Michael Totten and Armin Rosen interview Muslim Brotherhood officer Esam El-Erian in Cairo, Egypt. This fellow makes our politicians look logical and wise, comparatively. The thing the gets me is that the O Admin is even thinking of dealing with these guys. Read the whole thing. Better sit down, the interview spins in circles of epicycloid logic that will make you dizzy.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/14/2011 13:27 ||
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#1
Not many google hits on epicycloid, AP, and your use of the word is the third on the list. Good one.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
As the twin pillars of international monetary system threaten to come tumbling down in unison, gold has reclaimed its ancient status as the anchor of stability. The spot price surged to an all-time high of $1,594 an ounce in London, lifting silver to $39 in its train
#1
The reporter was witty in calling it a great leap forward.
The Chinese Great Leap Forward ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of deaths. Estimates of the death toll range from 16.5 to 46 million.
Coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the very foundation of the Great Leap Forward, resulting in one of the greatest mass killings in human history.
Not only will the eurozone countries have lost control of their interest rate, exchange rate and money supply, they will also have ceded permanently the ability to decide on public spending levels, tax rates and budget deficits.
Their democracies will be hollowed out as all important economic decisions will require the consent of unelected officials in Brussels or Frankfurt (where the European Central Bank is based) with no recourse to domestic opinion.
Worse still, the old saying that he who pays the piper calls the tune will be borne out. To convince German public opinion to take on this new guarantor duty, Germany will have to become the dominant force behind monetary and fiscal policy throughout the eurozone.
It will, however reluctantly, have gained greater European domination through financial measures that ever it did by force of arms.
So they will have fiscal restraint. Where can we sign up?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/14/2011 8:12 Comments ||
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PJMs Bob Owens has long speculated that the primary reason for Operation Fast and Furious was to perpetuate the lie that 90 percent of illegal firearms in Mexico were from the United States.
Owens assertion was buoyed on Wednesday by internal ATF emails obtained by Townhall.com. One email reads:
Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations.
This would seem to be a smoking gun for Owens assertion that this operation was never about crime and always about an under the table effort to institute the gun control Obama knew he could never push through Congress.
Additionally, Obama has just issued an executive order which requires gun dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to report multiple long gun (rifle or shotgun) purchases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in order to combat illegal firearms trafficking along the Mexican border.
#1
[It was always about] under the table effort to institute the gun control Obama knew he could never push through Congress.
And yet another assault on the Second Amendment.
Obama has just issued an executive order which requires gun dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to report multiple long gun (rifle or shotgun) purchases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in order to combat illegal firearms trafficking along the Mexican border.
Ordinary long guns (rifles and shotguns) have not had to be registered before so far as I know.
The problem with executive orders and laws interpreted made by agencies in a bureaucracy is that often these are outside the Constitution and the Congressional law-making process.
Unfortunately, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and Special Agent Jaime Zapata (ICE) died as a result of this operation. It is hard to tell how many Mexican citizens and police officers died as the result Fast and Furious. Some lawsuits have already begun.
First, the Arms Export Control Act, 22 USC §2778.. It authorizes the President to define defense articles and regulate their export. In so doing, he must consider the possibility that export could "support international terrorism, increase the possibility of outbreak or escalation of conflict..."
Those defense articles may not be exported without a permit, issued by the Secretary of State ( Department of State guidelines here), "except that no license shall be required for exports or imports made by or for an agency of the United States Government
(A) for official use by a department or agency of the United States Government, or
(B) for carrying out any foreign assistance or sales program authorized by law and subject to the control of the President by other means."
The firearms involved here were not being exported for official use by an agency, nor as part of foreign aid. This a lot narrower than the GCA exception for acts by a government agency, and for good reason: the purpose of this statute is to control executive agency actions. No gun running to foreign governments or persons without a paper trail (and in cases of large transactions, a prior request for Congressional approval).
Any person who willfully violates these provisions "shall upon conviction be fined for each violation not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
There have been some reports of agents having directly transferred firearms to drug cartel buyers, in order to boost their "street creds." That'd clearly be a violation. In other situations, the person who actually exported the firearms would be in clear violation. But what of those government supervisors who allowed the arms to flow -- especially the cases where a protesting FFL was told to sell the guns anyway?
(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.
(b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed byhim or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal."
#5
As Pres. Harry Truman said, the buck stops at the Presidency. Does this mean "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." in Fast and Furious? That would be hope and change I could get behind.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the so-called Indian Mujahideen is the prime suspect. India's Intelligence Bureau has previously denied that the Indian Mujahideen exists. Instead the Bureau has claimed the terror group is a creation of the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, or HUJI-B, an al Qaeda affiliate. HUJI-B created the Indian Mujahideen to confuse investigators and cover the tracks of the Students Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI, which provides logistics for the attacks.
SIMI is a front group for the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and Lashkar-e-Taiba inside India. It receives support from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and is an al Qaeda affiliate. SIMI provides logistical support for attacks in India.
Three bombs rocked crowded districts of Mumbai during rush hour on Wednesday, killing at least 21 people in the biggest militant attack on Indias financial capital since 2008 assaults. No one has claimed responsibility. Security analysts say the pattern of the attack points to a local militant group called the Indian Mujahideen (IM).
A remote possibility is the Pakistan-based separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), known for its sympathies for Al Qaeda and blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.
The Indian Mujahideen is described by global intelligence firm Stratfor as a relatively amateurish group thats been able to carry out low to medium intensity attacks.
The group is suspected of having been trained and backed by militant groups in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh. The group first emerged during a wave of bombings in north India in 2007. They have since claimed responsibility for bomb attacks in the cities of Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and New Delhi.
The last attack they claimed was in 2010 in the western city of Pune, where a bomb blast at a tourist spot killed nine people.
Police say the Indian Mujahideen may also include former members of Bangladeshi militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami.
The demands of the Indian Mujahideen, like their targets, have tended to be domestic. The group has declared open war against India.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, the army of the pure, is one of the largest militant groups in South Asia but has not been operating recently. Once nurtured by Pakistans military to fight India in Kashmir, it is now under a tight leash since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, for fear of a new attack that would invite retribution on Pakistan.
The group claimed responsibility for the attack on an army base in New Delhis historic Red Fort which killed three people in late 2000 and for an assault on Indias parliament in 2001 that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a fourth war.
In 2005, it was blamed for bomb attacks on markets in New Delhi that killed more than 60 people.
The United States has designated the LeT as a foreign terrorist organization. Pakistan banned it in 2002, but critics say it long operated openly under different names.
WHY MUMBAI? WHY NOW?
India has long been under the threat of militant attacks by a variety of groups ranging from separatists in the northeast to nationalists but there is a possibility the latest strike could be aimed at scuttling fledgling attempts to revive the peace process between New Delhi and Islamabad.
India and Pakistan have recently begun talks that were frozen after the 2008 Mumbai attacks and some of the progress has surprised observers. But an attack linked to Pakistan will almost certainly put pressure on India to pull out of talks and take a hardline stance.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/14/2011 00:00 ||
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#4
Times of India was suggesting it was local gangsters under contract to someone.
If India can trace the money back to Pakland, could see a shooting war over this which could well draw in China, who would be deeply alarmed at the possiblity of losing a land route to Pakland and India getting a land route to Afghanistan and on to central Asia.
[Dawn] the late Osama bin Laden ... who has made the transition back to dust... has been stolen, Raymond Davis exorcised, and the military's ego has been hurt once again by men "dressed like characters from Star Wars". "America is an unreliable ally," the ISI chief is said to have told the Pak parliament in a closed-door briefing.
Pakistain's ties with cut-throats are strategic. Like al Qaeda, Pakistain refers to modern notions of national illusory sovereignty and justice. Like Taliban, Pakistain is concerned less with the enemy and more with spies.
However, Switzerland makes more than cheese... our ties with Washington are platonic. If reliability, trust and selflessness are the benchmarks, then the ISI's evaluation of US foreign policy towards Pakistain is essentially a moral critique.
"What has America done for Pakistain?" parliamentarians asked before calling for a review of ties with the US. Inherent in that question are assumptions that need to be questioned themselves. Why should America do anything for Pakistain?
Pakistain was born a weak state. Soon after independence, Pakistain's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah asked the US, in a letter sent with his emissary, for $2 billion in military and financial aid, including $170 million for the army, $75 million for the air force, $60 million for the navy, and $700 million each for industrial and agricultural development. He had made a cultural choice.
Pakistain's first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan visited US president Harry Truman in 1950 to sell the country's "geopolitical importance" to the super power. Pakistain's decision to seek US help against the perceived Soviet designs to reach the warm waters of the Arabian sea was purely strategic.
What the US did for Pakistain consequently produced the conditions that allowed a state that was not expected to last very long when it came into existence, to develop robust agriculture to feed itself, one of the world's largest militaries and the ability to produce nuclear energy and weapons.
What has America done for Pakistain's armed forces?
From 1954 to 1956, the US gave Pakistain about $1400 million in military aid, helping an ill-equipped Pakistain Army develop infrastructure, mobility and firepower, and improve command, control, communication and intelligence capabilities for its newly raised divisions. Also in 1954, Pakistain began to receive more than 100 Sabre F-86F aircraft that made the core of its air force. Armed with Sidewinder missiles, these fighter planes gave the Pak air force a decisive edge over the Indian one.
Pakistain had also received several hundred M47 and M48 Patton tanks and artillery equipment that gave it tangible superiority over India. By 1971, Pakistain had lost this edge. During the 1971 war, a carrier task force of America's Seventh Fleet that included nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise, several destroyers and nuclear-powered attack submarine Gurnard arrived in the Bay of Bengal in support of Pakistain. But Pakistain Army surrendered a day later.
In the 1980s, after Pakistain rejected a $400 million aid package as peanuts, more than $6 billion flew into the country along with weapons that included about a thousand Stinger missiles, as it fought a perceived Soviet threat in Afghanistan and developed a 'strategic depth'. Since 9/11 (blamed on the 'strategic assets' that Pakistain developed in Afghanistan), we received more than $14 billion in military aid and reimbursements, 17 F-16 aircraft and artillery equipment despite substantial doubts on its commitment to the war on terror. Pakistain Navy received the PNS Alamgir frigate, boats, helicopters and two P-3C Orion surveillance and anti-submarine aircraft (with six in the pipeline) and assigned a key role in the Arabian Sea.
What has America done for Pakistain's nuclear program?
Pakistain's civil nuclear quest began with the American Atoms for Peace program. It was offered $350,000 to acquire a nuclear reactor in 1955. In 1965, years after scientists Dr Abdus Salam and Dr Ishrat Hussain Usmani traveled to the US, America gave Pakistain its first nuclear reactor. The reactor at Nilore near Islamabad was built by American nuclear engineer Peter Karter and supplied by contractors American Machine and Foundry.
It was only after Pakistain started to develop nuclear weapons that the US imposed sanctions on the country. American concerns of Pakistain's role in nuclear proliferation eventually turned out to be true.
What has America done for Pakistain's economy?
Pakistain's major existential concern in its early years was that all its rivers came from India, and India could block them to cause famines in Pakistain. After negotiations between India and Pakistain failed, America intervened. With input from US public officials, the World Bank spent six years in talks with India and Pakistain to broker the Indus Water Treaty in 1960. After that, the US and the World Bank were major donors to Pakistain's irrigation system, that included two large dams (Mangla Dam on Jhelum River and Tarbela Dam on Indus River) that added significantly to Pakistain electricity production, and a number of barrages and headworks (Sidhnai Ravi River, Rasul on Jhelum River, Qadirabad and Marala on Chenab and Chashma on Indus).
In the 1970s, American renaissance man Roger Revelle supervised the Salinity Control and Reclamation Program, American agricultural engineers worked with small-town machine shops in Pakistain to help them develop cheap local land-leveling equipment, and USAID's agriculture chief Richard Newberg developed a fertiliser production and import policy for Pakistain convincing Washington to supply $100 million worth of fertiliser and invest in the Fauji Fertiliser plant.
American scientist Norman Borlaug, with his new varieties of high-yield seed, oversaw the Green Revolution in Pakistain. He received a Nobel Prize in 1970. By 1977, Pakistain's production of wheat and other food grains had more than doubled and it became self-sufficient in food production. Decades later, Pakistain's economy still depends on agriculture.
After the failure of its first five-year plan, Pakistain set up a Planning Commission in 1958. The second five-year plan encouraged private enterprise in areas where profits could be made, and government expenditure in less developed areas. It surpassed its goals and Pakistain became a model of industrial and economic development in what is known as the third world (for example South Korea modeled its capital Seoul after Bloody Karachi), mainly due to American input and financial aid.
After 9/11 when Pakistain decided to join the war on terror, the US helped rescheduled loans of more than $12 billion with members of the Gay Paree Club, allowed duty-free import of hundreds of Pak products, and gave Pakistain the biggest economic assistance program since the cold war.
The impact of thousands of Pak students, researchers and professionals who were sent on scholarships to universities in the US cannot be measured in financial terms.
And in that manner of argument, it might be appropriate in the end to ask a question that has not been asked so far. What has Pakistain done for the US? What has Pakistain done for the US if reliability, trust and selflessness are the benchmarks?
Posted by: Fred ||
07/14/2011 00:00 ||
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#3
Echoes of Monty Python: "What have the Romans done for us? The aqueduct and the roads and the sewage network and the peace and the security. But excluding the aqueduct and the sexage network and the peace and the security what have they done for us?
[Dawn] Let's get it right: it's not just the military-mullah alliance (or the US and India) that pulls Pakistain down. There are also those who bury their necks in the sand when voted into power and cry murder when thrown out of it. Take the mainstream political parties which break no taboos when in power, set nothing right when they can, but flag their victimhood when they are booted out. Why do the PPP and the PML-N so readily come to mind?
Despite its repeated, rhetorical commitment to democracy, the PPP has something roguish in its working as a ruling party. Within the party the tendency towards autocracy at the very top leaves little room for dissent, while working with its coalition partners it exercises a hegemonic unilateralism when it comes to sharing power or even decision making. Take the recent case of the party's fallout with the MQM, which commands the urban vote in Sindh and deserves by virtue of its mandate to exercise some power. This, the MQM got in the form of running the city government in Bloody Karachi. The ceremonial post of the governor, with no real executive powers vested in him, meant little for the MQM.
The abolition of the local government system and its replacement with the colonial-time commissionerate system has nothing remotely democratic about it. It is a naked mechanism for controlling urban Sindh by a ruling party that does not command an urban vote bank, and hence it resorts to undemocratic means by keeping those out of the power equation who do have an urban democratic mandate. The MQM's City District Government, Bloody Karachi was very popular with the people because it delivered on its promises and served the city well. To abolish the system just to spite the MQM will further alienate Bloody Karachi residents from the policies of the PPP. It will increase political polarisation and may result in blood-letting, as recent festivities and killings in Bloody Karachi have shown.
The PPP has done what it did with its eyes set on the next election. Because of utter lack of governance, the PPP's approval ratings have been far from envious even in its home base of rural Sindh. The party's vociferous former home minister had said that the party would use the Sindh card as and when it deemed fit. Now a strategy has been devised to pit the Sindhis against non-Sindhis in Bloody Karachi in the hope that doing so would boast the PPP's Sindhi credentials and win it the popular vote from rural Sindh -- the same rural Sindh where the party's MPs do not allow schools to function or roads and communication infrastructure to be built.
The dubious logic at work is that a deprived Sindh has historically worked to the PPP's electoral advantage, so keep the status quo; let no winds of change or development reach the deep and dark recesses of the rural hinterland. The utterly impoverished peasantry is thus restricted to hand-me-down stipends, literally pittance, named after the party's slain leaders; for instance, the Benazir Income Support Programme and the like schemes. As for the Sindh cities, because they are not the party's electoral stronghold and given the PPP's record, they cannot expect any major development work taking place there either.
The PPP could have turned Lyari around but it has done nothing even for that district from where it has been winning elections all these years. And this is happening at a time when the devolution of many powers from the federation to the provinces has increased the financial resources available with the Sindh government considerably. No brownie points for guessing where the big money will go.
The party also has another sorry legacy, one of 'divide and rule'. Many can argue that it did so in the case of East Pakistain also; but let's call it ancient history now because it cannot be altered. The PPP has practically done so in Punjab by pitting Seraikis against Punjabis to spite the Sharifs (no angels themselves); but long before that in Punjab, the party spearheaded the movement to declare Ahmadis non-Mohammedan, and thus created a minority where none had existed before (this again was done with a view to win more votes from Punjab); it was also the PPP government of Mr. Bhutto that declared Friday as the weekly holiday and banned liquor to appease the religious right; Gen Zia through his controversial Islamisation process only built on what the PPP had started.
In Balochistan today, just to woo the khakis, it is the PPP's ruling MPs versus their nationalist Baloch brethren whom the state and intelligence agencies continue to hound, virtually kidnapping and torturing the dissidents who conveniently keep going 'missing'; the rest are forced to flee or to go underground; Balochistan remains virtually under siege. In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... , since there aren't many spoils to be collected in these bad times, the PPP has mercifully left the ANP alone so far; in Sindh, now by alienating the urban population, the party has broadened the rural-urban divide rather than bridging it.
Will such roguish policies win the party more votes in the next election? Probably yes. Will snubbing the US, holding it responsible for our economic woes and bad law and order, and oppressing the Baloch win the party the confidence of the armed forces? The lesson the PPP has not learnt is that if Mr. Bhutto, who also carried out a military operation in Balochistan and resurrected a demoralised army after it had lost half the country, could not pull it, no lesser mortal in the party's fold is up to the job.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/14/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] "SINDH is once again in turmoil. Lawlessness has increased. The crime graph has jumped up. Police are not able to protect the life and property of the people. No one feels safe. The army had to be called in to control the worsening situation."
Does this sound familiar? It's not a reproduction of a news report from last week's brutal 'ethnic' violence, in which nearly 100 lives were lost in Bloody Karachi. Rather, it is the first paragraph from the crime diary published in this newspaper's May 30, 1992 edition.
Yet nearly two decades down the line, it seems little has changed in Bloody Karachi with regard to the spasmodic bouts of violence this blighted city is made to suffer. And if the political posturing by the PPP-led government and the (now in opposition) MQM is anything to go by, Bloody Karachi may well see a return to the dangerous 1990s unless the law is enforced and political stakeholders in Sindh eschew confrontation in favour of dialogue and accommodation.
Despite being the nation's industrial and commercial hub, Bloody Karachi has faced major law and order problems since at least the mid-1980s. Following the end of Gen Ziaul Haq's military rule and the restoration of democracy in 1988, calm was often restored by calling in the army and imposing curfew (measures also used during the Zia era).
However, some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves... as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, there was no let-up in the mainly Mohajir-Sindhi ethno-political violence in the city. In 1992, Sindh's then inspector general of police said that the province witnessed over 2,000 murders in 1990, while the figure for 1991 was over 1,700. Perhaps the word 'murder' was used as a blanket term as 'assassinations' had not yet entered our lexicon. While Sindh was in the grip of severe violence, the infamous Operation Clean-up, led by the army, was launched in 1992 during Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Müslim League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... 's rule.
During this exercise, the MQM was held responsible for much of the violence by the government. The party claimed it was being victimised by the state. However, some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves... after initially restoring calm, violence in Sindh resumed; many felt that the moment the army went back to the barracks the province would once more be engulfed by a full-blown wave of violence.
Indeed, the violence did not abate, despite the fact that the army operation was ongoing. Along with ethno-political violence the sectarian scourge was at its peak during this period. By 1994, with a PPP government in place, several fronts were open in Bloody Karachi. There was a brutal war of attrition under way between the MQM and the breakaway Haqiqi faction, while sectarian battles also raged between supporters of Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistain and Tehrik Nifaz Fiqh-i-Jafria; the SSP also clashed with the Sunni Tehrik.
Commenting on the MQM-Haqiqi violence, this paper noted in an editorial on Aug 11, 1994: "The cycle of provocation and counter-provocation will continue with more and more faceless myrmidons on either side paying a forfeit of their lives and with more and more innocent non-combatants getting killed."
Replace the antagonists of 1994 with the current political players and there is a distinct sense of déjà-vu. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistain's State of Human Rights 1994 report released in 1995, more than 800 people were killed in Bloody Karachi in acts of violence.
In 2011, we seem to be viewing a repeat performance. According to the HRCP, in the first six months of this year alone Bloody Karachi has witnessed nearly 500 assassinations. Though the city saw relative peace for about a decade during Gen Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... 's rule (the events of May 12, 2007 notwithstanding), law and order started deteriorating around 2008. Today, we stand poised at the precipice of a new cycle of open-ended violence, unless better sense -- and the rule of law -- prevails.
After decades of unrest, people rightly want an end to the violence and a permanent solution to Bloody Karachi's law and order problems. However the state -- government after government -- has been unable to deliver on this count.
It doesn't take a social scientist to point out that the root of Bloody Karachi's problems lies in the fact that it is awash with arms. It is widely believed that all political parties with stakes in the city have well-armed bully boy wings. It is also known that the paths of political parties and criminal elements often cross.
But perhaps the biggest issue fuelling ethnic tensions is that of jobs and economic opportunities. Being the country's economic capital, Bloody Karachi is a magnet for people from across Pakistain. However, some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves... with a stagnant economy and shrinking economic opportunities, the competition for jobs in the city has become cut-throat. The constant influx of economic migrants to Bloody Karachi has led to encroachments and land grabbing, while new pie fights have erupted.
There is a feeling that the MQM, which considers itself the representative of urban Sindh's Urdu speakers, seeks to defend its power and territory in Bloody Karachi, which is the main reason for its tussle with the ANP that represents the interests of Pakhtun settlers.
Hence with plenty of weapons and the city divided into various ethnic ghettos, the Bloody Karachi of today has become a much more dangerous place than it was in the 1990s. And if the PPP-MQM tension is factored in, the situation becomes even more edgy through the lens of Mohajir-Sindhi ethnic rivalry.
If there is to be peace in the city political faceless myrmidons have to be disarmed and the practitioners of violence made to face the law. If TV camera crews can capture images of masked gunnies exchanging fire in trouble spots, why can't the state's security apparatus track down these individuals and arrest them? The security establishment can put a cap on the violence if it chooses to. The fact that Bloody Karachi was allowed to bleed for nearly three days before anything was done supports this observation. Deweaponisation and impartial action against beturbanned goons and criminals is the only solution.
As for long-term solutions, political parties must sort out their differences as per democratic norms. A political culture is needed, one that is founded on tolerance and healthy competition based on ideological solutions. This circle of violence has done no good to life and business in the city.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/14/2011 00:00 ||
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A Minneapolis man, Omer Abdi Mohamed, is scheduled to go on trial next week in federal court on charges that he aided a group of young American Somali men in their travels to Somalia to fight with the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab terrorist organization. Two of the men that Mohamed helped leave the country conducted suicide bombings, the most recent last month which I reported on exclusively here at PJMedia. In fact, over the past few years more than two dozen Somali men from the U.S. are known to have left for the fields of jihad in Somalia.
But just as that trial is about to begin we can report exclusively here at PJMedia that a new batch of al-Shabaab recruits from Minnesota and Ohio have left the country to join the terrorist group.
Confirmation of this new crop of al-Shabaab recruits comes from award-winning Kenyan journalist Fatuma Noor, who met up with the ten new recruits ranging in age from 17 to 24 years old in Nairobi and then Northern Kenya as they were on their way to cross the border into Somalia. In her current three-part series in the Nairobi Star, she also recounts her travel with the recruits to the Somali border, and how she was almost killed by al-Shabaab in Somalia for violating Islamic law by traveling without a chaperone with men who were not her relatives (only to be saved by the al-Shabaab recruits).
With the news that an entirely new crop of al-Shabaab recruits has left the country, it seems clear that the problem of radicalization in the Somali community is increasing rapidly.
Yet as I recently reported here, the U.S. government continues to conduct outreach to the very individuals responsible for radicalizing these youths and recruiting them for jihad. As the U.S. continues to attack al-Shabaab forces in Somalia and target al-Shabaab leaders, how long before one of these American Somali recruits is tasked to return home and kill Americans?
Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
Lots of links to news reports of other Somali-American jihadi adventures, and of one member of the community attempting to fight the trend.
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.
Punjab
[Dawn] "SINDH is once again in turmoil. Lawlessness has increased. The crime graph has jumped up. Police are not able to protect the life and property of the people. No one feels safe. The army had to be called in to control the worsening situation."
Nawaz Sharif
Pervez 
But just as that trial is about to begin we can report exclusively here at PJMedia that a new batch of al-Shabaab recruits from Minnesota and Ohio have left the country to join the terrorist group.
