Al-Qaeda training camps established in Romania

Italian daily Il Secolo XIX online edition has been claiming that Romania houses an Al-Qaeda training camp. The paper reported that 3 Al-Qaeda members, one of them the leader of the Easteuropean ramification, are hiding in Romania, where they established training camps.
According to the publication, Italian authorities intercepted phone calls of several terrorist suspects including clues that Al-Qaeda members settled in Galati, Romania, where they train those who aspire to fight for the Jihad how to use explosive devices. During an inquiry by the Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale (ROS) of the Genoa Police, the investigators intercepted a conversation between two terrorist suspects, Tunisians Jameleddine Ben Mohamed Ben Moussa and Bechir Kaouana. They mentioned Al-Qaeda training camps in Romania, used for training future Jihad fighters to make and use explosive devices.
Bucharest-based daily Ziua writes that the SRI (Romanian Intelligence Service) has confirmed the information, mentioning that they have identified and actively monitored the Romanian connections of a transborder criminal network related to terrorism. More...

Special Italian Police Force Seizes Koranic Toilet Seats

The imam of the mosque in the town of Latina in the central Italian region of Lazio, Sheikh Yusuf, on 26 October heckled interior minister Giuliano Amato about the toilet seat as he presented Italy's new 'Charter of values, citizenship and integration' for immigrants' at Rome's Grand Mosque. "This is an insult to the Muslim faith that we must react to," Yusuf called out to Amato, who reassured Yusuf, saying: "I would like to tell our friends from Latina that we have been informed of this matter and are taking action because it is offensive."
Al-Quds al-Arabi reported that local Muslims are planning further non-violent protests against the toilet seat until it is removed from stores.
Imported from China, it is still in sale in six towns in the region at 15 euros a piece. More...

Indonesia: Muslim values in line with environmental concerns, say scholars

AKI - Scholars who met in the Indonesian capital Jakarta to discuss Islam and the environment, have concluded that Muslim values support Indonesia's efforts to face its environmental challenges. The dialogue was held on Wednesday at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) in cooperation with the British Embassy in Jakarta.
The director of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES) in England, Fazlun M. Khalid, said that in contrast to common misperceptions, Islam was more than a ritualistic religion; Islam also provided universal values that underlined the importance of maintaining a balanced interaction with nature. He said Islamic teachings helped position human beings as the khalifah or administrative deputies of God on earth.
"Ulemas in Indonesia are way ahead ... in translating the sharia into fatwa (religious edicts)," he said. Khalid also said Indonesian ulemas issued many Islamic edicts that affirmed various environmental problems, including the burning of forests, illegal logging and mining, as well as the latest on the conservation of forests. He said Indonesia needed a "support mechanism" that would ensure the involvement of politicians and stakeholders in spreading religious beliefs related to the environment.

Al-Qaida cell tried to kill Nasrallah

JP Post - An al-Qaida-affiliated terror group has admitted to trying to assassinate Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese newspaper A-Saphir reported.
The admission came following the arrest of three members of the terror cell last summer. According to the report, the members also admitted to having fired Katyusha rockets from Lebanon into Israel between 2004 and 2007 in an attempt to spark tension between the Jewish state and Hizbullah.
The report said that the al-Qaida cell whose members had been detained was only one of three, and that the other cells had planned to attack UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon in an attempt to complicate matters between the United Nations and Hizbullah.
According to the report, one of the members of the cell was a Libyan national. When his house was raided, Lebanese security forces found a large quantity of cyanide, the report claimed. Sources familiar with the investigation told the newspaper that the US embassy in Beirut demanded details about the raid in an effort to discern how such a quantity of the poison made its way to Lebanon.

Hollywood just can’t stand it any more. Almost forty years after Vietnam and four years since we invaded Iraq, young Americans are still joining the military. That’s obviously intolerable to big thinkers such as Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand and the rest. So Hollywood’s best have sat, thought and created the surefire cure for anyone who might be considering enlisting in the military, running for public office, or writing facts instead of opinion for the TV news.
But there’s only one problem: Robert Redford’s latest directorial effort, “Lions for Lambs”, is a thumping bore. There have been a lot of great anti-war movies, ranging from “All Quiet on the Western Front” to “Platoon.” Suffice it to say, this ain’t one of them. More...

Samir Kuntar: The Nasser Operation

On July 12, 2006 Lebanese Hezbollah militants crossed the border with Israel in an operation dubbed "Operation Truthful Promise". Hezbollah succeeded in the operation and successfully took hostage two Israeli soldiers. This ignited the sequence of events which led to the Israel/Lebanon summer war.
The story goes further back than July of 2006. It really began in April 1979! On Sabbath day, April 22, 1979, Danny and Smadar Haran met up with a monster named Samir Kuntar.
Danny and Smadar were a loving Israeli couple. They had everything they could ever hope for... love, marriage and two precious daughters, Einat, 4 and Yael, 2. That day Smadar was home anticipating Danny's return from work and preparing for the Sabbath. Little did Smadar know that this would be the last Sabbath she would celebrate with her family because of a man named Samir Kuntar.
Samir Kuntar is one of three Lebanese prisoners still serving time in Israeli jails. What was his crime? The crime he committed was the most horrific crime ever committed on Israeli soil! On April 22, 1979 Samir Kuntar along with a gang of three other PLF terrorists (Abed Majeed Asslan, Ahmed Al-Abras, and Mhanna Salim Al- Muyaed) departed from the southern Lebanese seashore city of Tyre on a 55-horsepowered rubber motor boat. Read more...

CNN airs footage of home, safe house of artist marked for death by Al Qaeda

Hotair: I have the clip, although for obvious reasons I’m not going to post it. They even kept the name of the town in which he lives onscreen for most of the segment so I can’t show you the bit with the nut in the burqa saying she wants to kill him. But here’s the strangest part, which isn’t clear from the Gates of Vienna post: Vilks is aware that they’re filming him in front of the two houses. It’s not some stock shot of the door and the light fixture; it’s him, entering the building, with the camera right in his face. Unless CNN led him to believe that they weren’t filming or weren’t going to use the footage, and there’s no reason to think that they did, it was all done with his willing participation. Which, given the bounty placed on his head by Al Qaeda in Iraq and the verdict of Swedish police that he’s not safe at home, makes him one recklessly special idiot.

"Releaser of Terrorists" (Top Line); "Shimon Peres" (Middle Line); "President of the Arabs" (Bottom Line).

Via Debbie Slchussel.

Al-Dura and the "Public Secret" of Middle East Journalism

The evidence emerging from the ongoing Al Dura trial in France indicates that Western journalists are fully aware that some of the footage they use in their reports on the Mideast conflict is staged.
In the summer of 2006, Reuters News Agency, humiliated when bloggers caught them duped by obvious photographic manipulation, fired both the photographer and the chief of their photographic bureau. They then removed all the photographer’s photos from their news archive. In so doing, they acted decisively in punishing two of the cardinal sins of modern journalism: “creating evidence” and getting duped by created evidence.
These principles – i.e., the ethics of a free press – go so deep, that Westerners apparently have difficulty imagining that others might not share our commitments. Thus few people believe claims that footage of Muhammad al Dura, the twelve year old boy allegedly gunned down by Israelis at Netzarim Junction on September 30, 2000, was staged. Charles Enderlin, the correspondent for France2 who presented the tale to the world, derisively and successfully dismisses such claims as a conspiracy theory as ludicrous as those about 9-11. How absurd: Palestinian journalists would not do such a thing; and if they did, the Western media would catch it. To this day, most journalists still ask, “Who killed al Dura?” not, “Was he killed in the footage we see?” More...

Hamas Is Producing a New Generation of Palestinian Extra-Power, Extra-Range Missiles in Gaza and West Bank

In the last few weeks, the Palestinian Islamist Hamas has succeeded in tricking Israeli military intelligence into believing that the IDF forays behind the lines in Gaza had slowed down their Qassam missile offensive against Israeli towns and villages.
It was a ruse. DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that stocks of the primitive Qassam missiles are low because Hamas has stopped making them and is now fully engaged in setting up the production of a new generation of missiles upgraded to a range of up to 25 km, armed with 3-kilo warheads - one-and a half times the range of the types in current use and more than double their explosive power - and greater accuracy.
Production lines are also going up in several towns on the West Bank, the territory governed by Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority. According to intelligence sources, the Hamas target is to turn out enough new missiles in 4 to 6 weeks – preferably in time for the US-promoted Middle East conference in Annapolis at the end of November. The shelf-life of these missiles is no more than 6 weeks.
The new missiles bring half a million Israelis within range of Hamas fire – a quarter of a million in the south and a similar number in Israel’s heartland north and south of Greater Tel Aviv. In the South, the new missiles can reach Kiryat Gat and the southern outskirts of the big port-town of Ashdod.
DEBKAfile’s sources emphasize that the Palestinian Authority’s security services are not lifting a finger against the new missile industry mushrooming on the West Bank. In fact, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Abbas’ Fatah, are shielding it. More...

Feds Target Hezbollah Cell in L.A.

A bizarre case unfolding in the Los Angeles communities Bell and Cudahy, where a special task force collared a dozen Arab-American and Latino suspects involved in a seemingly small-time drug and counterfeit clothing ring. While on the surface it doesn't appear to be terrorism-related, our sources say Operation Bell Bottoms targeted a "classic case of terrorism financing," with the defendants smuggling profits from selling dope and counterfeit goods in L.A. back to Iran-backed Shiite terror group Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon.Neither the press release by the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California or court filings by the government specifically mention Hezbollah or terrorism. But one clue is found in the affidavits filed in court, which are signed by prosecutors from the Justice Department's National Security Division and by an FBI official assigned to "Counterterrorism Squad 4" in L.A., a task force brimming with agents from the FBI, DEA, IRS, Department of Homeland Security and local cops. CT-4 isn't known for making drug and counterfeiting cases. More...

Iranian-Saudi Sparring

Jamal Ahmad Khashogji, editor-in-chief of the liberal Saudi daily Al-Watan, reveals the diplomatic sparring that took place at the Istanbul Conference between Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
"When his turn came to speak, Prince Saud Al-Faisal… said that he would not be reading his prepared speech, which he [nonetheless] handed out to his counterparts. Then he gave an improvised speech, less than five minutes long, calling everyone's attention to [the fact] that the Iranian foreign minister had [just] reviewed the aid given by his country to Iraq - schools, clinics, power stations, and so forth.
"'But where?' asked Prince Saud. In answer, he said that according to the Iranian [foreign] minister's statements, all these projects were in Basra, Najaf, and Karbala, and those [that had aided] Baghdad had gone to the majority-Shi'ite Sadr City.
"Why does the 'Islamic Revolution in Iran' limit itself to one sect? It speaks in the name of the entire [Islamic] nation whenever it wants to, but when it provides aid and forms alliances, it does so on a strictly sectarian basis, solely with its Shi'ite brothers. More...

Al-Qaeda in Algeria may mobilise illegal immigrants

The so-called Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb may adopt the strategy of recruiting illegal immigrants as it is easy to convince them in view of their difficult social situations, according to security experts. A total of 5,049 foreigners who were illegally staying in Algeria have been arrested by the National Gendarmerie services since January. Of them 3,850 have been repatriated. Most of foreign illegal immigrants come from Niger, Mali, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Libya and Syria. More...

Britons join Kurdish rebels to fight Turks

Britons are among foreigners fighting Turkish troops with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, The Sunday Times can reveal.
According to PKK fighters holed up in one of the natural fortresses of the Qandil mountain range which runs along Iraq’s Turkish and Iranian borders, several Europeans have joined forces with their group.
At least three Britons were in the PKK’s 3,000-strong force, boasted one fighter as he and a group of men huddled in a room discussing the latest clashes with the Turkish army. Others include Russians, Germans, Greeks, Iranians and Arabs. More...

Iranians study nuclear physics in Britain

The Foreign Office has cleared dozens of Iranians to enter British universities to study advanced nuclear physics and other subjects with the potential to be applied to weapons of mass destruction.
In the past nine months about 60 Iranians have been admitted to study postgraduate courses deemed “proliferation-sensitive” by the security services. The disciplines range from nuclear physics to some areas of electrical and chemical engineering and microbiology. More...

Palestinian Militant Use of Google Earth

The Guardian reports that Palestinian militants have relied on Google Earth for their attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets:
Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group aligned with the Fatah political party, say they use the popular internet mapping tool to help determine their targets for rocket strikes. "We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city centre and sensitive areas," Khaled Jaabari, the group's commander in Gaza who is known as Abu Walid, told the Guardian. Abu Walid showed the Guardian an aerial image of the Israeli town of Sderot on his computer to demonstrate how his group searches for targets. The Guardian filmed an al-Aqsa test rocket launch, fired into an uninhabited area of the Negev desert, last month. Despite the crudeness of the weapons, many have landed in Sderot, killing around a dozen people in the last three years and wounding scores more. More...

Turks Set Cars Alight in Brussels

Tonight (Wednesday evening) heavy rioting erupted in Turkish quarters of Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Buses and trams were attacked. Several cars were torched and shops destroyed. Police forces were unable to restore law and order in the boroughs of Sint-Joost-ten-Node and Schaarbeek where since last Sunday the animosity among Turks is running high. Turkish flags are omnipresent. In some streets the Turkish crescent and star adorns almost every house.
The Turks’ anger was provoked by rising tension with Kurds along the Iraqi-Turkish border and by the debate in the American Congress about the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915. On Sunday night Turkish youths in Sint-Joost destroyed the pub of Peter Petrossian, an ethnic Armenian who had to flee for his life. Apparently, some Turks think that by attacking the Armenians in Brussels they can convince the world that the Turks never committed a genocide of the Armenians. More...

Where're LULAC & MeCHa?: New "24" Trailer Indicates Same Old Tricks

A plane is heading toward the White House to attack it. And wouldn't you know it?--the plane is not being led by four Muslim terrorists, the way it was on the actual plane that was headed that way, UNITED 93. Nope, it's Hispanic former CTU agent Tony Almeida (the very hot Carlos Bernard) who's misdirecting the plane. As on "24," even when Muslims are the terrorists, it's only because they're working for "the man"--the (non-Muslim) White corporate man, the (non-Muslim) Russian man, or some other (non-Muslim) entity or party.

Via Debbie Schlussel

Around Coke and Makkah

Via God Help Britain

Swastikas in Haifa - again

As already so many times before, swastikas are sprayed on houses and cars in Haifa, a home of burgeoning Slavic population.

Evidence Implicates Assad Personally in North Korean Nuclear Deal

President Bashar Assad was personally involved in Damascus’ nuclear deal with Pyongyang. Documentary proofs of this, obtained from the presidential bureau and signed by Assad in person, are now in the hands of the US and Israeli intelligence services, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report. In one, Assad hands down a specific order in his own handwriting that North Korea not be charged for Syrian goods, including an annual shipment of 100,000 tons of Durham wheat for five years worth a total of $120 million. This is the equivalent of the value of the reactor for producing plutonium up to its most radioactive stage, which North Korea promised Syria.
A high-ranking Western intelligence source speaking to DEBKAfile described the evidence against Assad in US and Israeli hands as solid and much closer to a smoking gun than the West has turned up against Iran’s nuclear program. More...

Special Forces Ops in Iran

Britain’s Sunday Times reports that British SAS and American and Australian Special Forces have been engaged in operations inside the Iranian border to interdict weapons shipments.
There have been at least half a dozen intense firefights between the SAS and arms smugglers, a mixture of Iranians and Shi’ite militiamen.
The unreported fighting straddles the border between Iran and Iraq and has also involved the Iranian military firing mortars into Iraq. UK commanders are concerned that Iran is using a militia ceasefire to step up arms supplies in preparation for an offensive against their base at Basra airport.
An SAS squadron is carrying out operations along the Iranian border in Maysan and Basra provinces with other special forces, the Australian SAS and American special-operations troops.
They are patrolling the border, ambushing arms smugglers bringing in surface-to-air missiles and components for roadside bombs. “Last month, they were involved in six significant contacts, which killed 17 smugglers and recovered weapons, explosives and missiles,” a source said. It was not clear if any of the dead were Iranian. More...

The U.S. Counter-propaganda Failure in Iraq

The coalition has failed to counter enemy propaganda either by responding rapidly with effective counter messages or by proactively challenging the messages, methods, and ideology that the insurgents and extremists promote and exploit.
While terminology may vary—some officials refer to information operations as strategic communications, influence operations, psychological operations, perception management, or just propaganda—the intent to influence the hearts and minds of target audiences through the effective use of information remains constant.
In Iraq, while the coalition fumbles its information operations, the insurgents and militia groups are adept at releasing timely messages to undermine support for the Iraqi government and bolster their own perceived potency. They are quick to exploit coalition failures and excesses; they respond rapidly to defend their own actions, often by shifting blame to the authorities; and they hijack coalition successes to argue that change only occurs as a result of their violence. The slow speed of the U.S. military's clearance process—typically it takes three to five days to approve even a simple information operations product such as a leaflet or billboard—creates an information vacuum that Iraqis fill with conspiracy theories and gossip often reflecting the exaggerations or outright lies of insurgents and extremists.
Insurgent capabilities are advanced. Violence is their most effective propaganda tool. This is not a new strategy. For example, Johann Most, a nineteenth-century German pamphleteer, described terrorism as "propaganda of the deed." In Iraq, violence intimidates the uncommitted, undermines confidence in the authorities, demonstrates potency, and can provoke a disproportionate military response from both the Iraqi authorities and the coalition. More...

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda’s Secrets

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.
Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company’s Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.
The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network.
“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Rita Katz, the firm’s 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE’s methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries. More...

WashPost: Seeking Iran Intelligence, U.S. Tries Google

When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement in a clandestine nuclear weapons program, the agency refused, citing a large workload and a desire to protect its sources and tradecraft.
Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer to find the names another way — by using Google. Those with the most hits under search terms such as “Iran and nuclear,” three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations. More...

Bin Laden issues Iraq message

Osama bin Laden, has released a new audiotape calling on fighters in Iraq to unite and stand shoulder to shoulder.
In the tape broadcast by Al Jazeera on Monday, a voice sounding like bin Laden admitted that mistakes had been made in Iraq and exhorted the fighters to rectify them.
"Some of you have been lax in one duty, which is to unite your ranks," bin Laden said. "Beware of division... The Muslim world is waiting for you to gather under one banner."
In the audio recording, entitled A Message to the People of Iraq, bin Laden called on tribal leaders and the leaders of armed groups to initiate an agreement between the different groups.
"The interest of the Islamic nation surpasses that of a group," he said.
"The strength of faith is in the strength of the bond between Muslims and not that of a tribe or that of nationalism."
Bin Laden said fighters in Iraq should admit "mistakes" and try to correct them in the interest of unity.
The recording was aired as Iraq's government reported violence had dropped by 70 per cent since the end of June, following a series of US-led offensives.

Al-Qaida spreading terror via Net

Over 100 English Internet sites, packed with flashy videos of car bombings and other terror strikes, are helping spread the message of the so called jihad by Al-Qaida and other extremist groups among Muslims in the US and Europe, taking advantage of their anger over Iraq war.
While their reach is difficult to assess, it is clear from a review of extremist material and interviews that militants are seeking to appeal to young American and European Muslims by playing on their anger over the war in Iraq and the image of Islam under attack, The New York Times reported quoting terrorism experts.
Tedious Arabic screeds, it reports, are reworked into flashy English productions. Recruitment tracts are issued in multiple languages, like a 39-page, electronic, English version of a booklet urging women to join the fight against the West.
There are even online novellas like "Rakan bin Williams," about a band of Christian European converts who embraced Al-Qaida and "promised God that they will carry the flag of their distant brothers and seek vengeance on the evil doers," it adds. More...

Looking for wife #9, child #68

With eight wives and 67 children, Shahadeh Abu Arrar has given new meaning to the term "family man."
Abu Arrar, 58, is a member of Israel's impoverished Bedouin Arab community. But even in a traditional society where men commonly have several wives and many children, Abu Arrar is exceptional.
"I'm thinking about a new wife, No. 9," he told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot in a recent interview. "There are many women who wish to marry me and there is no lack of women. I never had a problem with such things."

Somali forces shut radio station after Islamist interview

The forces ordered Mogadishu-based Simba Radio off the air and arrested its chief Abdullahi Ali Farak and a journalist, according to a reporter who works there. The radio on Wednesday evening interviewed Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, a radical Islamist leader, who said he was behind a suicide attack earlier in the day on an Ethiopian army base near a hotel where Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi was staying.
Sheikh Mukhtar -- also known as Abu Mansur after training in Afghanistan and fought alongside the Taliban in the early 2000s -- presented himself in the interview as a spokesman for the Somali Islamist movement in Mogadishu, but he has commanded numerous other militia fighters over the past decade.
Last month, Somali security forces besieged and opened fire at Shabelle radio, destroying equipment and forcing it to close for 15 days after they accused one of Shabelle reporters of hurling a grenade at a police patrol.