Terrorism
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6/12/2008 | Terrorism, U.S. Military
Supreme Court backs rights for Guantanamo detainees
Yahoo News
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. The justices handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The vote was 5-4, with the court's liberal justices in the majority.
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6/12/2008 | Terrorism
Lawmakers say Capitol computers hacked by Chinese
Yahoo News
WASHINGTON - Multiple congressional computers have been hacked by people working from inside China, lawmakers said Wednesday, suggesting the Chinese were seeking lists of dissidents. Two congressmen, both longtime critics of Beijing's record on human rights, said the compromised computers contained information about political dissidents from around the world. One of the lawmakers said he'd been discouraged from disclosing the computer attacks by other U.S. officials
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6/6/2008 | Foreign Policy, Terrorism
Israeli minister says alternatives to attack on Iran running out
Breitbart.com
An Israeli deputy prime minister on Friday warned that Iran would face attack if it pursues what he said was its nuclear weapons programme. "If Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it," said Shaul Mofaz, who is also transportation minister. "Other options are disappearing. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme," Mofaz told the Yediot Aharonot daily. He stressed such an operation could only be conducted with US support. A former defence minister and armed forces chief of staff, Mofaz hopes to replace embattled Ehud Olmert as prime minister and at the helm of the Kadima party.
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6/5/2008 | Terrorism, U.S. Military
US Marine acquitted of all charges in Haditha killings
Breitbart.com
A court martial on Wednesday acquitted a US Marine for his role in the deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha in Iraq in 2005, the sixth man to be exonerated in the affair, a military official said. Lieutenant Andrew Grayson, 27, was declared "not guilty on all charges" by a jury, said a spokesman for the Camp Pendleton military base in southern California where the hearing started on May 28.
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6/3/2008 | Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, God and Government, Racial Intolerance, Radical Islam, Religious Persecution, Terrorism
Former screen siren Bardot convicted in race case
Yahoo News
PARIS - Brigitte Bardot was convicted Tuesday of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing that Muslims are destroying France. A Paris court also handed down a $23,325 fine against the former screen siren and animal rights campaigner. The court also ordered Bardot to pay $1,555 in damages to MRAP. Bardot's lawyer, Francois-Xavier Kelidjian, said he would talk to her about the possibility of an appeal. A leading French anti-racism group known as MRAP filed a lawsuit last year over a letter she sent to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The remarks were published in her foundation's quarterly journal. In the December 2006 letter to Sarkozy, now the president, Bardot said France is "tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts." Bardot, 73, was referring to the Muslim feast of Aid el-Kebir, celebrated by slaughtering sheep. French anti-racism laws prevent inciting hatred and discrimination on racial or religious or racial grounds. Bardot had been convicted four times previously for inciting racial hatred.
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6/2/2008 | Foreign Policy, Iran, Radical Islam, Terrorism
Ahmadinejad says Israel will soon disappear
Breitbart.com
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Monday that Muslims would uproot "satanic powers" and repeated his controversial belief that Israel will soon disappear, the Mehr news agency reported. "I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene," he said. "Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started." Since taking the presidency in August 2005, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly provoked international outrage by predicting Israel is doomed to disappear. "I tell you that with the unity and awareness of all the Islamic countries all the satanic powers will soon be destroyed," he said to a group of foreign visitors ahead of the 19th anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Ahmadinejad also again expressed his apocalyptic vision that tyranny in the world be abolished by the return to earth of the Mahdi, the 12th imam of Shiite Islam, alongside great religious figures including Jesus Christ.
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6/2/2008 | Foreign Policy, Terrorism, U.S. Military
US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships
The Guardian
The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained. Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.
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5/30/2008 | Radical Islam, Terrorism, U.S. Military
US marines in hot water over Christian coins in Iraq
Breitbart.com
The US military said on Friday it was probing complaints that marines handed out coins inscribed with a verse from the Bible to a group of Sunni Muslims in Iraq, sparking outrage among local residents. It said a service member involved in the incident in the former flashpoint city of Fallujah west of Baghdad was removed from his duties on Thursday. "US forces initiated an investigation into reports that a coin with a Bible verse written in Arabic was distributed to Iraqi citizens as they passed through a Fallujah entry control point," the military said in a statement. "A coalition force service member was removed from his duties Thursday amid concerns from Fallujah's citizens regarding reports of inappropriate conduct." Residents of Fallujah, scene of one of the bloodiest post-invasion battles between insurgents and US forces in Iraq in 2004, said that marines had been doling out the token-like coins to residents to promote Christianity. The incident occurred less than than two weeks after a US soldier was removed from Iraq for using a Koran for target practice at a firing range near Baghdad and writing graffiti in the Muslim holy book.
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5/28/2008 | Iran, Radical Islam, Terrorism
Iran's Ahmadinejad requests meeting with pope
Reuters
ROME (Reuters) - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has asked for an audience next week with Pope Benedict which would be the first meeting between the two leaders, a diplomatic source said on Tuesday. Ahmadinejad is among the heads of state expected to visit Rome to attend a June 3-5 United Nations summit on global food security, hosted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Vatican sources said earlier this week that it was not yet clear if the pope would meet individual heads of state attending the U.N. event or hold a collective audience for them in order to save time. The Vatican has criticized Ahmadinejad for calling for Israel to be wiped off the map.
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5/27/2008 | Foreign Policy, Iran, Radical Islam, Terrorism
Nuclear agency accuses Iran of willful lack of cooperation
International Herald Tribune
PARIS: The International Atomic Energy Agency, in an unusually blunt and detailed report, said Monday that Iran's suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remains "a matter of serious concern" and continues to need "substantial explanations." The nine-page report accused the Iranians of a willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering allegations that its nuclear program may be pointed less at energy generation than at military use.
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5/20/2008 | Iran, Radical Islam, Terrorism
'Iran's nuke program may spur arms race'
The Jerusalem Post
Iran's disputed nuclear program has sent a wave of interest in atomic energy across the Middle East, a think tank said Tuesday, warning that it risked setting the scene for a regional nuclear arms race. An Iranian technician works at the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the city of Isfahan 410 kilometers south of Teheran. Photo: AP [file] Slideshow: Pictures of the week At least 13 Middle Eastern countries either announced new plans to explore atomic energy or revived pre-existing nuclear programs between February 2006 and January 2007, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, said in a report. While the flurry of interest in nuclear power is still tentative, the report said countries such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria or Egypt could soon feel the need to match Iran's nuclear ambitions. "If Teheran's nuclear program is unchecked, there is reason for concern that it could in time prompt a regional cascade of proliferation among Iran's neighbors," it said.
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5/14/2008 | Terrorism
Companies take on mammoth screening duty
USA Today
DULLES, Va. — Tim Holdaway's job seems simple: send a truck to pick up shipments of computers and TVs from manufacturers and get the boxes to an airport. Starting in the next year, Holdaway and companies like his, Cavalier Logistics, will take on a task that could change aviation security and international commerce. In one of the biggest and costliest expansions of aviation security since 9/11, hundreds of companies such as Cavalier are gearing up to screen tens of millions of boxes of merchandise before those boxes are loaded onto U.S. passenger airplanes to be carried each year to retailers and others around the world.
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5/8/2008 | Iraq, Terrorism, U.S. Military
U.S. deploys more than 43,000 unfit for combat
USA Today
WASHINGTON — More than 43,000 U.S. troops listed as medically unfit for combat in the weeks before their scheduled deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 were sent anyway, Pentagon records show. This reliance on troops found medically "non-deployable" is another sign of stress placed on a military that has sent 1.6 million servicemembers to the war zones, soldier advocacy groups say.
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5/1/2008 | Foreign Policy, Radical Islam, Terrorism, U.S. Military
"Hostile" Iran Sparks U.S. Attack Plan
CBS Evening News
(CBS) A second American aircraft carrier steamed into the Persian Gulf on Tuesday as the Pentagon ordered military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the planning is being driven by what one officer called the "increasingly hostile role" Iran is playing in Iraq - smuggling weapons into Iraq for use against American troops. "What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and -women inside Iraq," said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
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4/28/2008 | Foreign Policy, Radical Islam, Terrorism
Iran demands Russian nuclear shipment
Yahoo News
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran demanded Sunday that Azerbaijan deliver a Russian shipment of nuclear equipment blocked at its border with Iran for the past three weeks. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in his weekly briefing that his country has asked the Azerbaijani ambassador in Iran to get his government "to deliver the shipment as soon as possible."
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4/23/2008 | Radical Islam, Terrorism
Al Qaeda chief slams Muslims for lack of support
Breitbart.Com
Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri criticised Muslims for failing to support Islamist insurgencies in Iraq and elsewhere in a new audiotape posted Tuesday on the Internet. Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant also blasted Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas over their reported readiness to consider a peace deal with Israel. "I call upon the Muslim nation to fear Allah's question (at judgement day) about its failure to support its brothers of the Mujahedeen (holy Warriors), and (urge it) not to withhold men and money, which is the mainstay of a war," he said.
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2/27/2008 | Illegal Immigration, Presidential Issues, Terrorism
Virtual Fence is a Virtual Farce
WeNeedAFence.Com
The “virtual fence” era in America’s long-running immigration debate ended on Friday – less than 24 hours after both Democratic candidates for the Presidency put themselves squarely on the wrong side of it. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would abandon plans to extend the Boeing-designed “virtual fence” beyond its initial 28-mile long demonstration phase. In the Thursday night Democratic debate, Senator Clinton said “there is technology that can be used instead of a physical barrier.” A minute or so later, Senator Obama said “this is an area where Senator Clinton and I almost entirely agree,” and then added: “for the most part, having …surveillance, deploying effective technology, that’s going to be the better approach.” Within a few hours, this “better approach” was revealed to have been a failed experiment. There are three elements that are essential to achieving genuine border security: physical infrastructure, adequate manpower and technological backup. Failure to provide any one of them will result in failure to secure the border. A physical fence by itself can be breached, but one that is properly designed, backed up by cameras and high-tech detection devices and adequately staffed with border agents that can get to a point of attempted or successful breach within minutes will in fact secure the border against mass intrusion like nothing else.
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2/25/2008 | Illegal Immigration, Presidential Issues, Terrorism
Needed on the Border: A Real Fence and a Real Gate
"Virtual Fence" is a virtual farce
An era in America’s long-running immigration debate ended on Friday – less than 24 hours after both Democratic candidates for the Presidency put themselves squarely on the wrong side of the fence. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would abandon plans to extend the Boeing-designed “virtual fence” beyond its initial 28-mile long demonstration phase. The night before, Senator Clinton said “there is technology that can be used instead of a physical barrier.” A minute or so later, Senator Obama said “this is an area where Senator Clinton and I almost entirely agree,” and then added: “for the most part, having …surveillance, deploying effective technology, that’s going to be the better approach.” Within a few hours, this “better approach” was revealed to be a failed experiment. There are three elements that are essential to achieving genuine border security: physical infrastructure, adequate manpower and technological backup. Failure to provide any one of them will result in failure to secure the border. A physical fence by itself can be breached, but one that is properly designed, backed up by cameras and high-tech detection devices and adequately staffed with border agents that can get to a point of attempted or successful breach within minutes will in fact secure the border against mass intrusion. Sophomoric comments such as Arizona Governor Napolitano’s that even a 50 foot fence will prove useless because border crossers will just find 51 foot ladders miss the point entirely. A fence does not need to be completely impenetrable in order to be effective. It merely needs to slow intruders down sufficiently to permit border agents to get to the point of attempted intrusion in time to stop it or in time to close the breach after only a small number of intruders have successfully entered. Inadequate staffing will cripple the fence’s effectiveness. Inadequate fencing will cripple the Border Patrol’s effectiveness. And poor technology will severely diminish the effectiveness of both infrastructure and staffing. The “virtual fence” or Project 28 was doomed from the start. It failed the most fundamental test of a fence: to serve as a barrier. The “virtual fence” was thus never a fence at all; it was merely a series of detection and depiction devices that would not even slow down intruders, must less stop them. It can be fairly easily defeated by a simple parry and thrust decoy strategy, in which a small contingent of intruders crosses in one spot, attracting Border Patrol agents to chase them as soon as they enter United States territory, leaving another area unprotected which is then flooded with a much larger group of intruders. Senator Clinton got it precisely backwards when she said:”there is a smart way to protect our borders, and there is a dumb way to protect our borders.” She meant that the physical fence was the dumb way, but in reality the virtual fence is the dumb one. That same technology, however, or even a scaled-down version of it, becomes smart when coupled with a well-designed physical fence and adequate manpower. Even a good fence backed up by technology and staffing is still missing an important element, however. A real fence also needs a real gate – in fact, many of them. The purpose of border security is to stop illegal immigration, not legal immigration, commerce and tourism. The proposed barrier is between allies and trading partners, and the legal free flow of persons and goods must be facilitated, not impeded. Finally, once illegal immigration has been reduced, legal immigration almost certainly must be increased. This great country should remain a welcoming nation to those whose skills, values, ideals and culture will make us stronger. It only makes sense, however, to welcome them on our terms and we must know who they are.
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2/22/2008 | Illegal Immigration, Terrorism
Arizona 'Virtual Fence' to Get Final OK
My Way
WASHINGTON (AP) - A 28-mile "virtual fence" that will use radars and surveillance cameras to try to catch people entering the country illegally has gotten final government approval. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Friday was to announce approval of the fence, built by the Boeing Co. (BA) and using technology the Bush administration plans to extend to other areas of the Arizona border, as well as sections of Texas. These projects could get under way as early as this summer, officials said. The virtual fence is part of a national plan to secure the southwest border with physical barriers and high-tech detection capabilities intended to stop illegal immigrants on foot and drug smugglers in vehicles. As of Feb. 8, 295 miles of fencing had been constructed. The virtual fence already is working. On Feb. 13, an officer in a Tucson command center - 70 miles from the border - noticed a group of about 100 people gathered at the border. The officer notified agents on the ground and in the air. Border Patrol caught 38 of the 100 people who tried to cross illegally, and the others went back into Mexico, a Homeland Security official said.
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2/15/2008 | Terrorism
Bush Says Congress Putting US in Danger
MyWay
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Friday that "our country is in more danger of an attack" because of Congress' failure to extend a law that makes it easier for the government to spy on foreign phone calls and e-mails that pass through the United States. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney met with Republican congressional leaders in the Oval Office to discuss the impasse with the Democratic-led House. Lawmakers left Thursday for a 12-day recess without acting on the law, which expires at midnight Saturday. The president said Congress should act quickly on the measure as soon as lawmakers return. Bush argues that without the extension, the intelligence community will not have the tools they need to protect the nation from terrorism. Democrats, equally adamant, accuse the president of fear-mongering and say he has the authority he needs to intercept terrorist communications, even if the law expires. "American citizens must understand, clearly understand that there's still a threat on the homeland. There's still an enemy which would like to do us harm," Bush said. "We've got to give our professionals the tools they need, to be able to figure out what the enemy is up to so we can stop it."
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