links for 2009-08-11

• Frustrated Russian throws cup at Mona Lisa | U.S. | Reuters
  A Russian woman frustrated at failing to obtain French nationality hurled a ceramic cup at the Mona Lisa but did not damage Leonardo da Vinci’s famed portrait, a spokesman for the Louvre Museum said on Tuesday.
  (tags: Russia France odd_news art)
• Investigators Say Man Accused of Running NC Terrorism Ring Embellished Stories | WNCT
  “U.S. officials who worked in the Middle East at the time say those stories are embellished at best.
  They questioned whether Boyd had any connection to Islamic guerilla groups because the soviets were out of Afghanistan by the time he went to the region two decades ago.”
  (tags: North_Carolina US terrorism Islamic_terrorism)
• Infidel Bloggers Alliance: Al Qaeda Egyptian Plot Uncovered, Israel Threatens Response
  Egyptian officials have uncovered a plot by three Al-Qaeda linked terrorists to assassinate Israeli Ambassador to Egypt Shalom Cohen and to bomb Muslim and Christian sites, the Arabic-language Cairo-based Almasry Alyaom newspaper reported. However, it is not known if the terrorists’ confessions were voluntary or were made as a result of torture.
  (tags: Al_Qaeda terrorism Egypt Israel Islam Christianity Cairo Almasry_Alyaom Shalom_Cohen)
• What was NATO’s secretary-general thinking?
  The Globe And Mail criticizes Rasmussen after the latter expressed his views on Canadian departure from Afghanistan on 2011.
  (tags: NATO Rasmussen Canada Afghanistan)
• Daily Express | UK News :: Woman terrorist who planted 3 bombs hunted
  POLICE were yesterday hunting a female terrorist believed to be the mastermind behind a bombing campaign on the ­holiday island of Mallorca.
  (tags: Spain ETA terrorism Mallorca)
• War Without Borders – Mexico’s Drug Traffickers Continue Trade in Prison – Series – NYTimes.com
  Mexico’s prisons, as described by inmates and insiders and viewed during several visits, are places where drug traffickers find a new base of operations for their criminal empires, recruit underlings, and bribe their way out for the right price. The system is so flawed, in fact, that the Mexican government is extraditing record numbers of drug traffickers to the United States, where they find it much harder to intimidate witnesses, run their drug operations or escape.
  (tags: Mexico drug_trafficking US prison_system)
• JFK’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver dies at 88 – Yahoo! News
  (tags: USA Kennedy)
• BBC NEWS | Middle East | Bomb attacks in Iraq kill dozens
  (tags: Iraq violence Sunni_Shiite_conflict terrorism)
• Maggie’s Notebook: Oh Jerusalem!
  “Jersalem, City of Gold, City of David, City of G-d, Capital of both Ancient and Modern Israel is suppose to be handed over, both sides, Old and New City, to the Arabs before any further talks will be permitted.” Totally unnaceptable!
  (tags: Israel Jerusalem Gaza West_Bank)
• Nazi concentration camps occurred because man forgot God, says Benedict XVI
  (tags: Benedict_XVI Catholic_Church Shoah Judaism St_Edith_Stein St_Maximillian_Kolbe Catholicism Nazism concentration_camps)

technorati tags: odd_news, France, Art, Mona_Lisa, North_Carolina, US, terrorism, Islamic_terrorism, Al-Qaeda, Egypt, Israel, Islam, Christianity, Cairo, Almasry_Alyaom, Shalom_Cohen, NATo, Rasmussen, Canada, Afghanistan, Spain, ETA, Mallorca, Mexico, drug_trafficking, US, prison_system, USA, Kennedy, Iraq, violence, Sunni_Shiite_conflict, Gaza, West_Bank, Benedict_XVI, Catholic_Church, Shoah, Judaism, St_Edith_Stein, St_Maximilian_Kolbe, Catholicism, Nazism, concentration_camps

US: 17-yr-old Fathima converted to Christianity, father threatened to kill her

But she has escaped (excelent!)

A teenage girl who converted to Christianity from Islam is at the center of a legal battle over whether she should be returned to her Muslim parents.

Rifqa Bary, 17 - reports say she is threatened with death by her family in Ohio for converting from Islam to Christianity

Fathima Rifqa Bary, who turned 17 today, says her father twice threatened to kill her after learning she had become a Christian and had been baptized.

Last month, she ran away from her home near Columbus, Ohio, and traveled to Orlando, Fla., where she was taken in by a charismatic couple she met through a prayer group on Facebook.

She is now seeking emancipation from her parents, claiming they would kill her to defend the family’s honor if the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) returned her to their custody. In addition to Bary’s age, the case is complicated by the fact that she and her family immigrated from Sri Lanka and are not U.S. citizens.

Although Mohamed Bary denies that he threatened to kill his daughter, a juvenile court judge in Orange County today ruled that Bary can remain in Orlando in DCF custody and set a hearing for Aug. 21. Until then, Bary will live in a group home.

via Teen Says Parents Want to Kill Her for Converting.

More here and here. Photo thanks to REAL, where there is more information about this case. Her lawyer:

“‘She says her life is in danger and she could be killed in an honor killing,’ Rosa Gonzalez, the teen’s lawyer, said after the hearing. ‘Unfortunately it happens every day in the U.S.’” (It seems not only Europe is not doing things OK…).

technorati tags: Islam, Islam_converts, Islam_converts_to_Christianity, Christianity, US, Fathima_Rifqa_Bary, Sri_Lanka, Mohammed_Bary, Orange_County

Kuwait: AQ attack foiled on Us troops

Kuwait said on Tuesday it has foiled an attack by suspected Al-Qaeda members on a US military base on its territory and arrested six nationals over their role in the plot.

The six Kuwaitis were also planning to attack state security offices and other government buildings, according to an interior ministry statement.

About 15,000 US soldiers are stationed in Kuwait, the oil-rich Gulf emirate which is also used as a transit point for thousands of US soldiers going to and from neighbouring Iraq.

via Kuwait says it foiled Qaeda attack on US base.

technorati tags: Kuwait, US, terrorism, Islamic_terrorism, Iraq, terrorist_plot

Obama and his problems with History

clipped from www.thelandofthefree.net Authentic history dictates that it was not the Islam with which Obama harbors an unnatural infatuation that should be credited with these achievements. The Muslim world, after intimate contact with Greece and its culture, adopted their practices of mathematics, astronomy, and physics. They served Islam as devout Muslims while serving erudition as did the Greeks; this marriage led to a rapidly advancing and evolving Muslim culture. These Muslims were the disciples of Aristotle’s ideas, they were Arabs qua Aristotelians. Obama was correct to credit Islam for some of the achievements in his speech, but the Islam he praised is antithetical to the Islam that possessed an advanced civilization a thousand years ago.

The article also says:

“As rapidly as Islamic culture advanced, so too it declined. The Islamic orthodoxy repudiated Aristotelian thought and the advancements it beget in the sciences, mathematics, and architecture, and were able, through persecution of the learned, to eradicate reason and intelligence from Islamic culture. After the intentional and systematic elimination of math and science from their culture, the Muslim world hastily retreated into a primitive state and advancement ceased. Decline ensued.”

Yes, that’s true. But I doubt that Obama & Co. are going to support that…

technorati tags: History, Obama, Islam, Islamic_world, Greece, Greek_culture, Aristotle

Thailand: Viktor Bout’s extradition rejected, Russia satisfied

A court in Thailand surprised close ally the United States Tuesday by rejecting a request for the extradition of Viktor Bout, the Russian alleged arms dealer dubbed the “Merchant of Death”.

Bout, who is said to have inspired the Hollywood film “Lord of War” starring Nicolas Cage, has been fighting extradition since his March 2008 arrest in Bangkok on charges of peddling weapons around the world, including to Al-Qaeda.

Russia said it was “satisfied” by the court’s ruling (of course, Bout is an ex-KGB), but a senior US diplomat said his country was “disappointed and mystified” and hoped the Thai government would appeal against the decision.

“The Thai court has agreed to dismiss the case,” judge Jitakorn Patanasiri said.

The burly, moustachioed Bout flashed a victory sign after the decision. The court ruled that he should remain in detention for another 72 hours to give the attorney general chance to appeal.

Bout was arrested in a sting at a Bangkok hotel after allegedly agreeing to supply surface-to-air missiles to US agents posing as guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The Thai judge, however, said that the court in Bangkok “does not have the authority to punish actions done by foreigners against other foreigners in another country.”

He said that FARC had been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and the United States but not by Thailand, meaning that as far as Thailand was concerned it was a political movement. (Oh, great, thanks, Thailand!!!).

He has also allegedly sold weapons to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Is Al-Qaeda also a “political movement” for Thailand?

For from the ABC.es’ link pointed above:

Russian businessman Viktor Bout, whose extradition to USA has been rejected today by a Bangkok’s court, is an ex-member of Russian KGB and is considered as one of the world’s leading weapons’ dealer till his arrest in Thailand, on March 2008.

This ex-Russian spy, accused of selling weapons to the bloodiest conflicts in the planet and to groups such as FARC or Al-Qaeda, will go free in 72 hours’ time if the US authorities don’t appeal the sentence.

In that time, this man, who speaks Russian, Uzbek, English, French and Portugues, and who had five passports with different names when he was arrested, will be able to live a “normal life”, as he recently said he would be doing if he was freed again.

So the man whose life was elevated to the level of criminal legend thanks to the film “Lord of War” will imitate his role in the film played by Nicholas Cage and could escape again judicial prosecution.

Bad News… Very BAD NEWS. If there is no action made against people who profit from terrorism, there would be no end to this plague. And this guy profits from terrorism.

Russian position is understandable (he could say a thing or two about Russian role in present-day black weapons market) but lacks any kind of foresight: if his personal activities collide with Russian political objectives, he will also send weapons to Russian enemies (i.e. Chechenyan terrorists for example). There are a lot of rogue states where he can find shelter, that’s for sure. But as Russia is now in a permanent confrontation with US, specially over Kosovo and Georgia, they think now that setting a weapons dealer loose is going to be good for them.

I don’t know what people specially critical of Russian-Putinian Neo-Soviet regime would say about this, but clearly I don’t think these are good news at all.

technorati tags: Viktor_Bout, Russia, FARC, Thailand, Al-Qaeda, terrorism, violence, Lord_of_War, Nicholas_Cage, weapons_dealer, terrorism_funding

Indonesia: Govt will tackle Islamic schools – and track down Noordin

Tracking down and rolling up Noordin’s network — and the man himself given that DNA tests are expected to come back negative (after the raid in which he was believed killed) — is the job of Detachment 88, the National Police counter-terrorism unit. But analysts say the central government must take a long-term view of the country’s terrorism problem and begin tackling it at its source.

Terrorism’s roots, they say, lie within the country’s Islamic boarding schools. According to Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, about 50 pesantrens are believed linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional terrorist network of which Noordin was once a key member.

“The schools are still important, less for what they teach than for the connections made there,” said Jones, a JI expert. “It’s not so much ‘massive’ recruiting that’s the problem, but more that I would place the santri [orthodox Muslims] at these schools near the top of vulnerable populations for recruitment. And it only takes a visit by one extremist to bring a couple more on board.”

Indonesia has as many as 45,000 Islamic boarding schools, Jones said, but only about 15,000 are registered with the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Analysts have criticized the ministry for not overseeing the schools’ curriculums, which could be blinds for private study sessions for handpicked students with extremist teachers.

More here:

Some 17 people involved in Indonesia’s spate of terror attacks graduated from the al-Mukmin Islamic school in Ngruki, Sukoharjo, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. Most of the radical books including one written by a terrorist executed for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings are sold near the school.

“Impassioned youngsters who want to die as martyrs seek out Noordin” because they think he’s “cool” and “like a rock idol,” said Noor Huda Ismail, an analyst with the Jakarta- based Institute for International Peacebuilding, and a graduate of al-Mukmin.

Al-Mukmin is the school for children founded by fanatic Abu Bakar Bashir on the outskirts of Solo, central Java. The pro-terrorist cleric has ever refused to condemn Jihadi attacks, saying that “if infidels get involved, even in thought (against Islam), they must be killed“. It seems the Govt will adress the “fundamentalist ideology” as counterterrorism experts have pointed out. With the President now a target, in fulfillment of Bali terrorists’ menace against “any one involved in their death“, I suspect they are going to hurry to prevent more attacks.

technorati tags: Noordin_Mat_Top, Noording_Mohammed_Top, Indonesia, Al-Mukmin, Abu_Bakar_Bashir, Jemaah_Islamiyah, Islamic_terrorism, Islamism, Islamic_supremacy, violence, Sidney_Jones, International_Crisis_Group, Ngruki, Sukoharjo, Java, Solo, Noor_Huda_Ismail, Institute_for_International_Peacebuilding

Iran: opposition leader wants investigation into protestors’ rapes

One of the defeated reformist candidates in Iran’s disputed presidential election is calling for an investigation into whether protesters detained after the vote were raped in custody.

Mahdi Karroubi says he has received reports from former military commanders and other senior officials that male and female detainees have been repeatedly raped by their jailers.

Taraneh Moussavi

It’s good that the opposition begins asking questions about what is happening (let’s hope he is not imprisoned too and included in that kind of “trial”). Read also this account of a 18-year-old who suffers rupture of the rectum after being repeatedly raped in prison and this post about 19-year-old Taraneh (right) who has been found dead (her corpse was burned to prevent an autopsy) in the middle of the desert, after being “raped, sodomised and tortured by her captors“, as witnesses, from the hospital where she was treated while in a coma, told her parents:

Taraneh’s family has been threatened to keep quiet. The raped boy has been expelled from his house because of being dishonoured and asked the people who helped him “not to use their money on him, as he would better kill himself”.

Hundreds of Iranian women are said to endure solitary confinement, torture and sexual abuse in the prison system. The Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was tortured to death (and brutally raped) in 2003.

Meanhile Iranian leadership is worried about much more important things than protestors’ Human Rights: the nuclear program.

technorati tags: Iran, Mahdi_Karroubi, Taraneh, rape_in_Iranian_prisons, Human_Rights

Somalia: Hizbul Islam denounces US government

Somalia: Hizbul Islam denounces US government .

Hizbul Islam one of the Islamists factions in the Somali capital Mogadishu and an opponent to the government of Somalia led by his Excellency Sheikh Shariff Sheikh has on Saturday released an official communiqué in a written form saying that they are absolutely against the American involvement in the Somalia politics.

Of course they are. The more interested the rest of the world is in Somalia (and if US is interested the rest of the world will), the less manouevres they are going to be able to do.

NOTE: The link contains the press release made public by this group in full.

technorati tags: Somalia, US, Hizbul_Islam, terrorism, terror, Mogadishu, Sheikh_Shariff_Sheikh, Horn_of_Africa

Franck Gaffney: “Not all those who embrace Sharia are prepared to use terror against us”

But that doesn’t mean they are less dangerous for Shariah supporters are attacking the foundations of our values’ system:

not all those who embrace Shariah are prepared to use terror against us. Shariah requires though that if its adherents do not actually engage in violent jihad, they must support it through financial or other means. After all, according to Shariah, the purpose of jihad is to bring about the triumph of Islam over the entire world. Shariah commands that the faithful must use violence where possible to advance that objective, and non-violent means where not.By failing to recognize this justification and catalyst for the threat we face, Mr. Obama and his administration effectively foreclose the possibility of countering it effectively. Worse yet, in their understandable desire not to give gratuitous offense to Muslims, the U.S. government has repeatedly deferred to those who are most easily and most vocally offended.

Specifically, the latter – notably, the putatively non-violent, but virulently Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and its myriad front organizations – have come to dictate what our officials can and cannot say about the danger posed not just by al Qaeda and its “violent extremist allies,” but by all those who embrace the teachings, traditions, institutions and dictates of what authoritative Islam defines as “mainstream”: Shariah.

This practice effectively disenfranchises American Muslims who reject this Shariah program – precisely the sorts of people we should most want to empower.

via Center For Security Policy.

The more time Western countries spend “trying to win the hearts” of extremists, who are never going to love/respect or even tolerate the West, the less time they are supporting those who are supporting free speech and human rights. And precisely, the latter are the ones who should be supported: even if Muslim Brotherhood or HuT weren’t going to be very happy about it.

technorati tags: Frank_Gaffney, US, islamization, Shariah, Law, terrorism, financial_Jihad, Obama

Germany: Suspected leader of Sauerland terror cell confesses

The first of four alleged Islamist militants known as the Sauerland cell took the stand to confess his role in planning terror attacks in Germany. The confessions are expected to shorten the trial of the four men.

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Fritz Gelowicz, the alleged mastermind behind the Sauerland cell, confessed to planning terror attacks in Germany

In his wide-ranging confession, suspected ring leader Fritz Gelowicz told the court how the group’s plans for a terror attack in Germany developed.

According to his confession in a Duesseldorf court, the alleged mastermind of the group took part in a three-month terrorist training camp in Pakistan in 2006. There, a plot was hatched to attack American targets, particularly military personnel, in Germany.

Part of the training dealt with weapons, such as Kalashnikov machine guns, and the suspects were also reportedly trained in explosives and circuitry for bomb making.

Prosecution lawyer Volker Brinkmann said ahead of the trial that the suspects had admitted to their goal of “killing as many Americans as possible.” (what peaceful guys, hein?).

via Suspected leader of Sauerland terror cell confesses | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 10.08.2009.

More here:

Two of the suspects, Fritz G. and Daniel S., aged 29 and 23 respectively, are German converts to Islam. A third suspect, Attila S., is a 24-year-old German citizen of Turkish origin, while 30-year-old Adem Y. is a Turkish national.

Again this shows Islamic/Islamist terrorism has nothing to do with race…

technorati tags: Sauerland, Germany, terrorism, Islamic_terrorism, Duesseldorf, Fritz_Gelowicz, Pakistan, Volker_Brinkmann, Europe, terror_cells, terrorism_in_Europe