IRGC - REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS

IRGC: Iran’s Old Dogs

David Johnson - 8/30/2007

http://www.globalpolitician.com/articleshow.asp?ID=3352&cid=2http://www.globalpolitician.com/articleshow.asp?ID=3352&cid=2

You can’t teach old dogs new tricks; so the saying goes. This tired cliché’seems to fit the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) very well. The organization, scorned by majority of Iranians as the “rabid dogs of ayatollahs”, has been unwilling to be domesticated, no matter how delicious the incentive.

The IRGC’s top commander, Rahim Safavi, has repeatedly threatened the United States, Israel , Arab and Muslim states, andinternational shipping lanes with violence. Increased, tangible interference in Iraq ’s affairs has been repeatedly and consistently attributed totheIRGC by the United States Army and the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

As aresult,reports indicate the Administration of the President of the UnitedStatesintends to designate the IRGC a Specially Designated Global Terrorist(SDGT)organization.

Also known as the Pasdaran-e Enqelab, meaning the Guardians ofRevolution,the IRGC was established May 5, 1979 . Its purpose remains the same. It is an organization created to protect the Iranian Revolution, which in reality is meant to shield the theocratic regime first and foremost from domestic opponents.

Inside Iran and out, the IRGC wrote the book on terror tactics. Experienced in hunting down dissidents at home, assassinating dissidents on foreign soil, organizing insurgencies across the Middle East and recruiting suicide bombers to murder United Nation’s peace keepers, the IRGC is master of asymmetric warfare.

It would be naïve to pretend the IRGC achieved so much skill in their craft without practice. Preceding the Iran-Iraq War, a war in which many brave Iranian school children and teen-agers were senselessly slaughtered in human wave attacks by the suicidal orders of IRGC leaders,the IRGC conducted a thorough purge of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian detractors.

From its very inception the IRGC has ambitiously murdered its opposition lowering the bar to guarantee the clerics always stay on top.

The way to understand the IRGC is to see them through the lens of what the organization has done since 1979. Looking at them that way, policy makers can see the old dogs of the IRGC are an effect of the Iran ’s ruling theocracy, not the cause of it. The entire notion of the Iranian Revolution as an Islamic Revolution did not gain its momentum until just several months before the revolution succeeded.

The IRGC does not support a single tenet of the Iranian Revolution; popular sovereignty and freedom. The Islamic component was made a permanent feature shortly after Khomeini’s usurped the revolution with a brutal consolidation of power.

The “government of the oppressed and the poor” was making a killing, literarily, fulfilling its claim when in 1992 and 1993 unleashed the full might of the Revolutionary Guards and its paramilitary offshoot, the Bassij, to crush a series of riots by poverty stricken residents of many cities in Iran .

In August 1994, the Economist reported that the clerical regime responded to the four-day long riots in northern town of Qazvin by pounding the city mercilessly by air and land.

The 1995 riot in of Islamshar, an impoverished suburb in south of Tehran , was similarly put down where locals reported the IRGC and Bassij had killed nearly 100 of the residents. Since then popular riots and uprising have met a similar response from the regime and its Guardians, the IRGC.

In the midst of student-led uprising in 1999 which shook the clerical regime to its foundations, 24 senior commanders of the IRGC threatened to take matters into their own hands. “Our patience is at an end. We do not feel itis our duty to show any more tolerance,” they wrote in a letter, declaring their readiness to completely crush the students and thousands of ordinary people who had joined them.

A day later, Khatami abided by the IRGC’sdemandand completed the crackdown of protestors.

The IRGC have muscled their way into power using religion as one of many weapons in their expanding arsenal. Islam and Allah, to the IRGC, are about recruiting and maintaining organizational cohesion.

In so doing, they have taken Allah hostage. The IRGC have made Allah their slave here on earth. Ithas been said that Iran ’s President Mahmood Ahmadinejad, a former commanderof the IRGC, appears to “worship the bomb more than he’s worshipping God in heaven”.

It is wrong to categorize institutionalized religious hegemony as worship. With their suicidal tendencies, blatant lies and ruthless tactics Mahmood Ahmadinejad and the IRGC corrupt the concept of spiritual faith for all religions including Jews, Christians and Muslims.

The IRGC is an Iranian junta which is key to survival of the theocratic government of Iran . Adding the IRGC to the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations is an important step in the campaign for Middle East stability. Designating the IRGC terrorist will accomplish three important goals.

First, it will demonstrate to the IRGC and people of Iran that the United States sees the former as an enemy and the latter as an ally. Second,it will authorize the United States to take economic action against the IRGC. Third, it is an essential step to protect Iraqi sovereignty in the near and long term, as the IRGC are the most likely and most able organization in the region to interfere with all levels of Iraqi

A)religious expression,

B) security operations and

C) government policy.

In some ways, designating the IRGC terrorist is even more effective than branding the Iranian regime a member of “axis of evil” since this designation triggers specific and practical financial, political, and legal measures against the primary operator and spine of Tehran ’s rogue regime. It is time to put Iran ’s Revolutionary Guard dogs on a short leash.

David Johnson currently serves as the Director of Operations of the U.S.Alliance for Democratic Iran. He has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Front Page Magazine, Intellectual Conservative and AmericanDaily.

Our organization is based in Washington DC and can be found online at www.USADIran.org

http://www.usadiran.org/

DEFENSE & FOREIGN AFFAIRS SPECIAL ANALYSIS 08/21

SCO Summit Confirms Military Function and Strategic Objective of Removing US, EU Influence from Central Asia


Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS.



Reports on August 3 and August 7, 2007, by GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs to the effect that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was moving rapidly toward becoming a new power bloc, specifically aimed at removing US and European Union (EU) influence from Central Asia took on new meaning with the 2007 Summit of the SCO in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, on August 16, 2007.


That the Summit’s hostile tone toward the US should come from the Bishkek Summit also highlighted the reality that the US State Department and the EU had very specifically failed in Central Asia in their support for “color revolutions” against Central Asian former Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) members.


See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, August 3, 2007: The Growing Strategic Significance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, August 7, 2007: Iran Scrambles for SCO Participation to Invoke Mutual Defense Clause.


The US State Department was, with the US financier George Soros and his “Open Society” initiative, and supported by the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), instrumental in ousting Kyrgyz President Dr Askar Akaev in March 2005, putting in place Kurmanbek Bakiyev, covertly paying Bakiyev some quarter-billion dollars in incentives.



Bakiyev, however, proved to be a mistake for the US, while Akaev had been extremely pro-US. Bakiyev, who had also been backed by narco-traffickers, immediately began moving the Kyrgyz Republic away from the US and toward a more comfortable position between Russian and Chinese (PRC) pressures.


[See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, July 13, 2005: As Forecast by GIS, Newly-Elected Kyrgyz President Bakiyev Starts Process of Removing US Military from Manas Air Base.



As well, see Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, March 29, 2005: Myths and Reality of the Kyrgyz “Democratic Revolution”: How OSCE and US Officials Influenced Situation, and March 5, 2007: Kyrgyz Republic: Pres. Bakiyev Faces a Splintering Nation in Run-Up to Parliamentary Elections.]



The US, in its “colour revolution” approach toward gaining dominance in Central Asia by installing its own governments, flirted with, and either failed or gave up, attempts to change the governments of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. [See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, May 24, 2005: Uzbek “Protests” Organized and Paid-For by Narco-Traffickers Who Arranged Kyrgyz Coup, and Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, August 22, 2005: US Taking Steps to Bring Down Kazakhstan’s Nazarbeyev Government.]


The SCO began its two-stage 2007 military exercises, codenamed Peace Mission 2007, on August 9, 2007, in the Xinjiang region of the PRC. Peace Mission 2007 ended in Chelyabinsk, Russia, on August 17, 2007, and more than 6,500 military personnel participated, mainly from the PRC and Russia. Uzbekistan sent observers; Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan sent small numbers of troops to participate.


Several of the presidents attending the SCO Bishkek Summit, including Chinese Pres. Hu Jintao, went to Chelyabinsk to watch the final day of large-scale SCO military exercises before going on to Bishkek. Russian Federation Pres. Vladimir Putin used the occasion to announce that Russian strategic bombers would resume regular long-range patrols for the first time since the end of the Cold War. He noted: “Starting today, such tours of duty will be conducted regularly and on the strategic scale. ...



Our pilots have been grounded for too long. They are happy to start a new life.”


Some Western, and particularly US State Department, analysts have attempted to obscure the reality that the West has now forced Russia back into a firm strategic alliance with the PRC, and that this now forms the basis of the “New Cold War”, which GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs identified as becoming crystallized earlier in 2007.



[See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 14, 2007: The Friction of a New Cold War; and Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, May 21, 2007: Toward Victory in the New Cold War.]


An August 20, 2007, report in the Global Intelligence Brief, entitled The Looming Central Asian Battleground, highlighted the Western misperception that Russia and the PRC were once again moving into confrontation in Central Asia, rather than into cooperation. That report noted:


After 16 years of relative quiescence, Central Asia is about to become a major field of competition between the Russians and the Chinese.


Over the weekend [of August 18-19, 2007], the Chinese Government sealed a series of energy deals with the governments of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Airy promises of cooperation on the windswept Asian steppe are about as common as cold winters, but these deals are different. China's offers are monumental in scope, strategic in nature and backed up by cold, hard cash.


The two most critical projects involve the final phase of an oil pipeline to link China to Kazakhstan's sector of the Caspian Sea. Once the line is completed, China will be able to tap multiple oil-producing regions throughout Kazakhstan, and ultimately ship 1.0 million barrels per day into western China. The 2,000-mile project is already two-thirds complete -- and over the weekend, Beijing bellied up to finance the final leg.


The second project would link Turkmenistan to China via a natural gas line. This project has been under discussion for some time, but the Chinese have always been coy in public about the deal’s prospects. Now their interest is public and firm. Beijing also has explicitly said it wants the line to transit Uzbekistan, which would link Tashkent's energy and political desires into China's policy.


Taken together, the two projects mark a sea change in the geopolitics of the region. For the past several years, Central Asia has witnessed incessant maneuvering between Russia -- the region’s most recent colonial power — and the United States, which seeks to harness the region’s energy potential to Western purposes — in addition to staking out strategic outposts between Russia, China and the Middle East.


This is a fight that the Russians have more or less won. The region’s autocratic governments’ one-time friendliness to Washington disintegrated after the United States backed the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. (They feared they were next — and one, Kyrgyzstan, actually was.) Add in that distance prevented the United States from coming to anyone’s aid and that all meaningful pre-existing infrastructure from the Soviet period led north to Russia, and Central Asia quickly fell into lockdown.


That is, it would have if not for China. Moscow considers the presence of Central Asia in Russia’s tight geopolitical orbit as the one bright spot on its list of ongoing geopolitical realities. As such, Moscow has focused the bulk of its military and economic efforts elsewhere. In contrast, China knows full well that it is working from an institutional, linguistic and infrastructure deficit — and so has been spending billions to improve its chances.


The report went on to imply that Chinese acquisition of Central Asian energy would detract from Russia’s energy interests. But this, in reality, is a small price for Russia to pay for participating in a unified Eurasian marketplace complex which includes the New Silk Route infrastructure. Certainly, Russia lost ground with the break-up of the USSR in 1990-91, but, with the help of the SCO, it has begun to rapidly regain influence over the territory it once controlled, and, in this new iteration, has become part of a much more viable economic framework.


The SCO Summit, not surprisingly, included Iranian Pres. Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad, given that Iran is a candidate member of the SCO. And Pres. Ahmadi-Nejad supported the line of Russian Pres. Putin opposing the US bid to place anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems close to SCO countries, and to Iran. He attacked the “threats of one of the powers [ie: the US] to deploy elements of antimissile systems in several areas of the world.”


Turkmenistan Pres. Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov and Afghanistan Pres. Hamid Karzai also attended the Summit as observers, and the US Embassy in Bishkek closed for two days during the Summit.


The “Bishkek Declaration” issued at the conclusion of the Summit included an SCO commitment to increase cooperation with Afghanistan, and to create an “anti-drug zone” around the country, despite the fact that the man now in power in Bishkek, Pres. Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was already committed to supporting the narco-trafficking criminal groups bringing Afghanistani-grown narcotics in through the South (Ferghana Valley) of the Kyrgyz Republic even when the US, Soros, and the OSCE stepped in to help him mount his coup against Dr Akaev in 2005.

DEFENSE & FOREIGN AFFAIRS SPECIAL ANALYSIS 08/07

Iran Scrambles for SCO Participation to Invoke Mutual Defense Clause

There is growing evidence that the clerical leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran is pushing for early entry into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), in order to gain a measure of protection against possible military attack from the US or Israel.

US officials have attempted to underplay the mutual defense aspects of the SCO, but Russian and Chinese (PRC) officials have pointedly highlighted the mutual defense aspects of the organization, but equally pointedly, Russia has highlighted the fact that candidate member states do not qualify for the obligations of mutual defense support from other SCO states.

The reality that the SCO is shaping up as a mutual security pact — albeit one which specifically states that has no specific adversaries — is being ignored by the West.

The Growing Strategic Significance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

This report, by Iranian analyst Fariborz Saremi, based in Hamburg, Germany, highlights this particular aspect of Iran’s interest in the SCO.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia are cooperating more closely on Central Asian and the Middle Eastern issue than on any other region. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) provides the Russian Government the official means to acknowledge the legitimacy of the PRC’s interests in Central Asia, while Beijing in turn has installed institutions designed to promote its objectives in cooperation with the Russian Government.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was formally founded — after a period when it was known as the Shanghai Five grouping — in Shanghai on June 15, 2001, by six countries: the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Its member states cover an area of more than 30-million square kilometers, or about three-fifths of Eurasia, with a population of 1.455-billion, about a quarter of world’s total.

Though the declaration on the establishment of (SCO) contained a statement that “it is not an alliance against other states and regions and it adheres to the principles of openness”, many observers believe that one of the original purposes of the SCO is to serve as a counterbalance to NATO and the United States and in particular to avoid conflicts which would allow the United States to intervene in areas near both Russia and the PRC.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has made it clear that it is increasingly interested in joining the SCO and form a powerful axis with its twin pillars, as a counterweight to a US power.

Russia and the PRC have already signed military cooperation agreements with — and are the main suppliers of advanced weaponry to — Iran and Syria.

1 Russia plans to sell 250 advanced long-range Sukhoi Su-30 advanced combat aircraft to Iran in what would have been an unprecedented billion dollar deal. According to those reports, which have subsequently been questioned,

2 in addition to the fighters Tehran also planned to purchase a number of aerial fuel tankers that are compatible with the Sukhoi and capable of substantially extending its range.

[The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) may already have at least one Ilyushin Il-78 tanker in service.]

A major Sukhoi sale would grant Iran long-range offensive capabilities [and, indeed, its capabilities were already being extended by current and ongoing MiG deliveries]. Russia also recently supplied Iran with advanced anti-aircraft systems used to protect Iran’s nuclear installations. [The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, significantly, is more MiG-29-oriented than Sukhoi-oriented, although it does retain some Su-27 models, including some former Iraqi Air Force models.— Ed.]

The RPC, meanwhile, shares many important goals with Russia in the Middle East and Central Asia such as exploiting the region’s energy resources, and balancing influence. The two countries economic activities in this region thus far have been more complementary than competitive.

The Islamic Republic of Iran supports the PRC-Russian grand strategy. At the same time, the clerical leadership in Iran has proven determined to pursue an aggressive nuclear policy. In doing so it has consistently transgressed non-proliferation commitments.

It has lied to IAEA inspectors while secretly trying to enrich uranium and plutonium over the past 20 years. Thus it has failed to meet its NPT obligations. Russia’s nuclear marketing toward Iran has also raised concerns in the United States.

While Russia exports to Iran cold-water reactors which are of little use in the production of weapons-grade fuel, a civilian reactor of any kind can serve as cover for dabbling in weapons-related activities. Iran has used its Russian supplied reactor as an excuse to insist on developing its own means to enrich fuel for the plant, despite Russian offers to provide fuel, or even to enrich Iranian uranium on its soil.

Still, the international community has suspicions and has some evidence that Russia’s Federal Security Service had sent rocket scientists to Iran to help develop Iran’s medium range ballistic missiles, the Shahab-3 and -4 (which, although developed largely from North Korean designs, are based on original Russian/Soviet Scud technology).

At least 20 Russian research institutes and companies have been under US boycott since 1999 for their alleged transfer of controlled missile and nuclear technology to rogue states such as Iran.

Iran does not seem to comprehend that the International Community cannot tolerate and will not permit a regime which funds International Terrorism and provides it moral, financial and logistical support, to be armed with nuclear weapons.

With its President having repeatedly announced that the state of Israel should be wiped off the world map has developed the Shahab- 3 and -4 missiles with ranges up to 2000 km and has purchased BM-25s from North Korea with a reach of 2500 km, enough to cover much of the Arab world as well as Israel and even Eastern and Central Europe.

The Islamic Republic has made its long-term plans quite apparent by buying six KH-55 cruise missiles — with some 2,975km range — from the Ukraine. Iran possess, with the KH-55, a cruise missile powerful enough to deliver a 200 kiloton nuclear weapon, or biological, chemical, or conventional payloads, over substantial distances, quite accurately.

See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, March 7, 2006: Iran Achieves Multi-Tiered Military Nuclear Readiness, Ignored by Washington.

Meanwhile, the clerical Administration of Iran is the most active state sponsor of terrorism, aiding and training both Sunni terrorism such as Ansar-al-Islam and Ansar-al-Sunna in Iraq, HAMAS in Palestine, Taliban in Afghanistan and factions of al-Qaida network around the globe. Iran has always maintained close relations with al-Qaida, even though the Shia Muslim state is known to have ideological and strategic differences with this network. Iran is trying to cultivate a new generation of al-Qaida leaders who will be prepared to work closely with Tehran when they eventually take control.

Iran, besides directly supporting the Shi’ite Mahdi Army and Badr Brigade in Iraq, manipulates Shi’ite communities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somalia. According to the US State Depatment’s Patterns of Global Terrorism report of 2005, Iran remains “the most active state sponsor of terrorism in the world”.

While this judgment mainly reflects Iran’s very active involvement in sponsorship of the terrorist groups which reject the Arab-Israeli peace process, the Islamic Republic maintains dormant but highly effective unorthodox capabilities in the Persian Gulf area.

Such capabilities were first demonstrated during the Iran-Iraq war, when Iran manipulated Shi’ite communities in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in seeking to undermine or overthrow the northern Gulf Cooperation Council States.

For masterminding terrorist activity, the key executive bodies are the Persian Gulf affairs section of the intelligence Directorate of the IRGC and the al-Quds special operations wing. The Ministry of Intelligence & Security (VEVAK: Vezarat-e Ettela'at va Amniat-e Keshvar) maintains foreign intelligence directorate of some 2,000 personnel, and is active in intelligence collecting and network building in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the remaining Persian Gulf states.

The Shi’ite Lebanese HizbAllah is under the direct control of the Islamic Republic of Iran. With the help of Iran, the Lebanese HizbAllah was established in 1982 by two members of the local Shi’ite political organization Amal.

With the consent of Syria, Khomeini also sent about 1,000 Revolutionary Guards to Baalbek, in the Beqaa Valley, to train the party’s members. HizbAllah has established close ties to all Palestinian radical groups such as HAMAS and Islamic Jihad, whose leaders often visit Tehran and receive orders.

The Lebanese HIzbAllah receives arms from Iran through Syria and enormous amount of financial support.

See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 30, 2007: Iran, Syria Make Strenuous Preparations for Combat-Readiness, Partly Reflecting Major Internal Leadership Schisms. This report highlights recent arms shipments from Iran into HizbAllah, via Damascus.

HizbAllah has also an international network and even in Germany has some 800 to 1,000 Muslim followers and supporters.

The strategy of the clerical leadership of Iran, the Revolutionary Guards and its operational al-Quds special operations wing is to weaken US-backed target states in the area. This strategy is also indirectly of benefit for the main sponsors of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in trying to increase their sphere of influence in this strategically important geopolitical region.

US-Iran negotiations will not solve the current security problems in Iraq and will not change the behavior of the Iranian clerics. The US foreign policy establishment looks at this as an issue between two nation states with differing agendas and so they look for common agendas.

However, the clerical leadership of Iran has deep ideological differences with the West, and particularly with the United States. Iranian secular opposition elements have indicated their belief that if the US Government was serious in its declared intention to solve the issues of terrorism and WMD while also opposing Iranian clerics, it should back the Iranian people in their determination to engineer “regime change”.

The "C" change in world public opinion, which is now clearly against the Iran clerics, is, according to opposition elements inside and outside Iran, ready to be harnessed by the US and EU governments to create a basis for secular democracy in Iran.

Iranian history has shown how decisive International support for any emerging national leader is. Iran society by tradition is hierarchical/vertical and looks to strong leaders to guide it through crisis and trauma. Such leaders require, however international backing to cement their legitimacy.

The international community has not, in the past, supported any Iranian opposition leaders and yet, ironically, gave safe-haven and tacit support to exiled “Ayatollah” Ruhollah Khomeini to return to Iran, when secular revolts toppled the Shah in 1979, to assume power.

Author:

Fariborz Saremi is a Graduate of Schiller International University in Heidelberg, Germany; Boston University’s overseas Program in Heidelberg; and the University of Houston-Texas, in the US. He majored in International Relations, specializing in the Principles of Political-Military Strategy, Foreign and Security Policy and Terrorism. He was a member of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy from 1996 to 2000.

For the past 28 years, since the age of 13, he has been an activist in various Iranian nationalist movements and since 1994 he has been an active member of Azadegan Foundation.

He is the author of numerous articles on Iran and the Middle East and a commentator on TV and Radio (German ARD/NDR TV, Voice of America/Persian Service, Radio Israel) regarding issues involving the Middle East and Northern Tier.
Footnotes:
1. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 30, 2007: Iran, Syria Make Strenuous Preparations for Combat-Readiness, Partly Reflecting Major Internal Leadership Schisms. This report noted:

Syria reportedly took delivery in June 2007 of five MiG-31E advanced combat aircraft, and may have already begun accepting delivery of further MiG-29 variants — reportedly MiG-29M/M2s — for possible on-shipment to the IRIAF. The IIRAF already had some 25 Mikoyan MiG-29 and 15 two-seat MiG-29UB Fulcrum fighters in its inventory.

The Syrian Air Force (Al Quwwat al Jawwiya al Arabiya as Souriya) had appr. 42 MiG-29A Fulcrum fighters, 14 MiG-29SMT Fulcrum air defense and air superiority aircraft, and six Mikoyan MiG-29UB Fulcrum operational trainers in its inventory.

The MiG-31 is a development of the MiG-25 series, and it is reported that the MiG-29M/M2 is, in fact, similar in its subsystems and capabilities to the model being offered as the MiG-35 for the Indian Air Force. It is probable that Russia took back some of Syria’s older MiG-25 Foxbat high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft as trade-ins for the MiG-31Es.

The MiG-31E is the export version of basic MiG-31 prototype (“903”), which was first noted in 1997; it has simplified systems over the MiG-35, with no active jammer, downgraded IFF, as well as downgraded radar and DASS.

The Syrian Air Force has less than 15 Mikoyan MiG-25PD Foxbat air defense aircraft in its inventory; eight Mikoyan MiG-25RB reconnaissance; and two MiG-25RU Foxbat operational trainers.

It is possible that Tehran and Damascus have been awaiting delivery of the advanced models of the MiG-25 and MiG-29 series before declaring readiness for a major, coordinated upsurge in confrontation with the US and Israel. Certainly, Syrian and Iranian aircrew and technicians have been undergoing training in Russia on the new systems.

2. The Israeli DEBKA Reports of July 27, 2007, noted: “Tehran and the Russian Rosoboronexport arms group are about to sign a mammoth arms deal running into tens of billions of dollars for the sale to Tehran of 250 Su-30MKM warplanes and 20 Il-78 MKI fuel tankers.” On August 2, 2007, however, Russian officials denied the report, and Iran’s official Fars news agency noted: “Deputy Director for the Russian Center for Analysis and Technologies Konstantin Makiyenko said the news was a ‘pure lie’ adding that it was impossible to buy 250 warplanes with one billion dollars.”

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources also were sceptical of the report’s accuracy, given the output capabilities of the Russian aerospace industry at this time, as well as the stated value of $1-billion for the contract, an amount which would be substantially insufficient.

The value of such an order would be at least $3-billion. However, it was true that Iran was buying additional combat aircraft from Russia, as noted by earlier GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs reports.

REPOST OF INSIGHT INTO ISLAM

ISLAM

Thinking About the Resurgence of Muslim Aggression

(Originally from October 9, 2006)

by Col. Gerry Hickman

Islam began in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. From the outset, the religion was spread by military force. Aggression was justified as a holy war, or jihad, that the Muslims believed sanctified by God.

Although conversion to Islam was by force, some conquered peoples not only accepted Islam but also joined in its mission. Most notable perhaps were the Ottoman Turks.

The rise of Islam occurred at what was for its followers a propitious time. Byzantium, the last outpost of Roman rule, was in final collapse. When Constantinople fell to the Turks, few other states or rulers were strong enough to resist the Muslim tide.
Yet, a fragmented Europe fought valiantly. When Muslim aggression finally was halted at the gates of Vienna, and restricted to the Iberian Peninsula, its vigor was dissipated. For many centuries, Western Civilization would be safe.

Stopped in Europe, Islam moved on to conquer large parts of Asia. Today, centuries after the first Muslim horsemen brought war to the Middle East, Islam dominates countries from Africa’s west coast to the eastern tip of Indonesia.

Reportedly, some 1.5 billion people subscribe to the Islamic faith.

Obey the Sharia

In countries controlled by Islam, nonbelievers must bow to Islamic dominion. All must obey the Sharia, i.e., Islamic laws drawn from the Koran and interpreted by Islamic priests. The culture created under the Sharia disapproves of thought and progress not sanctioned by the priesthood.

Possibly it is this development more than any others that accounts for the widespread impoverishment of Muslim countries. Islamic intellectuals deny it, while blaming the problems of its peoples on Europe and America, i.e., the West.

During the past century Islamic intellectuals, principally clerics, began preaching a Muslim resurgence, calling for a reawakening of Muslim militancy and resumption of Islam’s ancient holy war.
Perhaps to make their goal more acceptable, the activists asked Islamic populations, ‘If Allah intends an earthly paradise for his followers, why is it that the world’s most prosperous peoples are those of the corrupt West?’

For the 0Islamic man, the question was answered in no uncertain terms. Western countries, particularly America, it was said kept the Muslim man and his family poor, and caused all his problems.
While the material progress of the West was frustrating to Muslim intellectuals, far more infuriating to them was the growing influence within Islamic society of Western values. Rightly, they foresaw that liberalizing philosophies would weaken Islam.

The original solution offered in rising Islamic thought was to sternly reinforce Shariah law within Muslim countries, while driving Westerners out of them. Such thinking led directly to the spread of radical Islamic teaching.

Today, aggressive Muslim resurgence continues to be fueled by radical Islamic thought, promulgated throughout much of the huge Muslim community. In practice, such thinking has already resulted in the Iranian Revolution, the Taliban, and among other violent groups, al Qaeda.

War Between Civilizations

Thus was born what Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington has called ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ The liberal Western Civilization and the Shariah of Islamic Civilization are perhaps so different as to make their clash inevitable.

In her book, Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror, Mary Harbeck of Johns Hopkins University, writes of current Islamic intellectuals:

‘…all assume that Muslims have a duty to spread the dominion of Islam, through military offensives, until it rules the world…’

Harbeck notes that Azzam, perhaps foremost among modern
Islamic activists, believes that ‘The jihadist is obliged to perform with all available capabilities until there remain only Muslims or people who submit to Islam’.

Presumably, ‘all available capabilities’ is supposed to justify the premeditated murder of women, children, and indeed anyone who does not subscribe to Islam.

It would seem then, that the nineteenth-century goals of reinforcing the Shariah within Islamic countries, while expelling Westerners from them, have morphed into a much larger objective.

In the event, the resurgence of Muslim aggression, asleep for centuries, is now fully awake and on the move. Hugely funded, already in control of Iran, and believing that they are doing what God wants them to do, those who invoke jihadism probably cannot be stopped by military force alone.

Yet a united West, relying at the least on its diplomatic, economic, cultural, and military strengths should be able to once again contain the jihadist movement. Every possible tool will be needed because religious revolutions have throughout history been hard to stop. At stake are Western Civilization and the continued evolution of mankind.

Scoffing at Warnings

While many scoff at such warnings, one need only refer to the Muslim activist question, ‘If Allah intends an earthly paradise for his followers, why is it that the world’s most prosperous peoples are those of the corrupt West?’

The question implies correctly that Muslims, once the world’s foremost astronomers, mathematicians, and scientists, are now among the world’s most intellectually starved and impoverished peoples. Conquest of the West and establishment of Shariah would surely halt progress not sanctioned by the jihadists.

Western peoples are only gradually awakening to the threat posed by the resurgence of Muslim aggression. The best-selling book in Denmark today, written by two of the nation’s leading progressive intellectuals, almost stridently issues a wake-up call. Yet, only vicariously have most people now benefiting from the philosophies of Western Civilization known war. Nor have most known poverty.

Having grown up in affluent societies based on liberalizing philosophies, it is perhaps hard for Westerners to grasp their growing peril.

Too often Americans, as well as Europeans, dispute with each other about parts of the developing struggle. Lost in the contention is the broader need of the West to find ways to stop the Islamic jihad before it has the capability of truly mass destruction.

Even now, Iranian jihadists are reportedly working feverishly to create a nuclear weapon. Compared to the explosion of a nuclear bomb, even the al Qaeda attack on New York would be found exceedingly minor.

Strategic and Tactical: Understanding the Difference

Thus it is that when Americans urge a speedy U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, they display purely tactical thinking. Either willingly or unwillingly, they fail to see the conflict in Iraq for what it actually is —only part of a much broader war.

‘A profound ability to think small’ is an old saying that describes those who can only see the tactical elements of any wider, strategic struggle.

A profound ability to court disaster might be a better way to put it.
Although difficult to achieve in an environment of political discord, more Americans and Europeans must learn to focus on the overall ‘War on Terror’. Failure to do so could trigger bad consequences —untoward events that are probably still preventable.

By keeping a larger view always in mind, Westerners might be less distracted by events in Iraq, or other single pieces of a much broader struggle. Learning to think in strategic terms could help the West unite against the serious peril that now threatens it.

Perhaps in time the big picture will materialize for most Americans. Within it, Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, Iraq, President Bush, the Taliban, liberals, conservatives, and other individuals and entities are but pieces. Altering a tactical element of the big picture, such as withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, might somehow benefit the enemy but will not alter his goals.

While early removal of U.S. power from Iraq might encourage and even embolden the enemy, its strategy as attributed to Azzam will remain unchanged.

It is enemy strategy that the West must defeat. To achieve victory, a Western strategy with a clear goal must be developed.

Seemingly, the goal should be to protect Western Civilization –a goal so sweeping in scope that it might be difficult for some to countenance.

Identifying the Enemy

Opposing Western Civilization is at the least a violent, ruthless, and determined segment of the Muslim world. No meaningful reports about its actually size within Islam apparently exist. Claims that only a small percentage of Muslims are involved in what they call a holy war must therefore be discounted or at least seriously questioned.

Western strategy must take into account that the size and strength of the Muslim force might be larger than current speculation suggests. The strategy should also address the proper way to identify the enemy.

While our adversaries indeed commit terroristic acts, simplistic labeling of a readily identifiable enemy as ‘terrorists’ obscures the true nature of the enemy and makes understanding of the broader war extremely difficult.

As an early step in helping Westerners to think of the war in strategic terms, the governments should abandon the meaningless term ‘War on Terror’. Confusing at best and meaningless at worst, the term was apparently coined to appease the supposed large majority of Muslims opposed to the allegedly few radicals among them.

Whether or not Western governments are willing to admit it publicly, the fact remains that the Western world is engaged in a great religious conflict that could grow into a significantly larger worldwide struggle. Muslims constitute the enemy force that the West must somehow dismember.

Perhaps not all Muslims are involved in the struggle, as Western political and other thought leaders proclaim, but the enemy force is indisputably Muslim.

Rather than calling the struggle a ‘War on Terror’, Western governments might better call the conflict what it is: Defense Against Muslim Aggression. No doubt this would instigate protests from supposedly peaceful Muslims, but their remarks should be measured against the value of helping Americans and Europeans to focus on the threat.

Some Muslims have proclaimed a ‘holy war’, and correctly reject the idea that they are merely nihilistic terrorists. The sooner the West comes to accept this self-proclaimed, true nature of its adversaries, as well as the broader context of the struggle thrust upon it, the better its nations can equip themselves –politically, economically, socially, and militarily —to contain it.

Western Civilization is the ultimate target of Islamic jihadism. As a foremost beneficiary of Western culture, America is identified by Muslims, whether peace loving or not, as the epitome of all that their customs proscribe. The aggressors have openly declared war on America, with the avowed intention of destroying its culture and converting its people to their Islamic forms.

Meanwhile, because Muslim aggressors expect Europe to be easier than America to overcome, it is expected by Islamic intellectuals to be the first part of the West to capitulate. Inroads there are being made, and the anticipated appeasement is being achieved.

The Muslim Strategy

While I have not seen a Muslim strategy enunciated, it clearly involves several discernible aspects. The ultimate goal, the spread of Islam, appeals to all members of the faith –whether or not they are radicals. The idea of converting hopelessly corrupt societies to Islam is universally seen as worthwhile.

What the allegedly peaceful Muslims fail to recognize is that the jihadists intend not only to spread Islam, but also to purify it from within according to the Shariah.

States that embrace Islam but not Islamic jihadism might suffer severe penalties.

Recognizing that the list is incomplete, following are several identifiable elements of Muslim aggressor strategy:

1) Patience. Some Muslim religious leaders talk of a war to the death that might take more than a century.

(Whether or not the U.S. withdraws soon from Iraq must seem fairly inconsequential to an enemy strategist who thinks in terms of decades. The withdrawal might help, hinder, or have no effect on the aggressor, but would not in the event be viewed as an end to his holy war.)

2) Teach virulent radicalism in Muslim schools and mosques by arousing and nurturing abiding hatred of America, Europe, and indeed Western Civilization.

(Saudi Arabia reportedly has not lived up to its commitment to suppress such instruction. Other nations, such as Iran, never made such promises.)

3) Teach young Muslims that the murder of non-believers as well as the sacrifice of their lives guarantees their entry into paradise.

(Again, Muslim countries reportedly are not taking steps to curb such preaching.)

4) Assure relatives of those thus sacrificed that they will be compensated.

(Both Saudi Arabia —and formerly Iraq— reportedly pay or have paid families of suicide bombers as much as $25,000 in honor of their sacrificed children.)

5) Recruit, train, and heighten the indoctrination of young Muslims to murder, destroy, and intimidate.

(This element of Muslim aggressor strategy is apparently spreading. Young Muslims born in Britain, for instance, committed murder by bombing subways.)

6) Without apology, seek every opportunity to kill all who do not subscribe to the radical beliefs of the Muslim aggressors. While the main target will always be Western Civilization, Muslims who fail to support the radicals are also targeted.

(Through such intimidation, the Muslim aggressors earn at least passive acceptance of other Muslims.)

7) Develop both willing supporters and unwilling supporters among Muslim and other peoples, thereby creating an obscure and supportive sea in which the jihadist might swim until sufficiently strong to abandon secrecy.

(The quiet takeover of Lebanon by radical Muslims while the Lebanese either offered aid or passive non-resistance is an example.)

8) Encourage Muslim immigration into Western countries, many of whose native populations are shrinking due to declining birth rates, thereby forming separate and rapidly growing cultural enclaves and developing the ability to turn Western liberal philosophy to gains for Islam.

(The influx of Muslims into Europe and America is large, and ongoing. Some reports claim more than eight million Muslims now live in the United States. Western failure to appreciate the danger of this element of Muslim aggressor strategy could result in increasing numbers of killings by homegrown Muslim jihadists.
London subway bombings and the plot to destroy 10 U.S. airliners by English born and raised Muslims are examples. )

7) Rely on the Western news media to serve its propaganda aims.

(The news media reportage of fighting in Iraq has focused largely on casualties without accounts of Allied military achievements and heroism. Such day-by-day reports have gradually discouraged many Americans and Europeans and obscured the true nature of the enemy.)

8) Use the Western news media as a source of intelligence.

(Revelations of previously secret U.S. efforts to counter funding, communications, and other radical Muslim activities allow the jihadist aggressor to reduce losses and shift tactics.)

9) Use the West’s own liberality against it.

(Capitalize on liberal ideals –ideals that Muslim aggressors consider corrupting influences— to create confusion among Western peoples. Example: Inspire efforts to extend to Muslim aggressors captured by Western forces all conceivable Constitutional rights enjoyed by Americans and Europeans in their own countries.)

10) Intimidate Western leaders into appeasement.

(According to the Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune, the European Union announced that it will ‘investigate’ European banks that have helped the U.S. track the flow of funds to Muslim aggressors.)

11) Continuously push non-radical Muslims to become radical.
Understanding Enemy Organization

For centuries, discernible hierarchies have led Western peoples. Chains of command have existed whether in kingdoms, empires, or republics. Yet there is no such hierarchy within the Islamic jihadist movement.

Instead, both nation states and lesser groups, some of which are exceedingly small, independently plan and conduct Muslim aggression. Inspiration for the formation of aggressor cells, each operating on its own but often supported by established jihadist entities, is apparently spread by roving clerics. The United Kingdom recently expelled one such priest, but the task is made difficult by the Western belief in freedom of religion.

As shown by the London subway bombings, the operations of a homegrown aggressor cell might also be at least partially planned by other Muslim radicals, but the British cell was independent.
That the cell was part of modern Muslim aggression is indisputable, but the fact is that no chain-of-command issued orders to it.

Even the roving clerics who convince young Muslims become jihadists seemingly operate independently.

What Aggressor Strategy Seems to Envision
Through intimidation wrought by cold-blooded murder in both Muslim and Western countries, the Muslim strategist seems to envision ever increasing numbers of willing supporters among Muslims, growing numbers of Western converts to Islam, and increasing civil discord throughout the West.

By the time the West awakens to his overall strategy, the aggressor strategist must anticipate that Islamic countries will already by purified by the stern enforcement of Shariah. Assuming that the West at last responds meaningfully, a battle to the death between the clashing civilizations would then occur.

Islamic intellectuals, the true Muslim strategists, believe Western Civilization is so corrupt that it is incapable of defending itself against a determined Islam. They believe that Muslim forces will take control of Western countries. Those Westerners who refuse to convert to or else bow to Shariah law will be killed.

With the West conquered, the rest of the world would then be targeted.

Note that since it was not America who declared war on Muslim aggressors, we Americans cannot of ourselves now declare the conflict ended. The war will end only after Muslim jihadism has been thoroughly discredited in the community of 1.5 billion believers, and recalcitrant jihadists have been defeated.

An end to the conflict might take a long time. Radical Islamists have stated that the war might last 100 years or more.

Although the U.S. Government, news media, and Western
intellectuals tell us repeatedly that the majority of the Muslim religion’s huge membership is peace loving, careful examination of the larger picture reveals that within those populations at least some of the apparent jihadist strategy is working. There appear to be insignificant numbers of Muslims who actively oppose the radicals.

The heart of Muslim aggressor resurgence seems to lie in Saudi Arabia and Iran. While the Saudi government has forcibly restrained Muslim attacks, it reportedly continues to tolerate the schools that might be central to the entire jihadist movement.

Meanwhile, Iran openly ignores appeals to halt nuclear weapons production, and reportedly has supported aggressor operations in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq.

Iraq

In the West, despite a beginning awareness of the broader problem, most of the focus remains on Iraq. Lightning rods of contention are the president of the United States and the prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Given the threat of broader Islamic jihad, it seems pointless to castigate either a sitting U.S. president or a British prime minister. While it is possible that different leaders might more effectively combat the jihadist movement, any administration will face a far broader conflict than that now occurring in Iraq.

Whether under the leadership of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, or others, the West should unite against a graver peril than any posed by Iraqis alone.

Until the West acknowledges the real nature of Islamic resurgence and the war that it pursues, Western leaders will probably appear uniformly weak, indecisive, or worse.

One discernible aspect of Western strategy is that of creating democracies in Islamic countries presently under totalitarian forms of government. Ultimate goal of Western strategists is to get help from governments based on the Western model of popular rule.

While this approach has appeal in parts of the West, and might eventually be helpful in suppressing the jihadist movement, in light of events it to be somewhat forlorn. Free elections were achieved in both Iraq and Palestine.

Violence in Iraq continues despite a massive turnout on its election day. And some ask, ‘What good did it do to democratize Palestine only to have Hamas elected overwhelmingly?’

Perhaps what America and its allies should recognize that above all the jihadist movement must be discredited and contained. To achieve that purpose America and European countries might be forced to work with totalitarian governments rather than seeking to overthrow them.

Defeating the modern Muslim aggressor is where the vital interest of America and its European allies lie. The West might have little choice in choosing partners to help protect the mutual vital interests of both.

Sense of Urgency

The West it would seem must soon develop a sense of urgency. It cannot long continue to dither. The enemy is identifiable, as is his goal. To reach it, the Muslim jihadist movement has shown itself capable of the most abhorrent acts. Now, it stands at the threshold of achieving incalculable destruction.

Iran we are told may soon have a nuclear bomb. Western leaders plead with the Iranians to stop development of the weapon, yet development seemingly continues apace.

Those who would withdraw our forces from Iraq now must overlook or else ignore Iranian nuclear developments. Should the West eventually be forced to use military power to stop Iran, would it not be tactically advantageous to have bases and lines of communication operating in the country next door?

Overlooked in most reporting is the danger of Pakistan falling into the control of Muslim aggressors. What Americans and Europeans should not forget is that Pakistan already has nuclear weapons, and a sizeable population of radical Moslems.

Should Muslim jihadists come to power in Pakistan, the nuclear problem there would immediately become even more serious than that posed by Iran.

Just as its ancient predecessors, the modern Islamic jihadist movement seeks to rebuild the Muslim world in its own image, destroy Western Civilization, and eventually convert the remaining people of the world. The movement has developed a clearly perceptible strategy designed to achieve its ultimate goal.

In the meantime, our European friends and we Americans appear to be weak and indecisive. Measured against the broader threat, attacks on the sitting U.S. president and British prime minister are at best simply expressions of frustration. Changing Western leaders might lead to greater effectiveness in combating the resurgence of jihadism, but will hardly change its goal.

Appeasement of Muslims by the West is foolish. Those who have historically sought to appease their enemy have found themselves only encouraging further aggression. Like the men trapped by crocodiles, the strategy of the appeaser is to be the last one eaten.
Having identified the enemy and examined his strategy while reviewing the Western response, one might shudder at thoughts of the future.

Yet, there is still time for the beneficiaries of Western Civilization to unite, bring all possible resources to bear, and once again contain ages-old Muslim expansionism.

Source: http://www.americandaily.com/article/15962

OIL FACILITIES TERRORIST TARGET

Terrorists May Strike Oil

Realizing that oil is the lifeblood of the West oil facilitiesconstitute atempting target that is under-secured
Sam Elrom (8/20/2007)
http://www.omedia.org/Show_Article.asp?DynamicContentID=2533&MenuID=603
http://www.omedia.org/Show_Article.asp?DynamicContentID=2533&MenuID=603

Introduction

As terrorists changed their global war paradigm, infrastructure targetsarenow in their cross hair and a shift from hardened targets to targetsthatare more vulnerable is more visible.

Terrorists have kept the oil andenergyindustry up high on their target acquisition list and from theirstandpointfor very good operational reasons:

* Firstly, the common belief that very sensitive sites, such asrefineries, processing facilities, offshore rigs, pipelines and tankersarewell protected is in many cases false.

* Secondly, it is presumed that there is a correlation between thevery high turnover and profits in the business and the industry’sability toprotect itself. After all, it makes sense that the protection of the“goosethat lays the golden eggs” would be protected at the maximum levelavailable; again, it is far from reality.

* Thirdly, terrorists were unhappy with the fact, that in spite ofhundreds of worldwide attacks during the last decade against the oilindustry, their actions did not attract the expected attention of theinternational media. They tend to blame the unsatisfactory coverage on the fact that the attacks were conducted mainly in remote regions. Many considered the attacks to be an integral part of the business and industry’s natural risks.

* Least but not last, as part of the projected West demise, terroristsrealized that a shortage of oil supply is extremely painful for theWest tocope with because it affects the entire nerve system of the Western economy and shatters the very basics of our life style and culture. It alsocreateshuge loses for American and foreign investors and cracks-open the very foundations of the new, westernized global political and economicstructure.

More so, it has an immediate negative impact on young, yet unstabledemocracies and their economies mainly in several ex-Soviet countrieswhereoil is the only natural resource.

* In addition, it magnifies and intensifies the fears of a terrorattack and creates an atmosphere of new investments abstinence, thusaddingadditional difficulties to the anyway fragile economies. It also galvanizes a domestic sense of instability and uncertainty seen by Jihadists as the beginning of the end of the Western civilization. Not to lose time, Al-Qaeda has defined precisely in 2003 their goals in an instruction manual found in Afghanistan which reads: the umbilical cord (the oil supply-SE) and lifeline of the crusader (infidels - SE)community, (is) the object ofthenext major assault on the West, an assault that could wreak havoc with America’s economy and way of life”.

Changes in terror strategy

Observations and analysis of more than twenty years of a vast array ofterror attacks and related events allow us to draw a comparison chart showing a strategic change in patterns, which are actually adaptations and responses to the changes we’ve made in our strategic approach of”“search and destroy” initiative policy. Hereafter are the changed guidelines adoptedby Al-Qae da and its surrogates:

* Aiming at soft targets is the most effective way to achieving massfear, chaos and distress and scoreless casualties

* Target Infrastructure because the impact is of immense magnitude andlong-lasting

* Take advantage of transportation natural vulnerabilities andprotection difficulties

* Focus on supply lines because of the abundance of targets relativelyeasy to reach and hit

* Focus on high risk-high value poorly protected sites because of thepropaganda added value and the immediate impact on the industry andcommerce”

*Exploit the psychological factor and wage a propaganda warfare; keepthe momentum going by daily terror events in various location in theworld,using the loose connections of transnational networking and connection with local terror factions as initiators.

The oil industry is under an imminent threat

There is an abundance of easy targets in the US yet terrorists wereunableto generate an attack on a major facility since 9/11, but the belief-spread by interested parties - that the reason lies in the superior protection of the critical infrastructure is a purely baseless.
We know retroactively that the real reason was a false perception that high risks-high value targets inthe US are much better protected than in Kazakhstan, Nigeria or Yemen where attacks on similar industrial sites and oil facilities were successful and continue today.

This interim five years long of zero attacks in the US led politicians and business leaders to the wrong conclusion that at least for now the infrastructure is not a priority on terrorists’ hit list, therefore there is no need to heavily invest in upgrading and reinforcing existing prevention and protection systems.

It took the terrorists, and more specifically Al-Qeida, several years to realize that the same terror attacks they carried out in remote locations in Africa or Kazakhstan are executable in the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Bottom line: oil & energy industries are extremely vulnerable and not prepared yet to meet the challenges that the transnational revived organizations like Al-Qaeda present.

Furthermore, significant benign events such as the huge power out age generated in Canada a few years ago, coupled by several in-depth chemical facilities investigations by TV networks which exposed the naked truth to the public (and the terrorists), have shown how easy it is to penetrate and retreat from a highly protected facility without being detected.”Although the investigative journalists intended well, public exposure showing how extremely unprotected those critical sites are, were an encouragingwakeupcall to the terrorists to rethink and refocus again on those industries.

The napping sentinel

Terror groups are aware of the increased security measures that were taken in western countries to protect national, historical and symbolic sites. Butthey are aware as well of the security gaps, the lack of national coverage of security needs for the protection of critical infrastructure and there luctance to invest in security unless the government pays a big chunk of it. A terror organization cannot afford to fail because they can choose the staging location, the target and the timing.

Terrorists are always insearchof targets that will focus the whole media attention, inflict as many as possible casualties, have an immediate impact of public safety, create a sense of insecurity, and generate chaos, confusion and fear.

Obviously, loosing the safe haven of Afghanistan coupled by the US policy of pursuing the enemy wherever, has forced the terrorists to change strategies looking for easier, more effective attack options.

As a result, a strategy shift is taking place in recent years, moving from targeting national symbols towards softer targets and under protected critical infrastructure sites. The oil industry, with its industrial ramifications and vast array of related sub-industries are on the top list of this new pragmatic approach because the vulnerabilities are visible and many sites still don’t have adequate protection.

Partially, this lack of protection is because it is very difficult to develop and manage a system that provides an overall superior protection all the time while maintaining the same high level of alertness and readiness for long periods. Nonetheless, poorly coordinated attempts are so evident only to be year after year be criticized by the media, the experts and the internal investigative units. As it stands today,attacking an infrastructure site is easier than hijacking a plane, and that is a very disturbing fact because we know how many gaps exist in aviations ecurity.

Security is in many aspects an invisible high-value asset. Thus, there is a reluctance to allocate the needed budgets for such an amorphous volatile goal defined as physical security which does not create any tangible profits. More so, convincing corporate, stock holders and investors that better security actually means higher profits in the long run is equally difficult. It becomes an even more daunting task when in some cases the profit lost due to a terror attack is lower than the investments needed to put in place a system that may prevent such attacks.

This “short memory syndrome” from which many businesses suffer from is more prevalent the more we distance ourselves from 9/11 and without any significant sign of a terror attack in mainland USA. But if such a major attack occurs in the heartland of any critical infrastructure conglomerate such as an oil port, the economic and homeland security implications are economically disastrous, not to mention the lose of life, the wounded and maimed and the impact on their families and on national morale.

With figures showing that the U.S. imports over 52% of its oil amounting to more then 12 million barrels per day, and with a projected dependency expected to grow to nearly 70% in the next 20 years, the acute problem America is facing today is obvious.

A terror attack using a “dirty bomb pales in comparison to the devastation created by a ship loaded with acargoof common grade LPG, or industrial explosives and chemicals beingdetonatedin one of US main highly congested oil ports. This is more than a viable scenario and from the terrorists’ point of view, the results will likely be catastrophic and more effective than other non-nuclear or bio WMD.

It is thesimplest and shortest way to reach an already available source of materialwhich otherwise would have been impossible to buy or prepare in such enormous quantities without creating suspicions. These are common highly commercialized materials available everywhere and a trained and motivated terrorist needs only to board the ship, plant a detonator and activate it wirelessly at the right moment

TERROR NEWS August 20th

US-backed campaign against Hamas expands to charitieshttp://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20275144.htm

(Afghanistan) Taliban Talks: German Secret Negotiations with the Islamists Proved Fruitlesshttp://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,500809,00.html

(Afghanistan) Taliban, US in new round of peace talkshttp://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IH21Df03.html

(Iraq) Mehdi fighters 'trained by Hizbollah in Lebanon'http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2878769.ece

(Iraq) US military struggles to 'defeat' IEDshttp://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2878769.ece

(Egypt) Eight Muslim Brotherhood members remanded in custody in Egypthttp://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1835559&Language=en

Iranian clerics goose-step over American flaghttp://kamangir.net/2007/08/15/the-picture-you-have-been-dreaming-about-armed-clerics/#comment-16397

(Lebanon) Cluster bomb kills Hezbollah guerrilla in Lebanonhttp://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/20/africa/ME-GEN-Lebanon-Cluster-Bomb.php

Israeli strike kills six Hamas militants in Gazahttp://au.news.yahoo.com/070820/19/148j1.htmlhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070820/wl_afp/mideastconflictgaza

(Gaza) Electricity is latest Gaza battleground - EU cut off power donations because Hamas diverting supplieshttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_mi_ea/palestinians_power_outage;_ylt=AiO8s3INVnPOZpYEpUcdvZis0NUE

(Russia) Two militants detained in Chechnyahttp://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=11802560&PageNum=0

(Morocco) The "engineers cell" dismantled in Moroccohttp://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/08/the_engineers_cell_dismantled.php

Other News:

Nazi documents promised to U.S., Israelhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20347868/

(UK) Midland Mosque plans to sue Channel 4 documentary on holdhttp://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/sundaymercury/news/tm_headline=mosque-plans-on-hold%26method=full%26objectid=19663998%26siteid=50002-name_page.html

(UK) BBC drops fictional terror attack to avoid offending Muslimshttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=476511&in_page_id=1770

(UK) ITV Documentary 'The Muslim Jesus' Draws Fiery Debatehttp://www.christiantoday.com/article/itv.documentary.the.muslim.jesus.draws.fiery.debate/12497.htm

Pakistan: Religious Minorities Told To Convert Or Diehttp://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=lead&lang=en&length=long&idelement=4986&backpage=

(Canada) Islamic income fund to launchhttp://www.thestar.com/Business/article/248000

(Australia) The Australian interview with Wafa Sultan (my title)http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22279722-2702,00.html

(Iraq) Roadside bomb kills second Iraqi governor -- Mohammed Ali al-Hassani, governor of Muthanna provincehttp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070820/wl_nm/iraq_dc_46;_ylt=ApXa6hdri5MvICtSXCiEy2tX6GMA

Iraqi-US forces arrest 31 suspected terrorists during Qaeda meetinghttp://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1012821

(Iraq) Baghdad explosion leaves 3 dead, 12 injured - motorcycle rigged with explosives parked in Al-Rasafi squarehttp://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1012844

(Iraq) Rocket attacks on Basra airbase increasehttp://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1012925

(Iran/Iraq) Iranian Guards training Iraqi militants: US generalhttp://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\08\20\story_20-8-2007_pg7_6

(Iran/Iraq) Ahmadinejad plans to visit Iraqhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070820/wl_mideast_afp/iraniraqdiplomacy_070820083015;_ylt=Ag0hhRGm7OhgpiUU7AfaSYRX6GMA

(Afghanistan) 10 Taliban said killed in base attack - Sangin district of southern Helmand provincehttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070820/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrest_070820083715;_ylt=ApwEvoH6RP7UGNOCz55Jxg3OVooA

Afghanistan: Korean hostages on hunger strikehttp://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1216994750

(Afghanistan) Kidnappers of German woman arrested in Afghanistanhttp://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=43036

(Pakistan) Violence in northern Pakistan kills 4, wounds several others - in Hungu town - north of Islamabad -- also roadside bomb in Tank and driveby shooting of intelligence official in Dera Ismail Khan districthttp://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1012817

Pakistan: Suicide bombing kills 3 troops -- outskirts of Thal,in the North West Frontier Provincehttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_1;_ylt=Al09shDnp40B.d5LEoCWam3zPukA

Pakistan: Military attacks militants in North Waziristan - in three villages - Eisuri, Hurmez and Khushalihttp://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1217065302

Pakistan frees al-Qaida computer expert Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan after three years in custodyhttp://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/20/asia/AS-GEN-Pakistan-Terror-Suspect.php

Pakistan: Pro-Taliban militants agree to free soldiershttp://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1217162826

Pakistan govt, militants agree on ceasefire in South Waziristanhttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pak_govt_militants_agree_on_ceasefire_in_South_Waziristan/articleshow/2293594.cms

'Pakistan is world's most dangerous country' -- per US' Senate Committee on Foreign Relationshttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pakistan_is_worlds_most_dangerous_country/articleshow/2293320.cms

(Pakistan) Bhutto links Pakistan terrorism to Musharraf regimehttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070819/wl_sthasia_afp/canadapakistanbhuttopolitics_070819053436;_ylt=Al5AUTQg.LXmMSPb2H7nKVoTv5UB

(Turkey) Turkish police: Egyptian hijacker of Turkish plane attended al-Qaida campshttp://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/19/europe/EU-GEN-Turkey-Hijacked-Plane.php

(Turkey) Hijacker of Turkish plane had links to al-Qaeda - reports -http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/95642.html

(Turkey) Reports: Turkish plane hijacker trained by Qaedahttp://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=89206

Turkish plane hijack bomb 'block of clay'http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=191178&Sn=WORL&IssueID=30153

Bosnia: International official under fire over al-Qaeda statementhttp://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1217590503

Bosnian Minister denies Al-Qaeda presence in Bosnia and Herzegovinahttp://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1835529&Language=en

(India) 15 suspected al-Qaeda operatives arrested in India http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/95622.html

(India) Manipur: 15 Al Qaeda operatives arrested - 10 were Myanmarese and 5 were Bangladeshi nations - entering Bangladeshthrough India's Assamhttp://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20070820/746437.html

(India) Manipur: 15 Al Qaeda operatives arrested - list of names of those arrested, one had Thailand work permithttp://www.rediff.com/news/2007/aug/20qaeda.htm

(India) Pakistan-based Jaished-e-Mohd plans to launch sleeper cells across India: Policehttp://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1012923

(India) 1993 Bombings Conviction: Bollywood star Dutt released on bailhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_en_mo/india_dutt_trial_1;_ylt=Ai9uJZsujOqxPvVDt4fLoqRA7AkB

(India) Two arrested for Naxal links from Govandihttp://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/FullcoverageStoryPage.aspx?id=809d55a5-37e0-4a96-9b51-17448c750817Indiawounded_Special&&Headline=Two+arrested+for+naxal+links

Yemen arrests 3 suspects in July terrorist attack on Spanish touristshttp://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/19/africa/ME-GEN-Yemen-Terror-Arrests.php

Somalia: Roadside Bomb Blast Wounds Three in Mogadishuhttp://allafrica.com/stories/200708200580.html

Somali elder shot deadhttp://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22272503-23109,00.html

(Somalia) Aid agency: Violence in Somali capital forces doctors, patients to stay homehttp://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/20/africa/AF-GEN-Somalia.php

(Egypt) Four Islamists sentenced to 25 years in prison for 2005 Cairo bombshttp://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1345288.php/Four_Islamists_sentenced_to_25_years_in_prison_for_2005_Cairo_bombs

(Bahrain) Two terror suspects freedhttp://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=191100&Sn=BNEW&IssueID=30153

Lebanon: 2 troops die; army drops bombs on camphttp://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187502423310&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Lebanon soldier killed as siege enters fourth monthhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070820/wl_mideast_afp/lebanonunrest_070820112930;_ylt=AiUi_SIkIR_51b7TbL.H5JHagGIB

'Hamas has formed West Bank cells'http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187502417353&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

West Bank 'could soon fall to Hamas' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=GG5R2DN5RXACFQFIQMGCFFWAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2007/08/20/wmid120.xml

Hamas's approach to jihad: Start 'em younghttp://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070820/ts_csm/ojihadbee

(Gaza) EU cuts funding to Gaza planthttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians_3;_ylt=AgRqYpLNHjE93RGy7WO6ghvuyucA

(Israel) Amnesty agreement result: Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group will not disarm or cease attacks (my title)http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57234

(Israel) Two Kassam rockets fired into the western Negevhttp://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1187502423838&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

(Ohio) Report: Hilliard Man Shares a Moment with Global Terrorist Yousef Al-Qaradawi http://ohioagainstterror.blogspot.com/2007/08/hilliard-man-shares-moment-with-global.html

(U.S. - Oregon) New nuclear terror drill sparks conspiracy scarehttp://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57213

Iran says 12 hostages freed in Pakistanhttp://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/August/middleeast_August211.xml§ion=middleeast&col=

Iran wants IAEA to highlight atomic cooperationhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070820/wl_nm/iran_nuclear_dc_1;_ylt=AnAGnAM08n3aS5QPVsHzWdhSw60A

(Iran) Commentary: Hitting Tehran where it hurtshttp://washingtontimes.com/article/20070820/EDITORIAL/108200003/1013

Australian court to decide on Haneef's work visa appealhttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Court_to_decide_on_Haneefs_work_visa/articleshow/2294585.cms

(UK) Glasgow Bomber Kafeel Ahmed had sent email wanting martyrdomhttp://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/FullcoverageStoryPage.aspx?id=ecd61192-8c93-4ab7-b493-77a947925c6cindiandocsinukterrorplot_Special&&Headline=Kafeel+had+sent+email+wanting+martyrdom

(UK) Final email of Glasgow airport bomber: 'I want to die for Allah'http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=476492&in_page_id=1770

(UK) Terror suspect's family claims he was tortured by Spanish policehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrights/story/0,,2152471,00.html

UK more suspicious of Muslims than America and rest of EUhttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8fb36962-4eb5-11dc-85e7-0000779fd2ac.html

(UK) Britain: Population 'more suspicious' of Muslimshttp://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.1217124093

(UK) A third of Britons believe: 'You can't be British AND Muslim'http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=476542&in_page_id=1770&ito=newsnow

Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamist propaganda on YouTube -- updatehttp://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22272200-2,00.html?from=public_rss

Malaysia frees 4 Islamic terror suspects held without trial, rights group sayshttp://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/20/asia/AS-GEN-Malaysia-Militant-Suspects.php

(Thailand) Soldier, villager wounded in South blasthttp://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/previousdetail.php?id=120972

Philippines: Summit between govt. and Muslim rebels 'cancelled'http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=1.0.1217163499

(Philippines) Terrorists hit back in Philippineshttp://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22271933-31477,00.html

(Sri Lanka) Five dead in Sri Lanka rebel attackhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070820/wl_sthasia_afp/srilankaunrest_070820103950;_ylt=AlJglIgKCtYQqe0KHrFsAwotM8oA

(New Zealand) Police investigate Christchurch bomb scarehttp://www.stuff.co.nz/4171666a10.html

(Columbia) Chavez to visit Colombia to push for hostage swaphttp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070818/wl_nm/colombia_hostages_chavez_dc_1;_ylt=ApzEVHDbEKWjCQLf1uniwyiwv7kA

Survival skills for an era of terrorismhttp://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/wellbeing/story/0,,2152315,00.html

Analysis: Emerging maritime security nethttp://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070820/COMMENTARY/108200020

(Spain) American anarchist faces charges in Spainhttp://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=81&story_id=43031

Other News:

Stop the NYC madrassa - by Daniel Pipeshttp://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1186557457251&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Italy: New mosque to open in Rome next to churchhttp://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.1217165774

(Netherlands) Wilders won't talk with Muslim Councilhttp://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=43016

(U.S.) CAIR Says ADL Seeks to Hinder Legal Rights of U.S. Muslimshttp://newsblaze.com/story/20070817162530tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html

(UK) Terror victims are BBC licence-payers, toohttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/08/20/dl2001.xml

Belgium: Speaking Dutchhttp://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/08/belgium-speaking-dutch.html

Norway: Interest in interest-free bankshttp://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/08/norway-interest-in-interest-free-banks.html

PUTIN BRINGING BACK BOLSHEVIK REPRESSION

At first blush it would seem a typical case of Russian President Vladimir Putin dipping into the Old Bolshevik’s Playbook — just another example of Life imitating Marx. But in today’s Russia, things are seldom what they seem.

Alan note: If you go through recent articles on this site, you will see that the Islamists are using repression and threats and murder to force themselves upon the rest of us.

Drug dealers and other gangs like the MS 13 use murder to induce and enforce their imposition on society.

Now Vladimir Putin is dragging Russia back into the Soviet era. ALL AROUND US, specially with the Islamic REVERSE CRUSADE we are sinking into the mire of the Dark Ages instead of moving forward into a Brave New World.

Even centers of mostly civilized behavior and mind sets like Europe and the USA are being dragged into the mud of the pig pens that are mushrooming up in the name of mindless liberalism and blame America first self-destructive, without common sense activities.

Islamism and ethnic racist, societal competition within slivers of our populace simply intensify the madness we face. In Iran, in Iraq, in Syria, in Palestinian territory, in Lebanon and in neighborhoods in Paris and England.

Putin has been keeping a low profile but he is a Soviet in every fibre of his being. With so much chaotic death and destruction, supression of freedoms, he must be feeling he can allow himself to be himself again.

Take the case of Larisa Arap. Ms. Arap, 49, is a journalist and, for the past six weeks, an inmate of a psychiatric clinic in the northwestern cities of Murmansk (the world’s largest city north of the Arctic Circle) and Apatiti.

On July 5, 2007, Ms. Arap appeared for her annual physical, a requirement for renewing one’s driver’s license. It was during the exam that Dr. Marina Rekish discovered that her patient was the author of a newspaper story titled “Madhouse” that alleged child abuse and other barbarisms at the Murmansk Regional Psychiatric Hospital.

Dr. Rekish immediately telephoned police who arrived minutes later —dressed in combat fatigues — and dragged the reporter to the hospital’s psychiatric unit where she has remained under “doctors’ care” ever since.

Both opposition leader and former chess champ Garry Kasparov and the chair of Russia’s Independent Psychiatric Association, Dr. Vladimir Prokudin, charge that Ms. Arap’s confinement is retribution for her investigative piece.

The hospital’s chief medical officer Yevgeny Yenin dismissed any link between Arap’s piece and her confinement. He then violated his patient’s privacy rights by revealing that Ms. Arap had been committed once before.

(Arap’s husband acknowledged that his wife had been in a psych unit for two weeks in 2004 for stress. It was during this stay that she witnessed the abuses detailed in her story.)

Soon after her arrest a Murmansk judge — acting on the recommendation of local authorities — declared the reporter to be “a danger to herself and others,” a view challenged by an account Arap’s daughter gave to the Chicago Tribune.

“One of the doctors asked whether I thought it was normal to write such things,” Taisiya Arap told the Trib. “[The doctor] said, ‘It’s not possible to write such things. It’s forbidden.’” Doctors also told Taisiya Arap that her mother needed “long term treatment and might never leave the clinic,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.

When not investigating allegations of child abuse by medical professionals, Arap is a member of Kasparov’s opposition United Civil Front. Following Arap’s arrest, Kasparov told the Independent

Indeed, Ms. Arap’s detention recalls a time not so long ago when all Soviet dissidents were regarded as being of unsound mind, since “no sane person would declaim against Soviet government and communism,” and paranoia was defined as the obsession with “the struggle for truth and justice.”

It was an effective and convenient way of silencing dissidents for institutionalization not only descredited their ideas, it broke them physically and mentally. “Treatment” often involved electric shocks, narcotics, beatings, isolation and torturous and unnecessary medical procedures like spinal taps.

Patients were frequently doped into submission for years at a time. Whether this was more humane than summary execution or exile to labor camps in Siberia or Kazakhstan is a matter of debate.

One of those who served time both in a gulag and a mental hospital, Vladimir Bukovsky, told the Tribune that “as far as the current lot in power is concerned using psychiatry for political purposes is a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with opponents...you don’t have to hire a killer.

” Such retro behavior is only to be expected, the director of Moscow’s Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations Oleg Panfilov told the Independent. “When there are KGB officers in the government, they restore what there was during the Soviet era: propaganda, censorship, and repression.”

(That an organization called the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations is necessary says all one needs to know about freedom of the press in Russia.)

Sadly Ms. Arap’s case is not unique. The Tribune has documented two similar episodes — one of lawyer Marina Trutko, another of businessman Roman Lukin, both recently committed to psychiatric hospitals for human rights activities.

These days it is no easy thing to completely isolate so-called mental patients, and a few officials have been able to meet with Ms. Arap, including Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin, and three members of the Independent Psychiatric Association.

The latter examined Arap and pronounced her to be of sound mind, though suffering from the effects of her confinement, maltreatment and her second hunger strike. The psychiatrists called for her immediate release.

Is this a case of a local medical mafia unable to shake its Soviet-era mindset and therefore taking the law into its own hands, or a thuggish government reverting to Stalinist tactics to silence and discredit the opposition? What do you want to bet it is, “All of the Above”? — that anyone can be forcibly detained “if you attack the interests of the local Gazprom, the local military base, or the local medical mafia.

Attacking the interests of local bureaucrats is a terrible risk, because they don’t stop at anything to get their own back.”

It’s worthy of note the Russia Profile, the Kremlin’s slavishly insidious propaganda blog, has stated: “Larisa Arap is not a journalist, and in contradiction to what has been widely reported, did not write the article in question. She is an accountant at the Murmansk office of the United Civil Front, and was quoted at length in an article written by a journalist named Ilona Novikova entitled ‘Madhouse’ and published in a special edition of a local opposition newspaper titled ‘Dissenters March.’

” This is really pathetic propaganda. Everyone associated with the opposition groups in Russia has a day job because there isn’t enough money to pay them. That doesn’t mean she’s not a journalist, and it’s been made quite clear that Arap was the de facto author of the piece in question, though she was presented as a source by the nominal writer.

Russia Profile also seeks to smear Arap by stating: “It seems that Ms. Arap does have a history of psychiatric problems.” It doesn’t give one single shred of evidence to back up this claim, and the fact that Ms. Arap had “psychiatric problems” at some point in her life has nothing whatsoever to do with whether there were grounds to incarcerate her.

Shame on Russia Profile for this unsourced smear, and shame on all those associated with it!

But it’s also worthy of note that not even Russia Profile can completely deny the horror of this situation, though it does it all it can to minimize it. RP itself admits that Russia’s human rights Czar has examined the situation, found the detention totally bogus, and declared: “This woman is a member of the United Civil Front and as such was able to get international attention,” said Savenko.

“But there are many other cases that are even more disturbing that have not made it to the public domain. We are on the verge of a wide-scale misuse of psychiatry for non-medical grounds that is reminiscent of Soviet times.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists has written to “President” Putin to demand Arap’s release:

August 14, 2007
His Excellency Vladimir PutinPresident of the Russian FederationThe KremlinMoscow, Russia
Via Facsimile: 011 7 495 206 5137/206 6277

Your Excellency,

The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply disturbed by the illegal psychiatric confinement in the northern city of Apatity of opposition activist Larisa Arap. Arap’s forced hospitalization on July 5 came soon after the publication of a story she coauthored on the treatment of patients at the Murmansk regional psychiatric hospital in Apatity—the same hospital where she is being held today.

On June 8, the Murmansk edition of the opposition newspaper Marsh Nesoglasnykh (Dissenters’ March)—the organ of the opposition coalition United Civic Front (OGF), led by Garry Kasparov—published Arap’s story. Titled “Durdom” (“Madhouse”), it described how harsh medical practices, such as the use of electroshock therapy, were reportedly used in treating children and adolescents at Apatity.

On July 5, Arap went to a local clinic in Severomorsk to receive the results of a medical checkup she had undergone a month earlier as a requirement to renew her driver’s license. What was intended as a routine doctor’s visit turned into a 40-day nightmare. Her doctor, Marina Rekish, who had issued a certificate for Arap a year earlier, asked her whether she was the author of “Durdom.”

When Arap confirmed that she was indeed the author, Rekish told her to wait outside. After some time, the doctor returned with several police officers who detained Arap until an ambulance arrived. Arap was taken to a Murmansk hospital where she was injected with drugs that weakened her, caused her tongue to swell, blurred her vision, and affected her balance, according to relatives who visited her at the hospital.

On July 7, when Arap’s husband, Dmitry, and daughter, Taisiya, were allowed to visit her at the hospital, Arap complained that the medical personnel had tied her to her bed and beat her. To protest the treatment, Arap went on a five-day hunger strike on July 9.

Yelena Vasilyeva, chairwoman of the Murmansk branch of OGF and Arap’s trustee, told the Russian press that Arap feared doctors were drugging her meals.

It was not until July 18 that a Murmansk district court officially sanctioned Arap’s hospitalization, meaning her 13-day detention had been illegal. The court upheld an appeal by the hospital holding Arap and ignored entreaties from her relatives and colleagues who pointed out that she was not a danger to herself or people around her.

Despite protests from local and international opposition and human rights activists, authorities continued to hold Arap and medicate her without her diagnosis.

Doctors have also refused to give her diagnosis to her family, lawyer, and trustee. On July 26, the 49-year-old Arap was taken to the Murmansk regional psychiatric hospital in Apatity—the place she described in “Durdom.”

The city of Apatity is about 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of Murmansk, and the hospital is outside city limits in a forested area. Mental patients housed there are considered a danger to themselves and those around them.

On July 31, during a visit to Arap at Apatity, doctors openly asked Vasilyeva whether her coalition, OGF, was afraid of publishing an article like Arap’s “Durdom.” Arap is still being held at the hospital.

Responding to local and international protests, the Russian Ombudsman for Human Rights Vladimir Lukin commissioned an independent psychiatric evaluation of Arap.

Yesterday, Yuri Savenko, president of the Independent Psychiatric Association, concluded that Arap has been illegally hospitalized, the Interfax news agency reported. “Larisa Arap has been put in a clinic by force, rudely, and without any grounds,” Savenko told Interfax. “This style, which is typical of the Soviet times—to protect the state and not the person—is used by inertia,” Savenko was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, local sources told CPJ that Larisa Arap’s daughter, Taisiya, was fired from her job at a Murmansk bank last week. Her employers told her she had been giving too many interviews about her mother.

Your Excellency, the horrifying method of forcible psychiatric detention as punishment for dissent was a trademark of the Soviet past and has no place in a new, democratic Russia. We call on you to personally intervene in the case of Larisa Arap, who has been living a nightmare because she wrote a story that angered those same hospital authorities “treating” her now.

In view of yesterday’s expert conclusion by the Independent Psychiatric Association, we ask that Larisa Arap be immediately released and that a criminal investigation is opened against those responsible for her illegal detention and psychiatric treatment.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.

We await your reply.

Sincerely,
Joel SimonExecutive Director

ISLAMISTS & DRUG GANGS SUPPRESS OPPOSITION THE SAME WAY

LAREDO — The shadowy figure who directed a Texas hit squad from 2005 to 2006 had a much bigger job on his hands — breaking a rival drug cartel's murderous three-year siege of his territory in and around Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
He did it with ruthless efficiency. Residents of the Mexican border city have heard about Miguel Treviño Morales, nicknamed "El Cuarenta," or "40" — but they don't talk about him.

He was well known to Mexican law enforcement officials, too. Yet he never appeared on the "most wanted" lists of Mexico's federal or Tamaulipas state's attorney general's offices.

"No one mentions the name because they are afraid," said a former federal Mexican police officer from Nuevo Laredo.

Treviño is a high-ranking Gulf Cartel leader who ran its operations in Nuevo Laredo during a period of bloody conflict with its rival, the Sinaloa Cartel, authorities on the U.S. side say.

He operated as a "gatekeeper," keeping tabs on all drug shipments heading through the Nuevo Laredo area to Texas, said an analyst from Stratfor, an Austin-based intelligence analysis firm with business clients in the border area.

A cartel gatekeeper exacts a fee on all contraband flowing through a given area, nicknamed a "plaza." He bribes officials to help maintain control, and puts down challenges, the analyst said.

"If your job is to run the plaza, it is your job that nothing interferes with your shipments," the analyst said.

U.S. authorities, both federal and local, believe Treviño formed a hit squad to work in Laredo, which killed five people before it was stopped in 2006. But they also think he is responsible for dozens, perhaps scores, of killings in Mexico as he fought off a takeover attempt by the Sinaloa Cartel in Nuevo Laredo.

Laredo police have nine arrest warrants out for Treviño, five for murder and four for engaging in organized crime. The department is the only agency — on either side of the border — formally seeking his arrest.

Treviño, believed in his mid-30s, began his criminal career as a lackey for Los Tejas, one of two competing smuggling rings that operated in Nuevo Laredo before Gulf Cartel and its enforcement arm, Los Zetas, took over.

He was imprisoned in Nuevo Laredo at one point before the Zetas got him out to work for them, said the former Mexican officer, who for his own security requested anonymity.

"From there, he began to gain power within the organization," the former officer said. "He started as a hit man and rose to have as many as 80 men working for him. He became so powerful that he was put in charge of Nuevo Laredo."

Webb County Assistant District Attorney Jesse Guillen, who prosecuted the murder cases stemming from the hit squad, compared Treviño to Lord Voldemort, an evil wizard in the Harry Potter series known as "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," saying he invokes the same kind of fear.

Local and state police in Nuevo Laredo declined to talk about Treviño or any drug cartel activity because fighting organized crime falls to the federal attorney general's office, or PGR by its Spanish acronym.

The PGR's Nuevo Laredo office said no one there was authorized to talk about its investigations.

Officials compare Treviño to Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez Villarreal, one of the Sinaloa Cartel's top lieutenants. Both are gatekeepers, but unlike Treviño, news media frequently cover Valdez and he has taken out full-page newspaper ads to defend himself.
Maybe Treviño has more discipline, observers said.

"The Zetas saw he was a person of strong character, whose heart wouldn't stop him from doing what needed to get done," the former Mexican officer said.

Investigators say Treviño is a dedicated businessman who doesn't drink, smoke or do drugs. The former Mexican officer disputed the last assertion.
But all agree he's feared.

"If I were talking about al-Qaida, this wouldn't be an issue," the Stratfor analyst said, explaining why he wanted anonymity. "But these guys are a little too close for comfort."

Any wonder the jihadists are establishing close ties with the drug gangs and also solidifying business partnerships to get extra cash for terrorist purposes. Birds of a feather?

LIST OF USA SANCTUARY CITIES

List of US Sanctuary Cities*

*Note: Not all listings have been independently confirmed by OJJPAC. If you believe a city should not be listed, please send an email, and OJJPAC will make note of the dispute and attempt to verify.

Dates represent when a city was added to the list, not when it became or allegedly became a sanctuary city. Other notations may indicate the source of information. Cities without a date were added prior to May, 2007. Some sanctuary cities may not have yet been identified and therefore not listed here. You are encouraged to perform additional research regarding the status of your own city.

Last updated: 8-14-07

State/City
Alabama

Note: False information appears to have been submitted to OJJPAC.org regarding the listing of Alabaster, AL.

As a result Alabaster, AL is being removed from the sanctuary city list.

Alaska

Anchorage (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service) Fairbanks (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service) [Mayor of Fairbanks disputes the listing. However, OJJPAC has verified the listing of Fairbanks, Alaska, as having a sanctuary policy by the Congressional Research Service in an 2005 report. OJJPAC has requested that the city administration forward its policy demonstrating that it is not a sanctuary city--but none has been forwarded as of 8-9-07.]

Arizona

Chandler, AZ (Added 5/30/07, Congressional Research Service Report, 2006 )
Phoenix, AZ

California

Bell Gardens, CA City of Industry, CA City of Commerce, CA Cypress, CA Davis CA Diamond Bar, CA (6/26/07 Disputed by city. Currently being researched to verify.) Downey, CA Fresno, CA (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service) Lakewood, CA Los Angeles, CA (Congressional Research Service) Long Beach, CA Lynwood, CA Maywood, CA Montebello, CA National City, CA Norwalk, CA Paramount, CA Pico Rivera, CA So. Gate, CA San Bernardino, Ca. (Added 6/7/07, reader submitted) San Diego, CA (Congressional Research Service) Santa Cruz, CA (Added 5/30/07, documented by KSBW news) San Francisco, CA (Congressional Research Service) San Jose, CA (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service) Sonoma County, CA (Congressional Research Service) Vernon, CA Watsonville, CA (Added 5/30/07, documented by KSBW news) Wilmington, CA

Colorado
Aurora, CO Commerce City, CO Denver, CO (Congressional
Research Service) Durango, CO (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service) Federal Heights, CO Fort Collins CO Lafayette, CO (Added 6/3/07, documented by reader) Thornton, CO Westminster, CO Connecticut

New Haven, CT (Added 6/4/07. TV News 8: City council votes 25-1 to issue ID cards to illegals)
Springfield CT (Disputed)

Florida
DeLeon Springs, FL
Deltona, Fl
Miami, FL Sanford, Fl (7-23-07. Listing disputed by City of Sanford, under review.)

Georgia
Dalton, GA (Added 5/30/07. 6/18/07 Listing disputed as inaccurate by the City of Dalton, GA. Currently being researched. )

Illinois
Chicago, IL (Congressional Research Service) Cicero, IL (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service) Evanston, IL (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service)

Massachusetts
Cambridge, Mass. (Source: Boston Globe. First passed resolution in 1985) Chelsea, Mass. (Added: 8-14-07 Source: Chelsea government website with text of sanctuary policy.) Orleans, Mass. (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service)

Maine
Portland (Added 5/31/07 Note: Maine resident reported that Portland city council passed sanctuary legislation) State of Maine (Added 5/31/07 Note: Maine resident reported that the governor signed a sanctuary executive order)

Maryland
Baltimore, MD (Congressional Research Service) Gaithersburg, MD Takoma Park, MD (Reported that City ordinance passed some 20 years ago; Congressional Research Service)

Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service)
Detroit, MI (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service)

Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN (Congressional Research Service) St. Paul, MN Worthington, MN (Added 5-30-07 Note: This is where a Swift plant was raided by ICE in December, 2006)

Nevada
Reno (Added 5-31-07)

New Jersey
Bridgeton, NJ (Added 6-3-07) [7-27-07 Disputed by a reputed farm worker advocate, see note below.]
Camden, NJ Fort Lee, NJ Hightstown, NJ (Added 5-30-07) Jersey City, NJ Newark, NJ (Added 6-3-07) North Bergen, NJ Trenton, NJ Union City, NJ West New York, NJ

New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service; 8-14-07 KOB-TV 4 Eyewitness News report)
Rio Ariba County, NM (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service)
Santa Fe, NM (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service)

New York
Bay Shore, NY Brentwood, NY Central Islip, NY Farmingville, NY New York City, NY Peekskill, NY [Disputed, being researched] Riverhead, NY Shirly/Mastic, NY Spring Valley Village, NY (Added 7-25-07) Uniondale, NY Westbury, NY

North Carolina
Charlotte, NC Durham, NC (6/13/07 Congressional Research Service) Raleigh Winston-Salem Ohio
Columbus, OH (7/5/07 Source: 5/10/07 Columbus Dispatch article stating illegal aliens in misdemeanor cases are not reported to ICE) Painesville, OH (7-19-07 Source: 7-18-07 Cleveland Scene article) [8-9-07 Disputed by Painesville's City Manager, under review.]

Oklahoma
Oklahoma City (de facto)
Tulsa (6-3-07 Note: Tulsa city council is discussing changing its sanctuary policy.)

Oregon
State of Oregon * (8-9-07 Congressional Research Service) *(See note below)
Ashland, OR (8-9-07 Congressional Research Service) Gaston, OR (8-9-07 Congressional Research Service) Marion County, OR (8-9-07 Congressional Research Service) Portland, OR

Texas
Austin, TX (Congressional Research Service) Baytown, TX (6-13-07 Local reader observation) Brownsville, TX Channelview, TX (6-13-07 Local reader observation) Denton, TX Dallas, TX El Cenizo, TX (6-13-07 Congressional Research Service) Ft.Worth, TX Houston, TX (Congressional Research Service) Katy, TX (Congressional Research Service) Laredo, TX Mcallen, TX Port Arthur, TX (6-13-07 Reader/resident observation) San Antonio, TX [Note: The Sanctuary status of San Antonio is disputed, being researched.]
Utah
Provo, UT
Salt Lake City, UT

Virginia
Fairfax County, VA
Virginia Beach, VA (Added 6/3/07)

Washington
Seattle, WA (Added 5/30/07; Congressional Research Service)

Wisconsin
Madison, WI (Congressional Research Service)

Wyoming
Jackson Hole, WY

Washington, D.C.
Watch List Cities (Cities considering sanctuary policies)

Note: This is a new list started 8-14-07

Worcester, MASS (Source: 8-14-07 Worcester Telegram)
Sanctuary Cities, USA: Additional Notes

State of Oregon
According to a CRS report (October, 2005), Oregon passed a law in 1987 that prohibits local and state law enforcement from using state resources for locating and capturing illegal aliens. Law enforcement was permitted [but not required] to "exchange information" with federal immigration agents if an illegal alien was arrested for a crime.

Bridgeton, NJ 7-27-07 Disputed by a reputed farm worker advocate who sent me this email:
"I just wanted to point out an inaccuracy on your website's listing of sanctuary cities. You have Bridgeton, NJ listed as a sanctuary city, and indeed it is most definitely not. I work with CATA - The Farmworkers' Support committee (www.cata-farmworkers.org) and we have an organized group of membership in this town. One of our goals is working towards making Bridgeton an sanctuary city, but the local government is quite unfriendly towards the immigrant population, and the mayor has even hinted at wanting to implement a Hazleton type of ordinance (luckily, given yesterday's legal decision, that won't be happening)."

Columbus, OH
The Columbus Dispatch [Ohio] wrote:
"The police didn't contact immigration authorities concerning those who were determined to be undocumented, Booth said. Authorities say that's typical when it comes to misdemeanor charges." [Columbus, Ohio]

Painesville, OH
Cleveland Scene (7-18-07) quotes the Painesville Police Chief Gary Smith:
***He [Police Chief Gary Smith] has no qualms about laying out his indifference in plain English: "We don't care what your [immigration] status is." ***

Oklahoma City, OK
One reader wrote about Oklahoma City:
Oklahoma City is a sanctuary city de facto. Police officers have been told not to stop any Hispanic for minor traffic violations, because they have a good chance of being illegal and it is a waste of time. The City has not been enforcing City Code if the recipient of the code violation doesn't speak English. And is not attempting to enforce the single-family dwelling laws.

ARREST WARRANT FOR SADDAM'S DAUGHTER

Interpol issues arrest warrant against Saddam’s daughter

Baghdad - Voices of Iraq Friday , 17 /08 /2007 Time 6:00:51

Baghdad, Aug 17, (VOI) – Interpol issued an arrest warrant against Raghad, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s daughter, upon a request from the Iraqi government.

“Raghad Saddam Hussein al-Majid, 38, is wanted by the Iraqi government on several charges of terrorism and crimes against innocent people,” according to a statement published on Interpol’s official web site and received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

The site called on anyone who has information about Raghad’s whereabouts to report to the local police station in their city. Raghad lives in exile outside Iraq, with her children in the Jordanian capital Amman, hosted by the Hashemite royal family.

The last time she was seen publicly was during a popular rally at the professional syndicates compound in Amman to protest the execution of her father on December 31, 2006.

MOSLEM MAFIA HIDING BEHIND "RELIGION"

A Muslim 'Mafia'?

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Homeland Security: Forget everything you've been told about "moderate" Muslim groups in America. New evidence that U.S. prosecutors have revealed at a major terror trial exposes the facade.

Related Topics: Global War On Terror Religion

Exhibit No. 003-0085 is the most chilling. Translated from Arabic by federal investigators in the case against the Holy Land Foundation, an alleged Hamas front, the secret document outlines a full-blown conspiracy by the major Muslim groups in America — all of which are considered "mainstream" by the media.

In fact, they are part of the "Ikhwan," or Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of Hamas, al-Qaida and other major Islamic terror groups. They have conspired to infiltrate American society with the purpose of undermining it and turning it into an Islamic state.

Check out this quote from Page 7 of the 1991 document:
"The Ikwhan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging their miserable house by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all religions."

Sounds like the latest screed from Osama bin Laden. But it comes from the Muslim establishment in America.

The secret plan lists several Saudi-backed Muslim groups as "friends" of the conspiracy.

They include the Islamic Society of North America — the umbrella organization — and the North American Islamic Trust, which controls most of the mosques in America and is the forerunner to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, this country's most visible Muslim-rights group.

All three have been cited as unindicted co-conspirators in the case, with all three sharing membership in the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet all have claimed, in the wake of 9/11, to be moderate, even patriotic.

Another exhibit reveals their plan to create innocuous-sounding "front groups" to hide their radical agenda.

Many in the media and politics have fallen for their deception and helped bring them into the mainstream.

Now everyone knows the truth.

The Muslim establishment that publicly decries the radical fringe — represented by Hamas and al-Qaida — may actually be a part of it. The only difference is that they use words and money instead of bombs to accomplish their subversive goals.

Over the past two decades they have constructed, with Saudi money, an elaborate infrastructure of support for the bad guys — right under our noses.

They even brag about putting "beehives" (Islamic centers) in every major city.

These exhibits — which so far have been ignored by major media outside the Dallas area, where the trial is under way — completely blow the mainstream Muslim NGOs' cover as pro-American moderates. Many, if not most, aren't.

This is their real agenda, spelled out in black and white. It should help investigators build a RICO case to dismantle the entire terror-support network in America.

Many have suspected it, but now we have proof that there is a secret underworld operating inside America under the cover of fronts with legitimate-sounding names.

It even uses charities to launder money for violent hits on enemies. It's highly organized, with its own internal bylaws and security to avoid monitoring from law enforcement.

Sounds like the Mafia.

But unlike the mob, this syndicate is religious in nature and protected by political correctness.

More evidence like this should put an end to such nonsense.

STOP CHILD EXECUTIONS

Children's Rights: A Historical Perspective

By: D.W. Duke

It is perhaps ironic that Iran, a nation whose government is one of the worst violators of human rights in modern times, was actually the birthplace of a document many historians consider to have been the first charter on human rights. Written by Cyrus the Great, King of Iran in 539 BCE, the charter was discovered in 1878 in Babylon and was published by the United Nations in 1971.

Even by today's standards the document expresses some of the most advanced concepts of humanitarian law. The following is an excerpt from this amazing writing. (Note that Cyrus the Great believed that he would eventually become King of Persia forever.

So although he was already crowned king, he refers to a time from his crowning until the time that he would receive his permanent kingdom.) "Now that I put the crown of kingdom of Iran, Babylon, and the nations of the four directions on the head with the help of (Ahura) Mazda, I announce that I will respect the traditions, customs and religions of the nations of my empire and never let any of my governors and subordinates look down on or insult them until I am alive.

From now on, till (Ahura) Mazda grants me the kingdom favor, I will impose my monarchy on no nation. Each is free to accept it, and if any one of them rejects it, I never resolve on war to reign. Until I am the king of Iran, Babylon, and the nations of the four directions, I never let anyone oppress any others, and if it occurs, I will take his or her right back and penalize the oppressor.

And until I am the monarch, I will never let anyone take possession of movable and landed properties of the others by force or without compensation. Until I am alive, I prevent unpaid, forced labor.

Today, I announce that everyone is free to choose a religion.

People are free to live in all regions and take up a job provided that they never violate other's rights.No one could be penalized for his or her relatives' faults. I prevent slavery and my governors and subordinates are obliged to prohibit exchanging men and women as slaves within their own ruling domains. Such a traditions should be exterminated the world over.

I implore to (Ahura) Mazda to make me succeed in fulfilling my obligations to the nations of Iran (Persia), Babylon, and the ones of the four directions."

Despite this expression of human rights over 2500 years ago, the idea of humanitarian law did not begin to find acceptance in international law until the last century. Prior to that time, international law concerned elationships between nations and individual human rights were the exclusively the subject of national interest and not international law.

Thus, for centuries the view in the free world was that human rights violations occurring in another nation were exclusively the concern of that nation, and there should be no interference with a overeign nation in the manner in which it treats its citizens.International law began to recognize human rights in the early part of the 20th Century, but it wasn't until the horrific tragedies of the Holocaust that governments of the free world began to realize that there are certainsituations where free nations may be required to step forward to protect the rights of citizens against abuses by their own government.

This view had been expressed Hugo Grotius and other scholars in the 17th Century buthad not been widely accepted as a legitimate view of international law until WWII. During this war citizens of the world began to recognize a responsibility to help others who suffer under totalitarian regimes and international law finally began to focus on human rights with the prosecution of war criminals in the Nuremburg trials.

But even at this date, the free nations of the world are slow to take action against other nations where human rights violations occur. As a result, private citizens have been forced to take an active role in protecting the rights of those who suffer abuses of totalitarian regimes.The rights of children began to achieve international recognition in the early part of the 20th Century.

The first text addressing the rights of children in international law was adopted in 1924 when the League of Nations passed a resolution endorsing the Declaration of the Rights of the Child that was first promoted in 1923 as the NGO "Save the Children" campaign. This became known as the "Declaration of Geneva." In 1948 it formed the basis for the Declaration adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations and in 1959 became the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

The by-product of this agenda to protect the rights of children ultimately became the United Nations "Convention on the Rights of the Child." Widely heralded as an extraordinary product of human rights enthusiasts, the Convention received only a lukewarm reception in the United States. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the General Assembly on November 20, 1989.

As of this date only two nations of the world have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Those nations are the United States and Somalia.

Today the Stop Child Execution Campaign has taken up the fight to protect children from horrific abuses at the hand of modern totalitarian regimes. Sadly, the primary nation addressed by the Stop Child Executions Campaignis the same nation that was the birthplace of the charter written by Cyrus the Great discussed above.

Not only does the Islamic Republic of Iran routinely execute children for actions deemed to be capital offenses, which are often nothing more than holding a religious belief contrary to the official state religion of Islam as that religion is interpreted by this regime, but where the minor is a female virgin, the night before her execution she is raped by a prison guard.

The next day a cleric prepares a marriage certificate which is sent to the girl's family along with a box of candy, as a wedding gift, after the execution is completed.

This act of rape is committed by official decree of the Supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei and is designed to prevent the female fromgoing to heaven as a virgin.

It is reported that some of the minors executed in Iran have been under the age of 13 years at the time of their execution and one girl was only 10 years of age.

Due to international pressure Iran has begun a practice of detaining those sentenced to death until they reach the age of 18 years then carrying out the execution at that time. However, it is known that some minors arestill being executed before reaching the age of 18 as in the recent case of one of two persons executed for alleged homosexual activity, who was only 17 at the time of his execution. However, even where a minor convicted of a crime is executed after reaching the age of 18 years, the execution is still a violation of Article 37(a) of the United Nations "Convention on the Rights of the Child" which provides in pertinent part: .

"[No] capital punishment... shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age".

Iran is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child but refuses to abide by its terms and thus, is inviolation of international law.

Nazanin Afshin Jam and the "Stop Child Executions Campaign" have issued urgent pleas to all people of the world to denounce these horrendous atrocities and to raise a united voice in opposition to child executions in Iran and in every nation where such horrendous acts occur.

Please join in this important effort by signing the petition at www.stopchildexecutions.com.

Your voice is needed for many voices of children are crying.

FBI NEWS & INFO TOP 10 ENDING AUGUST 10th

Washington D.C.FBI National Press Office(202) 324-3691

FBI’s Top Ten StoriesFor the Week Ending August 10, 2007

1. Houston: Six Indicted for Health Care Fraud in Southeast Texas

Assessment Professionals submitted claims in the amount of $3,500,972.93 to Medicaid from September 2004 until August 2005 for individual and group therapeutic sessions to Medicaid-eligible adolescents for drug and alcohol abuse. Parties, complete with food and entertainment, were held in low-income neighborhoods and employees of Assessment Professionals would obtain the Medicaid numbers of the attendees. Progress notes were created and signed for each patient in order to make the billings appear legitimate. Full Story (links on site shown at end).

2. Portland: Final Sentencing Hearing Held in Case of Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF) for Acts of Eco-Terrorism in Five Western States

Ten defendants were sentenced for numerous arsons committed from 1996 through 2001 resulting in damages exceeding $40 million. The defendants acknowledge they and their group (known as “The Family”) sought to influence and affect the conduct of government, private business, and the civilian population through force, violence, sabotage, mass destruction, intimidation, and coercion. This is the largest case of environmental extremists ever prosecuted in the United States. Full Story

3. Phoenix: Former Public Officials Sentenced for Participating in Bribery and Extortion Conspiracy

Three additional defendants were sentenced as a result of an FBI undercover operation known as “Operation Lively Green” which began in December 2001. For the receipt of bribes, the defendants used their official positions to assist, protect, and participate in the activities of an illegal narcotics operation. To date, 35 defendants have been sentenced in connection with Operation Lively Green. Full Story

4. New Orleans: Sheriff and Others Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Avoyelles Parish Sheriff William O. Belt has been indicted for illegally pocketing the profits from telephone services provided at jails operated by the Sheriff’s Office. Beginning in 1988 and continuing to the present, Sheriff Belt, in exchange for his authorizing the operation of phone services by certain vendors, Belt, other family members, and businesses in which Belt had an ownership interest all received proceeds from those services. Full Story

5. New Haven: Online Piracy Ring Results in Sentence for Maryland Man

Jeffrey Lerman, sentenced on August 7th, was a prominent member of the “warez” group known as “Kalisto” and was responsible for releasing pirated copies of more than 500 well-known, copyrighted computer games. The FBI conducted the investigation as part of “Operation Higher Education,” the largest component of a global law enforcement action known as “Operation Fastlink,” a multi-national software piracy investigation. Full Story

6. San Antonio: FBI Recovers French Cultural Treasure Missing Since World War II

A rare Gastinne Renette hand-made carbine created by the famed French gunsmith, Gastinne Renette, was recovered in an undercover operation by local FBI agents and agents from the FBI’s Art Crime Team. The FBI’s Art Crime Team is the FBI’s 12-member rapid-deployment unit responsible for investigating cases involving cultural property and artwork. Full Story

7. San Diego: Army Soldier Indicted in Murder for Hire Plot

Thomas Ryan Knight was indicted for offenses arising from his use of interstate facilities in pursuing the commission of a murder for hire. Knight, enlisted member of the U.S. Army stationed at Fort Huachuca, used an encrypted Internet chat room to relay his desire to have a Fresno, CA resident kidnapped and murdered. Knight then met with an undercover detective and made arrangements for the hit. Full Story

8. Washington, D.C.: Former Treasurer of International Fraternity Sentenced to Prison in Connection with Bank Fraud

Terry Davis was sentenced to concurrent sentences of 51 months in prison for committing bank fraud and 24 months in prison for committing theft in the first degree and fraud in the first degree stemming from his theft of over $200,000 from the Phi Beta Sigma international fraternal organization’s bank account. Davis committed the offenses while serving as the elected national treasure of the fraternity, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C. Full Story

9. Baltimore: Gymnastics Teacher Sentenced To 6 ½ Years For Receiving Child Porn

Patrick Bogan was sentenced to 78 months in prison in one of the most significant child pornography cases ever prosecuted in Maryland due to the sheer volume of child pornography possessed by the defendant. At the time of his arrest, Bogan was employed as a gymnastics teacher at Baltimore County Gymnastics, working with children ages five to 15 years of age. Full Story

10. FBI Continues to Assist in Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Investigation

In continued support of the National Transportation Safety Board and State of Minnesota, the FBI’s Minneapolis Field Office provided Special Agents, its Evidence Response Team, and command post. In addition, the FBI has deployed Evidence Response Team (ERT) members from the FBI’s San Antonio, Pittsburgh, and Chicago Field Offices. Underwater Search Evidence Response Team (USERT) members from the Los Angeles, New York, and Washington Field Offices have also responded to the scene. Full Story

http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel07/topten_081007.htm

HEY HOLLAND! DON'T LIKE ISLAM? THE RELIGION OF PEACE? THEN DIE! DIE!

Death Threats Greet Dutch Lawmaker’s Call to Ban the KoranBy Patrick GoodenoughCNSNews.com International EditorAugust 10, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - A Dutch lawmaker under fire for urging that the Koranbebanned in his country says he will press ahead with the proposal, andsubmitit in the form of a parliamentary resolution next month.

Geert Wilders of the right-wing Freedom Party told Cybercast NewsServicethat since calling for a ban — in a letter published Wednesday in thenewspaper De Volkskrant — he had received death threats and criticism,“butfortunately also many positive responses from voters.”

In his letter, published under the headline “Enough is enough: Ban theKoran,” Wilders called the Koran a “fascist” text that has “no place inourconstitutional state.” He said some verses instruct Muslims “tooppress,persecute or kill Christians, Jews, dissidents and non-believers, tobeatand rape women and to establish an Islamic state by force.”

The Koran, like Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, should be banned in theNetherlands, he said.

The letter drew a swift response from the Dutch government. ElleVogelaar,the minister for integration and housing, called it “an insult to themajority of Muslims in the Netherlands and abroad who reject calls tohateand violence.”

“It has to be perfectly clear that banning the Holy Koran in theNetherlandsis not up for discussion for this government and will not be up fordiscussion in future,” she said.

Two lawyers have filed complaints against Wilders, accusing him of violatingDutch law with his statements.

The Iranian embassy in The Hague issued a statement urging Dutchpoliticiansto take a stand against forces threatening to divide society, and Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Wilders’ comments “reflect total ignorance of the substance of Islam and its precepts, applied by an overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world.”

Wilders, whose new party holds nine of the 150 seats in the country’s Second Chamber, the lower house of parliament, acknowledged that it would beanuphill battle to win majority support.

Even so, he told Cybercast News Service, “it is my duty as aparliamentarianto put forward ideas as I see them, both inside and outside parliament.Infact, we will have a parliamentary debate with the government in thebeginning of September and I will put forward my proposal in parliamentthanas well [in the form of a resolution].”

The Netherlands is believed to have the second-largest per-capitaMuslimpopulation in western Europe, after France. About six percent of thepopulation - one million out 16 million total - is Muslim, mostly ofTurkishand Moroccan origin.

The country, long renown for its liberalism, has grappled increasinglyinrecent years with radical Islam, and inter-communal tensions worsenedwhen aDutch-Moroccan extremist in 2004 shot and stabbed to death Theo VanGogh, acontroversial filmmaker critical of Islamism.

Other critics of Islam threatened with death include Somalia-born Dutchlawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who ultimately moved to the United States,andWilders himself.

Last weekend an Iranian-born Dutch politician who recently set up asupportgroup for people who have renounced Islam was violently attacked bythreeMuslims, although he was not hurt.

Ehsan Jami, whose advisor said itwas thethird such incident, is now under police protection. Apostasy ispunishableby death in some Muslim societies.

Wilders said it was the attack on Jami that prompted him to write hisletter.

“It’s terrible to see how naive and silent and politically correct theotherpolitical parties are about the biggest problem I believe theNetherlands,Europe and the West faces today, [Islamization],” he said.

Wilders expressed optimism, however, that the message was gettingthrough.He noted that his party won nine seats in parliament last November, butthatopinion polls today give it enough support to hold between 12 and 17seats.

“The battle certainly is not lost. I am sure many, many Dutch voterssharemy views,” Wilders said. “I will continue to fight.
Wilders’ Freedom Party is known for favoring restriction onimmigration,particularly from non-Western countries.

He has tried on several occasionsto have the wearing of the burqa outlawed, but without success.

Last month, integration minister Vogelaar caused a stir when she saidtheNetherlands should in the future be home to a “Judeo-Christian-Islamictradition.”

A Dutch-Moroccan group praised her for her “courage,” but otherpoliticiansobjected, and Wilders said the minister should resign.

In an opinion survey
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/16683

last week, 56 percent of Dutch adult respondents rejected Vogelaar’s remark.

The chairman of the country’s largest Muslim group, the Contact BodyforMuslims and Government, did not respond to invitations to comment forthisstory.

This is not the first time critics of Islam have called for the Koranto bebanned.

In 1985, a Hindu in India petitioned the Calcutta High Court to have the book banned in that country, arguing that it incited violence, promotedenmity between different religious communities, and denigrated thebeliefsof non-Muslim religions in India.

A footnote to the petition provided lists of Koranic suras that the applicant said insulted other religions, promoted hatred and incitedviolence. The court threw out the petition on a technicality, accordingtopublished accounts.

BRITISH TERROR LEVEL SEVERE

With Britain facing a ‘severe’ level of terror threat, Dispatches investigates the roots of Islamic extremism in the UK and examines the government’s attempts to win the battle for British Muslims’ hearts and minds

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/britain+under+attack/656252

Britain Under Attack

With Britain facing a ‘severe’ level of terror threat, Dispatches investigates the roots of Islamic extremism in the UK and examines the government’s attempts to win the battle for British Muslims’ hearts and minds.

Reporter Phil Rees, an expert on Islamist violence, explores the Koranic teachings that lie behind the concept of jihad and examines Muslim fury over Western foreign policy. He meets the clerics who justify and encourage attacks on British soil and analyses the government’s response - to de-politicise Islam and to silence radical views.

Haras Rafiq, a government advisor on preventing extremism, tells Rees that between 15 and 20 per cent of British Muslims sympathise with Islamic militancy. To understand why there appears to be so much support for taking up arms, Rees examines the fundamental tenets of Islam that lie behind global jihad - such as ‘Ummah’ - a notion of Islamic brotherhood which encourages Muslims to act on behalf of one another - which can cause conflict with notions of patriotism.

Former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg who travelled to Bosnia and Afghanistan to help fellow Muslims and took up arms, tells Rees that Ummah is more powerful than the bond of nationhood. “Faith identity is much stronger because it’s based on a belief whereas the national identity is one that’s based on geography and where you happen to be born.”

Shahid Butt, who fought as a jihadist fighter in Bosnia describes the Ummah as an integral part of Islam, he says: “Telling Muslims to take the Ummah out is like asking me to cut my heart out of my body...Defending another Muslim is a compulsory act in Islam. You have to do it...if somebody came to my house and kicked the door down and tried to attack my family I’m gonna go in the kitchen and get the knife and I’m gonna defend them.”

Another belief which is central to many Muslims living in the West is the ‘Covenant of Security’ which prevents Muslims from attacking their home nation if they are offered safety and freedom to pray. Rees visits an Islamic Centre in Luton where young men are taught to accept and honour the covenant. The teacher, Abdul Qadeer admits that persuading his congregation to reject more extremist interpretations is, “a fight for the minds.”

In stark contrast, Rees meets an Islamic scholar who believes the British government has broken this covenant through its foreign policy in the Middle East so attacks can be theologically justified. His extreme views have seen him barred from Britain but he still communicates to his followers in Britain via the internet. Rees examines how the government is responding to these debates within British Islam. He discovers that the widely accepted cause of militancy is radical preaching - ignoring the grounds for violence cited by the London bombers - the West’s foreign policy.

The government’s plans to combat extremism involve allocating millions of pounds to projects that nurture a non-violent, non-political Islam. But Rees discovers these projects have been met with suspicion by the Muslim community. Mufti Mohammed Zubair-Butt from the Institute of Islamic Jurisprudence in Bradford is critical of the new anti-extremist curriculum drawn up for schools in the city: “Is this a government initiative to make the Muslims pliant and just follow the government agenda and not question whatever they have to say?”

Rees concludes that government plans to tackle extremism which do not take into account the radicalising affect of its foreign policy and refuse to engage with its critics are unlikely to succeed - as long as aspects of Islam can be seen to justify violence when Muslims are under attack.
Media Articles Commenting on UK Channel 4 Dispatches “Britain Under Attack”
Channel 4 platform for radical who wants ‘war’

Daily Telegraph
August 7, 2007
By Duncan GardhamLast Updated: 2:14am BST 07/08/2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/07/ntv107.xml

Bosses at Channel 4 are under fire for offering a platform to an Islamic extremist who said he would be happy to be labelled a terrorist and called on fellow Muslims to arm themselves against non-believers.

Using the name “Abu Muhammed”, the man was interviewed with his features disguised by a scarf as he claimed British Muslims were “at war” with the government and said the July 7 bombings were “very justified’’.

The man is banned from entering Britain, but has held meetings here in the past and maintains contact with other radicals through a website he runs.
Interviewed in an unnamed European location, he told the Dispatches programme that Britain was waging a “war against Islam” and that retaliation was justified.

“A Muslim in the UK should realise that we are in a state of war and that the covenant [of security] has been broken by the British government and its Western allies,” he said.

“They want to kill you unless you turn back from your faith.”
Asked by interviewer Phil Rees if the July 7 suicide attacks that killed 52 people were justified, he said: “Of course, it was very justified because Allah says if someone is committing aggression against you, you commit aggression towards him. “

He also said: “Even if you need to deceive the British government and get a visa to get into the country to perform your duties as a Muslim.

“If Allah orders us to terrorise the kuffar [non-believer] and I am doing something that will be labelled as terrorising them then I will be happy to have a label on my forehead that says I am a terrorist.”

Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo detainee, said he supported fighting British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Saudi dissident Muhammad al-Massari, who runs an extremist website from London, said it was a ‘’weighty’’ justification for July 7.

Anjem Choudary, a former leader of the group al-Muhajiroun, said: “For every action you need to look at the evidence. It’s not for me to say if it’s justifiable.”
Channel 4 said yesterday: “The interview is featured as part of a balanced examination of the roots of Islamic extremism in the UK.

The investigation also features moderate voices from within the Muslim community which reject the more violent interpretations of Islam.

The inclusion of the interview is important as ‘’’Abu Muhammed’ still communicates to followers in Britain via the internet”.

Mr Rees said: ‘’Muslims can get hold of this sort of thing over the internet and where they feel they don’t have a voice they are pushed into violence.
“We should feel our civilisation is strong enough to counter these beliefs.”

Channel 4’s The Mark of Cain, in which mocked-up scenes showed troops abusing Iraqi captives, was criticised by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, who said it handed a publicity coup to insurgents.

Channel 4 under fire for letting Muslim extremist defend 7/7
By SIMON CABLE09:44am on 7th August 2007
The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=473694&in_page_id=1770

Channel Four has defended itself after it broadcast an interview with a Muslim extremist who justified the London bombings and claimed Britain was waging “a war against Islam”.

Company bosses have been questioned over their decision to give a platform to Abu Muhammed, who has already been banned from entering Britain.
In a report for the Dispatches programme on Monday night, Muhammed - who had his features disguised by a scarf - was interviewed by Phil Rees.

Calling on fellow Muslims to retaliate against “non-believers”, he said the July 7 suicide attacks that killed 52 people two years ago was justified.
“Of course, it was very justified because Allah says if someone is committing aggression against you, commit aggression towards him.”

Interviewed in an unknown European location, he said: “Even if you need to deceive the British government and get a visa to get into the country to perform your duties as a Muslim.

“If Allah orders us to terrorise the kuffar (non-believer) and I am doing something that will be labelled as terrorising them then I will be happy to have a label on my head that says I am a terrorist.”

Channel 4 said the interview was a balanced report of Islamic extremism in the UK which also featured more moderate Muslim voices condemning Islamic violence.
Mr Rees said: “Muslims can get hold of the this sort of thing over the internet and where they don’t feel they have a voice they are pushed into violence.

“We should feel our civilisation is strong enough to counter these beliefs.”
Earlier this year Channel 4’s The Mark of Cain, in which mocked-up scenes showed troops abusing Iraqi captives, was criticised by Defence Secretary Des Browne, who said it handed a publicity coup to insurgents.

BANNED IN BRITAIN, BUT EVIL FANATIC IS ALLOWED TO RANT ON OUR TV SCREENS
Daily Express
Tuesday August 7,2007By Macer Hall, Political Editor
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/15803/Banned-in-Britain,-but-evil-fanatic-is-allowed-to-rant-on-our-TV-screens

CHANNEL 4 Television provoked outrage last night by broadcasting an Islamic extremist openly supporting terror attacks in Britain.
The Dispatches documentary showed the fanatic — who is said to be banned from Britain — applauding the 7/7 bombings in London and calling for British Muslims to “arm themselves.”

Programme-makers that claimed that the interview with the man, named as “Abu Muhammed”, was part of “a balanced examination of the roots of Islamic extremism in the UK.”

But MPs were furious that an extremist promoting violence was given TV time for his views.

Tory David Davies said: “This man must never be allowed to appear ranting on our television screens again.”

Fellow-Tory MP Philip Davies, a member of the Commons Media and Culture Committee, said: “It is appalling that an extremist like this should be given a free platform to express his obnoxious views.

“Of course, viewers can always reach for the off button, but broadcasters should give more careful consideration to what is right and decent.”

The programme, Britain Under Attack, was shown at eight o’clock last night. It included a range of views from both moderate and radical Muslims. But the remarks of Abu Muhammed were likely to cause most offence.

He appeared on camera with his face hidden by a headscarf: the programme made it clear that Abu Muhammed is not his real name. It also said the man is banned from Britain for extremist activities and is closely linked to the Al Qaeda terrorists.

“A Muslim in the UK must realise that we are in a state of war and that covenant has been broken by the British Government,” Abu Muhammed told the programme. “There is no covenant at this point. We are in a state of war.”

The extremist claimed that the 7/7 attacks on the London transport system which claimed 52 people were “very justified”.

“Allah says if someone committed an aggression against you, you commit aggression against them. If somebody transgresses against you, transgress against them the same way,” he said.

He was said to have addressed small groups of radical Muslims at meetings in private homes in Britain, and to be spreading his views over the internet.
During the programme, he was shown attempting to use quotations from the Koran as justifying his view that Muslims cannot live peacefully alongside Christians and Jews.

“Allah is telling us forget it, don’t even entertain the idea of a covenant or entertain the idea that the war is against some bad people or some oil or some politics,” he said.

“It’s a war against Islam because they will never be satisfied until we meet one condition — to follow their own religion.”He added: “Now this one is more serious. They will never cease fighting — physical struggle — they want to kill you unless you turn back from your faith.”The man claimed that British Muslims need to arm themselves against the threat of unbelievers — “Kaffir” — entering their homes.

He went on: “They need to arm themselves to prevent the kaffir coming into their home terrorising their families, frightening their children. We will lose people, we will have many people arrested. We will have many people living in hardship but that is part of the price to pay.

“They must arm themselves to make it known that you are not going to come to my home and terrify my family. I’m not going to sit there, if I’m going down, I’m taking you down with me.”

Tory David Davies called the documentary “disgraceful”.

“Channel 4 would be unlikely to broadcast the views of a fascist,” he said, “but they seem happy putting this violent extremist on television.”

A Channel 4 spokeswoman said: “The interview is featured as part of a balanced examination of the roots of Islamic extremism in the UK.

“The investigation also features moderate voices from within the Muslim community which reject the more violent interpretations of Islam.

Programme director Phil Rees in an article in the Guardian newspaper yesterday, defended his decision to include the Muhammed interview.

He described the extremist as “a courteous, intelligent man” and related how “we sipped tea and discussed events in the Middle East” at a London hotel earlier this year.

The Home Office said that because the man used an alias, it could not confirm that is banned from Britain. A spokesman said: “We have prevented 126 individuals from coming to our country on national security grounds, and have refused to admit another 62 for glorifying terrorism or other unacceptable behaviours.”

IRAN KILLING SPREE - 150 MORE ABOUT TO DIE

TEHRAN WATCH

Domestic Terror in Iran

Iran has just carried out the largest wave of executions since 1984.
BY AMIR TAHERI

Monday, August 6, 2007

It is early dawn as seven young men are led to the gallows amid shouts of "Allah Akbar" (Allah is the greatest) from a crowd of bearded men as a handful of women, all in hijab, ululate to a high pitch. A few minutes later, the seven are hanged as a mullah shouts: "Alhamd li-Allah" (Praise be to Allah).

The scene was Wednesday in Mashad, Iran's second most populous city, where a crackdown against "anti-Islam hooligans" has been under way for weeks.

The Mashad hangings, broadcast live on local television, are among a series of public executions ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month as part of a campaign to terrorize an increasingly restive population. Over the past six weeks, at least 118 people have been executed, including four who were stoned to death. According to Saeed Mortazavi, the chief Islamic prosecutor, at least 150 more people, including five women, are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in the coming weeks.

The latest wave of executions is the biggest Iran has suffered in the same time span since 1984, when thousands of opposition prisoners were shot on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini.
Not all executions take place in public. In the provinces of Kurdistan and Khuzestan, where ethnic Kurdish and Arab minorities are demanding greater rights, several activists have been put to death in secret, their families informed only days after the event.

The campaign of terror also includes targeted "disappearances" designed to neutralize trade union leaders, student activists, journalists and even mullahs opposed to the regime. According to the latest tally, more than 30 people have "disappeared" since the start of the new Iranian year on March 21. To intimidate the population, the authorities also have carried out mass arrests on spurious grounds.

According to Gen. Ismail Muqaddam, commander of the Islamic Police, a total of 430,000 men and women have been arrested on charges related to drug use since April. A further 4,209 men and women, mostly aged between 15 and 30, have been arrested for "hooliganism" in Tehran alone. The largest number of arrests, totaling almost a million men and women according to Mr. Muqaddam, were related to the enforcement of the new Islamic Dress Code, passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) in May 2006.
Most of those arrested, he says, spent a few hours, or at most a few days, in custody as "a warning." By last week, 40,000 were still in prison. Of these, 20,363 men and women are held on charges related to violating the Islamic Dress Code. According to the Deputy Chief of Police Gen. Hussein Zulfiqari, an additional 6,204 men and women are in prison on charges of "sexual proximity" without being married.

The wave of arrests has increased pressure on the nation's inadequate prison facilities. At a recent press conference in Tehran, the head of the National Prisons Service, Ali-Akbar Yassaqi, appealed for a moratorium on arrests. He said Iran's official prisons could not house more than 50,000 prisoners simultaneously while the actual number of prisoners at any given time was above 150,000. Mr. Yassaqi also revealed that each year on average some 600,000 Iranians spend some time in one of the 130 official prisons.

Since Mr. Ahmadinejad ordered the crackdown, work on converting 41 official buildings to prisons has started, with contracts for 33 other prisons already signed. Nevertheless, Mr. Yassaqi believes that, with the annual prison population likely to top the million mark this year, even the new capacities created might prove insufficient.

There are, however, an unknown number of unofficial prisons as well, often controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or militias working for various powerful mullahs. Last week, human rights activists in Iran published details of a new prison in Souleh, northwest of Tehran, staffed by militants from the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah. According to the revelations, the Souleh prison is under the control of the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi, and used for holding the regime's most "dangerous" political foes.

The regime especially fears the growing free trade union movement. In the past four months, free trade unionists have organized 12 major strikes and 47 demonstrations in various parts of the country. They showed their muscle on International Labor Day on May 1 when tens of thousands of workers marched in Tehran and 18 provincial capitals. The regime retaliated by arresting scores of trade unionists and expelling many others.
According to Rajab-Ali Shahsavari, leader of the Union of Contractual Workers, 25,795 unionists have been fired since April.

He estimates that now over 1,000 workers are losing their jobs each day, as the regime intensifies its crackdown.
Worse still, the number of suspicious deaths among workers has risen to an all-time high. According to Deputy Labor Minister Ibrahim Nazari-Jalali, 1,047 workers have died in "work-related accidents" since April. Labor sources, however, point out that none of the accidents have been investigated and, in at least 13 cases, the workers who died may have been killed by goons hired by the regime.

The biggest purge of universities since Khomeini launched his "Islamic Cultural Revolution" in 1980 is also under way. Scores of student leaders have been arrested and more than 3,000 others expelled. Labeling the crackdown the "corrective movement," Mr. Ahmadinejad wants university textbooks rewritten to "cleanse them of Infidel trash," and to include "a rebuttal of Zionist-Crusader claims" about the Holocaust. Dozens of lecturers and faculty deans have been fired.

The nationwide crackdown is accompanied with efforts to cut Iranians off from sources of information outside the Islamic Republic. More than 4,000 Internet sites have been blocked, and more are added each day. The Ministry of Islamic Orientation has established a new blacklist of authors and book titles twice longer than what it was a year ago. Since April, some 30 newspapers and magazines have been shut and their offices raided. At least 17 journalists are in prison, two already sentenced to death by hanging.

The regime is trying to mobilize its shrinking base by claiming that the Islamic Republic is under threat from internal and external foes. It was in that context that the four Iranian-American hostages held in Tehran were forced to make televised "confessions" last month about alleged plots to foment a "velvet revolution."
Over 40 people have been arrested on charges of espionage since April, 20 in the southern city of Shiraz.

Khomeinist paranoia reached a new peak last week when the authorities announced, through the Islamic Republic News Agency, the capture of four squirrels in the Western city of Kermanshah and claimed that the furry creatures had been fitted with "espionage devices" by the Americans in Iraq and smuggled into the Islamic Republic.

Mr. Ahmadinejad likes to pretend that he has no worries except "Infidel plots" related to the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions. The truth is that, faced with growing popular discontent, the Khomeinist clique is vulnerable and worried, extremely worried. The outside world would do well to carefully monitor and, whenever possible, support the Iranian people's fight against the fascist regime in Tehran.

Iran today is not only about atomic bombs and Iranian-American hostages. It is also about a growing popular movement that may help bring the nation out of the dangerous impasse created by the mullahs.

Mr. Taheri is author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002).

TERRORISTS IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Islamist terrorists have long been at war with the United States and frequently have proclaimed their determination to win the war.

In fact, they see their enemies' unwillingness to acknowledge this war as an act of cowardice.

(Alan note: that describes the liberals).

If their enemies refuse to wear the mantle of warrior, terrorists assume that they are weak, lacking in honor, and spiritually infe­rior—and the notion that their enemy is vulnerable emboldens them. Failing to acknowledge that we are at war only encourages the enemy to be more warlike.

Conclusive proof that terrorists are at war with us requires little more than reading their own words. A compilation drawn from translations of a number of authoritative sources illustrates the nature of the challenge that America and its allies face and what needs to be done to combat it.

Declaration of War

Osama bin Laden declared war on America in 1996, but before September 11, 2001, few paid more than episodic attention to the one-sided war that al-Qaeda waged against American targets.

Over the past five years, others have echoed his call, as these quotes demonstrate. Together they reflect clear and consistent themes.

These pronouncements clearly advocate terror­ism, the intentional murder of innocents for polit­ical purposes. They advocate an agenda that is illegitimate under any recognized legal or moral authority.

These terrorists use religious terminology to legitimize their inexcusable acts. Terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda advocate a totalitarian Islamic ideology that manipulates religious words and ideas but does not accurately represent traditional Islam. Many Islamist terrorists have never received a legitimate religious education.

Iraqis the most critical front in al-Qaeda's ter­rorist war effort, as repeatedly stated by bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his chief lieuten­ant. Even Abu al-Layth al-Libi, al-Qaeda's com­mander in Afghanistan, recognizes that Iraq is the "focal point" of the global conflict.

Although Osama bin Laden and others of his ilk seek to provoke a clash of civilizations, they also promote a clash within Islamic civi­lization. Al-Qaeda has killed many thousands more Muslims than non-Muslims and more Ira­qis than Americans.

Muslims have a major stake in defeating al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups because they are among the terrorists' chief vic­tims and pay a heavy price when forced to live under terrorist regimes.

Terrorists do not speak with one voice. Vari­ous terrorist networks pose different kinds of local, regional, and global threats.

For instance, while al-Qaeda is the most well known of the terrorist groups, many different terrorist net­works are at work around the world. These include Hezbollah, which has killed hundreds of Americans and struck in Europe and Latin America as well as in the Middle East, and ter­rorist groups in Africa, Asia, and the Indian sub­continent, which have carried out attacks in India and Pakistan.

While they do not represent a single cohesive enemy, they all pose distinct threats and are a grave danger to Americans and U.S. interests around the world.

Nothing demonstrates these truths more than the terrorists' own words. The first step in winning a war is understanding the enemy's goals, strategy, and conception of that war.

This collection of quo­tations is meant to clarify what the United States and its allies are fighting, using the actual words of terrorist leaders and their affiliates.

Their Words

Sheikh Hussein bin Mahmoud, senior al-Qaeda leader, April 17, 2007:

May Allah send the [Muslim] nation someone who will kill them even more [savagely], strike terror in their [souls], tear their hearts out…cut their heads off, tear them limb from limb and shed their blood in rivers.

Adam Gadhan, a.k.a. Azzam the American, American spokesman for al-Qaeda, May 29, 2007:

[Y]ou and your people will…experience things, which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Virginia Tech. And let us be clear: A pullout from Iraq alone, in the absence of compliance with the remainder of our legitimate demands, will get you nowhere, and will not save you from our strikes. So stop wasting your time and trying to save face with these futile farcical maneuvers on Capital Hill and start making some serious moves.

Muhammad Nimr Al-Zaghmout, head of the Islamic Palestinian Council in Lebanon, May 15, 2007:

Our number one enemy is Satan, and then comes the greatest taghout idol, in the form of Bush, Blair, and the Zionist Crusaders. These have become the mentors of our Arab leaders.…

The Koran says: "Make ready for them what strength you can…." But we say to Allah: We don't want to, because we're afraid that they will call us terrorists. If killing the Zionist Jews, the Ameri­cans, the English, and the French in Palestine, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan is considered terrorism— I am the number one terrorist.

Mullah Dadullah, high-ranking Taliban leader, May 14, 2007:

(Alan note: reported killed August 3rd or 4th)

We will be executing attacks in Britain and the U.S. to demonstrate our sincerity and make them understand how hard it is to endure under a foreign occupation.

Abu al-Layth al-Libi, leader of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, April 28, 2007:

Immediately after the collapse [of the Taliban], gloomy events hindered the people and prevented the movement of the mujahideen…. Everyone was shocked and overwhelmed waiting to see what the West, which was coming with its military machine, would do…. [T]oday we are experiencing mountains of realistic and true hopes [in Afghanistan], while our enemy is experiencing mountains of weakness, fear and apprehension.… [We will] finish off the remnants of the enemy's force and completely crush it.… [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] took the jihad from the edges of the place of the real conflict to the focal point of the conflict, which is Iraq.

Mullah Dadullah, March 2, 2007:

Next spring, we will bring shameful defeat upon the Jews and the Christians. The cries you are now hearing from them once a day—you will hear them 20 times a day. The number of countries aban­doning America will be doubled, and countries will refrain from helping or allying with the U.S. America will remain alone. We pray to Allah that America will remain without an ally.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, al-Qaeda head of the Islamic State of Iraq, February 2, 2007:

We are not afraid of your coalitions.... We have drunk blood [in the past], and we find no [blood] sweeter than that of the Byzantines [i.e., Christians]…. Roast their flesh with car bombs, cut off their supply lines with [explosive] charges and tear out their hearts with sniper fire. Know that offense is the best [form of] defense, and be careful not to lay down your weapons before the war is over…. We are not fighting out of nationalism, but with the aim of making Allah's word supreme.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda deputy leader, December 22, 2006:

The first is that you [Democrats] are not the ones who won the midterm election, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather the Mujahideen—the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq—are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost.

Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, October 10, 2006:

We haven't had enough of your [American] blood yet….
We call on the lame duck (Bush) not to hurry up in escaping the same way the defense minister did….

Remain steadfast in the battlefield you coward [President George W. Bush]….

We will not rest from our Jihad until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have blown up the filthiest house—which is called the White House.

Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, September 28, 2006:

The American military bases, with their large areas, are an ideal environment for trying out your [Muslim scientists' and experts'] non-conventional bombs: the biological [bombs] and the so-called "dirty" bombs.

Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London bombers, July 8, 2006 (the first anniversary of the London bombings):

We are 100% committed to the cause of Islam. We love death the way you love life. I tell all you British citizens to stop your support to your lying British government, and to the so-called "war on terror," and ask yourselves, why would thousands of men be willing to give their lives for the cause of Muslims?

Mohsen Rezai, Iranian Expediency Council Secretary, June 8, 2006:

America seems so big, but in fact is like a paper tiger—even the slightest tremor could easily make it crumple and disappear. That's why America's strength depends upon maintaining its hegemony.

Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda, April 23, 2006:

The West created the United Nations to defend their unjust doctrine. America and Europe consid­ers the Jihadi groups in Palestine, Chechnia, Iraq and Afghanistan as Terrorists, so how can we dia­logue with them without the use of weapons.

And the leaders of our region considers America and Europe as friends and allies, and consider the Jihadi groups against the Crusaders Terrorist groups, so how can we have an understanding with them, without weapons?

The UN is an infidel organi­zation, and whomever accepts its ruling is also an infidel. It is a tool to execute the Crusader and Zionist decisions against Muslims.

Sheikh Dr. Nasser Al-'Omar, Saudi Islamist cleric, April 19, 2006:

America is now disappearing from the hearts, within America itself and elsewhere, whereas Islam is growing even within America, my brothers. Islam is making steady progress in America. 25,000 people have converted to Islam every year since 9/11, and an even larger figure was mentioned in The New York Times.

Ahmad Husseini Al-Baghdadi, Iraqi Ayatollah, April 14, 2006:

But the mujahid Iraqi people of the resistance has shattered the American plan, not only in the region but throughout the world….

…[T]he coming year will witness the defeat of the Americans, their lackeys, and those who rolled in on the American tanks.

Mullah Krekar, Iraqi Ansar Al-Islam commander, March 13, 2006:

On one side stands the Western way of thinking. This is a way of thinking that has taken its materialism, egoism and savagery from the ancient Greeks and Romans….

The spread of democracy is just an excuse. The same with the hunt for Osama bin—it's just an excuse. It is Islam that the West can't stand.

Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research and president of the International Association of Muslim Scholars, February 25, 2006:

We do not disassociate Islam from the war. On the contrary, disassociating Islam from the war is the reason for our defeat. We are fighting in the name of Islam….

They fight us with Judaism, so we should fight them with Islam. They fight us with the Torah, so we should fight them with the Koran. If they say "the Temple," we should say "the Al-Aqsa Mosque." If they say: "We glorify the Sabbath," we should say: "We glorify the Friday." This is how it should be.

Religion must lead the war. This is the only way we can win.

Abu Mu'awiya Al-Shimali, Saudi suicide bomber in Iraq, February 13, 2006:

America, the only thing that awaits you here is this. TNT in my bag, and a bottle next to me.…

…Oh Bush, you despicable son of a despicable man, you will be humiliated. We destroyed the [WTC] tower, and we will make you bow your head.

Khaled Mash'al, Hamas leader, February 3, 2006:

Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day.

America will be of no avail to them. Their generals will be of no avail to them. The last of their generals has been forgotten. Allah has made him disappear. He's over. Gone is that Sharon behind whose back they would hide and find shelter, and with whom they would feel relatively secure. Today they have frail leaders, who don't even know where our Lord placed them.

Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, January 30, 2006:

Bush and his gang are shedding your blood, and wasting your money in failed adventures. They are involving you in a conflict with the Muslims, which you cannot win, in order to increase their wealth. They are drawing up a future for you which is painted with the color of blood, the smoke of bombings, and the darkness of fear.

The mujahid lion of Islam, Sheik Osama bin Laden, has offered you an honorable way out of the crisis you are in. But your leaders—because of their desire to accumulate wealth—insist upon casting you into perdition and causing your deaths, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even, Allah willing, within your own home.

Osama bin Laden, January 19, 2006:

Praise be to God, our conditions are always improving and becoming better, while your conditions are to the contrary of this.…

Days and nights will not go by until we take revenge as we did on 11 September, God willing, and until your minds are exhausted and your lives become miserable and things turn [for the worse], which you detest.

…You have occupied our land, defiled our honour, violated our dignity, shed our blood, ransacked our money, demolished our houses, rendered us homeless, and tampered with our security. We will treat you in the same way.

…Refraining from performing jihad, which is sanctioned by our religion, is an appalling sin. The best way of death for us is under the shadows of swords.

Do not be deluded by your power and modern weapons. Although they win some battles, they lose the war.…

I swear not to die but a free man even if I taste the bitterness of death. I fear to be humiliated or betrayed.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, September 19, 2005:

Reform can only take place through Jihad for the sake of Allah, and any call for reform that is not through Jihad is doomed to death and failure. We must understand the nature of the battle and conflict. Our enemies will not grant us our rights without Jihad.

Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, September 14, 2005:

Have you not heard that many of your chaste and pure sisters from among the Sunnis of Tel'afar had their honor desecrated, their chastity slaughtered, and their wombs filled with the sperm of the Crusaders and of their brothers, the hate-filled Rafidites? Where is your religion?

Moreover, where is your sense of honor, your zeal, and your manliness?

Ayman al-Zawahiri, September 1, 2005:

We have warned time and again, and we warn once again, that anyone who participated in the aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine—we will repay him in kind. Just as they have made rivers of blood flow in our countries, we will blow up volcanoes of rage, with Allah's help, in their countries.

The lands and interests of the countries that participated in the aggression against Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan are targets for us, and whoever wants to be safe stay away from them. The one who warns bears no guilt.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, August 4, 2005:

Our message is clear—what you saw in New York and Washington (in 2001) and what you are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq, all these are nothing compared to what you will see next….

If you continue your politics against Muslims, you will see, God willing, such horror that you will forget the horrors of Vietnam.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, July 9, 2005:

If our intended goal in this age is the establishment of a caliphate in the manner of the Prophet and if we expect to establish its state predominantly—according to how it appears to us—in the heart of the Islamic world, then your efforts and sacrifices—God permitting—are a large step directly towards that goal.

So we must think for a long time about our next steps and how we want to attain it, and it is my humble opinion that the Jihad in Iraq requires several incremental goals.

The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq.

The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate—over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq, i.e., in Sunni areas, is in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans, immedi­ately upon their exit and before un-Islamic forces attempt to fill this void, whether those whom the Americans will leave behind them, or those among the un-Islamic forces who will try to jump at taking power.

There is no doubt that this amirate will enter into a fierce struggle with the foreign infidel forces, and those supporting them among the local forces, to put it in a state of constant preoccupation with defending itself, to make it impossible for it to establish a stable state which could proclaim a caliphate, and to keep the Jihadist groups in a constant state of war, until these forces find a chance to annihilate them.

The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.

The fourth stage: It may coincide with what came before: the clash with Israel, because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, July 9, 2005:

However, despite all of this, I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. And that we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our Umma.

And that however far our capabilities reach, they will never be equal to one thousandth of the capabilities of the kingdom of Satan that is waging war on us. And we can kill the captives by bullet. That would achieve that which is sought after without exposing ourselves to the questions and answering to doubts. We don't need this.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, June 17, 2005:

Reform and expelling the invaders from the lands of Islam will only be accomplished by fighting for the sake of Allah….

…I call upon them in the name of Allah not to abandon their Jihad, not to throw down their weap­ons, not to believe the counsel of the collaborators, not to forget the lessons of history, not to trust the secularists who have sold Palestine cheaply, and not to be drawn into the secular game of elec­tions in accordance with a secular constitution.

Osama bin Laden, December 28, 2004:

I now address my speech to the whole of the Islamic nation: Listen and understand. The issue is big and the misfortune is momentous. The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War, which the Crusader–Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation.

It is raging in the land of the two rivers [Iraq]. The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.

Nasser Nassef, former cellmate of Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, November 28, 2004:

America bears within the roots of its own destruction, because of its war against Allah and because of its corrupt policies. I am absolutely certain that the day the dollar collapse, I mean the collapse of the bills, the stocks, and the bonds, like has happened to the airlines, oil and communications companies, the American will discover he has a pile of papers.…

This Great Satan occupies the world through.… Here is a slogan I'd like the whole nation to repeat tonight: "America is [as weak as] a spider web, and the White House is the weakest house."


Osama bin Laden, November 1, 2004:

Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al-Qa'ida. Your security is in your own hands, and any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security.

Sheikh Adnan Ahmad Siyami, radical Wahhabi cleric, September 26, 2002:

There can be neither an agreement nor a meeting point between the people of Islam and the Jewish and Christian People of the Book.

Sheikh Muhammad Saleh al-Munajjid, radical Wahhabi cleric, September 26, 2002:

Muslims must…educate their children to Jihad. This is the greatest benefit of the situation: edu­cating the children to Jihad and to hatred of the Jews, and Christians, and the infidels; educating the children to Jihad and to revival of the embers of Jihad in their souls.

Suleiman Abu Gheith, al-Qaeda spokesman, June 12, 2002:
What happened to America is something natural, an expected event for a country that uses terror, arrogant policy, and suppression against the nations and the people.…

…America must prepare itself; it must go on maximum alert…because, Allah willing, the blow will come from where they least expect it.…

…We have the right to kill 4 million Americans—2 million of them children—and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the
Muslims because of the [Americans'] chemical and biological weapons.

Al-Qaeda training manual:

The confrontation that Islam calls for with these godless and apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine gun.

Fighting and Winning the Long War

Ignoring, minimizing, or explaining away the terrorists' explicit threats would be a grave mistake. Al-Qaeda remains determined and capable of launching terrorist attacks against the United States, which it perceives to be the chief obstacle to its visionary plans for building a global Islamic state, a new caliphate.

A disparate network of Islamic revolutionary groups are loosely affiliated with al-Qaeda and share its long-term goals and the broad outlines of its ideology while focusing their efforts on attack­ing secular and moderate governments in the Mus­lim world, American and Western targets of opportunity, and moderate Muslim leaders in their respective fields of operations.

Although they cooperate with the al-Qaeda core group, support some of its operations, and receive al-Qaeda sup­port for some of their operations, the affiliate groups function independently and generally con­centrate on local or regional jihads rather than on waging war on a global basis.

The war against the al-Qaeda terrorist network will be a protracted struggle. There is no silver bul­let, nor a single target that the U.S. could hit, that would win the war in one stroke. Even if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed tomorrow, Muslim extremists will continue to attack the United States for decades to come.

"Bin Ladenism" has become a threat that will outlast bin Laden. While capturing or killing him is important, decisively discrediting his ideas—his ideology—is more important.

Bin Laden is not just a terrorist, but an Islamic revolutionary. There is a method in his madness. He seeks not only to kill Americans, but ultimately to overthrow every government in the Muslim world, with the possible exception of the radical regime in Sudan, which once gave him sanctuary.

His ideological fantasy is to unify the entire Muslim world in one state, ruled under his harsh and radi­cal brand of Islam.
Richard Weaver wrote that "Ideas have conse­quences."

Osama bin Laden's ideas will continue to inflict a lethal toll long after he has been captured or killed. Al-Qaeda's totalitarian Islamic ideology, which it cloaks in religious symbols, will remain a seductive intoxicant for radical Muslims for decades, if not centuries, to come. The war of ideas is just as important as the war on the battlefield if al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups are to be decisively defeated.

The Way Forward

There are no neutrals in this war. Neutrality was never an option. The enemy decided that. Al-Qaeda is at war with everyone and anyone who does not share its revolutionary dream of a totalitarian empire. Those that refuse to recognize the reality of the war against terrorism not only put their own security at risk, but also undermine the security of our allies, especially mainstream Muslims who have the most to lose, as seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Leba­non, and elsewhere.

Abandoning Muslim allies against Islamist ter­rorists would be a grave error. Ultimately, the secu­rity of Americans depends on bolstering the security of Muslims against the menace of Islamist totalitar­ian movements. Such unified action requires con­sensus—a common view of the nature of the threat and the war and a common vision of how to respond.

Listening to the terrorists' own words and taking them seriously is the first step in winning the long war.

James Phillips is Research Fellow for Middle East­ern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is Assistant Director of the Davis Institute and Senior Re­search Fellow for National Security and Homeland Secu­rity in the Allison Center. Austin Knuppe, an intern at The Heritage Foundation, conducted extensive research in compiling the quotations presented in this paper.

ISLAM BEHEADING NATIONS - FIRST EUROPE THEN THE USA

We have seen videos on TV of Muslim Jihadis beheading infidel hostages. Less attention has been paid to the fact that Muslims are beheading entire nation states. Although this is happening in slow motion, it is no less dramatic. Historically, the major cities have constituted a country’s “head,” the seat of most of its political institutions and the largest concentration of its cultural brainpower. What happens when this “head” is cut off from the rest of the body?

In many countries across Western Europe , Muslim immigrants tend to settle in major cities, with the native population retreating to minor cities or into the countryside. Previously, Europeans or non-Europeans could travel between countries and visit new cities, each with its own, distinctive character and peculiarities. Soon, you will travel from London to Paris , Amsterdam or Stockholm and find that you have left one city dominated by burkas and sharia to find… yet another city dominated by burkas and sharia.

For some reason, this eradication of unique, urban cultures is to be celebrated as “cultural diversity.” Britain ’s population is projected to rise by more than seven million in the next 25 years. The predictions were even greater than those made by the Migrationwatch UK think-tank, whose forecasts had been dismissed in the past as alarmist. Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch, said the figures were “staggering.” “They totally demolish the Government’s claim that it has a ‘managed migration’ policy. In fact they show that immigration into the UK is out of control.”

British citizenship has been granted to nearly one million foreign nationals since Labour and Tony Blair came to power in 1997. “Grants of citizenship have quadrupled under the present Government. This is a direct result of their ‘no limits’ immigration policy.” “Immigration on this scale is changing the nature of our society without public consent. It is no longer acceptable.”

More white families are moving from London to the regions while many immigrants arrive in the capital from overseas. Migrationwatch said that the change in 10 years had been “extraordinarily rapid” and “unprecedented.” Whites will soon become a minority in Birmingham and other major British cities, posing a “critical” challenge to social stability, Britain ’s race relations watchdog warned. Statistics showed that white and ethnic minority communities were becoming increasingly segregated.
“Asian youths,” a British euphemism for Pakistanis and Muslims from South Asia, in parts of Oldham are trying to create no-go areas for white people. One of them told:

“There are signs all around saying whites enter at your risk. It’s a matter of revenge.” However, it’s not just the white natives that are targets of Muslim violence, but other non-Muslims, too. A report on Hindus being driven out of the English city of Bradford by young Muslims was described by some Hindus as “ethnic cleansing.” Some of them want to leave the city to escape the “Talibanization of Bradford.”

In an online story in newspaper The Daily Telegraph that was removed “for legal reasons,” former Muslim Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo warned that British Muslims could soon form a state within the state. Dr Sookhdeo believed that “in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.” “In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future – and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence.

That is to say, do not integrate.” “Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on.”

The next step will be pushing the Government to recognize sharia law for Muslim communities – which will be backed up by the claim that it is “racist” or “Islamophobic” to deny them this. Sookhdeo noted that there is already a Sharia Law Council for the UK .

“There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time – and stay married, in sharia law, to all four.” “The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government’s record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that.”

In France , Muslims already have many smaller states within the state. Criminologist Lucienne Bui Trong wrote that: “From 106 hot points in 1991, we went to 818 sensitive areas in 1999.” The term she used, “sensitive areas,” was used to describe Muslim no-go zones where anything representing a Western institution (post office truck, firemen, even mail order delivery firms) was routinely ambushed with Molotov cocktails. The number was 818 in 2002, when the French government decided to stop collecting the statistics.

In some of these areas, the phenomenon of gang rape “has become banal.” Violence against and pressure on women is part of daily life in the suburbs, where boys can dictate how girls should dress. Pressure is mounting for Muslim women to wear veils. In 2002, a 17-year-old girl was set alight by an 18-year-old boy as his friends stood by. The support group “Ni Putes, Ni Soumises” (“Neither Whores nor Submissives”) says the number of forced marriages has risen in recent years, with roughly 70,000 girls pressured into unwanted relationships each year in France .

A leaked study conducted between October 2003 and May 2004 under the auspices of France’s inspector-general of education, Jean Pierre Obin, described an educational system where Muslim students regularly boycotted classes that concerned Voltaire, Rousseau and Moliere, whom the students accused of being anti-Islamic.

Orbin’s report cited Muslim students’ refusal to use the “plus” sign in mathematics because it looks like a crucifix; Muslims boycotting class trips to churches, cathedrals and monasteries; and forcing wholesale changes in school lunch fare to accommodate their religious practices.

The influence of radical Islamist groups is a growing threat to French business, too, a leading intelligence expert warned, citing the discovery of secret prayer-rooms at the Disneyland theme-park outside Paris . A report commissioned by several retail and courier companies stated that the Islamists’ strategy is to “take control of Muslims within the workforce” and then “challenge the rules in order to impose Islamic values.”

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that the riots in 2005 were rather “well organized.” Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post noted that some Muslim leaders explained that what they wanted was autonomy in their ghettos: “They seek to receive extraterritorial status from the French government, meaning that they will set their own rules based, one can assume, on Sharia law. If the French government accepts the notion of communal autonomy, France will cease to be a functioning state.”

Following three weeks of unrest, the police said 98 vehicles torched in one day marked a “return to a normal situation everywhere in France .” Some of the rioters left boasting messages on various Internet forums. “We aren’t going to let up. The French won’t do anything and soon, we will be in the majority here.” One observer stated: “In France , the majority of young Muslims believe that French society is dying, committing suicide.

More like 10 percent to 20 percent of them believe that they are in the process of replacing European civilization with an Islamic one.” In the southern city of Marseille , Muslims make up at least a quarter of the population, and rising fast.

In the Netherlands , Muslims will soon make up the majority in all major cities. “Today, we have 1 million Muslims out of 16 million Dutch,” according to Frits Bolkestein, Dutch politician and former EU Commissioner. “Within 10 years, they will have an absolute majority in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam . We are staring into the face of a shortly to be divided community. Muslims have the right to their own schools, so there is no teaching of evolution, gay teachers are not tolerated but anti-Semitism is.”

A researcher for the Netherlands Ministry for Immigration and Integration found that 40% of young Moroccan Muslims in the Netherlands rejected Western values and democracy. Six to seven percent were prepared to use force to “defend” Islam, and the majority were opposed to freedom of speech for offensive statements, particularly criticism of Islam.

We are witnessing a dramatic change in Europe , which men like Bolkestein see as underlined by a drop in national confidence in European countries over the entirety of the last century. The immigration problem, he said, “has to do with the loss of confidence in one’s own civilization. It started with World War II, which was really a mass European suicide. Then, the rise of fascism, the Holocaust and the 1968 student cultural revolutions across Europe . There is no clear European identity today. This has a real impact on foreign policy.”

Douglas Murray attended a conference in memory of the murdered Islam critic Pim Fortuyn in 2006, and noted with concern the strict security measures and what he saw as a nation under siege. “All across Europe , debate on Islam is being stopped. Italy’s greatest living writer, Oriana Fallaci, soon comes up for trial in her home country, and in Britain the government seems intent on pushing through laws that would make truths about Islam and the conduct of its followers impossible to voice.

Europe is shuffling into darkness. It is proving incapable of standing up to its enemies, and in an effort to accommodate the peripheral rights of a minority is failing to protect the most basic rights of its own people.” A survey in April 2005, after the murder of another critic of Islam, Theo van Gogh, indicated that 32 percent of Dutch people wanted to emigrate abroad.

They leave what was once their country in favor of people such as Dyab Abu Jahjah, founder of the Arab European League (AEL). The AEL, founded in Belgium in 2000, now has branches in the Netherlands and France , and intends to spread across the EU. Jahjah, who has called the 9/11 attacks “sweet revenge,” recruits Muslim youth to spread his ideology, which calls for the introduction of sharia in Europe . “We have three basic demands,” he says. “Bilingual education for Arab-speaking kids, hiring quotas that protect Muslims, and the right to keep our cultural customs.”

“Assimilation is cultural rape. It means renouncing your identity, becoming like the others.” Jahjah has also demanded that Arabic should be made an official language in Belgium . Belgium ’s Jews, in particular Antwerp ’s Jewish diamond merchants, have earlier felt threatened by the Arab European League (AEL), which issued a statement: “The AEL calls on the Jewish community in Antwerp to cease its support of, and distance itself from, the state of Israel . If not, attacks in Antwerp are almost unpreventable.”

Security sources in Germany warned that the country was home to between 3,000 and 5,000 potential Islamic suicide attackers. A Berlin court in 2005 ruled that a well-known Turkish religious leader should be extradited to Turkey . In his Berlin mosque he repeatedly said that “all Germans were stinking people and doomed to go to hell because they were useless creatures and infidels.”

Shortly before, the press spokesman of this mosque had told about the Turks’ strong interest in fostering good relations with native Germans. TV correspondent Reinhard Laska feared that the opinions voiced by the Imam were only the tip of the iceberg: “There was nobody in the mosque who stood up and demanded that the Imam stop his nasty talk about Germans,” he said. “Nobody seemed to mind at all.” In 2006, “Valley of the Wolves,” a virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war, sold out to cheering audiences from Germany ’s 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.

According to Der Spiegel , Germany ’s and Europe’s biggest weekly magazine, an estimated number of 50 women in Germany have been murdered in so-called honor killings in the past decade. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. Much of this insular and ultra-religious world is out of public view, “often hidden in inner-city apartments where the most influential links to the outside world are satellite dishes that receive Turkish and Arabic television and the local mosque.”

“In these families, loyalty and honor are elevated virtues and women are treated little better than slaves, unseen by society and often unnoticed or ignored by their German neighbors.” It caused an outcry when a group of 14-year-old Turkish boys mocked one victim during a class discussion. “She deserved what she got. The whore lived like a German.”

In Denmark, the nation-wide organization of Women’s Crisis Centres claims that a number of taxi drivers with immigrant background are spying on female immigrants who are in hiding, sending information about their whereabouts to their families. It was a group of taxi drivers who informed a Pakistani man where he could find his sister. He murdered her in broad daylight outside a train station because she had married a man from Afghanistan against her family’s orders. 80% of the women seeking help at crisis centres in the city of Oslo , Norway , are from immigrant background.

Non-western immigrants account for nearly 86% of the Norwegian capital’s total population growth over the past ten years. Muslims make up such a high percentage of cab drivers that it can be hard to obtain a taxi during Islamic holidays. Blind people with their guide dogs are finding it increasingly difficult to get a taxi ride, as demonstrated by a lady in the city of Drammen outside Oslo .

Grethe Olsen, accompanied by her guide dog Isak, experienced being rejected by no less than 21 taxis before finally getting a ride. Olsen thought the taxi drivers said no for religious reasons. The Norwegian Blind Association confirmed that this is a well known problem all over the country, especially in cities with many immigrants. Dogs are considered extremely dirty animals in Islam and only permitted for certain limited uses, such as guarding your property.

Two hadith, traditions relating to the words and deeds of Muhammad, state that: “The Prophet said, ‘Angels do not enter a house in which there is a dog or there are pictures’ and ‘Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) ordered the killing of dogs and we would send (men) in Medina and its corners and we did not spare any dog that we did not kill.’”

Mullah Krekar, former leader of Kurdish guerilla group Ansar-al-Islam, lives in Oslo . He has praised Iraqi al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has stated that “Osama bin Laden is a good person” and that he was willing to sacrifice himself for bin Laden. Krekar told an Oslo newspaper that there’s a war going on between the West and Islam, and that he was sure that Islam would win. Rumor has it that Krekar is such a respected man among many fellow Muslims that he gets taxi rides for free. Which means that it is easier to get a taxi ride in Norway ’s capital if you praise Osama bin Laden than if you are blind.

It has been reported that shopkeepers in certain areas of Oslo now need to pay protection money. The criminals are more trigger-happy than ever, and since many of them abide by the rules of blood vengeance, violence is rapidly increasing. In Sweden , reports about criminal gangs and mafias, a phenomenon that is growing day by day, are coming in from urban areas all over the country, and a feeling of powerlessness is spreading among ordinary citizens.

“We have no other possibility than to flee from this area. Families cannot fight against these problems alone. We are talking about survival, you can get stabbed here. We can only survive by attempting to avoid getting targeted.”

Feriz and Pajtim, members of youth gang Gangsta Albanian Thug Unit in the Swedish city of Malmö , explain how they mug and beat people downtown. “Many of us participated in gangs that fought against the Serbs during the war in Kosovo. Violence is in our blood,” Feriz said. They target a lone victim and make him a scapegoat. “We make it look like he bumped into one of us. Then we have an opportunity to attack him. We surround him and beat and kick him until he no longer fights back,” he said. “You are always many more people than your victims.

Cowardly?” “I have heard that from many, but I disagree. The whole point is that they’re not supposed to have a chance.” Neither Feriz nor Pajtim expressed any sympathy for their victims. “If they get injured, they just have themselves to blame for being weak,” said Pajtim and shrugged.

They bring with them a rather brutal culture to Sweden . A BBC article described how the centuries-old custom of blood feuds has made a comeback in Albania in recent years. “The law and order vacuum created by the collapse of communism sent many Albanians back to the ancient customary laws of their tribal roots.” “The Kanuns sanction blood feuds and regulate them from all points of view,” said professor of law Ismet Elezi.

“And first they established the rule: whoever kills will be killed. Blood is avenged with blood.” In an effort to end to this perpetual cycle of revenge, the Albanian education ministry has set up programmes for children affected by blood feuds. Each local authority tries to identify the children who do not attend school because they are in hiding or confined to their homes. “It’s between the families. If we go and ask for the police to help this thing will get even worse.”

What the BBC conveniently “forgot” to mention in this article was that these blood feuds are rooted in Islamic teachings. Two men were killed in a row involving a group of second generation immigrants in Copenhagen , Denmark , in 2005. According to imam Abu Laban, who was later responsible for whipping up hatred against his country of residence because of the now famous cartoons of Muhammad in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the thirst for revenge could be cooled if 200,000 kroner were paid by the family of the man who fired the shots.

200,000 Danish kroner is approximately the value of 100 camels, a number based on the example of Muhammad himself. The idea of blood money originates from the Koran, 2.178. Indemnity is secured through the payment of blood money to the next-of-kin or the injured party, as opposed to retaliation, in which the killer is put to death or has a like injury inflicted on him/her. It depends upon what the family of the deceased or the injured party wants.

Politiken, a left-leaning newspaper championing Multiculturalism in Denmark , argued that the principle of blood money might be worth considering. Luckily, they were met by an outcry from angry citizens. Apart from the apparent 7th century time warp Muslims seemed stuck in, many commentators missed out on the worst part of the blood money concept: The compensation to be paid is not the same for all people.

The only full members of the Islamic community are Muslim men. All others have fewer rights, due to their religion, sex or slave status. The rates for blood money mirror this religious apartheid system, which is deeply ingrained in Islamic law. A Saudi Arabian court ruled that the value of one woman’s life was equal to that of one man’s leg.

A secret high-level UK police report concluded that Muslim officers were more likely to become corrupt than white officers, with complaints of misconduct and corruption against Muslim officers running 10 times higher than against their colleagues. “Asian officers and in particular Pakistani Muslim officers are under greater pressure from the family, the extended family [...] and their community against that of their white colleagues to engage in activity that might lead to misconduct or criminality.”

The report argued that British Pakistanis live in a cash culture in which “assisting your extended family is considered a duty” and in an environment in which large amounts of money are loaned between relatives and friends.

It recommended that Asian officers needed special anti-corruption training. Only an extremely small percentage of the inhabitants of Pakistan , and many other Muslim countries, actually pay taxes. If Pakistanis don’t even pay taxes in Islamic Pakistan, why should they pay taxes to, or feel any loyalty towards, infidel, Western states? The clan is everything, the state is an enemy, a mentality people from these countries bring with them to the West, along with the corruption and the tribal violence associated with it.

The massive concentration of Muslims in major European cities will have dramatic consequences, some of which are already visible. If it is allowed to continue, it will destroy the coherence of society that is necessary for our democracies and our legal systems to work. Increased urban insecurity means that the state is not able to guarantee the security of its citizens. If ordinary citizens feel that the state is no longer able to guarantee the safety of their loved ones, then perhaps native Europeans will create groups and “clans” of their own, to counter the Muslim clans.

The result will be a re-tribalization of our countries. The downfall of the nation state, if it happens, will be chaotic, painful and bloody. Can it still be avoided? Only time will tell.

Source: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1183