Rapier SAMs on Blackheath Commons in London, apparently installed to protect the London Olympics. They were last used in the Falklands in 1982, where their performance was, frankly, pretty poor. Perhaps they’ve been upgraded. But what will arrest Al Qaida, and its rhizomic offshoots, with or without Osama bin Laden?
DEAR SRI LANKAN FRIENDS
Michael Roberts
My name is now part of the Petitionary protest, with a comment.
Name: Michael Roberts
Email: DELETED HERE
Comment: Thank you for your initiative — it is as pointed as vital. The extremist position of Inamaluwe Thera and his supporters cannot be considered an isolated incident; while the deafening silence of the leading members of GoSL is disturbing in its future implications.
Inamaluwe Thera can hardly be placed in the lunatic fringe so his initiative has many potential ramifications. One is the erosion of the middle ground of politics and the promotion of extremism on all sides of Sri Lanka’s multi-cultural mosaic.
PS: Inamaluwe was also part of the wheeler-dealing associated with Rangiri Stadium in cohorts with Thilanga Sumathipala. Here the President did step in behind the scenes and sort matters out — after prompting by some politically astute members of Sri Lanka Cricket.
PS 2 on Rangiri Stadium: This stadium stands on grounds belonging to the Dambulla Temple and was built by Thilanga Sumathipala when chairman of the Sri Lanka cricket on a legal arrangement that effectively made the site into a personal fiefdom and pocket borough of Inamaluwē Sumangala Thera and Sumathipala in tandem. This may have been well and good when Sumathipala was in charge of SLC. But, when he was not in office this meant that the two between them held SLC to ransom if and when the Rangiri Stadium was needed for international matches.
SEE Roberts, “Rangiri Cricket Stadium and its Tempestuous History,” 10 July 2007 in http://static.cricinfo.com/db/INTERACTIVE/DILMAH/GREATS/TALKINGPOINT/ rangiri_cricket_stadium.html
Roberts, “Governing Sri Lanka Cricket: Sumathipala as Premadasa,” in Essaying Cricket: Sri Lanka and Beyond,” Colombo: Vijtha Yapa Publishers, 2006, pp. 120-22.
RT, courtesy of the Eurasia Review, 1 May 2012
News has emerged of a German police seizure of a large cache of Al-Qaeda’s internal documents disguised as pornography. They outline the terrorist network’s plans for possible attacks in Europe, including hijacking a cruise liner.
The documents were found by the German Federal Criminal Police in mid-March 2011 after they arrested a man called Maqsood Lodin. Investigators suspect that the Austrian received training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan and was planning to establish a sleeper cell in Germany. The man had several memory cards hidden in his clothes, when he was being detained. Among the files on them was a pornographic movie called “Kick Ass” and a file named “Sexy Tanja” the German newspaper Die Zeit reports.
The files, however, had a massive amount of data hidden under their apparent content. There were more than 100 documents apparently used by Al-Qaeda terrorists in their activities. Of particular interest to German investigators were three text files, which outline the network’s assessment of its past operations and plans for future attacks.
The documents’ author remains unknown, but it is probably someone from Al-Qaeda’s inner circle of leadership. They were penned between 2008 and 2009, the Germans believe, but are still of great value to law enforcement agencies today.
Apparently the leadership of the terrorist network is unhappy with its inability to perform a major attack in the West over recent years. The documents indicate that the case of Lodin and another man, Yusuf Ocak, who allegedly received the same training in the same camp and was returning to Europe with Lodin, is part of a strategy to change that.
They and many others were to form a number of sleeper cells in Europe which would be available for eventual attacks. Al-Qaeda envisioned a twofold action plan, with a number of small terrorist attacks launched one after another to distract law enforcers and keep them pre-occupied. While this happened, a large-scale operation would be in the works unnoticed by the authorities.
The documents, called “Future Works”, outline a number of possible ways a major terrorist attacks could be carried out. One idea is to seize a cruise liner, take the crew and passengers hostage and start shooting prisoners in front of cameras unless the terrorists’ demands are met. The approach is referred to as “taking jihad to the sea” in the roadmap.
The exact value the intelligence has in fighting against Al-Qaeda is yet to be seen. It does not state any dates or targets of possible attacks. Nevertheless it provides a unique insight into the internal workings of Al-Qaeda.
The cache may be as precious a piece of evidence as the archive of Osama Bin Laden, captured by US Navy SEALs after the raid on his compound a year ago. The US announced that it will publish some of that booty soon.
It is unlikely that Bin Laden’s fabled porn collection would be among the data made public, but the news indicates that it may have had a sinister purpose behind it.
Web Editor’s Note: this is May 1st not April 1st so i presume this is no joke!
Filed under Al Qaeda, terrorism, world events & processes
Amanda Hodge, in The Australian, 2 May 2012 where it was presented under a different title
A FUNNY thing happened at the site where Osama bin Laden’s house once stood the other day. Three Chinese businessmen, arrested for entering the Abbottabad neighbourhood where the al-Qa’ida chief lived a life of secret mediocrity, tried to cut a deal with police to sell “genuine bin Laden rubble” over the internet.
The story is as notable for its slapstick value as it is for the fact that residents of Bilal Town can finally – after a year of fear and intrusion – see something to laugh about. Continue reading
John Blaxland in The Australian, 1 May 2012
POPULAR perception in the West often characterises the Thai military as being a totally self-serving and coup-prone organisation. But, in reflecting on political developments in Southeast Asia, Western observers tend to follow the classic Western liberal tendency of painting complex situations in black-and-white terms. Invariably, there is more grey than most are prepared to concede.
So while many like to portray the Thai armed forces as looking for an excuse to seek more power, this does not seem to be the case. Following the disastrous and bloody events in the streets of Bangkok in May 1992, the military studiously avoided staging another coup for 14 years – a remarkably long period of time for Thailand.
When General Sonthi Boonyaratklin staged his bloodless coup on September 19, 2006, he and his colleagues suddenly realised why the army had avoided staging such coups for so long. Running the country was a lot harder in 2006 than it had been in the good old days of the Cold War. Continue reading
Courtesy of Future Directions International, where the article appeared under a different title
Key Points:
Summary: Mohammed Waheed Hassan, the new President of the Maldives since 7 February 2012, faces two grave challenges – the twin threats of extremism and drug trafficking. Nonetheless, like his predecessor, the ousted Mohamed Nasheed, President Waheed also faces constraits in trying to resolve these national problems. For instance, Nasheed resigned when the Maldivian Police refused an order that was deemed illegal, and the Military did not carry out an order to disarm and ‘cut down’ the police, which paved the way for the then Vice President Waheed to assume office. Continue reading
Julian Gavaghan in Daily Mail, April 2012 … where the article bore a different title:
The immigration boom under Labour led to the face of Britain changing faster than any major nation except Italy, a study by an Oxford University think tank revealed. During the five-year peak of the influx, the UK’s migrant population soared by 22 per cent – double the average of G8 countries, figures from the Migration Observatory show. Over the past two decades, Britain’s foreign-born population has increased from 3.8million – or 7 per cent of the total population – in 1993 to almost 7million, or 12 per cent per cent in 2010.
I. “The truth about polygamy: A special investigation into how Muslim men are exploiting the benefits system in the UK,” by Sue Reid for the Daily Mail, September 2011
Ghulam is a taxi driver who lives in Blackburn, a once-booming textile town in Lancashire. He has a terrace house near his local mosque (one of 53 in the area), a silver Nissan car and a very complex private life. For, he has so many children that he struggles to remember their names, and five wives from various countries, including Yemen, Egypt, Turkey and his own birthplace, Pakistan. Ghulam’s latest bride is a shy 20-year-old called Hafeza. He brought her to Britain from Morocco, soon after his 45th birthday earlier this year. They married in an Islamic wedding ceremony called ‘the Nikah’ in her village in Morocco, with Hafeza’s pleased parents among the guests. Continue reading
thuppahi
