Tag Archives: somalia

Why Terrorists hate America: Koran burning a drop in the bucket

(Article has many links to mentioned people places and events. Link back to original article to read them) President Obama in warning against the Florida pastor’s plan to burn the Koran stated, “This is a recruitment bonanza for al Qaeda. You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. This could increase the recruitment of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities.” It’s funny how B.O. (or his predecessor) never cited past American government policies as being a recruitment bonanza for al Qaeda. Only a handful of misguided activists at the Florida church using their own property and their privately acquired copies of the Koran have such an effect in the President’s view. Here is a partial list of the past as well as some on-going American foreign policy interventions that – by official standards – have had no influence in empowering al Qaeda: 1. The combined British/American overthrow of the democratically elected head of government in Iran in 1953, replacing him with the hated Shah and his secret police who the U.S. trained to murder thousands of Iranians. 2. In 1987 the U.S. militarily supported Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi war with Iran. 3. In 1988 the U.S. ship Vincennes, stationed in the Persian Gulf, shot down a commercial jetliner, killing 290 Iranian civilians. 4. After the Gulf War, the U.S. led an embargo against Iraq, allowing no humanitarian or medical aid. The results, according to UN estimates: 10,000 Iraqi deaths per month with the toll including more than 300,000 children. Then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when asked said it was “worth it.” Albright never retracted her statement nor was it ever repudiated by an American president. 5. In 1998 President Clinton bombed an aspirin factory in Sudan. A number of totally innocent civilians were killed. 6. European armies, rather than native peoples, drew many of the borders in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and southwest Asia. 7. The Saudi government, the Kuwaiti government, and the Afghani government are actively supported with foreign aid by the U.S. despite the fact that they routinely oppress their people. 8. The war in Iraq since 2003 that has resulted in a minimum of 97,000 civilian deaths as well as the displacement of more than a million civilians. 9. The war in Afghanistan since 2001 that has resulted in a minimum of 6,000 civilian deaths. 10. Predator strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. But, again according to the official bi-partisan view, none of these actions have caused blowback against Americans or Europeans. Finally, we know what the CIA meant when it coined the term “blowback” – hostility over Koran burning. Also, we now know what Noam Chomsky, 9-11; Rick Maybury, The Thousand Year War; Robin Wright, Sacred Rage; and Chalmers Johnson, Blowback must have had in mind when the penned their works. It’s refreshing to know that Koran burning is the provocation that incites the Islamic world and is the only thing we have to end to protect Americans from more terrorism – our imperialistic foreign policy, now under Barack Obama, can continue without any consequence whatsoever. September 11, 2010 added by: Elevator

Ted Koppel Toasts America-Goading Genius of Osama bin Laden on 9/11 Weekend

Former ABC Nightline anchor Ted Koppel may have taken his pomposity off-camera, but it certainly remains. In a gassy op-ed for Sunday’s Washington Post , Koppel announced that that “canny tactician” Osama bin Laden has won the War on Terror by pressing America into a series of wild overreactions. He began: The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned. This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power. Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap. The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another . Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams. It’s important to remember that Koppel was not a measured critic of Bush foreign policy. Before the Iraq War, as Brent Bozell noted, he devoted a show to conspiratorial anti-Bush cranks who compared neoconservatives to Nazis and alleged that America was bent on global domination:  He began with a Scottish newspaper, the Glasgow Sunday Herald, breathlessly announcing a “secret blueprint for U.S. global domination” that included Iraq. But then, he added, “a similar, if slightly more hysterical version” from the Moscow Times claimed “Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed, years ahead of the blow.” Koppel added: “Take away the somewhat hyperbolic references to conspiracy, however, and you’re left with a story that has the additional advantage of being true.” Bozell also reported Koppel also was quick to lie about how the Reagan administration was behind Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction:  Koppel set the tone for the meeting by undermining America’s moral authority: “There’s a sardonic two-liner making the rounds in Washington these days: ‘‘How do we know that Saddam Hussein has biological and chemical weapons? We have the receipts.’ Nasty, but there’s an element of truth to it.” He added “there wasn’t a great deal of outrage from the Reagan-Bush White House” when Saddam gassed his own people in 1988. That’s misleading. President Reagan condemned it, Secretary of State George Shultz condemned it. What we forget is that the media barely covered it at that time , making our lack of memory easy to exploit. They didn’t have “a great deal of outrage,” either. Koppel is still slashing conservative foreign policy for leading to an “existential nightmare” based on “unsubstantiated assumptions.” (That’s funny: Koppel’s whole embarrassing attempt to push the conspiracy theory that the 1980 Reagan campaign delayed the release of U.S. hostages was a series of “unsubstantiated assumptions,” but he put them on the air anyway, just like a reckless partisan.) Koppel even attacked himself for liberals and media stars offering “flaccid opposition” to the war:  But the insidious thing about terrorism is that there is no such thing as absolute security. Each incident provokes the contemplation of something worse to come. The Bush administration convinced itself that the minds that conspired to turn passenger jets into ballistic missiles might discover the means to arm such “missiles” with chemical, biological or nuclear payloads. This became the existential nightmare that led, in short order, to a progression of unsubstantiated assumptions: that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons; that there was a connection between the Iraqi leader and al-Qaeda. Bin Laden had nothing to do with fostering these misconceptions. None of this had any real connection to 9/11. There was no group known as “al-Qaeda in Iraq” at that time. But the political climate of the moment overcame whatever flaccid opposition there was to invading Iraq , and the United States marched into a second theater of war, one that would prove far more intractable and painful and draining than its supporters had envisioned. Koppel sneered that perhaps Osama bin Laden had more foresight than our disastrous American architects of war, and even today, we are “so absorbed in our own fury and so oblivious to our enemy’s intentions” that we still haven’t absorbed the wisdom of Ted Koppel and all his liberal foreign-policy buddies like John Kerry:  Perhaps bin Laden foresaw some of these outcomes when he launched his 9/11 operation from Taliban-secured bases in Afghanistan. Since nations targeted by terrorist groups routinely abandon some of their cherished principles, he may also have foreseen something along the lines of Abu Ghraib, “black sites,” extraordinary rendition and even the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But in these and many other developments, bin Laden needed our unwitting collaboration, and we have provided it — more than $1 trillion spent on two wars, more than 5,000 of our troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead. Our military so overstretched that one of the few growth industries in our battered economy is the firms that provide private contractors, for everything from interrogation to security to the gathering of intelligence. We have raced to Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently to Yemen and Somalia; we have created a swollen national security apparatus; and we are so absorbed in our own fury and so oblivious to our enemy’s intentions that we inflate the building of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan into a national debate and watch, helpless, while a minister in Florida outrages even our friends in the Islamic world by threatening to burn copies of the Koran. If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. “All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda’ in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses.” Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald’s. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less? Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos? It is past time to reflect on what our enemy sought, and still seeks, to accomplish — and how we have accommodated him. Next up: Koppel is taking this acidulous commentary to BBC America. 

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Ted Koppel Toasts America-Goading Genius of Osama bin Laden on 9/11 Weekend

Security Worsens in Mogadishu, Thousands Displaced

As fighting worsens in Somalia, Christof Putzel and Kaj Larsen provide some background to turmoil in the region.

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Security Worsens in Mogadishu, Thousands Displaced

What Is Al-Shabaab Doing In Uganda?

Moments before twin bomb blasts tore through crowds of football fans. Photo: AFP/Getty Images Darren Foster is a producer for Vanguard. Just a few months ago, I sat down for a final dinner in Uganda with Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller and producer Alex Simmons. We were joined by a couple of other foreign reporters who we had become friendly with while covering the country’s controversial anti-gay legislation. One of them, a French photojournalist who is based in Uganda, suggested the place: Ethiopian Village, a leafy outdoor restaurant that’s as popular for its food as for its giant projection screen. Expats—journalists, missionaries, NGO workers—along with Ugandans regularly gather at Ethiopian Village to watch big sporting events. And that was the scene last night when a large crowd gathered to watch the World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands. The match was entering the final minutes of regular time when a bomb ripped through the packed restaurant. A near simultaneous explosion tore through a rugby field where large screens showing the match had drawn hundreds of spectators. At last count, 74 people were killed, and many more injured. While reporting in Uganda this kind of terrorism was the furthest thing from our mind. Kampala is a safe and peaceful city. But as early as last week, the leader of the Somali Islamist group, Al-Shabaab, threatened to launch an attack on Uganda, whose troops are part of the African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu. Also, lost in the bigger headline of New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman’s recent story about child soldiers working for the US-backed government in Somalia was the fact that many of the government forces are trained in Uganda. The Ugandan military dismissed the threat from Al-Shabaab. They may have thought that Uganda was too far outside the scope of international terror. And while many are reporting that this is Al-Shabaab’s first strike outside of Somalia, that’s not entirely accurate. Al Shabab is a franchise of a global network. A network that put itself on the map with another coordinated bombing in East Africa. In 1998, al Qaeda simultaneously bombed the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania killing hundreds of people. Lawrence Wright reported in his excellent book on al Qaeda, The Looming Tower, that it was Osama bin Laden’s hope that the bombings would draw the US into Afghanistan, where he had recently moved al Qaeda. All bin Laden got were a few cruise missiles. But three years later, after the Sept. 11 attacks, he finally got his wish. Since then, Afghanistan and Iraq have largely defined the war on terror. But as the bombings in Kampala show, with terrorism the battlefield isn’t always so clear or obvious. added by: dmfoster

BREAKING NEWS:Bombs Strike World Cup Watchers In Uganda, Kill 64

KAMPALA, Uganda — In simultaneous bombings bearing the hallmarks of international terrorists, two explosions ripped through crowds watching the World Cup final in two places in Uganda's capital late Sunday, killing 64 people, police said. One American was killed and several were wounded. The deadliest attack occurred at a rugby club as people watched the game between Spain and the Netherlands on a large-screen TV outdoors. The second blast took place at an Ethiopian restaurant, where at least three Americans were wounded. One American was killed in the blasts, said Joann Lockard, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Kampala. Kampala's police chief said he believed Somalia's most feared militant group, al-Shabab, could be responsible for the attack. Al-Shabab is known to have links with al-Qaida, and it counts militant veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan conflicts among its ranks. A head and legs were found at the rugby club, suggesting a suicide bomber may have been to blame, an AP reporter at the scene said. At least three Americans – part of a church group from Pennsylvania – were wounded at the Ethiopian restaurant. One was Kris Sledge, 18, of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. “I remember blacking out, hearing people screaming and running,” Sledge said from the hospital. His right leg was wrapped and he had burns on his face. “I love the place here but I'm wondering why this happened and who did this … At this point we're just glad to be alive.” At the scenes of the two blasts, blood and pieces of flesh littered the floor among overturned chairs. Police Chief Kale Kaihura originally said at least 30 people had been killed, though the toll could be higher. Later, a senior police official at the scene said that 64 people had been killed – 49 from the rugby club and 15 at the Ethiopian restaurant. The official said he could not be identified. Kaihura said he suspected al-Shabab, that country's most hardline militant group. Its fighters, including two recruited from the Somali communities in the United States, have carried out multiple suicide bombings in Somalia. If Kaihura's suspicions that al-Shabab was responsible for the Uganda bombings prove true, it would be the first time the group has carried out attacks outside of Somalia. added by: keithponder

From "Mogadishu Madness" to "American Jihadi"

After reading about an American youth who converted to Islam and joined an extremist insurgency in Africa, I realized he and I had unwittingly crossed paths a few years before. In Current TV’s “American Jihadi,” a new episode of the Vanguard documentary series airing Wednesday, I go looking for the young man pictured above. I wanted to find him, if not in the flesh, at least to trace his route from small-town high school boy to anti-American warrior. I was in the war-ravaged city of Mogadishu in 2006, one of the first American TV correspondents to see the place in years. An Islamic coalition calling itself the Islamic Court Union had seized control of the Somali capital and imposed an uneasy peace that at least possible to get inside the chaotic “failed state.” To me and many other Americans, Mogadishu was best known as the site of the military tragedy and movie “Black Hawk Down.” Twenty-six years old and no stranger to hot spots around the world, I was drawn by the spirit of adventure and a journalist’s curiosity, despite warnings from others—including my father, a seasoned war correspondent, that the story wasn’t worth the risk. It was. My colleague, Kaj Larsen, and I found Somali expatriates streaming back to their homeland by the thousands to pick up their lives in a spirit of hope and renewal, despite the ruins and hair-trigger tempers that were the legacy of a 15-year civil war. I interviewed Islamist leaders who had captured the city and listened to their pleas for peace and a chance to re-establish a nation. Accusing the Islamic Courts of having ties to Al Qaida, the U.S. government branded them as terrorists. Shortly after my return to the United States to put together my piece, “Mogadishu Madness,” Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia with U.S. military support and drove the Islamists into hiding. Somalia plunged back into war. As it turned out, in the flow of people arriving at the reopened international airport in Mogadishu during that brief period of peace was another twentysomething American. Drawn by a passion to help establish an Islamic state in Somalia, Omar Hammami had left his wife and family in Egypt and arrived in Mogadishu shortly after I did. Like many Somali Muslims who answered a call for jihad to fight off the Christian invaders from Ethiopia, Omar joined Al Shabaab, one of the most ruthless and determined factions that had previously fought each other but were now united against the foreigners. After rising to become a top field commander, Omar is now a prominent Internet propagandist for the Somali allies of Al Qaida who helps recruit other young Muslims from the West to enlist in the cause. In the past three years, at least 30 American and Canadian citizens have turned up fighting in Somalia with Al Shabaab, more than have joined any other extremist group affiliated with Al Qaida. In “American Jihadi,” I retrace Omar’s path from Bible Belt Christian to Islamic extremist. I flew to Daphne, Alabama with practically no leads and spent three days cruising bars and restaurants—local hangouts where I thought people Omar’s age might hang out. At a Hooters, I met a patron who vaguely remembered playing soccer with Omar as a kid, then another who believed her fianc

16 Burning Questions About The Oil Spill That We Deserve To Have Answered

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a national nightmare that seems to have no ending. Every day new details come out that are even more shocking than what we learned the day before. The truth is that life will never be the same in the Gulf of Mexico or for those who live along the Gulf coast. Now Barack Obama has made a big Oval Office speech and has tried to convince all of us that he is in charge of the crisis. Well, perhaps if he had tried to take decisive action a month ago the American people may have rallied around him. But right now the BP/government response to this disaster remains completely and totally chaotic. Nobody seems to be able to stop the leak, and BP has made the environmental nightmare far worse by dumping over a million gallons of highly toxic dispersants into the Gulf. U.S. government officials are running around holding press conferences and waiting for BP to do something. Meanwhile oil is pouring ashore and toxic gases are being detected at very alarming levels. The biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history is also quickly becoming one of the biggest economic disasters and potentially one of the biggest public health disasters. The truth is that the American people deserve some answers about what in the world is going on down there in the Gulf. BP does not own the Gulf of Mexico and they have no right to keep the American people from seeing what is happening. There are some very serious health and environmental questions that have been raised in the media recently, but both BP and the U.S. government are not giving us any answers. But we need some answers. People are getting sick. Crops are dying. Wildlife is being devastated. Birds are flocking north by the thousands. READ MORE AT THE LINK…………. http://beforeitsnews.com/news/88/246/16_Burning_Questions_About_The_Oil_Spill_Th… added by: TomTucker

Viral Video Film School: Scary Robots

Professor Brett Erlich takes a look at scary Internet videos of robots talking, climbing, coughing, fighting, kissing and more.

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Viral Video Film School: Scary Robots

The Story Behind "American Jihadi"

Christof Putzel writes about the path that led him from Somalia in 2006 to reporting on American Islamic extremists in 2010. AMERICAN JIHADI: WED, JUN 29, 10/9c

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The Story Behind "American Jihadi"

American Jihadi: Vanguard Trailer

In “American Jihadi,” Vanguard correspondent Christof Putzel traces the journey of a small town kid from Alabama to Somalia, where as part of Al-Shabab he is now recruiting young Muslims from the west to wage jihad overseas. “American Jihadi” premieres on Current TV on Wednesday, June 30 at 10/9c. “Vanguard,” airing weekly on Current TV Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories. For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard . added by: Christof