Category Archives: Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda, Salafi, Terrorism, Women 100, WTF

Al-Shamikha of Al-Qaeda: Salafi Women Discover Victoria’s Secret………

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“The 31-page glossy, Al-Shamikha, which translates loosely as “The Majestic Woman”, features a niqab-clad woman posing with a sub-machine gun on its cover. Much like Elle or Cosmopolitan, it includes advice on finding the right man (“marrying a mujahideen”), how to achieve a perfect complexion (stay inside with your face covered), and provides tips on first aid and etiquette. Alongside sisterly advice such as “not [to] go out except when necessary” and to always wear a niqab for protection from the sun, the magazine runs interviews with martyr’s wives and praises those who give their lives in the name of the editors’ interpretation of Islam. “From martyrdom, the believer will gain security, safety and happiness,” it says. For those readers not quite ready for such a drastic step, it argues the pros and cons of honey facemasks and lobbies against “towelling too forcibly”.……”

Don’t knock it. Women are women (just as men are men). They probably have everything that others do, under that black Salafi tent. Victoria’s Secret included. (No, I probably draw the line at things like leather and S & M and bondage). I liked the part about “not [to] go out except when necessary”, I thought it means “go out” as in “going out”, a.k.a “dating”. For a moment there I thought I had missed a Salafi fatwa allowing “going out on dates” when necessary. I thought of all the poor saps al-Qaeda that were sent to certain death and mayhem with a promise of all those delayed pleasures in Paradise, how these frustrated young men went partly because they could not see all the beauty around them, all the Victoria’s Secrets hidden under the dark attire. The least the master terrorists could have done was send them out to do “God’s work” in couples, couples with matching “belts”. That would have been an explosive date, the date of a lifetime, going with a bang, the puns intended.
Dommage….
(al-Shamikha also means dignified or proud, which apparently applies only to Salafi women who cater to Salafi men).
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden

Vengeful Bin Laden Coming to an IMAX Near You……

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“ATLANTIC OCEAN—Multiple sources have now confirmed that Osama bin Laden, thought to have been killed and buried at sea weeks ago, has emerged from the Atlantic Ocean, rising to the towering height of 500 feet. The al-Qaeda leader was spotted approximately 25 miles off the coast of the northeastern United States and appeared to be making his way toward land with alarming speed. Fighter jets and battleships are reportedly en route to the scene and are expected to engage bin Laden within the hour. Keep checking……..”

“BREAKING: Severe Seismic Activity Detected Near Location Where Bin Laden Buried At Sea….”

Initially I thought the reported seismic activity near his burial site was related to some latent frolicking under the sea. But, no, he is making his way toward the American coast. His goal? Most likely Robert Gates. Or maybe soon an IMAX theater at a shopping mall near you.
On a more serious mote: notice how the world has quickly forgotten about Bin Laden? He is hardly in the news anymore.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Terrorism

Mullah Omar and Bob Dylan on SNL………

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“Afghanistan on Tuesday said it has received reports of reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar being killed, but they have not been confirmed. “As spokesperson of our security office announced, we received that kind of reports but they are not confirmed,” Afghanistan’s Minister for Information and Culture Sayeed Makhdoom Raheem on Tuesday said. The Afghan intelligence agency had on Monday said that Omar disappeared from a suspected hideout in Pakistan and has been out of contact with his commanders for days…..….”

The Taliban have denied that their leader, Mullah Omar is dead. I suspect that they are right. A death requires certain ceremonies and procedures that can’t be hidden except maybe in North Korea. If Mullah Omar is dead, and not in North Korea, we will know. But there is speculation about his fate, as there has been in past years, especially in late 2001. I suggest that Mullah Omar, if he is alive, end all this speculation at once by appearing on Oprah or The View. If these venues are considered unmanly chick shows (they are), then he can go on Piers Morgan to prove that he is alive. If he objects to Piers Morgan, then maybe he can do an SNL skit (Sarah Palin did). It would be sad if his death is confirmed on Bob Dylan’s birthday. Although I doubt that he ever was a fan.
Now if he had a Twitter account……
Cheers
mhg


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9/11, Al-Qaeda, Iran, Saudi Arabia, September 11

Iranian 9/11, Jewish Barbarossa, Tooth Fairy of Qandahar………..

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“Former investigators on the 9/11 Commission, which uncovered tantalizing but inconclusive evidence of Tehran’s ties to the plot, tell The Daily Beast they welcome the lawsuit, because they believe the U.S. government has done little to follow up on the commission’s evidence of Iranian complicity. The lawsuit, they say, may offer the best hope of getting to the truth about whether Iranian government officials had advance knowledge of the plot and worked with al Qaeda to make it easier for several of the hijackers to travel undetected in the year before the attacks. The suit, brought in the United States District Court in Manhattan on behalf of the families of dozens of 9/11 victims, is promising testimony from three Iranian defectors, all of them identified as former members of Iran’s central spy agency, who will implicate Iran and its terrorist proxies in Lebanon in the Sept. 11 attacks. In court papers filed last week that outlined their testimony, the defectors were not identified by name out of concern for their safety, said Thomas Mellon, a Pennsylvania lawyer and former federal prosecutor who is representing the families…………”

I don’t know: this is like saying that the German Nazis were financing or plotting with the Jewish Agency to take over Palestine. Or that European Jews planned Operation Barbarossa (look it up). The mutual dislike and contempt between Shi’a Iran and Salafi Wahhabi al-Qaeda is that strong. This Thomas Mellon sounds like another D.A. Jim Garrison (google him and Kennedy and Dallas and Louisiana). It is not clear what they needed the Iranians for. They got all the money and leaders and volunteers from Saudi Arabia (with a couple of others). They had the planners in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Germany. As for the ‘Iranian defectors’ who will testify: I’d require blood tests on them first for alcohol, drugs, airplane glue, among other ‘substances’.

Okay, the truth is, I think it is the most ridiculous, nay most asinine, story I have read today. More ridiculous than the story about the prime minister of Bahrain, butcher of Manama, wondering why people can’t just get along. I may be wrong, I am wrong one in a while, but probably not on this one.
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Iran, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Terrorism

Ahamadinejad as Oliver Stone, Osama au masque de fer……….

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“Tehran: Al Qaida founder Osama Bin Laden was a prisoner in US custody for “sometime” before he was killed by the American military, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday. “I have exact information that Bin Laden was held by the American military for sometime… until the day they killed him he was a prisoner held by them,” the hardline president said in a live interview on Iranian state television. “Please pay attention. This is important. He was held by them for sometime. They made him sick and while he was sick they killed him,” Ahmadinejad added. He accused US President Barack Obama for announcing the Al Qaida leader’s death for “political gain”. “What the US president has done is for domestic political gain. In other words, they killed him for Obama’s election and now they are seeking to replace him with someone else,” Ahmadinejad said without elaborating……”

It is starting, predictably. It is tempting for me to explain this as Ahmadinejad being just a ….Middle Easterner. Conspiracy theories and all that. But then there is another possible explanation. Maybe the Pakistani military or ISI leaked this tidbit of gossip to the Iranians, just to muddy the waters, and counter American anger. Okay, that in itself is also a conspiracy theory. I have another one: old Papa Bin Laden had many wives, many sons; suppose there was another man who looked exactly like Bin Laden, but without wearing an iron mask……..
(FYI: Alexandre Dumas is dead, actually both are dead; no copyright, no nothing).
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

Two Futile Speeches: Obama and Osama……

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I am expecting two much-publicized speeches on the Middle East this next week. My advice to both speakers (I prefer speechifiers in this case) is or would have been: don’t bother. But one of them is dead. Bin Laden reportedly has an audio tape prepared for after his death. I wonder if we will hear it as we watch some of reported porno tapes found in his hideout in Pakistan (some say they were under his bed). Okay, like many of us he can watch almost all the porn he wants, there are no religious injunctions against it because in the old days they had no video recording and Arabs did not draw lewd figure on walls like the Romans and Greeks.
Osama’s speech will be a waste of time because it will not turn the tide and make his movement any more attractive to many Arabs and Muslims, especially outside the Arabian Peninsula.
The other speech, by President Barack Obama, will be as useless. Mr. Obama’s hands are tied behind his back by the coming elections and by the powerful Israeli lobby that has a veto power over American Middle East policy. He must know his speech will be useless at this time, for it will avoid or evade the Palestinian-Israeli issue. He will make some general statements about the Palestinian issue and his support for democracy in Libya and Syria but not in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. I wrote here about two years ago or so when the US administration introduced a Middle East initiative and said it expected a solution within a year: I said fohgetaboutit. As did others, and we were all right.
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Iraq, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism

Al-Qaeda Finances: Have Money, Will Travel………

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“This puts people like Abd al-Hamid al-Mujil in an uncomfortable position. Described by fellow jihadists as the “million-dollar man” for his successful fundraising on behalf of al Qaeda and other jihadi groups, Mujil directed the office of the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a charity in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Both he and the IIRO office he headed were designated as terrorist entities by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2006. But even if being “named and shamed” forced Mujil out of the terror-finance business, there are many others just like him. Just this week, David Cohen, the head of the Treasury Department’s Terrorism and Financial Intelligence branch told CNN that major donors from the Gulf states remain the key sources of funding for the al Qaeda core. There are no doubt dozens of radical funders now worrying that their names, bank accounts, or addresses will comes up in bin Laden’s spreadsheets — or “pocket litter” — and for good reason.……..”

I have always argued that all these terrorist operations from Iraq to Pakistan must cost a lot of money. More money than the locals could provide. I have always written here that following the money trail from Iraq or Pakistan or Yemen will lead so a huge field of petroleum, an oil well. This is part of someone’s ‘foreign policy’, at least the Iraq part is. Bring pressure on Iraq by sending suicide terrorists across the border and finance them (the money is peanuts for the deep pocketed princes). Bring pressure on Pakistan and others the same way. Meanwhile, the money and the Salafi fatwas will keep the bombers away from the home front. As for the Western allies, and the other Arabs who fall victim? Oh, well, there is such a thing as collateral damage.
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Iran, Salafi

Incomplete Iranian View of Bin Laden and his Genesis…………

     
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“The death of Osama bin Laden brought closure to many people around the world, especially those who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks or other terrorist acts that were conducted or inspired by Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network. Bin Laden is associated with murder and terror. Bin Laden claimed that his war was against those he called “infidels” but the victims of his shadowy Al-Qaeda network were mostly Muslims, and thus he and his death machine did the greatest injustice and harm to Islam and Muslims. Thousands of children have been orphaned in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan just because Al-Qaeda decided to use these countries as battlefields for taking revenge against the United States. Despotic Arab rulers and Western countries, especially the United States, are responsible for the emergence of people like Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Bin Laden and his Arab comrades were supported by the United States and certain European and Arab countries in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. To counter the Soviets in Afghanistan, the CIA provoked the people’s religious sentiments and used religious fanaticism as the strongest tool against forces that the CIA and other intelligence agencies called kafirs (unbelievers), and thus planted the seeds of extremism in the region…….” Mehr News (Iran)

On the face of it, nothing seems new here: it is the usual Western view of the emergence of the Salafi terrorist group under Bin Laden. Yet oddly this Iranian view completely ignores the deeper genesis of Bin Ladenism and the al-Qaeda: the Salafi educational system and the Wahhabi religious teachings in Saudi Arabia. This Salafi teaching of the exclusion and hatred of the “other” has spread to other places, especially in poverty-stricken regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan and Indonesia through Saudi schools and clerics. I know firsthand that it has also spread to some GCC Gulf states through Saudi-trained Salafi clerics and activists.
An interesting reluctance on the part of the Iranians; even as senior state-sponsored Saudi clerics wage a vicious media and mosque and fatwa war against “other” Islamic sects, unjustly tying them to the Iranian mullahs.
Cheers
mhg

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Al-Qaeda, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia

Post Bin Laden: Will al-Qaeda Come in From the Cold?………….

     
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“Bin Laden’s radical politics continued to hold sway with some Saudi youth as Al Qaeda carried out attacks in the desert kingdom mainly in 2003. With an internal crackdown against Al Qaeda, Saudi fighters headed to Iraq to battle the US military and Iraq’s Shiite-led government through 2007. Only after concerted pressure from the Americans, did the Saudi royal family make a serious effort to try to stop the migration of young Saudi radicals to Iraq..…….”

Will al-Qaeda mutate again now that Bin Laden is dead? Will it come in from the cold?
I have never believed that al-Qaeda terrorists, good Salafi sons of the Wahhabi nest, had ever completely cut the cord with the mother. There were a couple of publicized operations inside the Arabian Peninsula, many arrests, trials, re-education camps. Yet the emphasis has always been on ‘misguided’ sons who will return to the bosom. Re-education programs were set up exclusively for these Salafi ‘misguided ones’: by contrast, a ‘misguided’ Shi’a would probably have his head chopped off. Then there was the important money angle: that may explain the reluctance of the terrorists to perform significant operations in the Saudi kingdom. Why blow up decent Wahhabi folks in the ‘mother country’ when there is ample supply of Shi’a heretics next door in Iraq? Why kill the cash cow (or cash she-camel naqah)?

There is no doubt that al-Qaeda will undergo some more changes now that its leader, its main link to the moneyed part of the Arab world, is dead. We may be about to find out how far these changes will go before this year is over. Despite the public ‘animosity’ between al-Qaeda and the al-Saud dynasty, the Saudi regime has kept close and warm relations with the regional supporters of Bin Laden, the Salafis and their various organizations (e.g. Islamic Heritage Societies). Some of them act as outright Saudi agents in the Gulf states, pushing for yet closer ties with Riyadh, pushing for Saudi hegemony. This is partly tribal, but largely political and ideological and, dare I say it, financial.
The Salafi Wahhabis were spawned in Saudi Arabia and have never really strayed too far from their roots. The Saudis know they have a reliably fierce potential ally in their intensifying struggle not only against the ‘rival’ theocracy in Iran but also against the inevitable winds of Arab change and revolution. Al-Qaeda recruits have shown their ferocity in the terrorist campaigns inside Iraq, almost certainly financed by Saudis and other patrons in the Persian-American Gulf. For some years the Saudis tried to tie Iran to al-Qaeda, especially in Iraq, the same way as Dick Cheney tried to tie Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) to al-Qaeda. This was largely based on the proximity of Iran to Afghanistan and that some Bin Laden family members fled after 2001 to Iran. Saudis tried, improbably, to tie the Iranian mullahs to the terrorist acts committed in Iraq against the Shi’as by Saudis and other foreign Salafi Arabs. But that was then, a spin tailored to the Iraqi and American markets of that time.

Now there may be a new twist: a new, yet old, al-Qaeda that is truly allied with the Saudi regime, this time openly. The prodigal Wahhabis returning to the bosom of the mother: the absolute tribal monarchy from which they never strayed too far. They can be used in the coming battle: to intensify terrorist acts in Iraq (and possibly Iran), and they can be used against Hezbollah and Amal in Lebanon (something already started by the Saudi-financed Hariri group). It is an alliance that fits this new sectarian Sunni-Shi’a cold/hot war provoked by the al-Saud in order to divide our unstable region and help keep their shaky throne. This closer alliance is an idea that has no doubt crossed the minds of the al-Saud princes in the past, and they may be putting it to work now. They already have strong ties and alliances to al-Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers like the Salafis of the Islamic Heritage Societies and other groups in the Gulf. They have kept somewhat warm relations with the Taliban (Saudis and the UAE were the only Arab regimes that recognized their rule in Afghanistan before 9/11). Is it a coincidence that his year alone the Saudis have reportedly released hundreds, maybe thousands, of former al-Qaeda terrorists? Are they setting things up for a new alliance, post-Bin Laden? That would be a smart move for them to make, especially now that the more reactionary Prince Nayef is gaining ascendancy.
Cheers
mhg



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Al-Qaeda, Religion

A Bin Laden Doomsday Tape, Renewable Chicks of Paradise………

     
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“When doomsday rears her ugly head again
And even though you voted that awful man
i’ll never refuse your hand
on any given doomsday or the one and only doomsday
Not in all my wildest dreams it never once was seen
that doomsday might fall anywhere near a Tuesday……” Elvis Perkins

“A doomsday tape made by Osama Bin Laden was poised to be released Monday by his Al Qaeda disciples. U.S. officials feared the recording would be akin to a voice from the grave calling for a do-or-die jihad against the West, a final order of a terrorist madman. Just a day after U.S. Navy SEALs raided Bin Laden’s luxury hideout in Pakistan and snuffed him out, media outlets were weighing whether to air a tape that could boost his legacy as a martyr. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said he was getting bombarded with Twitter messages from viewers pleading with the network not to air Bin Laden’s propaganda. Blitzer’s colleague Anderson Cooper said he sided with those who had no desire to hear from a hater. “Bin Laden a mass murderer who should never be heard from again,” Cooper said Monday……….”

The media is doing its best to fuck up the aftermath of Bin Laden’s death. All this nonsense about a ‘doomsday’ tape that will somehow set the world aflame is pure horse apples. Al-Qaeda terrorists have wanted to set the world aflame for a couple of decades and have mostly failed. What makes these press pundits think that one more tape will inspire the terrorist Salafis to make that one extra push toward the rivers of wine and renewable chicks of paradise? I say release the tape, if it exists, for it will come out anyway sooner rather than later. Unless it has a shot of Osama and Ayman belting out Auld Lang Syne.
Cheers
mhg

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