German terrorist plot, Jihad, China, Thompson runs, demonstrations on Muslim world, Chávez, scandal in F1 and Pavarotti

So, after 8 Islamist terrorists were arrested in Denmark (in 11 raided locations), now the target were US nationals in Germany:

THREE men arrested in Germany had formed a terror cell to carry out “massive” bomb attacks, among the biggest on German soil, authorities say. “They were planning massive attacks,” federal prosecutor Monika Harms told reporters today. She said the suspects had amassed vast amounts of the chemical needed to make the bombs used in the suicide attacks in London in 2005 which killed 56 people.

They planned to attack Frankfurt’s international airport along with the Ramstein Air Base, a key US military hub, Harms said. They also planned to hit and nightspots popular with Americans. “As possible targets for the attacks, the suspects named discotheques and pubs and airports frequented by Americans,” she said.

The trio had trained at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, and had formed a German cell of the group, officials said. They had procured some 700kg of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives. Officials said the 35-per cent solution of hydrogen peroxide, stored in a hideout, could have been mixed with other additives to produce a bomb with the explosive power of 550kg of TNT. “This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany’s Federal Crime Office, told reporters.

Frankfurt airport terror plan ‘massive’ | Herald Sun

More about the plot in Yahoo.com:

The men — two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen who prosecutors said shared a “profound hatred of U.S. citizens” — allegedly obtained military-style detonators and enough chemicals to make bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 commuters in Madrid in 2004 and 52 in London in 2005.

[…] Security experts said the two purported plots are a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies.

Islamic radicals “treat the whole Western world as their enemy,” said Tadeusz Wrobel, an analyst of military and security issues in Warsaw.

Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer who is an analyst at Chatham House, a London think tank, said the radical ideology embraced by Islamic militants outweighs national loyalty, noting that many of those arrested in alleged European terror plots in recent years grew up here

A fourth man has been arrested in Lebanon in connection with the German plot to bomb trains and the Lebanese authorities have filed preliminary charges against another five Lebanese and a Syrian.

One of the three suspects (of this September’s plot) was arrested for spying on a U.S. military base in December but was released soon afterwards, federal police Chief Joerg Ziercke said. 😡

[…] German federal prosecutors in June charged a suspected mastermind behind a failed plot to bomb two passenger trains using bombs packed in suitcases last year which failed to explode because of faulty detonators.

Six Lebanese men are currently standing trial in Lebanon over the plot, which  targeted trains in western Germany.

[…] Germany’s elite GSG-9 anti-terrorist unit arrested two of the suspects at a vacation home in Oberschledorn, a town of some 900 people in central Germany, officials said. The third suspect fled out a bathroom window but was caught about 300 yards away, they said.

The suspects were taken before a judge in closed sessions Wednesday at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe and ordered held pending trial.

Prosecutors said the three — identified only as Fritz Martin G., 28; Adem Y., 28; and Daniel Martin S., 21 — first came to the attention of police when one or more of them carried out surveillance of U.S. military facilities in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in late 2006.

Officials said that during the first part of this year, the men acquired 12 containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution, which can be combined with other material to make explosives — as did the four London suicide bombers who blew up three subway cars and a bus on July 7, 2005.

In diluted form hydrogen peroxide is commonly used in hair coloring and as a disinfectant, but the more than 1,500 pounds obtained by the suspects could have made a bomb with the explosive power of some 1,200 pounds of dynamite, officials said.

😯 /irony on/ But no, you’re thinking very wrongly of these bastards peaceful and loving and caring guys. They perhaps wanted to begin a hairdresser’s business, so they needed a lot of hair coloring… /irony off/ 😈

But that is not the only news coming from Germany today:

German technology has made it into an Iranian nuclear power plant despite an export ban. Prosecutors are investigating the case and the German Foreign Ministry is concerned about the damage to Germany’s credibility.

Dmitry S. is one of those Russian businessmen with a knack for quick deals. A native Uzbek and Russian citizen, he has just completed a major deal in Moscow for beef shipments from Brazil. In his last deal, he supplied half of Siberia with CD players and TVs from Berlin.

But Dmitry S.’s deals are not always so trouble-free. A deal involving industrial equipment attracted the attention of prosecutors and customs investigators to S., who has been doing business in German for more than a decade. The electromagnetic brakes, switchgear, spring elements and special cables that the 46-year-old businessman bought up in Germany between 2001 and 2004 were bound for the Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr — a central project in the nuclear program of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Dmitry S. case has since evolved into more than just an ordinary criminal case. Indeed, it touches on highly sensitive international political issues. Proliferation experts working for German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have shown a keen interest in the investigations by prosecutors in Potsdam, near Berlin. And this is not just because, once again, a number of German companies, working hand-in-hand with foreign dealmakers, are suspected of circumventing export bans.

This is marvellous, hein? And the control on weapons, on materials of double use (military and non-military) or their components, where it is???

And by the way, is there any liaison with Putin?

The case’s true political explosiveness lies in the structure of the business relationships it involved. The Potsdam prosecutors now believe that they can prove that Dmitry S. and his now-liquidated Berlin company, Vero Handels GmbH, were involved in the acquisition of illegal material from Germany on behalf of the partially state-controlled Russian nuclear company Atomstroiexport (ASE) — material intended for export to Iran. “It looks as if Putin’s nuclear firm deliberately violated German law,” says one investigator.

Hmm, this does not look any good. Chinese Army hacking computers AND Russian public corporations lying to the same hacked Government about deals with Iran… It puzzles me extremelly… 

Anyway, read this post by Debbie about the link between China, Russia and Iran.

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The Jihad’s objectives: Jihad demands the killings of infidels or their subjugation under Islamic law. Read it all.

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Anyway, in China they are very worried about the bath houses and massage parlours, because of the “growing sex trade“. But, well, they should be happy about it, because the abortions focused mainly on female fetuses (and infanticide on girls) have saved the Chinese environment. [Well, no, not really, China has one of the most poluted atmospheres in the world h/t China Digital Times…].

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And, at last, ex-Law and Order Fred Thompson is running. 😆 I would like to see the expression in Zapatero’s face if he wins… Dumb OX has written a very funny post about this. 😆

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The Hillary Clinton’s fundraiser, Mr. Hsu, has failed to appear in court after the Judge set him for bail reduction hearing. An extraordinary judicial decision, as Fausta notes, considering that he has been a fugitive from the law these last fifteen years:

Hsu turned himself in to authorities last week after more than 15 years on the run from a felony conviction of grand theft. He admitted to defrauding investors of $1 million in a bogus investment scam.

He failed to appear in court for sentencing on that 1991 conviction, a revelation that prompted high profile Democrats — including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — to return thousands of dollars donated by Hsu.

Hmmm,  I would like to see what would have happened if this would have been made by any republican. You know, I haven’t seen this very underlined on Spanish press, but the Craig’s scandal… oh, yeah…

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Yemen: You could be punished by a slogan:

Demonstrations that began in May are continuing in Yemen as the regime takes increasingly repressive and violent measure to quell dissent.

Security forces made mass arrests of demonstrators, prompting more demonstrations. A new law criminalizes slogans. A newspaper is facing terrorism charges for reporting war news in the Sa’ada War. A top member of the Yemeni Socialist Party has been “seized” by security forces.

Interesting development. Normal people in Yemen -don’t think at first it’s the most developed society..- are demonstrating

demanding the release of more than 200 veterans and their sympathizers detained for protesting earlier this month, a police official said.

The protesters are mostly southern Yemeni veterans who lost their jobs after a defeat by northern forces in a civil war 13 years ago.

So, basically they have been jobless for 13 years because they lost a civil war. And now they are detained for demonstrating!! And when others protest that, they are also imprisoned!! 😯

Don’t know what happens today with the demonstrations:

Prominent Saudi reformist Abdullah Al Hamed and his brother brother have been ordered to appear in court on charges including inciting protests by women.

Wow, what a danger, eh? Women demonstrating… by themselves. Oops…

But the best is why they were demonstrating -well, trying to…-: because they want a man to be tried or released from prison. Charges? After the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, he was imprisoned for calling for a constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia!

Yes, that’s right. Saudi bombers spreading everywhere, but people calling for democracy are imprisoned on terrorist charges. Pfrrrrrrrrrrrtttttt!

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“Chávez is a danger for democracy“, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa says. Link in Spanish.

He stated that [Chávez] has a “messianic vocation” and blamed his attitude on the petrodollars, which he uses in an irresponsible manner to spread his bolivarian phylosophy, de-stabilising a Hispanic-American democratic Governments“.

He also distinguished between the nearly-dictatorial (or fully-dictatorial as @€#€@# Castro’s brothers) and the democratic left in the area.

But Chávez maybe also a danger for another freedom (yeah, one more, looks impossible… but ): the freedom to name your children as you wish. Now they are going to obliged to choose between 100 names if a new law passes through Parliament. Yeah, I know some of the names are a little bit critizable:

Software searches of the voter registry find more than 60 people of voting age with the first name Hitler, including Hitler Adonys Rodríguez Crespo; eight Hochiminhs, among them Hochiminh Jesús Delgado Sierra; and six Eisenhowers, including Dwight Eisenhower Rojas Barboza.

Who can name Hitler to his son? I would be horrified…

But this measure is a little idiot. I mean, you can forbid that people name their children after famous people. But you cannot impose a list to choose from there.

Another thing is the discrimination this future law makes: the Indians and the foreigners are excluded
from the measure. I understand about foreigners -they normally are ruled by the laws of their own country-. But Indians? What happens?? Are they different from the rest?

Then they would say that they have been discriminated and bla, bla, bla…. So, now they are discriminating the non-Indians. 😯

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A little bit of motor sport:  (in Spanish here)

It began innocuously enough with what looked like a patch of soap powder sprinkled across the floor below the two Ferraris awaiting Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa for this year’s Monaco grand prix. From this unlikely starting point it accelerated into arguably the biggest scandal in recent formula one history, possibly blighting Lewis Hamilton’s efforts to win his first British grand prix at Silverstone on Sunday [poor guy who has to ask for help to his daddy against Fernando Alonso… :twisted:, well, if you’re English, err, well, I’m Spanish, 😆], potentially jeopardising the careers of two respected engineers and forcing the McLaren-Mercedes team into such a humiliating corner that they offered up their world championship-leading MP4-22 to a detailed examination by the FIA ruling body in an effort to prove that no element stolen from Ferrari had been incorporated into its design.

The crisis reached its peak on Tuesday morning when Ferrari sacked their British engineer Nigel Stepney on suspicion of industrial espionage and a few hours later McLaren suspended their chief designer, Mike Coughlan, after hundreds of drawings and other technical data relating to this year’s Ferrari F2007 were allegedly found at his home in Surrey. It is understood that Coughlan acquiesced in the search and no legal compulsion had to be sought.

😯

(By the way, in Iran the racing Queen Sedigh has been banned from entering the stadium for the national competitons. What happens, ayatollahs? Do you think she was going to win again? Well, yes… 😡 ).

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Pavarotti has died.