World Threats

The Daily Mail is reporting that Italy has called for a cease fire with Libya.

Italy broke ranks with Nato yesterday and demanded an urgent halt to hostilities in Libya. Franco Frattini, the foreign minister in Rome, called for an ‘immediate suspension’ of military operations to allow humanitarian aid to be brought to the wartorn country. He also said military leaders should provide more details about Nato bombing raids following mistakes which led to civilians being killed. His demand for a ceasefire echoed comments by Arab League Chairman Amr Moussa on Tuesday. However, British Prime Minister David Cameron played down calls to stop the mission and said it would eventually reach a ‘satisfactory conclusion’.

Please read the entire article for more important information.

Analysis. NATO is casualty averse. The major combatants may also be running out of ammunition.

Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the head of the Royal Navy, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon Bryant, the RAF’s second-in-command, have both warned that their services would struggle to fight beyond six months because of defence cuts. It led Mr Cameron to slap down top brass by warning: ‘You do the fighting and I’ll do the talking.’ He told MPs: ‘I have sought assurances, and received them, from the Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir David Richards, that we are capable of keeping up this operation for as long as it takes.

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From CAN:

An investigation by the Sunday Telegraph has documented over a dozen instances where residents in the Tower Hamlets borough of London have been intimidated over violating Islamic teaching. The borough’s mayor, Lutfar Rahman, won as an independent with the support of an Islamist group called the Islamic Forum of Europe last year.

In one incident, a Muslim was severely beaten for smoking during Ramadan. Several teachers said they feel “under pressure” from Muslim extremists to conform to their beliefs. The newspaper also found that hate crimes against gays have skyrocketed by 80 percent since 2007, including a 21 percent increase in 2010. Some of these crimes include attacks on attendees of a gay bar. Extremist preachers like Khalid Yasin that condemn homosexuals have preached in Tower Hamlets.

Mayor Rahman was elected as an independent after the Labor Party expelled him. He was removed as council leader of Town Hamlets six months prior because of the controversy surrounding his Islamist ties. The Telegraph previously revealed that Rahman has had Islamist texts placed into libraries, appropriated more than 10 million pounds to affiliates of the Islamic Forum of Europe, and has put the organization’s officials in positions of power.

“It really is Britain’s Islamic republic now,” one senior Labor Party official told the newspaper.

The Telegraph has broken several incriminating stories about the Islamic Forum of Europe. Undercover reporters have recorded its leaders talking about replacing democracy with Sharia law and holding meetings with known extremists.

“It was the execution of a careful and sophisticated plan by a small, well-financed and highly-organised cabal to seize control of a London borough,” wrote the Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan.

 

Rep. Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, held a hearing last week on radical Islam in the U.S. prison system, called “prislam” by one witness. The hearing was met with predictable accusations of discrimination and bigotry, but the name-calling failed to impede the exposure of the nexus between convicts and radical Islam.

Democratic Rep. Laura Richardson confronted King for singling out extremists within Islam, saying his hearing could “be deemed as racist and as discriminatory.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations likewise stated, “Congressman King has been shown very clearly to have made anti-Muslim statements and a number of false allegations toward the American-Muslim community.”

Rep. King defended himself. “If we find out that Neo-Nazis are allied with a foreign power and they come into this country…we will address it. The fact is we are not going to spread ourselves out and investigate everything, which means addressing nothing,” he said.

The content of the hearing shows why Rep. King is right to focus on the phenomenon that Michael Downing of Los Angeles Police’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau called “prislam.” One witness, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Smith, discussed a plot by prison converts to attack Los Angeles International Airport and Jewish sites around Los Angeles. “From the prison [the cell leader] was able to set up and set out an operation cell of would be jihadists on the streets of Southern California” Smith said. In 2009, four Muslims who met in prison were arrested for planning to bomb synagogues in the New York area and conspiring to shoot down a military plane with a Stinger missile. Three of the four involved converted while imprisoned.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

From CAN:

A hit list of over 40 people has been published on an Al-Qaeda-linked Internet forum, CNN reports. Photos accompanied 26 of the names. The Investigative Project on Terrorism says that the message suggesting killing those on the list with “booby-trapped parcels.”

The list was written up following the release of a videotape by Adam Gadahn, an American member of Al-Qaeda, where he called for “acts of individual jihad.”

CNN says that an FBI report from June 8 states that “while the information posted was detailed, it appears aspirational in nature and it is unknown whether the threat will progress beyond discussion.” An alert was also sent out by the Department of Homeland Security.

FoxNews.com reports that “The full breadth of the online discussion is actually worse than it is portrayed in the original DHS report.” Posters on the jihadist forum are actively discussing additional figures to assassinate.

Names on the list include President Obama, General David Petraeus, evangelical preacher John Hagee, arms contractors, and terrorism experts including Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Dr. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum and Yigal Carmon of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“I can’t recall anything this specific. I think these guys are serious,” terrorism expert Patrick Poole told FoxNews.com.

From CAN:

Rep. Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, held a hearing last week on the spread of radical Islam in America’s prison system, which one expert dubbed “prislam” because of its “cut and paste” version of the religion. King’s hearings on Islamic extremism have been criticized in some quarters for singling out one religion.

The hearing focused on several cases of inmates and former prisoners converting to radical Islam. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Smith discussed a plot by a group of prisoners to attack the Los Angeles International Airport and Jewish centers in the Los Angeles area. He noted that the cell was created from inside the prison he was held. According to FOX News, there have been at least four documented cases of Muslim inmates converting to radical Islam.

Experts also testified about prison imams that have spouted extremism and the presence of extremist texts in prison libraries, much of it from Saudi Arabia. The case of Imam Warith Deen Umar, the former top Muslim chaplain for the state of New York, was examined. Imam Umar was fired after it was discovered that he was glorifying the 9/11 attacks and praising attacks on U.S. soldiers to Muslim inmates.

One witness, Bert Useem of Purdue University, said the threat is overblown.

“Prisons have not served as a major source of Jihad radicalization,” Useem said.

King rejected accusations that focusing solely on Islamic extremists is racist or bigoted, as his critics contend.

“If we find out that Neo-Nazis are allied with a foreign power and they come into this country…we will address it. The fact is we are not going to spread ourselves out and investigate everything, which means addressing nothing,” King said.

While Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbotabad may or may not have been known to Pakistan’s senior leadership, it is apparent that at least some in the country realized it. Now we have the leader of another very deadly jihadist group living openly in Pakistan.

Fazle-ur-Rahman Khalil is the leader of the Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, which was allied to al Qaeda. Khalil was a trusted confidant of bin Laden and signed the fatwa against the United States in the 1990s. Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen was and is an international group, with its jihadists ending up in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Khalil is living openly in Pakistan, where even the US press knows about it.

Because of HuM’s goal of ‘liberating’ Kashmir from India, it may be getting a pass from the government:

Like most of the militant groups that get a wink and a nod from Pakistan’s security agencies, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen’s primary focus is Kashmir, a picturesque region divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by each in its entirety. Kashmir has been the cause of two of three wars between the South Asian neighbors and brought them perilously close to a nuclear confrontation in 2000.

Khalil’s group has kidnapped foreigners in Indian Kashmir, killing one. His group also helped in the 1999 hijacking of an Indian airlines plane that resulted in the release of three militants, including Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is now on death row for his part in the 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Further, they have ties with some very nasty people:

Khalil’s militant ties include the anti-Indian Lashkar-e-Taiba group, blamed for masterminding the November 2008 assault on Mumbai that killed 166 people. The AP learned from the same official that seven training camps are operating in Pakistani Kashmir and most of them are run by Jamaat-ud-Dawwa, the name Lashkar-e-Taiba took after being banned.

When will the Pakistanis get serious, if ever?

From CAN:

The authorities arrested a Yonathan Melaku in Arlington Cemetery near the Pentagon for possible terrorism-related activity on Friday, June 17, various press outlets reported.  No dangerous materials were in his possession, but one of his notebooks contained references to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Melaku, who is a Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps Reserves, was confronted when seen in Arlington Cemetery around 2 a.m. with a backpack. He fled on foot but was ultimately subdued. According to ABC News, he was carrying a notebook with references to “Al-Qaeda,” “mujahidin,” “defeated coalition forces” and “Taliban rules.”

He also had four bags with a label indicating they contained ammonium nitrate and according to New Jersey Newsroom, 20 9mm shell casings. The authorities located his car near the Pentagon. It was determined that none of the materials posed a danger and officials say they have yet to find a link between Melaku and a terrorist group.

Melaku’s arrest caused a bomb scare that resulted in the closure of roads around the Pentagon.

Melaku is an Ethiopian-American and joined the Marines in 2007, but NBC News has been told that he failed boot camp.

James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal noted that only FOX News Channel mentioned that Melaku is a Muslim.

“Now, it’s possible that Fox simply got a scoop here, but our guess is that this fact was omitted from the other reports because of the politically correct taboo against making a connection between Islam and terrorism,” Taranto wrote.

The Syrian government’s savagery has ruptured the friendship the Assad regime has enjoyed with Turkey since Prime Minister Erdogan came to power. There is now a refugee crisis on the border, and the Turkish military may be deployed to create a buffer zone to protect the Syrians that President Assad is trying to starve and abuse into submission.

On Sunday, Turkey delivered the first shipment of humanitarian aid to the refugees on the Syrian side of the border. The Turks are taking care of at least 10,000 refugees on its own territory, though the Turkish Red Crescent puts the number as high as 30,000. The assistance comes at a time of immense need. The army has made Jisr al-Shoughour a ghost town, and is now laying siege to the border town of Bdama. The 4^th Division commanded by Assad’s brother, Maher, is burning down forests, stores and the bakery that is the single source of bread for the refugees. The cutting off of food, medicine and vital supplies to the refugees makes it more likely that Turkey will take drastic measures to contain the humanitarian crisis.

“If chaos starts, then we will have to form a security zone or buffer zone inside Syrian territory,” one Turkish official said. Prime Minister Erdogan has accused the Syrian regime of carrying out an “atrocity.” His government is urging that Assad carry out “shock” reforms and oversee a period of transition, echoing the words of President Obama in his speech about the Arab Spring. There are reports that Turkey will privately demand the sacking of Maher al-Assad as the commander of the 4^th Division and Presidential Guards, as well as insist on specific reforms, but this has been denied.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

Al-Qaeda has officially made its deputy-leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, its chief. Zawahiri is a divisive but deadly figure, commonly believed to be more important to Al-Qaeda operations than even Osama Bin Laden. This makes him America’s number one target, and it will be a struggle for him to manage the group’s vast networks while protecting his own life.

It took Al-Qaeda’s leadership six weeks to name Zawahiri as their commander. He has long been Bin Laden’s second-in-command, and so his appointment was expected to be an immediate development. This delay indicates the terrorist group’s top officials are having difficulty communicating, and may mean there is apprehension about Zawahiri. His new post will also force him to undertake stronger security measures that could result in isolation, causing fractures within Al-Qaeda.

“The question is whether Zawahiri…can hold these groups together in some kind of cohesive movement, or whether it begins to splinter, and they become essentially regional terrorist groups that are more focused on regional targets,” Defense Secretary Gates said.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

This from the Chosun Ilbo.

The rogue state will continue experimenting with intercontinental ballistic missiles that put the U.S. within striking distance until it succeeds in 2012, said Larry Niksch, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. (…) Niksch said that if Pyongyang secures the appropriate technology, it will never abandon its nuclear program, thereby rendering the six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the country ineffective. He said the U.S. needs to fundamentally rework its policies regarding the North’s nuclear weapons programs in order to make progress.

Please read the entire article for more information.

Analysis. The Kim family wants the same thing that they have always wanted: a guarantee of existence for North Korea. Absent a peace treaty that makes the division of Korea permanent, the North will continue its drive to insure its permanence through nuclear means. It will then use its nuclear capability to blackmail South Korea and the United States into supporting it. We must prevent North Korea from obtaining the ability to blackmail us.

The other point to remember is that a North Korean nuclear capability implies an Iranian nuclear capability. While North Korea is most likely not suicidal, the same cannot be said for the mullahocracy running Iran. North Korea is simply a feudal state with Communism as the theoretical justification for the feudalism. Iran is a state run by religious zealots whose goal is to bring forth the Mahdi (Twelfth or Hidden Imam) through causing the chaos necessary to bring the Mahdi forth.

NewsMax is reporting that North Korea may have tested a nuclear weapon designed to produce a large electro-magnetic pulse (EMP).

Gary Samore, a top Obama administration national security official, warned of new sanctions if North Korea conducted a third round of nuclear tests on Monday, as reports surfaced that North Korea has miniaturized its nuclear warheads so they can be delivered by ballistic missile. North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states, says Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA nuclear weapons analyst and president of EMPact America, a citizens lobbying group. Samore, who handles arms control and non-proliferation issues, warned that “additional strong sanctions will be imposed on the North with the support of Russia and China.”

Please read the entire article for more important information.

Analysis. There are several reasons for developing “low yield” nuclear weapons, generally those with a TNT equivalent yield of 20 kilotons or less. Low yield weapons may be used for small targets that can be struck with extreme precision. This limits the damage to the surrounding territory. For a demonstration of how yield effects damage see The Federation of American Scientists website. A low yield fission detonation is used as the trigger for a fusion (hydrogen) detonation. The fission detonation supplies the required heat and pressure to cause tritium atoms to form helium as occurs in the sun. A low yield fission detonation may be specially designed to enhance the radiation given off by the detonation. This can be in the form of an electro-magnetic pulse that is significantly larger than the detonation would normally produce or in the form of an enhanced number of neutrons (AKA the “neutron bomb” we were afraid of in the 70s and 80s). Neutron bombs are specifically designed to kill people through enhanced radiation without causing great property damage. The North Korea/Iranian tests could have been for any of these purposes.

To be reasonably sure of what the North Koreans/Iranians are really developing we would have to know what their nuclear doctrine is. That information, if we even have it, will not be seen in unclassified form. However, it would appear to be illogical that North Korea would develop an EMP weapon for use against South Korea. The effects would spill over into the eastern People’s Republic of China as well as Japan. The PRC would not be happy. An EMP weapon would be more likely directly employed against the United States by North Korea or by Iran.

A neutron bomb, on the other hand, could be employed by North Korea against South Korea to great effect. It would be a distinct advantage to North Korea to take South Korea relatively intact but mostly depopulated. This would be especially true if the North could avoid destroying South Korea’s agriculture with conventional explosives in any conflict. The same would be true of the Iranians vis-a-vis the Saudi oil facilities.

I believe we will know shortly what the Iranians and North Koreans are doing. The next test will pretty much tell the tale. If it is another low yield test then we may presume that some kind of enhanced radiation weapon is being developed. If it is a high yield detonation greater than approximately 20 KT, then they are developing large yield weapons and the prior test were of a fission trigger for a fusion bomb. Neither of these outcomes is particularly good for World stability.

A lawsuit has been filed accusing Iran and Hezbollah of “direct support for, and sponsorship of, the most deadly act of terrorism in American history.” Drawing on the knowledge of two Iranian intelligence defectors, three 9/11 Commission staffers and various experts, eight law firms are placing blame for the September 11 attacks on the Iranian regime. If successful, the lawsuit will put to rest the notion that a nuclear Iran can be lived with.

The first indications of possible Iranian involvement in the September 11 attacks were in the 9/11 Commission Report released in 2004. The report revealed that 8 to 10 of the hijackers had gone to Iran between October 2000 and February 2001. The border guards were apparently ordered not to stamp their passports. In October 2000, a senior Hezbollah official went to Saudi Arabia to prepare for the arrival of guests in Iran. The lawsuit says this was Imad Mughniyah, a top agent of Iran and operations chief of Hezbollah. That same month, two future hijackers (Mohand al-Shehri and Hamza al-Ghamdi) flew from Iran to Kuwait.

The next month, another future hijacker (Ahmed al-Ghamdi) flew to Beirut on the same flight as Mughniyah. Salem al-Hazmi also flew to Beirut from Saudi Arabia separately. In the middle of the month, three more hijackers (Ahmed al-Nami, Waleed al-Shehri and Wail al-Shehri) flew together from Saudi Arabia to Beirut and then went to Iran on the same flight as an associate of Mughniyah. According to the 9/11 Commission, top Hezbollah officials in Beirut and Iran were expecting important visitors at this time. The report said it “cannot rule out the possibility of a remarkable coincidence.”

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

From CAN:

Iran has a “large network” in the U.S., a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Iranian government’s most loyal force, said in an interview withPipeline News. The defector, who goes by the name “Reza Kahlili,” spied for the CIA while in Iran and warns that Iran can carry out terrorist attacks in America.

“They [Iran] have a large network here through Islamic student associations…they collaborate with the Muslim Brotherhood…they do run a large network through the mosques in the U.S.,” he said.

The Iranian government has been tied to Islamic institutions and imams in the U.S. before, such as Imam Abolfazl Bahram Nahidian in Manassas, Virginia. He was a strong supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic Revolution in Iran. His mosque also received nearly $200,000 between 2004 and 2005 from a known Iranian front called the Alavi Foundation, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Imam Nahidian’s partner at the Islamic Education Center, Mohammed al-Asi, also supported Khomeini and said in 1990, “We should be creating another war front for the Americans in the Muslim world…Strike American interests.”

Hezbollah, a terrorist group intimately connected to the Iranian government, is also known to have a large presence in the U.S.

“Hezbollah has got a greater network [than Al-Qaeda], much, much, more elaborate…I would think potentially Hezbollah can wreak a lot more damage if they chose to attack the United States within the continental borders,” Steve Emerson, director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, said in 1996.

The Alavi Foundation also made large donations to universities. Columbia University, for example, received $100,000 after it had Iranian President Ahmadinejad as a speaker in 2007.

On June 3, Al-Qaeda may have suffered its biggest blow since the killing of Osama Bin Laden when a drone strike targeted Ilyas Kashmiri, an elite commando and possible replacement for the terror chief. Pakistani officials are certain of his demise but U.S. officials are skeptical. If Kashmiri was killed, then Al-Qaeda has lost one of its most prized operatives, and the West can celebrate the loss of a terrorist whose skill earned him the nickname “the commando commander.” And on June 11, the head of Al-Qaeda’s operations in East Africa was killed in Somalia, making him possibly the third senior commander to be killed in six weeks.

The fate Kashmiri is unfortunately unclear at this time. The Pakistani interior minister was quoted as saying, “I can confirm 100 percent that he is dead,” but said to Reuters that he was “98 percent sure.” Prime Minister Gilani is similarly confident. A spokesman for Kashmiri’s group, Harakut-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI), confirmed his death to the Pakistani Dawn newspaper, as has a spokesman for a Taliban commander connected to the bombed compound. A HUJI commander named Qari Mohammad Idrees also said Kashmiri is dead. The Pakistanis also arrested a man alleged to have hid Kashmiri in the days following the strike.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

In anticipation of the launch of a new flotilla bound for Gaza later this month, the IDF spent Wednesday engaging in a comprehensive navy drill. The Navy practiced stopping a simulated flotilla in various scenarios, as well as dealing with both violent and non-violent activists, stopping ships of different sizes using water cannons, and integrating upgraded command and control capabilities. A video of the drill was released to the media.

The planned flotilla has been plagued by setbacks- reportedly only four or five ships have been secured, far fewer than the dozens promised by organizers. It also remains unclear whether IHH activists will take part in this flotilla. These delays could impact the flotilla’s departure date, something the IDF is closely monitoring. The IDF has stated that they plan to stop the flotilla regardless of its cargo.

The IDF has been working to address issues that arose during last year’s interception of the Mavi Marmara, which resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish activists. A Navy commando was also shot, but survived. Most significantly, the command and control capability will now allow commanders to receive intelligence in real time, meaning that they can immediately adjust their tactics in a fluid situation.