For $11.96 you can buy a copy of the Al-Qaeda Training Manual in paperback on Amazon.com.
One such order was recently placed by staff members at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom to make a point about academic freedom. Earlier this summer Rizwaan Sabir, a 22-year-old M.A. student at the university, and Hisham Yezza, an administrator, were arrested by British police for possession of the training manual and held for nearly a week under the sweeping powers of the U.K.'s 2006 Terrorism Act.
The manual, which contains fairly unimaginative prescriptions for terrorist warfare, first came to police attention almost a decade ago after a raid on the Manchester home of an al-Qaeda suspect. It has since made the rounds of various websites, including the U.S. Department of Justice's, from which Sabir downloaded it for his research thesis into terrorist tactics.
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Posted by: Fred ||
08/01/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Parts of the Manual have been on "Smoking Gun" for years. There isn't too much of tactical value. UK terrorists are more likely to be inspired by the Guardian and the Independent, that that publication. Production of C4 requires only 3 chemical compounds, and instructions can be found on the internet. My take on what the terrorists already have is: Western Civilization needs to adopt life-boat ethics, and replace habeas corpus rights with show cause obligations. There have been science fiction treatments of the problem of the presence of persons who are too dangerous to live free. I believe that ideological subscription to Islamism is unconscionable in itself, and that Gitmo SOP - which led to water-boarding, etc - were only Act 1. It's time for Act 2.
#3
But what may be more disturbing about such police tactics is their worrying ability to drive Muslims towards extremism.
Because nothing in their doctrine, history or examples on the world stage too numerous to count would suggest "extremism" without the help of the police.
#4
They are misreading the survey results, which strongly suggest that at least a third of the Muslims on British university campuses are already extreme enough to be dangerous.
After years of litigation, the first military commission trial of the war on terror -- United States v. Hamdan -- is underway in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Don't believe the critics who say justice isn't being done. Some of the complaints about the trial are trivial, such as that the proceedings are not televised (neither, of course, are the Supreme Court's). Other complaints are irrelevant, such as the claim that reporters cannot move about the Guantanamo base without an escort (try wandering unescorted into the Oval Office if you are on the White House beat).
Then there are the suggestions that the trial atmosphere feels wrong (all those uniforms in the "jury" box), and that the trial is going too fast compared with civilian cases. Since these are trials by military commission, the uniforms should have been anticipated. A quicker pace is also typical of military proceeding. Unlike civilian trial judges, military judges don't need to juggle civil litigation in addition to criminal cases on their dockets. The real question, of course, is whether Hamdan is getting due process, and whether his trial is fair. The answer is yes. Hamdan has an able team of defense lawyers determined to squeeze from the system every drop of procedural advantage. They have, for example, made an unsuccessful attempt to have his trial postponed until after he has had a hearing in the civilian courts. Although the Supreme Court ruled in June that Guantanamo detainees can seek "habeas corpus" review, Judge James Robertson -- appointed by President Bill Clinton to the federal district court in Washington, D.C. -- ruled that the military commission trial can go forward.
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#1
You mean they televise trials in, lets say, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or Iran? How about all those televised trials in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain and especially Russia. I'll bet Amnesty International and The Guardian are responsible for those innovations. Yeah, even at Nuremberg all those military guys left their uniforms at home for somber, wrinkled dark blue suits just like the reporters wore.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
08/01/2008 10:59 Comments ||
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THERE was a naivety about it, but the brutal honesty in George Bush's cross-examination of the Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, this week was a revealing moment in the post-September 11 world.
"Who is in control of the ISI?" the US President demanded, referring to Pakistan's all-powerful Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence by its acronym ISI.
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Posted by: john frum ||
08/01/2008 12:04 ||
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#1
Naivete, hell! "Who is in control of the ISI?" is an important and fundamental question. It *will* need to be answered. But there is talking and there is doing. I expect there is going to be a lot of doing that no one wants to talk about. For the sake of appearances, of course.
Questions about identity and loyalty among the Muslims who have chosen to live in the West have been recurring themes since 9/11. As the number of suicide bombings and attempted attacks has mounted, so too has suspicion about the large and growing population of immigrants from the Muslim world. Especially among the working class and right-wing sections of the population, Muslims living in their midst are now seen as a fifth column, ready to wreak mayhem at the slightest pretext.
As the only Muslim many of my English friends know socially, I often find myself being addressed as a sort of spokesman for the Islamic world, a role I do not exactly relish. This happens more often late in the evening when several drinks have dissolved notions of political correctness. "Why," I am asked earnestly. "Do Muslims come here if they hate our laws and lifestyle? Why do the ones living here not return to where they came from if they are not willing to make any attempt to get along with the rest of us? And why do they all stick together all the time?"Patiently, I explain that immigrants, whether Muslim or not, are forced to leave their homes due to political or economic conditions, so it is often not really a matter of choice. Many of them are from a conservative background, and are shocked by the easygoing attitudes and personal choices that have evolved in the West. As to Muslims who have been born and brought up in Europe, they find themselves caught between two cultures: exposed to a traditional home environment, they are expected to conform to a Western lifestyle at school and at work. This produces an identity crisis that leads some of them to choose extremism to resolve and simplify these dilemmas. In short, I mouth a bunch of clichés without being sure how many of them are really valid.
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Posted by: john frum ||
08/01/2008 08:37 ||
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... it is especially disturbing as it focuses on university students, a group that had earlier been assumed to be less prone to extremism.
Assumed by anyone who imagines the universities are not a hotbed for every radicalizing stupidity known to man. Why should the Muslims be left out?
#3
Wait till the pogroms start. Happened a lot to another religious group often characterized as self isolating, secretive, keeping to the old ways, some of who's tenets [which did not include advocating conversion by the figurative/literal sword or butchering whole train loads of the locals] rankled the general population.
#4
"Patiently, I explain that immigrants, whether Muslim or not, are forced to leave their homes due to political or economic conditions, so it is often not really a matter of choice."
The unspoken comment is elsewhere in the Muslim world doesn't want them and are actually just as bad a stink-holes as where they came from. Still they could have gone to another nation, I just don't buy this. Many chose the West because of the free cash and prizes.
#6
I don't remember the Irish and Italians being sermonized that they will cut off the heads of the infidel hosts and rape their daughters. Maybe I slept through that sermon.
Posted by: ed ||
08/01/2008 15:25 Comments ||
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#7
No ed, but they were treated like dogs (No DOgs or Irish Allowed), and accused of being traitors (loyal to the pope, etc).
And unlike the Irish and Italians, the Mulsim *DO* cut off heads, "honor kill", etc.
So what are the Muslims to do?
Prove the critics wrong - be peaceful, publicly and loudly criticise those elements of that reinforce stereotypes, flush out the radicals.
#1
Are there any weapons in our arsenal on the order of a stealth-cruise missle that could give us plausible deniability when something in Iran goes boom? Kinda like what happened to the Hezzies guns?
I am so sick of this nest of diseased slig fodder that I really would love to see random destruction of anything military or governmental in the whole damn cess pool.
#2
Already talking about deteriorating roads out here on account of the cost of tar. Perhaps there is a way to fill potholes using wind power I'm not aware of?
#3
Already talking about deteriorating roads out here on account of the cost of tar I think we should fill our potholes with incumbents, they last forever.
#4
was flipping channels for a few mins and hit c-span last night. In the beginning of a Republican turn Pelosi just walked right out. It seems when the speaker does that the session just halts.
#7
This is the person who demanded the Air Force provide her with a personal Boeing 757, a 250 passenger plane, for her weekend jaunts to San Francisco. Last I heard, the Air Force held firm at a Gulfstream V.
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.
By David Rivkin & Lee Casey
