I got this in an email. I thought I'd post it for everyone's review. I don't know if this is true or not. Or some kind of mix as these things often are.
This one has clearly been circulating for a while. A google search reveals a blog post from 2008 based on an almost word-for-word email, here. The book does exist, and is well reviewed at Amazon.com, here.
Adapted from Dr.. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat
Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life.
[Maghrebia] n the latest in a string of damaging defections from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), one of its most senior leaders in Algeria, Abou El-Abbes, surrendered to security forces on Tuesday (May 25th).
El-Abbes (real name Othmane Touati) was a member of the Council of Notables (Majles al-Ayan), AQIM's central decision-making body, and the right-hand man of AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel.
"The surrender was made possible through the assistance of his wife, who managed to convince her husband to abandon the criminal horde and return to his family", an unnamed security source told APS.
The day after his surrender, El Abbes spoke to authorities about "the problems that armed groups are facing in the bush".
He said that terrorists face difficult living conditions following Algerian army sweeps, as well as a lack of religious authority to legitimise suicide attacks, kidnappings and other terrorist activity, according to the daily newspaper Echourouk.
El-Abbes, who also served as AQIM mufti and judge, joined the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in 1993 before forging an alliance with Hassan Hattab. Together, they engineered the creation of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. With Abdelhamid Sadaoui, a former leader of the group who was born in the same village and has since been killed, he controlled the Centre-East region before being asked by Droukdel to take charge of legislative affairs.
Most recently, he was responsible for co-ordinating terrorist acts in Boumerdes, Tizi-Ouzou and Bouira provinces.
Analysts quoted in local press reports said the defection resulted from security operations, which have combined military pressure with efforts to encourage former terrorists such as Hattab to convince the families of active terrorists to persuade them to renounce violence.
However, Echourouk quoted El-Abbas as saying that it was the lack of attacks over the past few months that led to this situation.
El-Abbes also was quoted as saying that many AQIM members want to surrender due to the loss of all public support, as well as a shortage of new recruits.
El-Abbes said that to cope with the shortfall, AQIM is recruiting mercenaries to re-start its terrorist campaign. He also mentioned recent calls by certain supporters for jihad to be justified so that their terrorist activity can continue and suicide bombings can be resumed.
The pressure exerted by former GSPC members, religious scholars and certain theologians has hindered AQIM leaders' work, particularly recruitment, said the analysts.
The analysts cited recent fatwas issued by religious scholars and theologians that challenge the concept of jihad in Algeria and condemn AQIM attacks.
They said that such fatwas have destabilised AQIM, a point that Abou El-Abbas confirmed in his comments to Echourouk.
Faced with this destabilisation, Droukdel appealed to the mufti of Al-Qaeda, who is known as the "spiritual father" of global jihad, Mohamed Maqdissi. However, the analysts said, Droukdel received no reply to his request that Maqdissi legitimise suicide bombings.
El-Abbes' surrender marks the latest in a series of defections from al-Qaeda. Another terrorist, Grig-Ahsine Abdelhalim, turned himself in the same day as El-Abbes. The Algiers native joined the GSPC in 1994 after escaping from Batna's Tazoult prison.
AQIM medical committee head Mokadem Lounis, aka Abou Naamane, surrendered in mid-April, as did former El-Farouk brigade emir Ahmed Mansouri Ahmed, aka Abdeldjebbar.
One counterterrorism officer downplayed El-Abbes' surrender, saying on condition of anonymity, "It's not like it was an emir like [southern zone commander] Abu Zeid."
"However, this surrender will certainly help security services," the officer conceded.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Both NK + SK, Govt as well as Citizens, are well aware that China has Cold War-era plans to formally take over North Korea in case of any such internal collapse, A SCENARIO WHICH NEITHER KIMMIE NOR SEOUL WANTS.
E.G. MIL FORUMS MAPS > ANCIENT KOREA once included ALL OF NORTH-SOUTH VIETNAM, + FAIR/GOOD-SIZE CHUNKS OF MONGOLIA + EAST CHINA + MANCHURIA + COASTAL RUSSIA, NOT COUNTING THE CURR TWO KOREAS.
WHAT PRICE POWER IFF THE ONLY WAY IN PRESENT TO KEEP SUCH [Personal, Dynastic]POWER IS TO RISK INCREASING + ENTRENCHING THE ALREADY POTENT INFLUENCE + CONTROL OF A FOREIGN STATE UPON YOUR OWN?
HOw many times on the Net has Chin mil bloggers "mistakenly" belabeled the DPRK + SK as "CHINA" or "PART OF CHINA", + the DPRK KPA as the PLA, or sovereign ordinary Koreans as de facto "Chinese"!?
#2
Well, the rouges of the world look at the west and see it's being ran by a bunch of weenies and have decided it's safe to cause trouble. Thus far nothing has happened to prove them wrong.
Barry O is a failure at basically everything.
Posted by: Jefferson ||
06/03/2010 14:38 Comments ||
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Over the years I have seen it happen more than once: a plausible "moderate Muslim" appears on the scene and becomes the darling of hopeful non-Muslims who believe that he epitomizes the peaceful, reasonable face of Islam upon which they have placed so much hope (and based so much policy). His non-Muslim patrons loudly sing his praises and denounce anyone who is rude or "Islamophobic" enough to examine his statements closely and find that they don't actually amount to what those patrons think they do or wish they did: a genuinely peaceful and pluralistic version of Islam that is strong enough on Islamic grounds to convince Muslims that they should abandon jihad against Infidels in all its manifestations.
Akyol, like Ed Husain and the other moderate I mentioned above, finds one great obstacle in the way of a lucrative and adulation-filled career as a "moderate": Israel. It is one thing to sell unsuspecting and ignorant Infidels on the idea that Islam is peace. But Islamic antisemitism, based on the Qur'an's designation of the Jews as the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82) and their repeated cursing by Allah (2:62-65; 2:89; 5:59-60; 7:166; 9:30, etc.), is harder for even these "moderates" to shake off, and it leads them to take postures toward Israel that are frequently revealing.
Posted by: ed ||
06/03/2010 12:17 ||
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Maybe the constitutional case for ObamaCare isn't so open and shut.
'Frivolous," says Nancy Pelosi. "More to do with politics than with policy," in the words of Kathleen Sebelius. En masse, Democrats claim that the constitutionality of ObamaCare is so elementary that the matter doesn't deserve even a half-serious thought. The Obama Justice Department is finding it a bit more difficult.
Last week, Administration lawyers motioned for a one-month extension in Florida district court, where 20 state Attorneys General and the NFIB, the small business association, are arguing that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. Justice is asking for the suit to be dismissed, presumably on the same assumptions of the Washington establishment. Only "presumably," though, because the government lawyers say they need more time to file a brief. Could ObamaCare's constitutional problems be more serious than liberals advertise?
At the core of the suit is whether the Commerce Clause gives the government the power to compel all private citizens to buy insurance. "Requiring individuals to purchase something simply because they are alive is unprecedented," as NFIB president Dan Danner recently wrote in these pagesand if this individual mandate stands, the question is what remains of the Constitution's government of limited and enumerated powers. Yet neither the House nor Senate thought the question deserved even a hearing before the law passed.
Taking these matters with more gravity was Judge Roger Vinson, who denied Justice's extension request on Friday. A delay isn't warranted, he wrote dryly, because the defendants "have at their disposal the very substantial resources of the federal government, including numerous attorneys and staff within and outside the United States Department of Justice." Then again, maybe this is the first time they've actually had to think about what they've done.
When MoDo whacks a Democrat prez, it's just about all over ...
It's not a good narrative arc: The man who walked on water is now ensnared by a crisis under water.
One little hole a mile down on the ocean floor, so deep it seems like hell spewing up its sulfurous smoke, has turned the thrilling saga of "The One" into the gurgling horror of "The Abyss." (Thank goodness James Cameron, the director of "The Abyss," came to Washington Tuesday to help the administration figure out how to cap the BP well. What's next? Sending down the Transformers and Megan Fox?)
With as much as 34 million gallons of oil inking the Gulf of Mexico, "Yes we can" has been downgraded to "Will we ever?"
It's impossible not to feel sorry for President Obama, pummeled by the cascading disasters, at home and abroad, unleashed by two war-mongering oil men -- plus scary escalations by Israel, Iran and North Korea. (Dick Cheney's dark influence is still belching like the well. BP just brought on a new public relations executive: Anne Womack-Kolton, who served as Cheney's campaign press secretary in 2004 and worked in W.'s White House and at the Energy Department.)
Obama wanted to be a transformative president and now the presidency is transforming him.
Instead of buoyant, he seems put upon. Instead of the fairy dust of hopefulness, there's the bitter draught of helplessness.
His battle against water is taking on Biblical -- even Job-like -- proportions.
Besides the roiling water below, the skies opened from above and gusting, lightning-streaked rains drowned the president's plans to give a Memorial Day speech at the Lincoln cemetery near Chicago. On the evening news, pictures of the president standing under an umbrella shooing people off the soggy field were a sad contrast to the wildly sentimental Joe Biden presiding, hand on heart, over a sunny and moving Memorial Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery.
After suffering more indignities -- a S.U.V. in his motorcade blew a tire on I-55 outside of Chicago -- a tired-looking Obama returned to Andrews Air Force Base at 7:30 Monday night and went to an area called the "tactical fitness center" to give his remarks to 150 or so subdued service members who had been rounded up by the White House advance team.
As The Washington Post's Anne Kornblut wryly wrote in her pool report: "It has been years since President Obama attended a rally like the one that took place here Monday night: sparsely attended, thrown together at the last minute, involving people who were not expecting to be there. We're partying like it's Obama circa 2005."
The oil won't stop flowing, but the magic has.
Barack Obama is a guy who is accustomed to having stuff go right for him. He's gotten a lot of breaks: two opponents in his U.S. Senate race in Illinois felled by personal scandals; a mismanaged presidential campaign by Hillary Clinton; an economic collapse that set the stage for a historic win, memorably described by the satiric Onion newspaper as "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job."
Reporters grilled Robert Gibbs at his White House briefing on Tuesday about the president's strange inability to convey passion over a historical environmental disaster. This was underscored by Obama's perfunctory drop-by to a sanitized beach in Grand Isle, La. Despite his recent ode about growing up near an ocean, he didn't bother to meet with the regular folks who have lost their seafaring livelihoods.
After Gibbs asserted that his boss was "enraged" at BP, CBS News's Chip Reid skeptically pressed: "Have we really seen rage from the president on this? I think most people would say no."
"I've seen rage from him, Chip," Gibbs insisted. "I have."
Reid asked for an exact definition of what constitutes emotion for Obama: "Can you describe it? Does he yell and scream? What does he do?"
Gibbs mentioned the words "clenched jaw" and the president's admonition to "plug the damn hole."
How does a man who invented himself as a force by writing one of the most eloquent memoirs in political history lose control of his own narrative?
In "Dreams From My Father," Obama showed passion, lyricism, empathy and an exquisite understanding of character and psychological context -- all the qualities that he has stubbornly resisted showing as president. It was a book that promised a president who could see into the hearts of other people. But there's so much you don't learn about candidates in campaigns, even when they seem completely exposed.
This president has made it clear that he's not comfortable outside whatever domain he's defined. But unless he wants his story to be marred by a pattern of passivity, detachment, acquiescence and compromise, he'd better seize control of the story line of his White House years. Woe-is-me is not an attractive narrative.
#5
The implosion of Jimmuh II is hilarious to watch.
This empty suit is nothing more than a Chicago Mob puppet that the MSM painted all their hopes and dreams upon. He's well on his way to being the worst president in history. Ha!
Posted by: Jefferson ||
06/03/2010 12:57 Comments ||
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#7
Instead of buoyant, he seems put upon. Instead of the fairy dust of hopefulness, there's the bitter draught of helplessness.
Sux finding out there are no Unicorns, eh Barry?
Besides the roiling water below, the skies opened from above and gusting, lightning-streaked rains drowned the president's plans to give a Memorial Day speech at the Lincoln cemetery near Chicago. On the evening news, pictures of the president standing under an umbrella shooing people off the soggy field were a sad contrast to the wildly sentimental Joe Biden presiding, hand on heart, over a sunny and moving Memorial Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery
#8
MoDo buried the lead: He's gotten a lot of breaks: two opponents in his U.S. Senate race in Illinois felled by personal scandals; a mismanaged presidential campaign by Hillary Clinton; an economic collapse that set the stage for a historic win, memorably described by the satiric Onion newspaper as "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job."
Except the economic collapse in Sept '08 didn't "set the stage for a historic win", it caused that win, full stop.
Barry was ever and always a lightweight BS artist using his fabulous Lifestory as a magnet for people to project their own kumbaya hopes. He has never, in his weird and accomplishment-light pre-politics professional life, shown any mastery of any difficult subject or management or leadership challenge. No grasp of foreign policy or economics or finance or immigration or trade or any particular region of the world. Nothing except BS and race-mongering.
#9
Yet here he is, by his own choice, in charge of a job of work at the outermost limits of technical knowledge and experience. Wet suit on, close the hatch! Barry to the rescue! Dive Dive! Dive!
How does this spanner thing work again?
[Dawn] The Shahbaz Sharif government appears to be reluctant to take action against the banned sectarian and Jihadi organisations operating in Punjab in spite of evidence that these may have been involved in many terrorist attacks in the province recently and may have strong links with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The Sharif government's unwillingness to deal with the growing menace of terrorism in the province, including its southern districts, is in defiance of the evaluation by its own counter-terrorism agencies. A recent secret document based on data collected in south Punjab finds that a number of banned groups are carrying out a "sustained drive" to recruit fresh cadre from among the "poverty stricken, illiterate and unemployed" youth in the region.
'Terrorists active'
Interior Minister Rehman Malik says that terrorists taking refuge in southern Punjab were "now active" to "destabilise the country after the defeat of the Taliban in Fata". "They -- Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ), the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Jaish-i-Mohammad (JM) -- are allies of the Taliban and Al Qaeda...," he was quoted to have said.
The minister also hinted at an operation in south Punjab on the pattern of the one carried out in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) "because nearly 700 out of the more than 1,700 people with suspected links with the banned terrorist and sectarian outfits belonged to southern Punjab".
"Army operations are required only where there are no-go areas and there is no such situation in any part of Punjab," Rana Sanaullah, Punjab Law Minister and a trusted aide of Shahbaz Sharif, rebuffed the interior minister. The provincial minister, who attracted wide criticism for hobnobbing with the leader of the banned SSP's during an election campaign in Jhang a couple of months ago, dubbed Mr Malik's statement an attempt to destabilise the province (and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government).
Rana Sanaullah has rejected demands for an operation in south Punjab, but promises to bring to justice those involved in terrorist activities like the ones that took place in Lahore during the last four days.
List of suspects
Talking to Dawn, police officials of Dera Ghazi Khan and Multan expressed their ignorance of the list of people suspected of their links with the banned sectarian and Jihadi organisations as mentioned by Mr Malik.
Regional Police Officer of Dera Ghazi Khan Ahmed Mubarrak said police had no idea of the list of the members of the banned organisations like JM and LJ in south Punjab. "Right now the police are only watching the activities of people placed in the fourth schedule rather than seeking any information about the people the (federal) minister has spoken of," he added.
RPO of Multan Arif Ikram said the police were watching and provided figures to back his assertion: there are 275 people placed on the fourth schedule in the Multan region, besides 380 who came back from Jihad in Afghanistan.
Mr Ikram, however, conceded that an integrated system bringing together various agencies was needed to enable the police to come up with the right picture about the potential terrorists' activities. The federal government, he observed, was being assisted by different secret agencies while the police, being run by the province, had limited resources at its command, depending largely on its CID wing. Owing to this the federal government may have more information about such elements as compared to the police, he said. He spoke of a new system that the government was introducing for the monitoring of Madressahs but didn't elaborate what this system would entail.
A senior police official in Lahore says the government is preparing its strategy to deal with terrorism but he could not discuss it with media. "But let me tell you one thing: the involvement of some people from south Punjab in terrorist attacks does not mean that this region has become a hub of Taliban," he said. "Far from it; there are no training centres in this region. The terrorist networks are spread across the country. Only some terrorists belong to this part of the country. Some, as in case of Abdullah, a terrorist arrested from Lahore for attacking the Qadianis, had left this part years ago and settled elsewhere," he said.
A secret report -- Talibanisation in Southern Punjab -- by the Crime Investigation Department (CID) acknowledges that "the terrorist activities that have taken place in Punjab in the past couple of years invariably prove direct/indirect links with activists' ex-proscribed organisations. This phenomenon does not qualify as spread of Talibanisation in society".
State of denial
The question then is: Is the PML-N government waiting for a 'standard' Talibanisation of the area to start before it moves to control the situation?
"The Punjab government is living in a state of denial. It should first admit that the groups carrying out terrorist activities (in the province) are there and operating out of south Punjab before it can take action against them and protect people from them," defence and political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi told Dawn on Tuesday.
He regretted that the Shahbaz Sharif government was pursuing a policy of 'reaction' rather than 'action' (against terrorists). Even if reaction is what the Punjab government must restrict itself to, doesn't it have enough proof of a simmering situation in the south to react to? Surely, only action now can prevent a full-blown operation in future.
As is pointed out in the secret report quoted above, groups and organisations like SSP and JM and their breakaway factions like LJ and Jamaatul Furqan are quite active in southern districts of Punjab.
"Most analyses have acknowledged the presence of strong sympathies for Jihadi and sectarian elements in south Punjab," a publicity-shy Islamabad-based security analyst said.
Until a few years back, according to him, the militant groups operating out of south Punjab and elsewhere in the province and the Taliban from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had different agenda and focus. "But the Musharraf government's action against the sectarian Punjabi outfits and reduction in intensity of Jihad in Kashmir under the US pressure led them to seek refuge in the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and obtain financial assistance and training from the TTP. That was the beginning of their joint operations within the country," he said.
A police official in Lahore said the police were "alert to the threat and doing our best to control it".
Right now, the people of Shahabz Sharif's Lahore would be entitled to say that the police's best is not quite good enough.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
PUNJAB/PUNJABI-based Talibs + aligned are repor planning + prepping for a NEW MIL COUNTEROFFENSIVE to take back lost areas + pol influence???
Turkeys Islamist government, not known for its compassion to, say, Kurds in Turkey, has been shedding crocodile tears over Gaza for several years now, and helped instigate the flotilla fiasco. So I have a modest proposal: if Turkey is so concerned with the welfare of Gazans, why not let Turkey run the place. Israel doesnt want it, and never has; it tried to give it back to Egypt several times, but Egypt doesnt want it, either. Meanwhile, Gaza is controlled by a terrorist government that is both cruel and incompetent; and Israel is not going to lift its siege to long as Hamas is in charge.
But maybe Hamas, which of course is concerned with nothing more than the welfare of its subjects, would be willing to turn the administration of Gaza over to Turkey. Gazans would benefit from Turkeys trade ties with the rest of the world; Gazans and Israelis would be rid of Hamas; and Turkey would be able to send all the aid it wants to Gaza! Win-Win-Win! And if Hamas doesnt agree, lets just say that Turkey, or at least its Ottoman predecessors, has been in charge in Gaza before, and knows how to deal with violent local factions.... It's a crazy idea, but it's so crazy that it just! might! work!
Posted by: Mike ||
06/03/2010 12:03 ||
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#1
Let the Turks have Gazans. Starting with as many as can be crammed on those ships.
Posted by: ed ||
06/03/2010 13:17 Comments ||
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#2
ed has the better idea. Every time that Turkey opens its pie hole, Israel should offer to fill it with Gazans. Israel should even offer free transport to *any* Gazan who wants to get out from under the thumb of Hamas, and head to Turkey.
Then it should formally ask Turkey to provide thousands of permanent resident visas for Israel to distribute to Gazans.
#5
Turkey and Israel should get together and give Syria to the Kurds. If all Kurds moved to Syria they would be out of Turkey's hair and provide a stable reasonable nation to Israel's North.
Bigotry: Comedian Bill Maher stereotypes black people as ghetto hoodlums and there's no outcry. The long-standing racial double standard always shields the left.
'I thought when we elected a black president we were gonna get a black president," HBO's Maher told viewers last week. "You know, this is where I want a real black president. I want him in a meeting with the BP CEOs, you know, where he lifts up his shirt so they can see the gun in his pants."
Is this really what TV audiences picture when they think of "black people"? In 2010?
Wasn't this country, which has suffered so much in its race relations, supposed to have transcended caricatures like this long ago?
Hasn't Maher ever heard of the Cosby Show's Dr. Cliff Huxtable and his lovable, affluent, furthest-thing-from-dysfunctional family, who ruled prime-time television for five straight years some two decades ago?
How could a nerdy white guy like Maher get away with something like this? Where were the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who usually seem so quick to demand apologies for racial insults? And where are the "mainstream" media?
Virginia Republican George Allen, once considered presidential timber, saw his career derailed by the media in 2006 after he called a nonwhite operative for an opponent's campaign a "macaca" a cryptic remark no one to this day has deciphered.
Former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., was forced from Senate leadership in 2002 after an open mike picked up an offhand remark at former segregationist Democrat Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. Lott said Thurmond should have been elected president in 1948.
But Joe Biden, who during the presidential campaign described Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean," got a pass and ends up vice president.
And when John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's recent book, "Game Change," brought to light Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's 2008 statement about Obama being "light skinned" with "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," the whole hullabaloo blew over in a matter of days.
So Republicans pay the price and liberals like Maher get a pass. This isn't Maher's only offense, either. Last month he called Obama "President Sanford and Son" yet this guy gets invited onto ABC's "This Week" to assure the millions watching that "nowadays, if you are racist, you're probably a Republican."
#2
Former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., was forced from Senate leadership in 2002 after an open mike picked up an offhand remark at former segregationist Democrat Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. Lott said Thurmond should have been elected president in 1948. It was conservative bloggers that noticed the remark and harassed him until he was forced to step down. Politicians and media at the event didn't notice anything.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
