Tag: Al-Qaeda

U.S. Extremists Worse Than Jihadists

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in U.S. extremists

Bergen: U.S. extremists worse than jihadists

By Peter Bergen and David Sterman
On Sunday, a man shot and killed a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and then drove to a nearby Jewish retirement community where he shot and killed a third person. Police arrested a suspect, Frazier Glenn Cross, who shouted “Heil Hitler” after he was taken into custody.

Cross, who also goes by Frazier Glenn Miller, is a well-known right wing extremist who founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now let’s do the thought experiment in which instead of shouting “Heil Hitler” after he was arrested, the suspect had shouted “Allahu Akbar.” Only two days before the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, this simple switch of words would surely have greatly increased the extent and type of coverage the incident received.

Yet the death toll in the shootings in Kansas is similar to that of last year’s Boston Marathon bombings, where three people were killed and the suspects later killed a police officer as they tried to evade capture. (Many more, of course, were also wounded in the Boston attacks; 16 men, women and children lost limbs.)

In fact, since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies, including white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists and anti-government militants, have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology. According to a count by the New America Foundation, right wing extremists have killed 34 people in the United States for political reasons since 9/11. (The total includes the latest shootings in Kansas, which are being classified as a hate crime).

By contrast, terrorists motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology have killed 23 people in the United States since 9/11.

(Although a variety of left wing militants and environmental extremists have carried out violent attacks for political reasons against property and individuals since 9/11, none have been linked to a lethal attack, according to research by the New America Foundation.)

Moreover, since 9/11 none of the more than 200 individuals indicted or convicted in the United States of some act of jihadist terrorism have acquired or used chemical or biological weapons or their precursor materials, while 13 individuals motivated by right wing extremist ideology, one individual motivated by left-wing extremist ideology, and two with idiosyncratic beliefs, used or acquired such weapons or their precursors.

A similar attack to the one that Frazier Glenn Cross is accused of in Kansas occurred in August 2012 when Wade Michael Page killed six people in a shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Page was a member of a white supremacist band and associated with the Hammerskins, a white supremacist group. Page committed suicide during the attack.

Page is not, of course, the only right wing extremist to have used lethal violence to achieve political ends. In 2009, for instance, Shawna Forde, Albert Gaxiola, and Jason Bush raided a house in Arizona, killing Raul Flores and his daughter Brisenia. The three attackers sought to use the burglary to finance their anti-immigration vigilante group, Minutemen American Defense. Forde and Bush were convicted and sentenced to death. Gaxiola was sentenced to life in prison.

Also in 2009, Scott Roeder murdered Dr. George Tiller, who ran an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas. In 2010 Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Roeder not only had ties to the extreme anti-abortion movement, but he also had been pulled over while driving with a fake license plate bearing the markings of the Sovereign Citizens, a movement of individuals who deny that the government has authority over them.

Of course, the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil prior to 9/11 was the Oklahoma City bombing, which was masterminded by Timothy McVeigh, a man with deep ties to far-right militant circles. McVeigh killed 168 people when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995.

Despite this history of deadly violence by individuals motivated by political ideologies other than al Qaeda, it is jihadist violence that continues to dominate the news and the attention of policy makers.

Some of this is quite understandable. After all, on 9/11 al Qaeda’s 19 terrorists killed almost 3,000 people in the space of a morning. Since then al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen tried to bring down with a bomb secreted on a passenger an American commercial jet flying over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and al Qaeda’s branch in Pakistan tried to launch bombings on the New York subway system a few months earlier. Luckily those plots didn’t succeed, but certainly if they had the death toll would have been on a large scale.

Yet the disparity in media coverage between even failed jihadist terrorist attacks and this latest incident in Kansas is emblematic of a flawed division in the public’s mind between killing that is purportedly committed in the name of Allah and killing that is committed for other political ends, such as neo-Nazi beliefs about the need to kill Jews.

Part of the reason for this disconnect might be that when a Department of Homeland Security report warning of violent right wing extremism was leaked in 2009, it generated a substantial political controversy.

In a 2011 interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Daryl Johnson, the leader of the team that produced the report, argued that following the controversy, DHS’s examination of such threats suffered, stating “Since our report was leaked, DHS has not released a single report of its own on this topic. Not anything dealing with non-Islamic domestic extremism—whether it’s anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists, ‘sovereign citizens,’ eco-terrorists, the whole gamut.”

The threat from al Qaeda and its associated forces has changed significantly since 9/11. Today, almost 13 years after 9/11, al Qaeda has not successfully conducted another attack inside the United States. And since 2011, no individual charged with plotting to conduct an al Qaeda-inspired terrorist attack inside the United States has acted with more than one accomplice. This demonstrates the difficulties today of forming a jihadist group sufficiently large enough to conduct a complex attack anything on the scale of 9/11, and is a tribute to the success of law enforcement agencies in detecting and deterring jihadist terrorist activity.

Today in the United States, al Qaeda-type terrorism is the province of individuals with no real connection to foreign terrorists, aside from reading their propaganda online. Given this, it becomes harder to explain, in terms of American national security, why violence by homegrown right wing extremists receives substantially less attention than does violence by homegrown jihadist militants.

Tyler Hite contributed research support for this article.

  • Copyright 2014 by CNN NewSource. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

NSA Can Reportedly Track Phones Even When They’re Turned Off

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in NSA, Secrecy, Spying

NSA Can Reportedly Track Phones Even When They’re Turned Off

By   

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A woman checks her mobile phone in Vienna.Photo by ALEXANDER KLEIN/AFP/Getty Images

The NSA has a diverse range of surveillance capabilities—from monitoring Google Maps use to sifting through millions of phone call records and spying on Web searches. But it doesn’t end there. The agency can also track down the location of a cellphone even if the handset is turned off, according to a new report.

On Monday, the Washington Post published a story focusing on how massively the NSA has grown since the 9/11 attacks. Buried within it, there was a small but striking detail: By September 2004, the NSA had developed a technique that was dubbed “The Find” by special operations officers. The technique, the Post reports, was used in Iraq and “enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off.” This helped identify “thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq,” according to members of the special operations unit interviewed by the Post.

It is not explained in the report exactly how this technique worked. But to spy on phones when they are turned off, agencies would usually have to infect the handset with a Trojan that would force it to continue emitting a signal if the phone is in standby mode, unless the battery is removed. In most cases, when you turn your phone off—even if you do not remove the battery—it will stop communicating with nearby cell towers and can be traced only to the location it was in when it was powered down.

In 2006, it was reported that the FBI had deployed spyware to infect suspects’ mobile phones and record data even when they were turned off. The NSA may have resorted to a similar method in Iraq, albeit on a much larger scale by infecting thousands of users at one time. Though difficult, the mass targeting of populations with Trojan spyware is possible—and not unheard of. In 2009, for instance, thousands of BlackBerry users in the United Arab Emirates were targeted with spyware that was disguised as a legitimate update. The update drained users’ batteries and was eventually exposed by researchers, who identified that it had apparently been designed by U.S. firm SS8, which sells “lawful interception” tools to help governments conduct surveillance of communications.

In recent weeks, the NSA’s surveillance programs—both domestic and international—have been the subject of intense scrutiny following a series of leaked secret documents. The NSA says that a vast database that it maintains on phone calls made by millions of Americans does not include location data. But the revelation that the agency has developed a technique that apparently enables  it to monitor thousands of cellphones—even when turned off—is likely to only inflame civil liberties groups’ concerns, prompting further questions about the full extent of the agency’s spying efforts.

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Idiotic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in 9/11 conspiracy theories, Conspiracy Theories, New World Order

9/11 conspiracy theories

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda, an Islamist terrorist organization led by Osama bin Laden, executed a plan in which a group of (in the end) nineteen men, mostly from Saudi Arabia, hijacked four jet airplanes in order to crash them into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and probably the White House.

Besides the unspeakable horror that this plan unleashed, it also gave birth to a conspiracy unlike anything the United States had seen since Pearl Harbor. 9/11 conspiracy theorists claim that the attacks were deliberately condoned or even carried out by the United States government in order to launch the War on Terror.[1] More extreme variations on these theories suggest that the attacks were masterminded by an international Jewish conspiracy, or that they were carried out as part of an ongoing strategy to bring about the New World Order.

More here at RationalWiki

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories

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Deranged Cultist Glenn Beck a Mormon Charlatan Like His Fake Prophet Joseph Smith

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Glenn Beck Cult Brainwashing, Glenn Beck Mormon Buffoon

Beck: ‘I’m Sorry America, but Your President is a Liar’
SUBMITTED BY Kyle Mantyla on Friday

On Wednesday night’s program, Glenn Beck spent the entire hour laying out a rather confusing theory about how the Obama administration has systemically lied about the attack in Benghazi, Libya as part of an attempt to cover of the fact that has been secretly arming Syrian rebels for the benefit of al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The entire program was an epic performance of conspiracy and delusion driven by an amazing lack of self-awareness as Beck said that someone who will so willingly and unapologetically lie to his audience must either “have deep psychological problems” or be totally insane, eventually getting very serious and quiet to declare “I’m sorry America, but your president is a liar” before dramatically walking off camera:

Mormon Cult Brainwashed Glenn Beck, Charlatan, Shyster, Con Artist and Uber Buffoon!

British Al-Qaeda Gang Planned ‘Another 9/11′ in UK Led By Muslim Terrorists Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Islamic Fascism, Islamic Fundamentalism, Islamic Kooks, Islamic Religious Right, Islamic Terror, Islamist Fundamentalists, Islamist Terror

British Al-Qaeda Gang Planned ‘Another 9/11′ in UK Led By Muslim Terrorists Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali.
Via:- pibillwarnerGo to full article

Jihadist group, from Birmingham UK, were to target crowded areas to cause “mass death” in a terror plot that was set to be even more devastating than the 7/7 London bombings, Woolwich Crown Court was told.  Two of the alleged ringleaders had received terror training in Pakistan and made martyrdom videos to be released after they had “blown themselves up”.

They were taught in bomb-making, how to use weapons and poisons before returning to the UK to recruit others for their plot. That included arranging for others to be sent to Pakistan for training as well. They planned to detonate homemade bombs in up to eight rucksacks and may also have blown others up with bombs on timers.

A total of 11 men and one woman were arrested by police on various terrorism charges last September. The details emerged as the trial began today of the three central plotters. Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27, and Ashik Ali, 27, all unemployed from Birmingham, all deny a number of terror charges including planning a bombing campaign, recruiting others for terrorism and terrorism fundraising.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, told the court: “In September 2011, and after, officers of the West Midlands Counter-Terrorism Unit arrested a number of young men from the Birmingham area, who are resident in this country.  “With it the police successfully disrupted a plan to commit an act or acts of terrorism on a scale potentially greater than the London bombings in July 2005, if it had been allowed to runs its course.  READ THE WHOLE THING CLICK HERE.

USA TODAY REPORTS ….Dirtbags Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid, and Ashik Aliallegedly inspired by the anti-Western sermons of U.S.-born Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in Yemen in September 2011. Altman said Naseer and Khalid traveled to Pakistan for terror training, where they learned details of poisons, bombmaking and weapons use and made “martyrdom videos” justifying their planned attacks.

On their return in July 2011, he said, they began to recruit others to the plot and to raise money by posing as fundraisers for Muslim charities. Altman accused the men of “despicably stealing from their own community” to fund their plot.They also began experimenting with chemicals ”to make an explosive mixture for use in an improvised explosive device,” the prosecutor said, aided by Naseer’s academic background — he has a degree in pharmacy.

Many of the group’s plans soon went awry, however. Four other young men dispatched by the plotters to Pakistan for terrorist training were sent home within days when the family of one man found out, Altman said. They have pleaded guilty to terrorism-related offenses.

Rahin Ahmed, an alleged co-conspirator described in court as the cell’s “chief financier,” attempted to increase the group’s budget by trading the money it had made through bogus charity fundraising on the currency-exchange market.He lost the bulk of the terror cell’s money through his “unwise and incompetent” commodities trading, the prosecutor said, READ THE WHOLE THING CLICK HERE.

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Right Wing Religious Nuts Profiteering From Islamophobia

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Anti-Muslim Film, Islamophobes, Islamophobia, Islamophobia Industry, Islamophobic Conspiracies, Pamela Geller Hatemonger, Pamela Geller Jewish Fascist, Pamela Geller Right Wing Lunatic, Right Wing Creeps

Al Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahri Urges Holy War Over Prophet Film Produced And Promoted By Right Wing Extremists Joseph Nassralla, Morris Sadek and Nakoula B. Nakoula.

FOX NEWS CAIRO – The leader of Al Qaeda is encouraging Muslims to wage holy war against the United States and Israel in response to a film that insulted Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. Ayman al-Zawahri, in an audio message released by Al Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab early Saturday, claimed Washington allowed the film’s production under the pretext of freedom of expression, but added that “this freedom did not prevent them from torturing Muslim prisoners.”

The crudely-produced amateur film, “Innocence of Muslims,” which was posted to YouTube and other online forums (some in Arabic), was made by Egyptian-born American citizens (Joseph Nassralla, Morris Sadek and Nakoula B. Nakoula). The video sparked violence in the Middle East, including in Egypt and Libya, where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others were killed on Sept. 11 during an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Dozens more have also been killed in violence related to the film. In Saturday’s audio recording, Al-Zawahri praised “honest and zealous” demonstrators who breached the U.S Embassy in Cairo and attackers who stormed the U.S. “embassy” in Benghazi.

World War III: That’s exactly what Right Wing Extremists  Joseph Nassralla, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Morris Sadek intended to do when they produced and promoted the stupid ‘Innocence of Muslims’ film.

Right Wing Extremists  Joseph Nassralla, Nakoula B. Nakoula and Morris Sadek, who are Coptic Christians from Egypt, have been on the  Islamophobia ”money train” for the past 3 years. Nakoula has federal convictions for manufacturing and distribution of Meth and ID fraud, he is an ex-convict whose probation conditions exclude him from ever using the internet or a computer without the written approval of his probation officer.

Gas station operator Nakoula B. Nakoula’s ”production company” is “Pharaoh Voice, Inc.” The registered address was 11804 Carson St. Hawaiian Gardens, Ca 90716. This is a converted gas station, now a “smog test” depot under a new owner not linked to Nakoula B. Nakoula.

Joseph Nassralla and Media for Christ (M4C) applied for the filming permit for Desert Warrior aka ‘Innocence of Muslims’ (per San Gabriel Valley Newspaper) and provided a certificate of insurance.  M4C has IRS non-profit status and files 990 returns. The 2011 return shows a budget of over $1 million dollars, and assets that were used to produce the film, ie the studio and the equipment such as sound editing for overdubs. The Media for Christ ( www.ATVSat.com ) website is a video blog production. 

Islamophobia Industry is Big Bucks as ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Filmmaker Joseph Nassralla’s Media For Christ Went From $8 Grand in Cash Donations in 2005 to over $1 Million in 2011. Joseph Nassralla has a very deep media trail, mostly on account of his featured roles in the various Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer promoted anti-Mosque events in New York City. SEE: http://rainoutreachtv.com/… “Nassralla founded the charity [i.e., Media for Christ] in 2005 with $30,000 of his own money. In its 2011 tax filing, which covers the period of the filming, the charity reported having eight employees and contributions of over $1 million.”

“There’s an interesting chronological parallel in the development of Joseph Nassralla’s alliance with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, and the funding fortunes of Media For Christ nonprofit 501(c)(3), that in its first four years of existence, starting in 2005, it had an operating budget of less than $50,000 a year. Then, in 2009, according to Media For Christ’s 2009 990 tax form filed with the IRS, the non profit’s yearly budget jumped to $195,396.

“In 2010, the year Joseph Nassralla spoke at Pamela Geller’s and Robert Spencer’s two anti-mosque rallies, and was photographed together with the two, Media For Christ’s budget tripled, to $633,516. Then, in 2011, Media For Christ’s budget zoomed to over one million dollars ($1,016,366), an astounding rate of growth for a new nonprofit.

Media For Christ 1040 Hamilton Dd Durate CA 91010
Media for Christ Federal EIN 203012642 Public Charity 501(c)(3)
Most recently completed fiscal year (TAXPER) 12/2011
Total Revenue $1,016,785 12/2011
Total Assets: $67,167
President Joseph Nassralla
Filed by Kamal Rizk CPA/Vice President
Total Revnue $635,198… 12/2010 Way TV launched on 1/1/2010
Total Revnue $195,396… 12/2009..Linked to Geller and Spencer
Total Revnue $46,248….. 12/2008
Total Revnue $65,861….. 12/2007
Total Revnue $64,164….. 12/2006
Total Revnue $8,719…… .12/2005

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Religious Sadists Condone Torture | Catholics and Co-Religious Rate Highest In Approving Torture

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Catholic Sadism, Religious Sadists

Reminder, of recent Polling indicating Catholics and Evangelicals highest in torture approval!

Poll: Most Evangelicals and Catholics Condone Torture in Some Instances

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Check out this fascinating new graphic analysis from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

It shows that most white evangelicals and Roman Catholics, along with most frequent churchgoers, say it’s OK to “sometimes” or “often” use torture on suspected terrorists. A slight majority of mainline Christians and religiously unaffiliated Americans, meanwhile, say torturing suspected terrorists could “rarely” or “never” be justified:

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Islamic Terror In Nigeria

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Islamic Terror, Religious barbarity, Religious Fundamentalism, Religious Terror, Sectarianism

Nigeria’s descent into holy war

A wave of terrorist violence across Nigeria has raised fears of an alliance   between the Islamist Boko Haram movement and al-Qaeda‘s franchise in the   Sahara. Colin Freeman reports from the Boko Haram stronghold of   Maiduguri.

Cars allegedly destroyed in army reprisals against residents of Maiduguri for failing to alert them to Boko Haram attacks

Cars allegedly destroyed in army reprisals against residents of Maiduguri for failing to alert them to Boko Haram attacks Photo: TOM SAATER/DEMOTIX
Colin Freeman

By , Maiduguri

7:30AM GMT 08 Jan 2012

Like many other Christian outposts in the spiritual homeland of Nigeria‘s   “Taliban”, the Victory Baptist Church in the northern desert city   of Maiduguri no longer just relies on God for protection.

A modest whitewashed spire in a skyline dominated by mosques, for the last   month it has had a military guard to defend it from Boko Haram, the militant   local Islamist sect blamed for a string of terror attacks nationwide in   recent weeks.

The soldiers in the sandbagged machinegun nest outside the church, though,   were unable save three members of the flock last week.

On Wednesday evening, three days after Boko Haram ordered all Christians to   leave Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria for good, Ousman Adurkwa, a   65-year-old local trader, answered the door of his home near the church to   what he thought was an after-hours customer. Instead it was two masked   gunmen.

“They shot my father dead, and then came for the rest of the family,”   Mr Adurkwa’s other son Hyeladi, 25, told The Sunday Telegraph the   following day. “One chased my brother Moussa and killed him, and the   other shot at me, but my mother took the bullet in the stomach instead.”

Hyeladi spoke as weeping parishioners gathered for an impromptu memorial   service in the Adurkwa family compound, where the parlour carpet was still   stained with blood from the gunshot wound suffered by Mrs Aduwurka, 50, who   now lies in hospital.

But while the sermon from the local pastor, Brother Balani, urged “prayers   for those who God has taken away, and comfort for those who remain”, it   diplomatically avoided the more earthly question of who actually did it.

For one thing, no-one can be sure the killing was not simply the result of a   private feud. And for another, Boko Haram, whose name means “Western   education is sinful”, and which wants hardline Sharia law across the   whole of Nigeria, has a track record of killing anyone who points the finger   at them publicly.

Yet some of the Adurkwa family’s neighbouring Christian households have   already made up their mind, fleeing the district for fear they might be next.

“We are going through a very difficult time because of Boko Haram,”   said Joseph Adams, 30, who lives nextdoor to the Aduwurkas. “Two weeks   ago a nearby church was also burned down, and nine other Christians have   been killed. Now all the houses around me are emptying.”

Whether such killings really do herald the start of a pogrom of Christians   remains in dispute. The Nigerian government, which is facing criticism for   failing to curb Boko Haram’s reign of terror, insists last week’s threats   were simply bluster, despite the deaths of some 23 Christians in two further   attacks elsewhere in northern Nigeria on Thursday and Friday.

What is less in doubt is the alarming evolution of the sect, which has   progressed from using machetes and poisoned arrows in its infancy to   sophisticated carbombs and Mumbai-style mass gun attacks today.

Started as a religious study group in Maiduguri more than 15 years ago, it   first took up arms under the leadership of a firebrand former civil servant,   Mohammed Yusuf, and focused its wrath mainly against the Nigerian   government, which it accused of neglecting the dirt-poor Muslim north.

Today, however, it is believed to be morphing into a new pan-African jihadist   franchise, forging links with both al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, which   operates in the vast Sahara region north of Nigeria, and al-Shebab in   Somalia.

Last August, in what diplomats fear may signal a campaign against Western   interests in oil-rich Nigeria, it killed 24 people with a car bombing of the   United Nations building in the capital, Abuja.

But what is causing even more worry is its parallel lurch into more sectarian   violence, aggravating historic tensions between the Christian south and the   Muslim north, and potentially destabilising West Africa’s biggest and most   powerful nation.

That new agenda was spelt out with a brutal sense of occasion on Christmas   Day, when a car bomb killed 42 worshippers at morning mass at St Theresa’s   Catholic Church in Madalla, just outside Abuja.

Among the bereaved was Steady Esiri, who rushed to the scene to find a charred   corpse wearing the distinctive Sunday best dress of his pregnant wife Uche,   26. Her eight-month old foetus had been torn from her womb.

“We were supposed to attend Mass together, but I was busy and planned to   go the evening service instead,” he said. “Then I heard a huge   explosion, and when I rushed here I recognised her dress. She was a   wonderful woman, a perfect housewife, now I will have to start my life   again. What kind of people do this for political ends?”

For the Reverend Isaac Achi, who feared his 3,500 strong congregation might   carry out reprisals against local Muslims, it was cause for a heartfelt   sermon the following day reminding them of the Christian virtue of   forgiveness.

“I told them revenge would just increase the number of souls dying on   both sides,” he said last week, looking out over church’s wrecked   facade, where Christmas decorations still hung lopsidedly. “But if the   government cannot stop this kind of thing, I will be worried about the   future of Nigeria.”

For some Christian leaders, however, the time for meekness is over. In   comments that angered Muslim leaders, the president of the Christian   Association of Nigeria, the Reverend Ayo Oritsejafor, branded the attacks a “declaration   of war” against Christians, and warned that they would “have no   choice but to respond appropriately ” if the authorities failed to stop   them.

Responding to the crisis last weekend, Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan,   declared a state of emergency throughout selected northern areas, including   Maiduguri, a dusty frontier town near the border with Chad.

Troops, tanks and pick-up trucks of menacing-looking plain clothes police have   flooded the city’s sandy, unpaved boulevards, where motorbikes – long the   favourite method for Boko Haram’s hit and run attacks – have long been   banned. Nevertheless, an air of menace remains, with the 6pm curfew enforced   not just by the soldiers, as by the knowledge that the sect generally mounts   attacks from late afternoon onwards. When The Sunday Telegraph   visited last week, explosions and gunfire were heard during the hours of   darkness.

Pacifying the city has been made harder by the local hostility to the security   forces, whose heavy-handed approach has won few hearts and minds over the   years.

In 2009, more than 700 people were killed when troops fought a five day battle   against Boko Haram followers which culminated in the capture of their   leader, Mr Yusuf. But the government’s victory was marred by reports that he   was summarily executed in police custody, a move that galvanised Yusuf   supporters to regroup, and put some locals off cooperating with the   authorities.

Last week, The Sunday Telegraph saw one street littered with burned out   cars – allegedly set fire to by soldiers after locals failed to warn them of   a bomb attack.

“They were angry because we did not give them any information,” said   one man, afraid to give his name. “But if we do, the sect will come   after us. We’re stuck in the middle.”

Maiduguri, however, is not the only flashpoint city in the region, and nor do   Muslim extremists have a monopoly on aggression. In the religiously mixed   city of Jos, north of Abuja, Christians are held equally to blame for   clashes that have claimed several thousand lives in the last decade alone.

The city, said to be an acronym for “Jesus Our Saviour”, sits atop a   balmy plateau that provides prime farming land and was once a favoured   retreat for British colonials escaping the humid malarial climes of coastal   Lagos. But it is jealously regarded as a historic fiefdom by the Christian   Berom tribe, who still view the Muslim Hausas who came here a century ago as   interlopers, despite having sold them much of their land.

On a walk through Jos’s Bukuru district, scene of Muslim-Christian clashes   which claimed 150 lives two years ago, the conflicting visions become clear.   While the two groups still live side by side in dense shanty towns, patches   of no-go-areas abound for each, and no two accounts of how 2010’s bloodshed   arose are alike.

“It is the Berom who cause the problems, trying to get their land back,”   said Mohamed Yakuba, 32, gesturing to a row of burned-out houses where his   father and eight other relatives died during the clashes.

True, he is still on good terms with his Berom neighbour John Jang, who also   lost his home. But when asked for his version of events, Mr Jang insists: “The   Birom were simply retaliating for attacks that the Hausa started.”

Yet while most Berom and Hausa still muddle along together in every day life –   urged on by street posters saying “Stop this wickedness” – some of   the Jos’s politicians have a less compromising view. None more so than Toma   Davou, 73, the Scripture-quoting leader of the Berom parliamentary forum,   who greets foreign visitors to Jos by saying “Welcome to Beromland”.

“The Hausas want to push us out, and although it is about land   occupation, they say it is religious so that they can get the sympathy of   Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda,” said Mr Davou. “Christians should arm   to the teeth to meet this threat from them and Boko Haram.”

Mr Davou is now campaigning for Nigeria to divide into separate Muslim and   Christian states, a move that for many would evoke memories of the Biafran   civil war of the 1960s.

The Nigerian government dismisses such talk, pointing out that the vast   majority of its 150 million citizens get on with one another peaceably, but   there is less clarity on the remedy for Boko Haram and al Qaeda, its new   ally.

Some Nigerian officials even question whether the sect really exists, saying   much of the havoc in Maiduguri is the work of criminal gangs who use its   name to frighten people.

But others are convinced that Boko Haram’s relationship is indeed having a   fledgling relationship with al-Qaeda – not least Robert Fowler, a Canadian   diplomat kidnapped by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb while serving with the   UN in Niger in 2008.

The gang who held him in the Sahara for 130 days repeatedly told him of their   aim to destroy governments across central Africa as a precursor to   establishing a pan-African caliphate. And among their number, they also   included a Nigerian.

“It would be an obvious partnership to form, even if there isn’t any hard   evidence yet,” Mr Fowler said. “The world should be worried,   because Nigeria is a huge country, and if it implodes it will take the rest   of West Africa with it.”

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9/11 and The Relentless Terror

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in 9/11, American Imperialism, Fake Terror, False Flag, Islamic Imperialism

9/11 and the relentless terror
Written by Lal Khan Friday, 09 September 2011

It is ten years today since in 2001 an outrageous attack killed 3000 innocent people and maimed hundreds of others in New York. This anniversary will be commemorated at a grand ceremony in New York where the US elite will gather in an outpouring of more pseudo-patriotism and chauvinism to dupe the working classes of the mightiest empire in history which is now plagued with economic disaster and social decay.

At the same time the mullahs will be blaring on about the victory of piety and faith against evil and immorality from the pulpits to whip up a religious hysteria that has wreaked havoc in the entire region. In reality the attack on 9/11 was a grotesque act of the fundamentalist bigots in which most of the victims were American workers already oppressed and exploited by crisis ridden US capitalism.

It is not just in the US where these religious fanatics have wreaked havoc but they have killed and maimed thousands of oppressed Muslims in Pakistan and other countries with a population of predominantly Islamic background. These forces of dark reaction are the product of a vacuum produced after the collapse of the left, an epoch of mild reaction with societies in the throes of a spiralling economic crisis and malaise that has set in with a relative lull in the movements of the youth and workers for radical change.

However, it is also true that this temporary phenomenon has been exaggerated and abused in their own interests by the imperialists. Rather than conducting a prophetic analysis of the horrific episode of 9/11, conspiracy theories have been proliferating. Mostly absurd and mysterious they were biased and merely expressed religious and racist prejudices. On the other hand the official report of the 9/11 commission is inarticulate and is conveniently vague in order to circumvent the motive of the perpetrators of this gruesome act. This has added to the confusion of the ordinary people not just in the US but around the world.

After the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union the glorified imperialist ideologue Francis Fukuyama came up with his thesis of the ‘end of history’. This ingenious thesis was demolished by history even before the ink had dried. Capitalism plunged yet again into a crisis that destroyed the notion of it being the ultimate destiny of the human race. Then his contemporary genius, Samuel Huntington came up with his reactionary idea of a crusade in ‘the clash of civilisations’ in 1997.

After the fallout with the fundamentalists in Afghanistan and elsewhere the Americans tried to inversely use this reactionary phenomena as an external threat to ‘western civilisation and use it to oppress the workers of the advanced capitalist countries to prop up exploitation and profits. They crafted Islamic fundamentalism and figures like Osama in such a manner that suited their propaganda machinery and inculcated fear in societies to subvert and retard the class struggle.

In his latest book, ‘The Rise and Fall of Al Qaida’, Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics writes the following, “Al Qaida was never the monster many imagined it to be. The only thing that keeps it alive is fear stoked by self-serving politicians and ignorant media. A decade after September 11, over-reaction is still the hall mark of the US war on terror.”

Al-Qaida and its ilk were not a unified axis as depicted by the bourgeois media. It was a fragmented and amorphous enterprise based mostly on personal relationships and megalomaniac delusions like the myth of the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan by the Mujahidin etc; bolstered up by the western media. After the Americans abandoned their fundamentalist protégés who were nurtured by the CIA in Afghanistan, it was the sponsorship of some state agencies in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other despotic states who wanted to use these frenzied fundamentalists for their own strategic manoeuvres, that has kept them running. The conflicts around the financial stakes in the black economy to which these outfits were wed instigated frictions that ended up in further splintering and fragmentation amongst them. The split-away factions defying the ‘agencies’ controlled outfits, had to be more ferocious and bestial to prove their worth. Hence the spiral of terror and barbarism unleashed further suicidal bombings and slaughter that are still devastating Pakistan and Afghanistan.

However, the imperialists have been using the thesis of the ‘clash of civilisations’ even more in the aftermath of 9/11. The Islamic fundamentalists have enormously benefitted from this policy. Even Jonathan Freedland confessed in a recent article in The Guardian, “A new foreign policy doctrine was hastily assembled. It said that the world faced a single, overarching and permanent threat in the form of violent jihadism… And the call went beyond foreign policy. Culture, too, was to be enlisted in a clash of civilisations between Islamism and the West…” Just a few years before 9/11 jihad and mujahedeen were exalted concepts in the western vocabulary. With honest hindsight, looking at the last 70 years it becomes more than clear that imperialism and fundamentalism are two sides of the same coin. After all they subscribe to the same economic doctrine.

But this war of attrition has been a very profitable venture for the military industrial complex especially in the US. A huge security empire was built up. Some 1,271 government organisations and 1,931 private companies work on programmes related to counter-terrorism. Companies from Martin Lockheed to General Dynamics and from Halliburton to DynCorp have made astronomical profits. The imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the sales to tension plagued India have boosted the armaments industries in the US.

But the working class in America has suffered tremendously. They face a wage freeze for 20 years, unemployment has soared to unprecedented levels and the US masses are facing draconian austerity cuts and more and more are being deprived of health benefits. But for how long will they tolerate such vicious attacks? The American people are losing the civil liberties they fought for and gained in the last two hundred years. The US president has given the Joint Special Operations Command a rare authority to select individuals to kill, rather than capture them.

Yet the US is another imperialism that is in historical decline. The Economist Editorial in its latest issue says, “The world-bestriding hyper power of ten years ago has lost its confidence and craves a chance to regroup.” Under capitalism that chance has gone. The mighty American proletariat will have to rise to take power and overthrow this system that is horror without an end. Trotsky wrote long ago, “The United States is the foundry of the future of mankind”. The working class and the youth in America have a historical task to accomplish. They have a pledge to redeem.

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