find other, prepackaged wheat products in most natural foods and grocery stores; buy in bulk for maximum savings.
Wheat is found in three basic strains: hard, or winter, wheat, used in bread making; soft wheat, used for pastries; and durum, used for pasta. Wheat is available as a whole grain (wheat berries), as flour, cracked, in flakes, and in a variety of other forms.
Bulghur is steamed, hulled, and cracked wheat berries.
Couscous is made from refined durum wheat and looks like tiny grains.
Farina is a refined cereal made from ground and sifted wheat.
Wheat germ is the nutrient-rich core of the wheat kernel.
Wheat bran, the outer layer of the grain, is rich in fiber and nutrients.
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Aired February 25, 2010
Got an item of clothing - maybe with the price tag still on it - that's been sitting in the back of your closet because you're just not sure what it goes with or how to wear it? From sweaters to blazers, Gretta shows you how to put some life back into those forgotten pieces!
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|Americanarama Festival - Peoria 7/11/13 - Moved to Peoria Civic Center
|News Releases - Music & Entertainment
|Written by Mike Lynskey
|Tuesday, 09 July 2013 09:56
The Americanarama Festival featuring Bob Dylan & His Band, Wilco, My Morning Jacket and the Richard Thompson Electric Trio scheduled to play Dozer Park on July 11 has been moved to the Peoria Civic Center Arena. Tickets purchased for the Dozer park show will be honored. Tickets available through Ticketmaster.
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Daydreams by imveryconfusedWatch
©2012-2016 imveryconfused
Awesome photo! Saw it in MarinCristina's feature. The light colour and bokeh sparkles are gorgeous.
Thank you - absolutely gorgeous feature! Really enjoyed looking through it and happy to be a part of it!
A lovely piece. Wonderful shot.
This is such a lovely & magical
capture!! The warm colors and sparkly
droplet bokeh creates such a scene
of dream and comfort!!
capture!! The warm colors and sparkly
droplet bokeh creates such a scene
of dream and comfort!!
Well I'm glad you felt some magic from this! Thank you for your kind words!
I like the colors here very much! Thanks for sharing.
No worries - I enjoy sharing work that I'm happy with! I'm glad you like it!
Strong Capture
Very nice I love the colours and the bokeh and really, everything about this picture!
Love the lighting and the colors. Circles and lines together. A serene picture. Very nice.
Thank you, I hope it is serene! Not a soul was up at 5AM on the beach with me when I took this shot!
veryyyy pretty!
I love the colors
I love the colors


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5 Stocks Going Ex-Dividend Tomorrow: BGB, AL, DPS, AMT, MRK
MerckOwners of Merck (NYSE: MRK) shares as of market close today will be eligible for a dividend of 43 cents per share. At a price of $47.88 as of 9:35 a.m. ET, the dividend yield is 3.5%. The average volume for Merck has been 18.2 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Merck has a market cap of $146.3 billion and is part of the drugs industry. Shares are up 16.2% year to date as of the close of trading on Tuesday. STOCKS TO BUY: TheStreet Quant Ratings has identified a handful of stocks that can potentially TRIPLE in the next 12-months. Learn more. Merck & Co., Inc. provides various health solutions through its prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, animal health, and consumer care products worldwide. The company has a P/E ratio of 24.72. TheStreet Ratings rates Merck as a buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, good cash flow from operations, expanding profit margins and solid stock price performance. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income. You can view the full Merck Ratings Report now.
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Listen here. Ski Team is a rising L.A.-based production group who have worked with MCs from around the country, like Hollywood Holt, Freddie Gibbs, and U-N-I. Seattle's-own State of the Artist has also worked with them on a number of occasions, and in Slopes, the two groups have come together for a full-length venture.There was little fanfare surrounding this release, and I think they're over that for now. Their formal debut Seattlecalifragilisticextrahelladopeness was a massive production (and name, although it's usually shortened to SeaCal), with a large-scale promotional push and guests on every track--a cool one-off experiment, but they seem to be finding their groove elsewhere here; they're simply enjoying the after-party.
Ski Team's instrumental contributions are polished and super-easy listening, using piano and finger snaps, shakers, light synths, and easy guitar to set the scene for HY, Thaddeus, and Parker Joe's after-hours rhymes. They've toned the swag down a bit, and lyrically, the tracks are very listenable. There're aren't a lot of hard-hitting bars or eye-popping punch-lines, just playful innuendo to help the rhythm along on its course, and although there are a few dull moments ("Jeopardy," for example), the SOTA boys keep the party going, which at this point sounds just right for the group.


text: (Radius squared x Pi) divided by 144 = rotor disc area in square feet. Rotor loadings for successful single rotor autogyros are around 3 ounces per square foot. i.e. My "Simple G" weighs 22 ounces and has a rotor area of 5.58 square feet. 22 divided by 5.58 = 3.94 ounces per square foot rotor disc loading (bit heavy init?!). Hope you find this useful.


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2013 Readers' Choice Breakthroughs
This year, scientists found the Higgs boson, a particle that will help answer enduring questions about how the universe evolved. Also, Allure readers discovered their top breakthrough products, i.e., the ones that evolved their beauty routines to another plane. And what do the Higgs boson and nail gels have to do with one another? Absolutely nothing.
An at-home manicure kit that combines two technologies in one: the splotchproof ease of nail-polish stickers and the chip-proof strength and shine of a salon gel manicure.
How It Works: Each adhesive strip is made up of layers of real nail polish. Position it onto the nail, press down, and buff to fit. A clear gel topcoat cures under the included LED light in just 30 seconds, sparking a chemical reaction that makes it ten times more durable than regular polish. The nearly indestructible manicure won't fade or chip for up to two weeks of typing, texting, and various other abuses.


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Hop In John
240 minutes
1 lb. of dried black eyed peas
2 smoked ham hocks or one meaty ham bone (great use of leftovers)
2 medium yellow onions chopped
3 cloves of minced garlic
1 bay leaf
1 cup of long grain rice
1 can of diced tomatoes with chile peppers, keep the juice
1 1/2 chopped bell pepper, red is prettiest for the holiday but I use green to economize
3 ribs of celery chopped
1 serrano pepper, minced, seeds and veins removed
2 teaspoons of favorite Cajon seasoning (The BAM man is my favorite)
1/2 tsp of dried thyme leaves
3/4 tsp of cumin
3/4 tsp of salt
4 green onions, diced, tops and all
How to make it
In a large dutch oven combine the peas, your ham bone and 6 cups of water.
Add one half of one of the onions along with 1 big tsp of the chopped garlic.
Add the bay leaf.
Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer gently for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Remove the ham bone and cut off the meat and dice.
Drain the black-eyed peas.
Discard the bay leaf.
Bring 2 1/2 cups of water to boil
Add rice and cover and simmer until the rice is nearly done about 15 minutes.
Mince the remaining onions/garlic and add to the rice along with peas, tomatoes, peppers, celery, seasoning, thyme, cumin and salt.
Cook another 10 minutes until the rice is tender.
Stir in chopped ham and diced green onions.
Serve with additional Crystal Hot sauce on the side.
Cracklin cornbread, collards are a must.
Print it!


text: AdChoices Terms of Use Privacy Policy Hide GALLERIES Dave Grohl Dave Grohl Picture 13 13/136 Dave Grohl AskMen Editors December 7, 2007 Share Tweet 0 Shares He may have first met with fame as a hard-pounding drummer, but today Grohl's fame rests on a much more broad musicianship -- as a drummer still, but chiefly as guitarist, singer and songwriter of some of the biggest rock hits of the last dozen years. Continue reading Dave Grohl's profile. Next Slide gallery Comments Share your opinion Your name More Like This Around the Web Special Features Mother's Day Gift Guide These Mother's Day Gifts Will Win You 'Best Son Ever' Status Read More


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|Kathy Blaze my Fire/Fire Brute, after switching over to hero side
|Costume Contest in Pocket D
|Hanging With Hero 1
|My Tank Raging Blue Ice/Mace
|Hanging in RWZ
|Cut scene For A trial
|Dark Mallice hanging in a Crey building
|What a Veiw
|Come get some! ! !
|Hami Raid! ! !
|RedemtionX hanging in PI
|Kathy Blaze hanging out at City Hall


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Lyra and Bon-Bon by lunarapologistWatch
©2011-2016 lunarapologist
Submission for today's EqD Artist Training Grounds. Even keeping it black and white, I still had to rush this out the door.
Confound these ponies! They drive me to have ideas that I can't finish before the deadlines!
Confound these ponies! They drive me to have ideas that I can't finish before the deadlines!
Someday Bon-Bon SOME DAY............... Lyra will get comfortable
HAHA! This is Greatness!
Lawl XD
lots of lawls
Plus, who came up with the names Lyra and Bon Bon for those two?
Plus, who came up with the names Lyra and Bon Bon for those two?
Not sure! I think the fandom just decided that those were as good of names as any since Lyra has a harp/lyre on her flank, and Bon-Bon's cutie mark looks like wrapped bon bons.
awsome story
awsome story
Why DO their benches have backrests on them?
Ever see how a dog sits? Maybe that's how the benches are supposed to be used, and Bon Bon is the one using them wrong.
Wait, that hypocritical-!
Wait, that hypocritical-!
so funny
I love this! It's cute and funny ~~ ♥
But I'm just wondering.. how did this 'Lyra slouching' stuff start/come from? ;o
But I'm just wondering.. how did this 'Lyra slouching' stuff start/come from? ;o
From about 2 minutes into "Dragonshy" - Lyra's on a bench, slouched just like that
Ohh I see! On youtube 2:25 on the episode... Lol that's awesome xD
Thanks for letting me know. :3
Thanks for letting me know. :3
This had me laughing. Especially the last panel.
Ive always thought of the backrests as more like side-rests, in that the ponies can sit like Bon-bon is and lean on the backrest to, well, rest.
Maybe! Though that particular bench design seems like it'd force ponies to sit muzzle-to-muzzle (awkwardly close), rear-to-rear (sorta weird), or muzzle-to-rear (just sort of insulting, really!)
What's awkward or weird to us isn't necessarily awkward or weird to ponies. Ponies would have a different culture and social norms than we do. One good example is that even though they have clothes, it's not considered wrong to go out without any form of clothing.
She makes a good point, if they didn't want her to act like a human, why'd they make everything in Equestria like that?
i really love this draw, i saw this one in equestria daily, i love it
Thank you! It's actually one of the first things I did, so I'm a little embarrassed by it's quality now
I hope to clean it up and redo it properly someday soon!
I hope to clean it up and redo it properly someday soon!
I wonder if that's really why she sits like that.
The mystery of backrests remains unsolved...
Can we get the color version please?
I actually wasn't the one to do the color version, and with daily drawings for EqD, I haven't had time to clean and color it myself. It's on the to-do list, though
well, she's persistent
or rather she's gonna get chronic back pain
or rather she's gonna get chronic back pain
Poor Lyra XD
lol, cute!
She has a point though
Right? I mean, I guess they could be side-rests, but it seems like they'd build them a little different if that were the case.
The 1st panel is adorable. Everytime, last panels are WINS.


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May 2 2013 - Products
TRP announced a new line of durable clutch replacement components including clutch brakes, pilot bearings, clutch release yokes and clutch installation kits.
Among the components offered, the new line features hinged locking clutch brakes and high temperature pilot bearings that withstand hotter temperatures. The hinged locking clutch brakes, including torque limiting and two-piece clutch brakes, are available in 1 3/4-inch and 2-inch sizes.
Tags: TRP


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Pre-Register here and we'll notify you the second registrations opens. Prices range from $25 - $60 but remember the earlier you register the lower the price.
Color Me Rad® is owned by Sack Lunch Productions and is one of many highly enjoyable events.
© 2016 Color Me Rad 5K Run.


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Brown could be intriguing with Bucs
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers took an admittedly smallish step toward reinvigorating their receiving corps Monday evening by trading a sixth-round pick in the April 2011 draft to the Philadelphia Eagles for Reggie Brown. Brown, who was buried behind DeSean Jackson, Jeremy Maclin and Jason Avant on the Philly depth chart, suddenly becomes a candidate to be the Bucs' No. 1 receiver, at least at the moment.
Tampa Bay seems to have no intention of retaining Antonio Bryant, whom they ...
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2010 Fantasy Football Offseason
ESPN.comkeeps you connected to fantasy football all offseason long with updated rankings, mock drafts and analysis of all the important moves.
NFL Draft• Day 1: Ryan Mathews the big winner
• Day 2: Toby Gerhart now a handcuff
• Day 3: Rounds 4-7 can yield sleepers
• Matthew Berry's Top 150, updated June 4
• Christopher Harris' Top 200, updated May 11
• Fantasy Staff Top 200, updated April 30
• Christopher Harris' Top 200, updated April 19
• Matthew Berry's Top 100, April 8
Analysis from Christopher Harris
• Don't expect much from T.O. in Cincinnati
• Vincent Jackson no longer a top 25 receiver
• Jason Campbell is still bland in Oakland
• LenDale White, Leon Washington in Seattle
• Brandon Marshall deal to Miami boosts Henne
• Santonio Holmes' value falls with trade to Jets
• Donovan McNabb's stock drops with Redskins
• Willie Parker joins Redskins veteran RBBC
• Browns wheeling and dealing potential options
• LDT signing with Jets muddies Greene's value
• Larry Johnson still irrelevant with Redskins
• Derrick Mason's re-signing helps Flacco
• Antonio Bryant decent fit with Bengals
• Thomas Jones loses lots of value with Chiefs
• Reggie Brown intriguing with Tampa Bay
• Boldin trade doesn't do much for his value
• Taylor, Burleson open free-agency season
• NFL scouting combine fantasy review
Mock Drafts
• Harris' one-man mock draft, May 18
• Harris' one-man mock draft, March 4


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Tonight, Faire Gallery and Cafe (1351 East Olive Way) is hosting a benefit for Haiti, where all of the proceeds will go to L'Union Fait La Force (Strength Through Unity). If you've ever been to Faire on a Sunday night, you'll know the small space gets pretty cozy as house jazz musicians groove out. You may also know they offer an unparalleled Nutella mocha. Faire regulars Mark Sampson, Owuor Arunga, Grant Stroff, and Conrad Real will be playing starting at 9 PM, and the event is open to all ages.
Politics-and-more blog PubliCola is throwing a one-year anniversary party at the Crocodile (2200 2nd Avenue) tonight, with live free performances from THEESatisfaction, CMYK, and Song Sparrow Research. The show is completely free; in fact, they say they'll buy a drink for the first 200 people that show up after the doors open at 6 PM. And yes, they'll be live-streaming the State of the Union address as well.
There's quite a few places to catch local hip-hop this evening, starting in Fremont, where Fatal Lucciauno heads a bill with Ripynt (who was featured last year in this cover story written by Kevin Capp), Gran Rapids, Notion, and DJ Swervewon at the High Dive (513 N 36th St) for $6.....and down in Belltown, the smooth rap stylings of Helladope take the stage at the Rendezvous (2322 2nd Avenue). They're using the show to fundraise to press their debut, self-titled album, slated to be released on March 12. If you haven't yet bore witness to Helladope-- who will be opening for the legendary Goodie Mob next month-- then you have not experienced one of the catchiest songs of 2009, "Rainwater." State of the Artist and Katie Kate will also perform.
Finally, if you're trying to catch some real up-and-comers, alternative arts school Nova High is throwing a showcase of their student bands in the Central District tonight, featuring such groups as the Narcotic Lollipops, Boy Love and Powergasp! The show is at the Cafetorium (300 20th Ave.) and starts at 6:30 PM. Admission is by suggested donation.


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The music is very cool.
Whats the name of this?
Welcome to C&C Retarded, the best mod ever made: EVER... C&C Retarded is the latest of the "Retarded" Mod Series that I began back with C&C Generals: Zero Hour. Something about this mod you should know, is that it is completely made by one dude, me, TheGunrun. I find that working alone allows me to create what ever the hell I want with out people complaining. Download my mod and find out why I still make this. Every game you play will be epic, never before has a command and conquer title been able to produce as much POWER AND CHAOS.
The music is very cool.
Whats the name of this?
its the soundtrack from universe at war
I liked, yes what is the music name??
same wat is the song
I believe that the song is called Divine Intervention, but I could be mistaken. I know that it's made by Frank Klepacki.
It is not Divine by Frank Klepacki, I don´t think it´s one of his song, it´s realy difrent.
It's like a giant light show!
Pretty cool.
Yeah what is the music?
Itz all kool right until I see 10's of thousands of $$$ for techcenter and 45K for a friggin superpower.
If I played one game like that, my computer would flip me off and then die.