House Rejects Bailout Package, 228-205; Stocks Plunge
By CARL HULSE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN | September 30, 2008
WASHINGTON — In a moment of historic import in the Capitol and on Wall Street, the House of Representatives voted on Monday to reject a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry. The vote came in stunning defiance of President Bush and Congressional leaders of both parties, who said the bailout was needed to prevent a widespread financial collapse.
The vote against the measure was 228 to 205, with 133 Republicans turning against President Bush to join 95 Democrats in opposition. The bill was backed by 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans.
Supporters vowed to try to bring the rescue package up again as soon as possible, perhaps late Wednesday or Thursday, but there were no definite plans to do so. A former Treasury Department official predicted that the administration would try to get another House vote before the end of the week, and with only “tiny tweaks” to the package, given the relative closeness of the vote.
Stock markets plunged as it appeared that the measure would go down to defeat, and kept slumping into the afternoon when that appearance became a reality. By late afternoon the Dow industrials had fallen more than 5 percent, and other indexes even more sharply. Oil prices fell steeply on fears of a global recession; investors bid up prices of Treasury securities and gold in a flight to safety.
The vote was a catastrophic political defeat for President Bush, who tried to muster national support for a recovery plan in a televised address last Wednesday, then lobbied wavering Republican legislators in intensely personal telephone calls on Monday morning.
“We put forth a plan that was big because we got a big problem,” the president said afterward. “And we’ll be working with members of Congress, leaders of Congress on the way forward. Our strategy is to continue to address this economic situation head on.”
The president was described as “very disappointed” by a spokesman, Tony Fratto. Mr. Bush’s disappointment may have been deepened by the fact that members of his own party voted against the package by more than 2 to 1.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., appearing at the White House late Monday afternoon, warned that the failure of the rescue plan could dry up credit for businesses big and small, making them unable to make payrolls or buy inventory. Vowing to continue working with Congress to revive the rescue plan, Mr. Paulson said it was “much too important to simply let fail.”
Supporters of the bill had argued that it was necessary to avoid a collapse of the economic system, a calamity that would drag down not just Wall Street investment houses but possibly the savings and portfolios of millions of Americans. Moreover, supporters argued, a lingering crisis in America could choke off business and consumer loans to a degree that could prompt bank failures in Europe and slow down the global economy.
Opponents said the bill was cobbled together in too much haste and might amount to throwing good money from taxpayers after bad investments from Wall Street gamblers.
House leaders pushing for the package kept the voting period open for some 40 minutes past the allotted time at mid-day, trying to convert “no” votes by pointing to damage being done to the markets, but to no avail.
The former Treasury Department official who predicted another House vote this week said that before there could be another vote, he would expect Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader, to approach members with seats in safe districts and tell them, in effect: “You’ve got to do this. The fate of the country hangs on your vote.”
On the other hand, the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was not sure what adjustments would satisfy the Republican lawmakers who voted against the package, given that the Republicans had already succeeded in tacking government insurance on to the bill, and that other items on their list of proposals, like a suspension of the capital gains tax, are non-starters.
The United States Chamber of Commerce vowed to exert pressure, warning in a letter to members of Congress that it would keep track of who votes how. “Make no mistake,” the letter said. “When the aftermath of Congressional inaction becomes clear, Americans will not tolerate those who stood by and let the calamity happen.”
Secretary Paulson, in promising to continue working with Congressional leaders to win passage of a rescue plan, alluded to remedial steps that the Treasury and Federal Reserve could take on their own, like lowering short-term interest rates. “Our tool kit is substantial,” he said, “but insufficient.”
Immediately after the vote, many House members appeared stunned. Some Republicans blamed Ms. Pelosi for a speech before the vote that disdained President Bush’s economic policies, and did so, in the opinion of the speaker’s critics, in too partisan a way.
“Clearly, there was something lacking in the leadership here,” said Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia.
Democrats, meanwhile, blamed the Republicans for not coming up with enough support for the measure on their side of the aisle.
Members of both parties, doing a quick political post-mortem, said those who voted no had encountered too much hostility for the bill among their constituents, and were worried that a vote in favor would be political suicide.
The Senate had been expected to vote later in the week if the bill had cleared the House on Monday. Senate vote-counters had predicted that there was enough support in the chamber for the measure to pass. But the stunning vote in the House, coupled with the Jewish holidays, made it difficult to predict when other votes might be held. Many House members who voted for the bill held their noses, figuratively speaking, as they did so.
Mr. Boehner, the Republican minority leader, called the measure “a mud sandwich” at one point, but he said that there was too much at stake not to support it. He urged members to reflect on the damage that a defeat of the measure could mean “to your friends, your neighbors, your constituents” as they might watch their retirement savings “shrivel up to zero.”
And Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who as Democratic majority leader often clashes with Mr. Boehner, said that on this “day of consequence for America” he and Mr. Boehner “speak with one voice” in pleading for passage.
When it comes to America’s economy, Mr. Hoyer said, “none of us is an island.”
The House vote came after a weekend of tense negotiations produced a rescue plan that Congressional leaders said was greatly strengthened by new taxpayer safeguards. “If we defeat this bill today, it will be a very bad day for the financial sector of the economy,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the Financial Services Committee. Earlier Monday, President Bush urged Congress to act quickly. Calling the rescue bill “bold,” Mr. Bush praised lawmakers “from both sides of the aisle” for reaching agreement, and said it would “help keep the crisis in our financial system from spreading throughout our economy.”
After long favoring a hands-off approach and deregulation of the financial industry, the Bush administration has found itself in recent weeks interceding repeatedly in the private market to try to avert one calamity after another.
Even before the House vote, European and Asian stock markets declined sharply on Monday, especially in countries where major banks have had significant problems with mortgage investments, like Britain and Ireland. In the credit markets, investors once again bid up prices of Treasury securities and shunned more risky debt.
Early in the House debate, Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, said he intended to vote against the package, which he said would put the nation on “the slippery slope to socialism.” He said that he was afraid that it ultimately would not work, leaving the taxpayers responsible for “the mother of all debt.”
Another Texas Republican, John Culberson, spoke scathingly about the unbridled power he said the bill would hand over to the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., whom he called “King Henry.”
A third Texan, Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat, said the negotiators had “never seriously considered any alternative” to the administration’s plan, and had only barely modified what they were given. He criticized the plan for handing over sweeping new powers to an administration that he said was to blame for allowing the crisis to develop in the first place.
The administration accepted limits on executive pay and tougher oversight; Democrats sacrificed a push to allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages. But Republicans fell short in their effort to require that the federal government insure, rather than buy, the bad debt.
The final version of the bill included a deal-sealing plan for eventually recouping losses; if the Treasury program to purchase and resell troubled mortgage-backed securities has lost money after five years, the president must submit a plan to Congress to recover those losses from the financial industry.
Presumably that plan would involve new fees or taxes, perhaps on securities transactions.
The deal would also restrict gold-plated farewells for executives of companies that sell devalued assets to the Treasury Department. But by mid-afternoon on Monday, no one could safely predict whether the provisions in the 110-page bill were strictly academic.
“The legislation has failed,” Speaker Pelosi said at a news conference after the vote. “The crisis has not gone away. We must continue to work in a bipartisan manner.”
Reporting was contributed by David Stout and Robert Pear from Washington,
Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong and Graham Bowley from New York.
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Pakistan Daily : What Was Mysterious Activity Going on in the Marriott Hotel Islamabad by United States Marines
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
What Was Mysterious Activity Going on in the Marriott Hotel Islamabad by United States Marines
September 21, 2008
Marriott Hotel has now become a ghost house which was yesterday the most beautiful and prestigious hotels in the Islamabad. While the condemnation of the blasts and the deaths and the loss of property is going on from all the quarters, some intriguing news is also pouring in.
After the blast, mysteriously fire was started at the fourth and fifth floors. It was said that this fire was the result of gas pipeline burst running through the hotel. The million dollar question is that was the gas pipeline not running through the other floors? Why the fire broke out from the fourth and fifth flours? That is the question which perhaps holds the key to the mystery as why the hotel was targeted yesterday, in which more than 60 people died including many foreigners.
Though it would never get confirmed but the fire on the fifth and fourth floor of the hotel broke out because those flours were housing the mysterious steel boxes under the heavy guard of United States marines and no one including the Pakistani security forces and the security men of the hotel were allowed to go near with the them. These boxes were shifted inside the hotel when the Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.
It is said that one member of parliament Mumtaz Alam who belongs to the PPP, the ruling party was there eye witnessed the whole scene when the white truck of US embassy came to the gate of Marriot Hotel and US marines themselves unloaded the steel boxes from the trucks and shifted them to the fourth and fifth floors without passing through them the scanners at the entrance of the hotels. When the truck was there, all the entrance and the exit passage way to the hotels were closed.
And now this blast has occurred at the Marriott, while that mysterious activity was going on.
September 21, 2008
Marriott Hotel has now become a ghost house which was yesterday the most beautiful and prestigious hotels in the Islamabad. While the condemnation of the blasts and the deaths and the loss of property is going on from all the quarters, some intriguing news is also pouring in.
After the blast, mysteriously fire was started at the fourth and fifth floors. It was said that this fire was the result of gas pipeline burst running through the hotel. The million dollar question is that was the gas pipeline not running through the other floors? Why the fire broke out from the fourth and fifth flours? That is the question which perhaps holds the key to the mystery as why the hotel was targeted yesterday, in which more than 60 people died including many foreigners.
Though it would never get confirmed but the fire on the fifth and fourth floor of the hotel broke out because those flours were housing the mysterious steel boxes under the heavy guard of United States marines and no one including the Pakistani security forces and the security men of the hotel were allowed to go near with the them. These boxes were shifted inside the hotel when the Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.
It is said that one member of parliament Mumtaz Alam who belongs to the PPP, the ruling party was there eye witnessed the whole scene when the white truck of US embassy came to the gate of Marriot Hotel and US marines themselves unloaded the steel boxes from the trucks and shifted them to the fourth and fifth floors without passing through them the scanners at the entrance of the hotels. When the truck was there, all the entrance and the exit passage way to the hotels were closed.
And now this blast has occurred at the Marriott, while that mysterious activity was going on.
Dawn : ‘Fedayeen’ claims responsibility
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
‘Fedayeen’ claims responsibility
By Our Staff Reporter | September 22, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Sept 22: A group calling itself Fedayeen-i-Islam claimed on Monday responsibility for the deadly suicide attack on the Marriott hotel.
According to TV channels, a spokesman for the group told Al Arabiya TV in Islamabad on phone about its involvement in Saturday’s bomb blast.
It could not be ascertained if the group had any link with Al Qaeda or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
The interior ministry made no comment on the Fedayeen’s claim. However, a senior government official told Dawn that intelligence departments were investigating the call received by Al Arabiya.
“We have not heard the name of the organisation but we are trying to locate its network,” he said.
Responding to a question, he said it had been confirmed that the call was made from within the country, but not from Islamabad.
He said the investigators had questioned several truck drivers and showed them the video of the dumper truck that hit the steel barrier of the hotel to recognise the vehicle and its driver.
By Our Staff Reporter | September 22, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Sept 22: A group calling itself Fedayeen-i-Islam claimed on Monday responsibility for the deadly suicide attack on the Marriott hotel.
According to TV channels, a spokesman for the group told Al Arabiya TV in Islamabad on phone about its involvement in Saturday’s bomb blast.
It could not be ascertained if the group had any link with Al Qaeda or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
The interior ministry made no comment on the Fedayeen’s claim. However, a senior government official told Dawn that intelligence departments were investigating the call received by Al Arabiya.
“We have not heard the name of the organisation but we are trying to locate its network,” he said.
Responding to a question, he said it had been confirmed that the call was made from within the country, but not from Islamabad.
He said the investigators had questioned several truck drivers and showed them the video of the dumper truck that hit the steel barrier of the hotel to recognise the vehicle and its driver.
CNN : Taliban group claims Pakistan bombing
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Taliban group claims Pakistan bombing
* Four people killed in 2 bombings in north western Pakistan
* Elections to replace Musharraf set for September 6
* Taliban-linked group claims responsibility for attacks
August 23, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Four people were killed Saturday in two bombings in an extremist violence-plagued region of northwestern Pakistan, close to the border with Afghanistan, officials said.
The incidents in the Swat Valley follow a week of deadly attacks in Pakistan as the country was embroiled in new political turmoil after the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf under threat of impeachment.
In the first attack, a suicide car bomber hit a police station in the village of Charbagh, killing two officers and wounding 11 people, said Naveed Iqbal, a police inspector in charge in Swat.
Later, a remote-control bomb blew up at a vacant police checkpoint in the village of Abuha, killing two civilians and injuring four people, including three children, Iqbal said.
A Pakistani Taliban group, Tehrik-e-Taliban, claimed responsibility for both blasts.
Spokesman Muslim Khan warned of more attacks unless Pakistan stops an offensive against Islamic militants in parts of Swat and the North West Frontier Province, a rugged area near the Afghanistan border where the central government has long exerted little control.
On Thursday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for dual suicide bombings at a Pakistani military arms factory that police said killed 66 people and wounded more than 70 others.
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Two suicide bombers blew themselves up near the gates of the military arms factory in Wah, near Rawalpindi, where Pakistan's military is based. The attack took place during a shift change at one of several factories that employ several thousand people.
The violence comes as the country's election commission announced Friday that the election to replace Musharraf will be held September 6, saying candidates have until Tuesday to indicate that they will run.
* Four people killed in 2 bombings in north western Pakistan
* Elections to replace Musharraf set for September 6
* Taliban-linked group claims responsibility for attacks
August 23, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Four people were killed Saturday in two bombings in an extremist violence-plagued region of northwestern Pakistan, close to the border with Afghanistan, officials said.
The incidents in the Swat Valley follow a week of deadly attacks in Pakistan as the country was embroiled in new political turmoil after the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf under threat of impeachment.
In the first attack, a suicide car bomber hit a police station in the village of Charbagh, killing two officers and wounding 11 people, said Naveed Iqbal, a police inspector in charge in Swat.
Later, a remote-control bomb blew up at a vacant police checkpoint in the village of Abuha, killing two civilians and injuring four people, including three children, Iqbal said.
A Pakistani Taliban group, Tehrik-e-Taliban, claimed responsibility for both blasts.
Spokesman Muslim Khan warned of more attacks unless Pakistan stops an offensive against Islamic militants in parts of Swat and the North West Frontier Province, a rugged area near the Afghanistan border where the central government has long exerted little control.
On Thursday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for dual suicide bombings at a Pakistani military arms factory that police said killed 66 people and wounded more than 70 others.
advertisement
Two suicide bombers blew themselves up near the gates of the military arms factory in Wah, near Rawalpindi, where Pakistan's military is based. The attack took place during a shift change at one of several factories that employ several thousand people.
The violence comes as the country's election commission announced Friday that the election to replace Musharraf will be held September 6, saying candidates have until Tuesday to indicate that they will run.
FBI : Protecting America : National Task Force Wages War on Terror
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
PROTECTING AMERICA : National Task Force Wages War on Terror
August 19, 2008
There are 106 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country, where local, state, and federal agencies work together to combat terrorism on a regional scale.
Coordinating the efforts of all those regional task forces is the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, a fusion of local, state, and federal agencies acting as an integrated force to combat terrorism on a national and international scale.
The National Joint Terrorism Task Force, or NJTTF, was established in 2002 to manage the burgeoning Joint Terrorism Task Force program—the number of task forces almost doubled overnight, from 35 pre-9/11 to 56 soon after 9/11 (50 more have been established since then). Of course, JTTFs have been around since the 1980s, starting in New York and Chicago.
Originally located at FBI Headquarters, the NJTTF moved to the multi-agency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), where it performs its mission while also working with NCTC personnel to exchange information, analyze data, and plan anti-terrorism strategies.
So what exactly is the NJTTF’s mission? Managing the Bureau’s JTTFs around the country is major part of the operation, and it’s a huge job—there are currently more than 4,000 JTTF task force members from over 600 state and local agencies as well as 50 federal agencies.
According to Special Agent Gregory Massa, who heads the NJTTF, “We support each task force in every way imaginable—from sharing intelligence and terrorism threat information to providing big-picture terrorism analysis…from offering guidance and oversight to setting sound program policies…from supplying resources for manpower, equipment, and space to facilitating training.”
Another vital aspect of the NJTTF’s mission is sharing information among its 80 members—officers, agents, and analysts—who then pass the information onto the 48 different agencies they represent. Those agencies—from the law enforcement, intelligence, homeland security, defense, diplomatic, and public safety sectors—include the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military, and federal, state, and local partners. Men and women from the U.S. Secret Service, Federal Air Marshals, New York City Police Department, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Amtrak Police, and dozens of other organizations work together every day in the global war on terrorism.
NJTTF members are also working together on joint initiatives designed to address broader terrorism threats. For example:
* Operation TRIPWIRE focuses on information and intelligence-sharing operations from the NJTTF’s participating agencies to help identify terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S.
* Correctional Intelligence Initiative assists JTTFs and correctional facilities to combat prison radicalization and recruitment of prisoners within federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial prisons.
* Rail Liaison Agent Program works to protect the country’s critical mass transit and freight rail infrastructure by collecting and disseminating rail-related terrorism intelligence info to JTTFs and critical rail partners nationwide.
* Military Working Group is comprised of 12 Department of Defense agencies who look at military-specific terrorism threats.
The NJTTF and the JTTFs work tirelessly to protect Americans from terrorism, but they can’t do it alone. Says Agent Massa, “Every law enforcement officer, first responder, military member, intelligence analyst, and private citizen has a role to play in the global war on terror.” And he asks that suspicious activity of any kind be reported to your local JTTF or FBI field office.
Resources:
Counterterrorism webpage
August 19, 2008
There are 106 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country, where local, state, and federal agencies work together to combat terrorism on a regional scale.
Coordinating the efforts of all those regional task forces is the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, a fusion of local, state, and federal agencies acting as an integrated force to combat terrorism on a national and international scale.
The National Joint Terrorism Task Force, or NJTTF, was established in 2002 to manage the burgeoning Joint Terrorism Task Force program—the number of task forces almost doubled overnight, from 35 pre-9/11 to 56 soon after 9/11 (50 more have been established since then). Of course, JTTFs have been around since the 1980s, starting in New York and Chicago.
Originally located at FBI Headquarters, the NJTTF moved to the multi-agency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), where it performs its mission while also working with NCTC personnel to exchange information, analyze data, and plan anti-terrorism strategies.
So what exactly is the NJTTF’s mission? Managing the Bureau’s JTTFs around the country is major part of the operation, and it’s a huge job—there are currently more than 4,000 JTTF task force members from over 600 state and local agencies as well as 50 federal agencies.
According to Special Agent Gregory Massa, who heads the NJTTF, “We support each task force in every way imaginable—from sharing intelligence and terrorism threat information to providing big-picture terrorism analysis…from offering guidance and oversight to setting sound program policies…from supplying resources for manpower, equipment, and space to facilitating training.”
Another vital aspect of the NJTTF’s mission is sharing information among its 80 members—officers, agents, and analysts—who then pass the information onto the 48 different agencies they represent. Those agencies—from the law enforcement, intelligence, homeland security, defense, diplomatic, and public safety sectors—include the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military, and federal, state, and local partners. Men and women from the U.S. Secret Service, Federal Air Marshals, New York City Police Department, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Amtrak Police, and dozens of other organizations work together every day in the global war on terrorism.
NJTTF members are also working together on joint initiatives designed to address broader terrorism threats. For example:
* Operation TRIPWIRE focuses on information and intelligence-sharing operations from the NJTTF’s participating agencies to help identify terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S.
* Correctional Intelligence Initiative assists JTTFs and correctional facilities to combat prison radicalization and recruitment of prisoners within federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial prisons.
* Rail Liaison Agent Program works to protect the country’s critical mass transit and freight rail infrastructure by collecting and disseminating rail-related terrorism intelligence info to JTTFs and critical rail partners nationwide.
* Military Working Group is comprised of 12 Department of Defense agencies who look at military-specific terrorism threats.
The NJTTF and the JTTFs work tirelessly to protect Americans from terrorism, but they can’t do it alone. Says Agent Massa, “Every law enforcement officer, first responder, military member, intelligence analyst, and private citizen has a role to play in the global war on terror.” And he asks that suspicious activity of any kind be reported to your local JTTF or FBI field office.
Resources:
Counterterrorism webpage
Dawn : Algeria bomb attack kills 43, wounds 38
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Algeria bomb attack kills 43, wounds 38
August 19, 2008
ALGIERS, Aug 19 (Reuters): A bomb attack east of Algiers on Tuesday killed 43 people and wounded 38, an Algerian Interior Ministry statement said.
The statement, carried by the official APS news agency, said the attack targeted a paramilitary gendarmerie training school at Issers 55 km east of the Algerian capital.
August 19, 2008
ALGIERS, Aug 19 (Reuters): A bomb attack east of Algiers on Tuesday killed 43 people and wounded 38, an Algerian Interior Ministry statement said.
The statement, carried by the official APS news agency, said the attack targeted a paramilitary gendarmerie training school at Issers 55 km east of the Algerian capital.
Reuters : China Locks Down Kashgar After Attacks on Police (Update1)
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
China Locks Down Kashgar After Attacks on Police (Update1)
By Dune Lawrence | Bloomberg | August 5, 2008
Police locked down Kashgar, cutting Internet access in China's westernmost major city and detaining journalists, after an attack yesterday by members of the Uighur ethnic group killed 16 officers, according to media reports.
Web access was shut today in the city, Agence-France [Presse reported], citing the staff of Yiquan Hotel, across the road from where yesterday's attack occurred. Two reporters working for Japan's Chunichi newspaper and Nippon Television Network were detained by police for two hours and beaten before being released, Kyodo English News said, citing the journalists' employers.
Police detained two suspects after yesterday's attack, describing them as ethnic Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in Xinjiang province, state-owned Xinhua News Agency said. The authorities, counting Xinjiang's East Turkistan Islamic Movement as China's largest terror threat, have clamped down on the region's security and detained Uighur suspects ahead of the Olympic Games which start in Beijing on Aug. 8.
``The Chinese authorities have a right to protect the life and security of their law enforcement officials,'' Amnesty International said in a statement yesterday after Xinhua reported the incident in Kashgar, known in Chinese as Kashi. ``However, attacks such as these should not be used to justify the promotion or implementation of repressive or abusive security measures.''
Police Said Sorry
Kairat Salief, the Xinjiang government's spokesman, today declined to comment on AFP's report of Kashgar's lockdown or Kyodo's report of the Japanese journalists' beating.
``We cannot comment on ongoing police investigations, but we can promise we'll get to the bottom of this,'' Kairat said in a phone interview from Urumqi, Xinjiang's provincial capital.
Provincial border patrol police and the Kashgar foreign affairs department today apologized to the Japanese reporters, Xinhua said, without naming any of the officials.
China has been fighting the East Turkistan Islamic Movement in Xinjiang since the 1980s, trying to wipe out militants who aim to establish an independent state for Uighurs along the border with Tajikistan.
Kashgar's population of 3.3 million people is 90 percent Uighur, mostly Muslims who speak a different language and bear little resemblance to ethnic-Han Chinese.
Two men yesterday drove a truck into a platoon of border patrol policemen on their morning jog, killing 16 of them and injuring another 16, Xinhua said yesterday. The two also threw home-made grenades and hacked at the officers with machetes, Xinhua said, citing local police.
`Sickening' Assault
A Polish couple who witnessed the assault from the Yiquan Hotel described the scene as ``sickening,'' AFP reported.
Police found nine home-made bombs, a gun, machetes and literature about a ``holy war'' at the scene of the attack, China's Public Security Ministry said today in a statement without giving further details.
Chinese police arrested 82 people in the first six months of 2008 on charges of plotting terror attacks during the Olympics, underscoring the potential threat as China prepares to host its biggest international event.
With 4 billion television viewers projected to tune in to the opening ceremony, where more than 40 heads of state and government leaders may be in attendance, China wants to ensure the games go off safely.
``We can guarantee a safe and peaceful Olympic Games,'' the Beijing Olympics organizing committee spokesman Sun Weide told reporters today.
China's Security Threat
The Asian nation has said that terrorism poses one of the biggest threats to security, and named the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which Beijing accuses of trying to split Xinjiang from China, as planning attacks. The Bush administration declared the group a terrorist organization in 2002, supporting the Chinese army's crackdown in Xinjiang.
Police in Kashgar have set up road blocks to check passengers, bags and vehicles, according to Xinhua. Armed traffic police have been patrolling buses in Urumqi since early July, Xinhua reported.
The Uighur people -- also spelt Uyghur -- condemn all acts of violence, the AFP reported yesterday, citing Rebiya Kadeer, president of the Washington D.C.-based Uyghur American Association. She urged caution in evaluating the Chinese government's reports of terrorist attacks by the group because the government routinely fails to provide evidence to back such reports, the AFP said.
Journalists' Beatings
Chunichi's newspaper photographer Masami Kawakita, 38, and Nippon Television's reporter Shinji Katsuta, 37, suffered light injuries after they were taken from their hotel by police and beaten, Kyodo said today. Kawakita's equipment was partially destroyed, Kyodo said.
The border police have apologized after they ``clashed'' with the journalists who were trying to film a restricted area under police control, Xinhua said today without providing details.
Police also entered the hotel room of an AFP photographer and forced him to delete photos he had taken of the attack scene, AFP said in a separate report.
To contact the reporter on this story: Dune Lawrence in Beijing at dlawrence6@bloomberg.net
By Dune Lawrence | Bloomberg | August 5, 2008
Police locked down Kashgar, cutting Internet access in China's westernmost major city and detaining journalists, after an attack yesterday by members of the Uighur ethnic group killed 16 officers, according to media reports.
Web access was shut today in the city, Agence-France [Presse reported], citing the staff of Yiquan Hotel, across the road from where yesterday's attack occurred. Two reporters working for Japan's Chunichi newspaper and Nippon Television Network were detained by police for two hours and beaten before being released, Kyodo English News said, citing the journalists' employers.
Police detained two suspects after yesterday's attack, describing them as ethnic Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in Xinjiang province, state-owned Xinhua News Agency said. The authorities, counting Xinjiang's East Turkistan Islamic Movement as China's largest terror threat, have clamped down on the region's security and detained Uighur suspects ahead of the Olympic Games which start in Beijing on Aug. 8.
``The Chinese authorities have a right to protect the life and security of their law enforcement officials,'' Amnesty International said in a statement yesterday after Xinhua reported the incident in Kashgar, known in Chinese as Kashi. ``However, attacks such as these should not be used to justify the promotion or implementation of repressive or abusive security measures.''
Police Said Sorry
Kairat Salief, the Xinjiang government's spokesman, today declined to comment on AFP's report of Kashgar's lockdown or Kyodo's report of the Japanese journalists' beating.
``We cannot comment on ongoing police investigations, but we can promise we'll get to the bottom of this,'' Kairat said in a phone interview from Urumqi, Xinjiang's provincial capital.
Provincial border patrol police and the Kashgar foreign affairs department today apologized to the Japanese reporters, Xinhua said, without naming any of the officials.
China has been fighting the East Turkistan Islamic Movement in Xinjiang since the 1980s, trying to wipe out militants who aim to establish an independent state for Uighurs along the border with Tajikistan.
Kashgar's population of 3.3 million people is 90 percent Uighur, mostly Muslims who speak a different language and bear little resemblance to ethnic-Han Chinese.
Two men yesterday drove a truck into a platoon of border patrol policemen on their morning jog, killing 16 of them and injuring another 16, Xinhua said yesterday. The two also threw home-made grenades and hacked at the officers with machetes, Xinhua said, citing local police.
`Sickening' Assault
A Polish couple who witnessed the assault from the Yiquan Hotel described the scene as ``sickening,'' AFP reported.
Police found nine home-made bombs, a gun, machetes and literature about a ``holy war'' at the scene of the attack, China's Public Security Ministry said today in a statement without giving further details.
Chinese police arrested 82 people in the first six months of 2008 on charges of plotting terror attacks during the Olympics, underscoring the potential threat as China prepares to host its biggest international event.
With 4 billion television viewers projected to tune in to the opening ceremony, where more than 40 heads of state and government leaders may be in attendance, China wants to ensure the games go off safely.
``We can guarantee a safe and peaceful Olympic Games,'' the Beijing Olympics organizing committee spokesman Sun Weide told reporters today.
China's Security Threat
The Asian nation has said that terrorism poses one of the biggest threats to security, and named the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which Beijing accuses of trying to split Xinjiang from China, as planning attacks. The Bush administration declared the group a terrorist organization in 2002, supporting the Chinese army's crackdown in Xinjiang.
Police in Kashgar have set up road blocks to check passengers, bags and vehicles, according to Xinhua. Armed traffic police have been patrolling buses in Urumqi since early July, Xinhua reported.
The Uighur people -- also spelt Uyghur -- condemn all acts of violence, the AFP reported yesterday, citing Rebiya Kadeer, president of the Washington D.C.-based Uyghur American Association. She urged caution in evaluating the Chinese government's reports of terrorist attacks by the group because the government routinely fails to provide evidence to back such reports, the AFP said.
Journalists' Beatings
Chunichi's newspaper photographer Masami Kawakita, 38, and Nippon Television's reporter Shinji Katsuta, 37, suffered light injuries after they were taken from their hotel by police and beaten, Kyodo said today. Kawakita's equipment was partially destroyed, Kyodo said.
The border police have apologized after they ``clashed'' with the journalists who were trying to film a restricted area under police control, Xinhua said today without providing details.
Police also entered the hotel room of an AFP photographer and forced him to delete photos he had taken of the attack scene, AFP said in a separate report.
To contact the reporter on this story: Dune Lawrence in Beijing at dlawrence6@bloomberg.net
Filed under
China,
East Turkistan Islamic Movement,
terrorism
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, August 05, 2008
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Xinhua : Weapons in Xinjiang attack resemble those of East Turkistan terrorists'
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Weapons in Xinjiang attack resemble those of East Turkistan terrorists'
August 5, 2008
URUMQI, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- The gun and explosives found at the site of the fatal attack on policemen in Kashi City were similar to those used by East Turkistan terrorists, Xinjiang public security authority said Tuesday.
Police found nine home-made explosive items and a home-made [gun at] the site of the suspected terrorist attack that left at least 16 border policemen dead and 16 others injured on Monday morning in Kashi City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China.
The explosives and the gun were similar to those found by Xinjiang police at a training base of the "East Turkistan Islamic Movement" in a crackdown in January, 2007, according to the autonomous regional public security bureau.
Two knives and some propaganda posters advocating the "holy war" were also discovered at the site of the attack, just 100 meters away from the Kashi border police division, the bureau said in a statement released on Tuesday.
The statement said the two suspects, who were arrested on the spot, lived in Kashi City.
One of the suspects is a taxi driver and the other a vegetable peddler, and the attack had been premeditated, the bureau said, citing initial investigation results.
One of the attackers drove a truck to ram into a team of more than 70 policemen who were jogging during a regular exercise at about 8:00 a.m.
The driver and the other attacker also threw explosives at the team and the gate of the station.
Road checks have been strengthened across Xinjiang and the local authorities in Kashi have ordered a full security alert in public places including government office buildings, schools and hospitals.
The Spanish government and the United States have expressed their strongest condemnation of the bloody attack.
August 5, 2008
URUMQI, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- The gun and explosives found at the site of the fatal attack on policemen in Kashi City were similar to those used by East Turkistan terrorists, Xinjiang public security authority said Tuesday.
Police found nine home-made explosive items and a home-made [gun at] the site of the suspected terrorist attack that left at least 16 border policemen dead and 16 others injured on Monday morning in Kashi City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China.
The explosives and the gun were similar to those found by Xinjiang police at a training base of the "East Turkistan Islamic Movement" in a crackdown in January, 2007, according to the autonomous regional public security bureau.
Two knives and some propaganda posters advocating the "holy war" were also discovered at the site of the attack, just 100 meters away from the Kashi border police division, the bureau said in a statement released on Tuesday.
The statement said the two suspects, who were arrested on the spot, lived in Kashi City.
One of the suspects is a taxi driver and the other a vegetable peddler, and the attack had been premeditated, the bureau said, citing initial investigation results.
One of the attackers drove a truck to ram into a team of more than 70 policemen who were jogging during a regular exercise at about 8:00 a.m.
The driver and the other attacker also threw explosives at the team and the gate of the station.
Road checks have been strengthened across Xinjiang and the local authorities in Kashi have ordered a full security alert in public places including government office buildings, schools and hospitals.
The Spanish government and the United States have expressed their strongest condemnation of the bloody attack.
Filed under
China,
East Turkistan Islamic Movement,
Kashi City,
terrorism
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, August 05, 2008
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NYT : Bush Warns House on Surveillance
Friday, March 14, 2008
Bush Warns House on Surveillance
By BRIAN KNOWLTON | March 13, 2008
WASHINGTON — With the House moving toward a vote on electronic surveillance legislation that the White House has said falls far short of its requirements, President Bush warned legislators strongly Thursday morning against passing what he called “a partisan bill that will undermine American security.”
In clear defiance of the White House, the proposal from House Democratic leaders would not give retroactive legal protection to the phone companies that helped in the National Security Agency program of warrantless wiretapping. Mr. Bush also threatened to veto any such measure, should it reach his desk.
The Senate last month passed a bill that did provide such protection and also broadened government eavesdropping powers.
Administration officials say that the Democrats know that the House version would face probable defeat in the Senate. But House Democratic leaders have shown themselves more ready than in the past for a fight on national security.
Using tough language on a subject on which he has been persistent and unswerving, Mr. Bush warned House members that “they should not leave for Easter recess without getting the Senate bill to my desk.”
He argued that failure to pass the Senate language would make it harder to detect emerging terrorist threats.
“Voting for this bill would make our country less safe,” Mr. Bush said. “Congress should stop playing politics with the past and focus on helping us prevent attacks in the future.”
Democrats have accused the president of fear-mongering, saying surveillance can be monitored more carefully without losing its effectiveness.
Mr. Bush also argued again that the House Democrats’ approach would unfairly expose the phone companies to lawsuits that could potentially be enormously expensive.
“House leaders simply adopted the position that class-action trial lawyers are taking in the multibillion law suits they have filed” against the phone companies, he said. This “would undermine the private sector’s willingness to cooperate with the intelligence community, cooperation that is essential to protecting our country from harm.”
Instead of giving the companies blanket immunity, as the Senate would do, the House proposal was understood to give the federal courts special authorization to hear classified evidence and decide whether the phone companies should be held liable.
But the president said that this approach “could reopen dangerous intelligence gaps by putting in place a cumbersome court approval process that would make it harder to collect intelligence on foreign terrorists” and could lead, he said, to disclosure of state secrets.
“Their partisan legislation would extend protections we enjoy as Americans to foreign terrorists overseas,” Mr. Bush said.
In a statement yesterday, 19 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee questioned the administration’s arguments.
“We have concluded that the administration has not established a valid and credible case justifying the extraordinary action of Congress enacting blanket retroactive immunity as set forth in the Senate bill,” they said.
Some 40 lawsuits are pending in federal courts, charging that by cooperating with the eavesdropping program put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the phone companies violated their responsibilities to customers and federal privacy laws.
By BRIAN KNOWLTON | March 13, 2008
WASHINGTON — With the House moving toward a vote on electronic surveillance legislation that the White House has said falls far short of its requirements, President Bush warned legislators strongly Thursday morning against passing what he called “a partisan bill that will undermine American security.”
In clear defiance of the White House, the proposal from House Democratic leaders would not give retroactive legal protection to the phone companies that helped in the National Security Agency program of warrantless wiretapping. Mr. Bush also threatened to veto any such measure, should it reach his desk.
The Senate last month passed a bill that did provide such protection and also broadened government eavesdropping powers.
Administration officials say that the Democrats know that the House version would face probable defeat in the Senate. But House Democratic leaders have shown themselves more ready than in the past for a fight on national security.
Using tough language on a subject on which he has been persistent and unswerving, Mr. Bush warned House members that “they should not leave for Easter recess without getting the Senate bill to my desk.”
He argued that failure to pass the Senate language would make it harder to detect emerging terrorist threats.
“Voting for this bill would make our country less safe,” Mr. Bush said. “Congress should stop playing politics with the past and focus on helping us prevent attacks in the future.”
Democrats have accused the president of fear-mongering, saying surveillance can be monitored more carefully without losing its effectiveness.
Mr. Bush also argued again that the House Democrats’ approach would unfairly expose the phone companies to lawsuits that could potentially be enormously expensive.
“House leaders simply adopted the position that class-action trial lawyers are taking in the multibillion law suits they have filed” against the phone companies, he said. This “would undermine the private sector’s willingness to cooperate with the intelligence community, cooperation that is essential to protecting our country from harm.”
Instead of giving the companies blanket immunity, as the Senate would do, the House proposal was understood to give the federal courts special authorization to hear classified evidence and decide whether the phone companies should be held liable.
But the president said that this approach “could reopen dangerous intelligence gaps by putting in place a cumbersome court approval process that would make it harder to collect intelligence on foreign terrorists” and could lead, he said, to disclosure of state secrets.
“Their partisan legislation would extend protections we enjoy as Americans to foreign terrorists overseas,” Mr. Bush said.
In a statement yesterday, 19 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee questioned the administration’s arguments.
“We have concluded that the administration has not established a valid and credible case justifying the extraordinary action of Congress enacting blanket retroactive immunity as set forth in the Senate bill,” they said.
Some 40 lawsuits are pending in federal courts, charging that by cooperating with the eavesdropping program put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the phone companies violated their responsibilities to customers and federal privacy laws.
Filed under
lawyers,
politics,
terrorism,
wiretapping
by Winter Patriot
on Friday, March 14, 2008
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Mother Jones : Don't Even Think About It
Monday, January 28, 2008
Don't Even Think About It
Commentary: The war against "homegrown terrorism" is on. Enter the thought police.
By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella | January 23, 2008
Perhaps no campaign tactic is more effective than fearmongering, and in the current presidential race the sum of all fears, once again, is radical Islamic terrorists—or "jihadists," to use the now-ubiquitous term. On the Republican side, it's a pissing match over who can look toughest against this shadowy enemy, with John McCain running ads showing masked Islamic gunmen, while Mitt Romney spouts the old neocon warning about forces that want to "unite the world under a single jihadist caliphate." Although the Democrats' rhetoric is more restrained, Hillary Clinton didn't hesitate to suggest that the new president might quickly face another terrorist attack on American soil, as part of her quest to convince voters they need her cool-headed experience.
Largely ignored by the mainstream candidates—as well as the mainstream media—are the latest efforts to bring the fear home by targeting "homegrown terrorism"—another new catchphrase. Only liberal Democrat Dennis Kucinich and libertarian Republican Ron Paul have warned that in the name of stopping domestic terrorist plots before they happen, Congress is in the midst of passing legislation aimed not at actual hate crimes or even terrorist conspiracies, but at talking, Web surfing, or even thinking about jihadism or other "extremist belief systems." Last October, a piece of legislation called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 sailed through the House with near-universal bipartisan support; it is likely to reach the floor of the Senate early this year and appears certain to be signed into law.
Meanwhile, a report released by the New York City Police Department's intelligence division has been warmly received in Washington and widely distributed to law enforcement officials and seems sure to influence national policy. "Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat" details how not only committed terrorists but potential jihadists think, what they talk about, and where they meet. The report's apparent goal is to increase surveillance on constitutionally protected activities. Already, members of the New York City Fire Department have been enlisted by Homeland Security to be on the lookout for signs of possible terrorist activity whenever they enter people's homes and to share this "intelligence" with other agencies.
Both the legislation and the report are presented as reasonable, rational responses to the threat of terrorism from domestic "extremist" groups and are framed not as plans for action but as efforts to "study" and "understand" the roots of homegrown terrorism. Both promote precisely the kind of broad approach—targeting beliefs rather than actions, assuming that "radicalization" leads to violence, defining terms loosely and casting a wide net—that has been used in the past by government authorities to monitor and disrupt legitimate dissent as well as illegal plots.
The primary sponsor of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act is Jane Harman, chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security's Subcommittee on Intelligence. Harman made a point of introducing the legislation on April 19, the 12th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, saying it was "aimed at ensuring such an attack never happens again." But it was clear from the start that the bill was not aimed at white supremacists or anti-government militias. In announcing the bill, Harman also cited a 2005 plot in her Southern California district, targeting "military bases and recruiting stations, the Israeli Consulate, synagogues filled with worshipers on Jewish holy days, and the El Al ticket counter at LAX"—a plot that was foiled when a local police detective spotted "jihadist extremist material" in the apartment of a robbery suspect.
The danger posed by American jihadists remains relatively small—both in comparison to domestic threats in Europe and to the threat of attacks on the United States from abroad. The latest National Intelligence Estimate on "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," released in July 2007, clearly stated that Al Qaeda "is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat" to the United States. In fact, the report found that "the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability" from its safe haven in Pakistan, and that the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq has helped it raise resources and "recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks." Far down in its threat assessment, the NIE notes that "the radical and violent segment of the West's Muslim population is expanding, including in the United States," but also finds that "this internal Muslim terrorist threat is not likely to be as severe as it is in Europe."
Nonetheless, a few thwarted conspiracies are more than enough to float a bill like this. After a couple of hearings—described by OMB Watch as "primarily one-sided, with the bulk of the witnesses representing law enforcement or federal agencies"—the bill went to the House floor, where it was it passed with only six members voting against it—three Democrats and three Republicans. (Twenty-two others were absent.) Currently, a nearly identical version of the bill awaits a vote in the Senate's Committee on Homeland Security, where it has a supporter in chair Joseph Lieberman. Committee member Barack Obama has gone on record as being undecided on the bill (after an earlier email to constituents that seemed to indicate support)—but no presidential candidate is likely to cast a vote that could be seen as soft on terrorism.
The legislation would create a National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism composed of 10 members whose vaguely defined job would be to "examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence," and to "build upon and bring together the work of other entities" including various federal, state, and local agencies, academics, and foreign governments. The commission is charged with issuing a report after 18 months. It also directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to set up a center to study "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism" at a U.S. university, and to "conduct a survey" of what other countries are doing to prevent homegrown terrorism.
On the surface it looks harmless enough, except perhaps as a source of potential pork. California's Dana Rohrabacher, one of three Republicans to oppose the bill, told Congressional Quarterly that he saw the creation of the commission as "the [worst] type of posturing. Is spending $20 million so people can talk more and pay for their hotel rooms and expenses really going to solve anything? I don't think so."
On the Democratic side, however, the legislation's three nay votes included Kucinich, who refers to it as the "thought-crimes bill." At campaign stops in New Hampshire, Kucinich cited the bill as yet another sign of government intervention in civil liberties. Earlier in his campaign, he said it "sets the stage for further criminalization of protest."
The bill raises the potential for government encroachments on civil rights in part through the way it defines some basic terms. The text of the bill says that "the term 'violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change." It gives no clue as to what would qualify, under this law, as an "extremist belief system," leaving this open to broad interpretation according to the prevailing political winds.
In addition, simply by designating the "process of adopting or promoting" belief systems as a target for government concern or control, the bill moves into dangerous territory. The director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office, Caroline Fredrickson, said in a statement on the bill, "Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme."
The United States already has ample federal and state laws against violence of all kinds, and against conspiracy to commit violence. Participants in the handful of "homegrown terrorist" plots that have hatched since 9/11 are being prosecuted under these existing statutes. Certain kinds of direct incitement to violence are already illegal, as well, but within strict limits.
Robert Peck of the Center for Constitutional Litigation points out that some of the most significant First Amendment battles have been fought over precisely when "speech transgresses the line from mere advocacy, which is protected by the First Amendment, to incitement, which is not." Through the early twentieth century, when "incitement" was defined broadly as speech that had a "tendency" to cause illegal acts, it was used to prosecute nonviolent abolitionists, anarchists, socialists, and draft resisters. Gradually, the Supreme Court narrowed the definition, so that speech is protected unless it will "intentionally produce a high likelihood of real imminent harm."
What the Homegrown Terrorism bill does is bring back into the equation not just violent actions, and not just violent plots, but the words and ideas that may (or may not) inspire or encourage them somewhere down the road. It moves toward designating people as terrorists based not on what they do, but on what they say and what they think.
Other red flags appear in the bill's initial "findings"—among them, the charge that "the Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens." "If Congress finds the Internet is dangerous, then the ACLU will have to worry about censorship and limitations on First Amendment activities," says the ACLU's Fredrickson. "Why go down that road?"
It's the "road" the bill lays out that worries civil libertarians. "This measure looks benign enough, but we should be concerned about where it will lead," Kamau Franklin of New York's Center for Constitutional Rights said when the bill passed the House. The National Commission it creates will have broad power to conduct investigations; one commentator dubbed it the "Son of HUAC"—the House Un-American Activities Committee—because it is supposed to travel around the country, holding hearings and questioning people under oath about their ideological beliefs. Wherever it may ultimately lead, the bill seems clearly part of a growing push toward expanding domestic intelligence operations—spying that is aimed not at any Al Qaeda members who may have slipped across the border, but at U.S. citizens and legal residents. The great civil libertarian Frank J. Donner, in his book The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System, argued that the true goal of domestic intelligence was not to prevent or punish criminal activity, but to protect existing power structures and suppress dissent. Unlike law enforcement, which deals with illegal actions that have already been committed, domestic intelligence is by nature "future-oriented": It is not looking for criminals, but potential criminals, and it does so by relying on "ideology, not behavior, theory not practice." Anyone who thinks the wrong way could at some point act the wrong way—so they have to be watched.
Donner was writing in the late 1970s, following congressional investigations that exposed the abuses of the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program), which for more than a decade had conducted surveillance and planted informants to spy on and disrupt what J. Edgar Hoover had decided were "enemies of the American way of life"—including civil rights, anti-war, student, and women's liberation groups, as well as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan. During this period, the bureau tapped phones, opened mail, planted bugs, and burglarized homes and offices. At least 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national emergency." In the end, the Bureau conducted more than half a million investigations of so-called subversives and maintained files on well over a million Americans—all of this without a single conviction for a criminal act.
Plenty of people will argue that the "subversive" groups targeted during the McCarthy era or the COINTELPRO period were nothing like today's Islamic radicals—and there are, of course, differences, not least in terms of new tactics like suicide attacks and dirty bombs. But the Weather Underground set off at least a dozen bombs, which is a dozen more than the homegrown jihadists have managed so far. And just as the FBI spied on Weathermen and anti-war activists alike, it will be unlikely to distinguish between active jihadists and Muslims who are simply ardent or angry. What's more, anything that can be applied to one "extremist" group—laws, policies, law enforcement strategies, domestic intelligence operations—can be applied to others. A case in point is offered by Brian Michael Jenkins, a Rand Corporation terrorism expert who served as a consultant on the NYPD's report. In his book on terrorism, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves, Jenkins wrote, "In their international campaign, the jihadists will seek common grounds with leftist, anti-American, and anti-globalization forces, who will in turn see, in radical Islam, comrades against a mutual foe." Once a terrorist is defined by thought and word rather than deed, there will be room for all of us in the big tent.
The bill does include a provision that all activities "should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents," and must observe "racial neutrality" policies. They are also to be audited by Homeland Security's Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer. But as Mike German of the ACLU told In These Times, an internal review does not constitute real independent oversight. "Nobody should be fooled that such an office would have authority to address policies that are approved at a high level of the administration."
Outside of civil liberties groups, most criticism of the bill seems to be coming from the libertarian right—including presidential candidate Ron Paul, who gave a shout-out to his diverse base of supporters when he warned that "otherwise non-violent anti-tax, antiwar, or anti-abortion groups [could] fall under the watchful eye of this new government commission."
For an indication as to where the initiatives outlined in the bill could lead, we can look to the NYPD report on the "homegrown threat" that was released in August 2007. Prepared by two senior analysts in the department's intelligence division, it compiles information from case studies of successful attacks and thwarted plots by domestic terrorists in the United States and other Western nations, and uses them to create what the authors call "a conceptual framework for understanding the process of radicalization in the West."
The NYPD report, like the House bill, starts out with a definition of terms. But unlike the bill, it is frank about which "extremist belief system" poses what it calls "the homegrown threat" (although it often avoids referring to Islam and instead uses the term "jihadi-Salafi ideology"): "What motivates young men and women, born or living in the West, to carry out 'autonomous jihad' via acts of terrorism against their host countries? The answer is ideology. Ideology is the bedrock and catalyst for radicalization. It defines the conflict, guides movements, identifies the issues, drives recruitment, and is the basis for action. In many cases, ideology also determines target selection and informs what will be done and how it will be carried out."
The lines between thought and action are blurred. And the report states explicitly that both are dangerous and need to be policed: "Where once we would have defined the initial indicator of the threat at the point where a terrorist or group of terrorists would actually plan an attack, we have now shifted our focus to a much earlier point—a point where we believe the potential terrorist or group of terrorists begin and progress through a process of radicalization. The culmination of this process is a terrorist attack."
Central to the report is an analysis of the four phases of this "radicalization process": pre-radicalization; self-identification with the jihadist cause; indoctrination following exposure to jihadist literature or arguments; and finally, "jihadization." None of these phases involves any violent acts, although the last, in the report's definition, will "ultimately" lead to "operational planning for the jihad or a terrorist attack." The way that one phase leads into another suggests a kind of seamless continuity between thought and action, a sense of inevitability—as if once an individual admits the ideology into his mind, he will eventually end up with a bomb strapped to his body.
The report acknowledges that individuals destined to follow this trajectory do not fit any particular profile. They can be citizens or resident aliens (legal or illegal); immigrants or second- and third-generation Americans; Muslim-born or converts. The "radicalization incubators" where they gather, the report says, "can be mosques," but also "cafes, cab driver hangouts, flophouses, prisons, student associations, nongovernmental organizations, hookah (water pipe) bars, butcher shops and book stores." Or they may meet on the Web, which the report calls "a virtual incubator of its own" and New York police commissioner called "the de facto training ground" for terrorists.
Future jihadists, the report says, "look, act, talk and walk like everyone around them," and "in the early stages of their radicalization, these individuals rarely travel, are not participating in any kind of militant activity, yet they are slowly building the mind-set, intention and commitment to conduct jihad." In other words, as Spencer Ackerman writes on TPMMuckraker, "most of what we learn about potential homegrown jihadists is that their pre-radical behavior is...a lot like that of non-jihadists." How, then, can we identify these people? Only by keeping an eye on everyone who might remotely fit the bill.
"The NYPD must have the tools it needs to investigate and combat terrorism, but this report lays the foundation for blanket surveillance of the entire Muslim community," said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The NYPD report outlines no concrete strategies for combating "jihadization," but these would presumably involve the same kinds of tactics that have been used to track "dangerous" and "subversive" groups in the past, the basic tactics of domestic intelligence work: electronic surveillance, recruiting informants, placing agents—and sometimes agents provocateur—inside suspect communities, and taking up other opportunities to watch, look, and listen.
The report also seems to have inspired renewed calls for ordinary citizens to join in the task of rooting out potential jihadists by spying on their neighbors. "They can live next door," warned the New York Post, which also declared that the report "underscores the relentless efforts by civil libertarians and leftist groups—with the New York Times at the head of the line—to thwart counterterrorist efforts" by the NYPD.
Interestingly, the NYPD's "counterterrorist efforts" to which the Post refers had nothing to do with crushing jihadist plots; instead, they involve one of the most blatant crackdowns on legitimate dissent in recent memory, and show why the police force honed by Rudy Giuliani needs no more weapons against constitutional liberties added to its arsenal. Before and during the 2004 Republican National Convention, with no credible threat of violence, the NYPD conducted not only mass arrests of peaceful protesters (almost three times as many as Chicago 1968), but widespread preconvention surveillance of activists with "anti-Bush sentiment," from anti-war organizations to church groups to street-theater companies. "The police action helped to all but eliminate dissent from New York City during the Republican delegates' visit," said the New York Times editorial that aroused the Post's wrath. "If that was the goal, then mission accomplished. And civil rights denied."
Commentary: The war against "homegrown terrorism" is on. Enter the thought police.
By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella | January 23, 2008
Perhaps no campaign tactic is more effective than fearmongering, and in the current presidential race the sum of all fears, once again, is radical Islamic terrorists—or "jihadists," to use the now-ubiquitous term. On the Republican side, it's a pissing match over who can look toughest against this shadowy enemy, with John McCain running ads showing masked Islamic gunmen, while Mitt Romney spouts the old neocon warning about forces that want to "unite the world under a single jihadist caliphate." Although the Democrats' rhetoric is more restrained, Hillary Clinton didn't hesitate to suggest that the new president might quickly face another terrorist attack on American soil, as part of her quest to convince voters they need her cool-headed experience.
Largely ignored by the mainstream candidates—as well as the mainstream media—are the latest efforts to bring the fear home by targeting "homegrown terrorism"—another new catchphrase. Only liberal Democrat Dennis Kucinich and libertarian Republican Ron Paul have warned that in the name of stopping domestic terrorist plots before they happen, Congress is in the midst of passing legislation aimed not at actual hate crimes or even terrorist conspiracies, but at talking, Web surfing, or even thinking about jihadism or other "extremist belief systems." Last October, a piece of legislation called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 sailed through the House with near-universal bipartisan support; it is likely to reach the floor of the Senate early this year and appears certain to be signed into law.
Meanwhile, a report released by the New York City Police Department's intelligence division has been warmly received in Washington and widely distributed to law enforcement officials and seems sure to influence national policy. "Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat" details how not only committed terrorists but potential jihadists think, what they talk about, and where they meet. The report's apparent goal is to increase surveillance on constitutionally protected activities. Already, members of the New York City Fire Department have been enlisted by Homeland Security to be on the lookout for signs of possible terrorist activity whenever they enter people's homes and to share this "intelligence" with other agencies.
Both the legislation and the report are presented as reasonable, rational responses to the threat of terrorism from domestic "extremist" groups and are framed not as plans for action but as efforts to "study" and "understand" the roots of homegrown terrorism. Both promote precisely the kind of broad approach—targeting beliefs rather than actions, assuming that "radicalization" leads to violence, defining terms loosely and casting a wide net—that has been used in the past by government authorities to monitor and disrupt legitimate dissent as well as illegal plots.
The primary sponsor of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act is Jane Harman, chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security's Subcommittee on Intelligence. Harman made a point of introducing the legislation on April 19, the 12th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, saying it was "aimed at ensuring such an attack never happens again." But it was clear from the start that the bill was not aimed at white supremacists or anti-government militias. In announcing the bill, Harman also cited a 2005 plot in her Southern California district, targeting "military bases and recruiting stations, the Israeli Consulate, synagogues filled with worshipers on Jewish holy days, and the El Al ticket counter at LAX"—a plot that was foiled when a local police detective spotted "jihadist extremist material" in the apartment of a robbery suspect.
The danger posed by American jihadists remains relatively small—both in comparison to domestic threats in Europe and to the threat of attacks on the United States from abroad. The latest National Intelligence Estimate on "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," released in July 2007, clearly stated that Al Qaeda "is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat" to the United States. In fact, the report found that "the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability" from its safe haven in Pakistan, and that the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq has helped it raise resources and "recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks." Far down in its threat assessment, the NIE notes that "the radical and violent segment of the West's Muslim population is expanding, including in the United States," but also finds that "this internal Muslim terrorist threat is not likely to be as severe as it is in Europe."
Nonetheless, a few thwarted conspiracies are more than enough to float a bill like this. After a couple of hearings—described by OMB Watch as "primarily one-sided, with the bulk of the witnesses representing law enforcement or federal agencies"—the bill went to the House floor, where it was it passed with only six members voting against it—three Democrats and three Republicans. (Twenty-two others were absent.) Currently, a nearly identical version of the bill awaits a vote in the Senate's Committee on Homeland Security, where it has a supporter in chair Joseph Lieberman. Committee member Barack Obama has gone on record as being undecided on the bill (after an earlier email to constituents that seemed to indicate support)—but no presidential candidate is likely to cast a vote that could be seen as soft on terrorism.
The legislation would create a National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism composed of 10 members whose vaguely defined job would be to "examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence," and to "build upon and bring together the work of other entities" including various federal, state, and local agencies, academics, and foreign governments. The commission is charged with issuing a report after 18 months. It also directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to set up a center to study "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism" at a U.S. university, and to "conduct a survey" of what other countries are doing to prevent homegrown terrorism.
On the surface it looks harmless enough, except perhaps as a source of potential pork. California's Dana Rohrabacher, one of three Republicans to oppose the bill, told Congressional Quarterly that he saw the creation of the commission as "the [worst] type of posturing. Is spending $20 million so people can talk more and pay for their hotel rooms and expenses really going to solve anything? I don't think so."
On the Democratic side, however, the legislation's three nay votes included Kucinich, who refers to it as the "thought-crimes bill." At campaign stops in New Hampshire, Kucinich cited the bill as yet another sign of government intervention in civil liberties. Earlier in his campaign, he said it "sets the stage for further criminalization of protest."
The bill raises the potential for government encroachments on civil rights in part through the way it defines some basic terms. The text of the bill says that "the term 'violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change." It gives no clue as to what would qualify, under this law, as an "extremist belief system," leaving this open to broad interpretation according to the prevailing political winds.
In addition, simply by designating the "process of adopting or promoting" belief systems as a target for government concern or control, the bill moves into dangerous territory. The director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office, Caroline Fredrickson, said in a statement on the bill, "Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme."
The United States already has ample federal and state laws against violence of all kinds, and against conspiracy to commit violence. Participants in the handful of "homegrown terrorist" plots that have hatched since 9/11 are being prosecuted under these existing statutes. Certain kinds of direct incitement to violence are already illegal, as well, but within strict limits.
Robert Peck of the Center for Constitutional Litigation points out that some of the most significant First Amendment battles have been fought over precisely when "speech transgresses the line from mere advocacy, which is protected by the First Amendment, to incitement, which is not." Through the early twentieth century, when "incitement" was defined broadly as speech that had a "tendency" to cause illegal acts, it was used to prosecute nonviolent abolitionists, anarchists, socialists, and draft resisters. Gradually, the Supreme Court narrowed the definition, so that speech is protected unless it will "intentionally produce a high likelihood of real imminent harm."
What the Homegrown Terrorism bill does is bring back into the equation not just violent actions, and not just violent plots, but the words and ideas that may (or may not) inspire or encourage them somewhere down the road. It moves toward designating people as terrorists based not on what they do, but on what they say and what they think.
Other red flags appear in the bill's initial "findings"—among them, the charge that "the Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens." "If Congress finds the Internet is dangerous, then the ACLU will have to worry about censorship and limitations on First Amendment activities," says the ACLU's Fredrickson. "Why go down that road?"
It's the "road" the bill lays out that worries civil libertarians. "This measure looks benign enough, but we should be concerned about where it will lead," Kamau Franklin of New York's Center for Constitutional Rights said when the bill passed the House. The National Commission it creates will have broad power to conduct investigations; one commentator dubbed it the "Son of HUAC"—the House Un-American Activities Committee—because it is supposed to travel around the country, holding hearings and questioning people under oath about their ideological beliefs. Wherever it may ultimately lead, the bill seems clearly part of a growing push toward expanding domestic intelligence operations—spying that is aimed not at any Al Qaeda members who may have slipped across the border, but at U.S. citizens and legal residents. The great civil libertarian Frank J. Donner, in his book The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System, argued that the true goal of domestic intelligence was not to prevent or punish criminal activity, but to protect existing power structures and suppress dissent. Unlike law enforcement, which deals with illegal actions that have already been committed, domestic intelligence is by nature "future-oriented": It is not looking for criminals, but potential criminals, and it does so by relying on "ideology, not behavior, theory not practice." Anyone who thinks the wrong way could at some point act the wrong way—so they have to be watched.
Donner was writing in the late 1970s, following congressional investigations that exposed the abuses of the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program), which for more than a decade had conducted surveillance and planted informants to spy on and disrupt what J. Edgar Hoover had decided were "enemies of the American way of life"—including civil rights, anti-war, student, and women's liberation groups, as well as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan. During this period, the bureau tapped phones, opened mail, planted bugs, and burglarized homes and offices. At least 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national emergency." In the end, the Bureau conducted more than half a million investigations of so-called subversives and maintained files on well over a million Americans—all of this without a single conviction for a criminal act.
Plenty of people will argue that the "subversive" groups targeted during the McCarthy era or the COINTELPRO period were nothing like today's Islamic radicals—and there are, of course, differences, not least in terms of new tactics like suicide attacks and dirty bombs. But the Weather Underground set off at least a dozen bombs, which is a dozen more than the homegrown jihadists have managed so far. And just as the FBI spied on Weathermen and anti-war activists alike, it will be unlikely to distinguish between active jihadists and Muslims who are simply ardent or angry. What's more, anything that can be applied to one "extremist" group—laws, policies, law enforcement strategies, domestic intelligence operations—can be applied to others. A case in point is offered by Brian Michael Jenkins, a Rand Corporation terrorism expert who served as a consultant on the NYPD's report. In his book on terrorism, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves, Jenkins wrote, "In their international campaign, the jihadists will seek common grounds with leftist, anti-American, and anti-globalization forces, who will in turn see, in radical Islam, comrades against a mutual foe." Once a terrorist is defined by thought and word rather than deed, there will be room for all of us in the big tent.
The bill does include a provision that all activities "should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents," and must observe "racial neutrality" policies. They are also to be audited by Homeland Security's Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer. But as Mike German of the ACLU told In These Times, an internal review does not constitute real independent oversight. "Nobody should be fooled that such an office would have authority to address policies that are approved at a high level of the administration."
Outside of civil liberties groups, most criticism of the bill seems to be coming from the libertarian right—including presidential candidate Ron Paul, who gave a shout-out to his diverse base of supporters when he warned that "otherwise non-violent anti-tax, antiwar, or anti-abortion groups [could] fall under the watchful eye of this new government commission."
For an indication as to where the initiatives outlined in the bill could lead, we can look to the NYPD report on the "homegrown threat" that was released in August 2007. Prepared by two senior analysts in the department's intelligence division, it compiles information from case studies of successful attacks and thwarted plots by domestic terrorists in the United States and other Western nations, and uses them to create what the authors call "a conceptual framework for understanding the process of radicalization in the West."
The NYPD report, like the House bill, starts out with a definition of terms. But unlike the bill, it is frank about which "extremist belief system" poses what it calls "the homegrown threat" (although it often avoids referring to Islam and instead uses the term "jihadi-Salafi ideology"): "What motivates young men and women, born or living in the West, to carry out 'autonomous jihad' via acts of terrorism against their host countries? The answer is ideology. Ideology is the bedrock and catalyst for radicalization. It defines the conflict, guides movements, identifies the issues, drives recruitment, and is the basis for action. In many cases, ideology also determines target selection and informs what will be done and how it will be carried out."
The lines between thought and action are blurred. And the report states explicitly that both are dangerous and need to be policed: "Where once we would have defined the initial indicator of the threat at the point where a terrorist or group of terrorists would actually plan an attack, we have now shifted our focus to a much earlier point—a point where we believe the potential terrorist or group of terrorists begin and progress through a process of radicalization. The culmination of this process is a terrorist attack."
Central to the report is an analysis of the four phases of this "radicalization process": pre-radicalization; self-identification with the jihadist cause; indoctrination following exposure to jihadist literature or arguments; and finally, "jihadization." None of these phases involves any violent acts, although the last, in the report's definition, will "ultimately" lead to "operational planning for the jihad or a terrorist attack." The way that one phase leads into another suggests a kind of seamless continuity between thought and action, a sense of inevitability—as if once an individual admits the ideology into his mind, he will eventually end up with a bomb strapped to his body.
The report acknowledges that individuals destined to follow this trajectory do not fit any particular profile. They can be citizens or resident aliens (legal or illegal); immigrants or second- and third-generation Americans; Muslim-born or converts. The "radicalization incubators" where they gather, the report says, "can be mosques," but also "cafes, cab driver hangouts, flophouses, prisons, student associations, nongovernmental organizations, hookah (water pipe) bars, butcher shops and book stores." Or they may meet on the Web, which the report calls "a virtual incubator of its own" and New York police commissioner called "the de facto training ground" for terrorists.
Future jihadists, the report says, "look, act, talk and walk like everyone around them," and "in the early stages of their radicalization, these individuals rarely travel, are not participating in any kind of militant activity, yet they are slowly building the mind-set, intention and commitment to conduct jihad." In other words, as Spencer Ackerman writes on TPMMuckraker, "most of what we learn about potential homegrown jihadists is that their pre-radical behavior is...a lot like that of non-jihadists." How, then, can we identify these people? Only by keeping an eye on everyone who might remotely fit the bill.
"The NYPD must have the tools it needs to investigate and combat terrorism, but this report lays the foundation for blanket surveillance of the entire Muslim community," said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The NYPD report outlines no concrete strategies for combating "jihadization," but these would presumably involve the same kinds of tactics that have been used to track "dangerous" and "subversive" groups in the past, the basic tactics of domestic intelligence work: electronic surveillance, recruiting informants, placing agents—and sometimes agents provocateur—inside suspect communities, and taking up other opportunities to watch, look, and listen.
The report also seems to have inspired renewed calls for ordinary citizens to join in the task of rooting out potential jihadists by spying on their neighbors. "They can live next door," warned the New York Post, which also declared that the report "underscores the relentless efforts by civil libertarians and leftist groups—with the New York Times at the head of the line—to thwart counterterrorist efforts" by the NYPD.
Interestingly, the NYPD's "counterterrorist efforts" to which the Post refers had nothing to do with crushing jihadist plots; instead, they involve one of the most blatant crackdowns on legitimate dissent in recent memory, and show why the police force honed by Rudy Giuliani needs no more weapons against constitutional liberties added to its arsenal. Before and during the 2004 Republican National Convention, with no credible threat of violence, the NYPD conducted not only mass arrests of peaceful protesters (almost three times as many as Chicago 1968), but widespread preconvention surveillance of activists with "anti-Bush sentiment," from anti-war organizations to church groups to street-theater companies. "The police action helped to all but eliminate dissent from New York City during the Republican delegates' visit," said the New York Times editorial that aroused the Post's wrath. "If that was the goal, then mission accomplished. And civil rights denied."
Filed under
homegrown terrorism,
militarization,
terrorism
by Winter Patriot
on Monday, January 28, 2008
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Daily Times : 30 killed in two suicide attacks in Rawalpindi
Sunday, November 25, 2007
30 killed in two suicide attacks in Rawalpindi
* Attack on bus kills 28 ISI meng Two die in attack near GHQ
* ISPR confirms 16 deaths
* Private ambulances, police not allowed near sites
By Aamir Yasin and Imran Asghar | November 25, 2007
RAWALPINDI: Two separate suicide car bombings on Saturday morning rocked the garrison town of Rawalpindi, killing at least 30 people and injuring dozens more.
The first incident occurred at 7.49am when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a 72-seater bus parked in front of Ojhri Camp on Murree Road. The bus, which was carrying Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officials to work, was completely destroyed according to eyewitnesses. They said 28 officials and a bystander were killed in addition to the bomber.
Shoaib Abbasi, owner of the Oriel guesthouse across the street from the intelligence compound, said that when he came out on the street after the blast, the bus was burning fiercely, reported AP. “Firemen tried to open the emergency doors while they were dousing the interior, but I can’t believe anyone inside survived because of the intensity of the fire,” he said.
GHQ attack: The second incident occurred at 8.05am as a second suicide bomber attempted to enter the General Headquarters (GHQ). Upon being asked for identification at the GHQ’s checkpost, he blew himself up, resulting in the deaths of one security official and a bystander, according to eyewitnesses.
ISPR claims: Meanwhile, an Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) statement said 16 people were killed in both incidents. “Sixteen persons, including a suicide bomber, died in the suicide attack on a Ministry of Defence vehicle near Hamza Camp on Murree Road,” it said. It said the suicide bomber hit the rear of the bus, which was carrying almost 50 people. “In another incident, a suicide bomber riding in a car blew himself up near the GHQ checkpost. Two security personnel are critically injured,” it added. “Both were suicide attacks,” confirmed army spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad.
Two senior intelligence officials, requesting not to be named, told AP that at least 35 people were killed. One of them, who was at the scene of the attack on the bus, said the bus was overloaded and it was believed that more than 72 people had been killed or injured.
Sealed off: Troops sealed off the entire area around Hamza Camp and GHQ soon after the blasts and no police official was allowed access to the two spots. Similarly, private ambulances were also not allowed to shift the injured and the dead to the military hospitals.
President General Pervez Musharraf and caretaker Prime Minister Mohammadmian Soomro condemned the two suicide blasts and expressed their grief and sorrow over the deaths that occurred. Gen Musharraf said the government would continue its crackdown against the elements that were behind the attacks and would expose them before the public. He said the government’s fight against terrorism would continue with more vigour.
Soomro, meanwhile, said the country would not be blackmailed by the elements behind the attacks. He directed the Rawalpindi administration and heads of hospitals to provide the best medical care to the injured. He also directed law enforcing agencies and police to step up security.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed condemned the incident on a private TV Channel and said this would affect the election process, as there would be less voter-turnout, reported Online.
* Attack on bus kills 28 ISI meng Two die in attack near GHQ
* ISPR confirms 16 deaths
* Private ambulances, police not allowed near sites
By Aamir Yasin and Imran Asghar | November 25, 2007
RAWALPINDI: Two separate suicide car bombings on Saturday morning rocked the garrison town of Rawalpindi, killing at least 30 people and injuring dozens more.
The first incident occurred at 7.49am when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a 72-seater bus parked in front of Ojhri Camp on Murree Road. The bus, which was carrying Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officials to work, was completely destroyed according to eyewitnesses. They said 28 officials and a bystander were killed in addition to the bomber.
Shoaib Abbasi, owner of the Oriel guesthouse across the street from the intelligence compound, said that when he came out on the street after the blast, the bus was burning fiercely, reported AP. “Firemen tried to open the emergency doors while they were dousing the interior, but I can’t believe anyone inside survived because of the intensity of the fire,” he said.
GHQ attack: The second incident occurred at 8.05am as a second suicide bomber attempted to enter the General Headquarters (GHQ). Upon being asked for identification at the GHQ’s checkpost, he blew himself up, resulting in the deaths of one security official and a bystander, according to eyewitnesses.
ISPR claims: Meanwhile, an Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) statement said 16 people were killed in both incidents. “Sixteen persons, including a suicide bomber, died in the suicide attack on a Ministry of Defence vehicle near Hamza Camp on Murree Road,” it said. It said the suicide bomber hit the rear of the bus, which was carrying almost 50 people. “In another incident, a suicide bomber riding in a car blew himself up near the GHQ checkpost. Two security personnel are critically injured,” it added. “Both were suicide attacks,” confirmed army spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad.
Two senior intelligence officials, requesting not to be named, told AP that at least 35 people were killed. One of them, who was at the scene of the attack on the bus, said the bus was overloaded and it was believed that more than 72 people had been killed or injured.
Sealed off: Troops sealed off the entire area around Hamza Camp and GHQ soon after the blasts and no police official was allowed access to the two spots. Similarly, private ambulances were also not allowed to shift the injured and the dead to the military hospitals.
President General Pervez Musharraf and caretaker Prime Minister Mohammadmian Soomro condemned the two suicide blasts and expressed their grief and sorrow over the deaths that occurred. Gen Musharraf said the government would continue its crackdown against the elements that were behind the attacks and would expose them before the public. He said the government’s fight against terrorism would continue with more vigour.
Soomro, meanwhile, said the country would not be blackmailed by the elements behind the attacks. He directed the Rawalpindi administration and heads of hospitals to provide the best medical care to the injured. He also directed law enforcing agencies and police to step up security.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed condemned the incident on a private TV Channel and said this would affect the election process, as there would be less voter-turnout, reported Online.
Filed under
Pakistan,
Rawalpindi,
suicide,
terrorism
by Winter Patriot
on Sunday, November 25, 2007
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AP : Bomb 1/4-Mile From Musharraf's HQ Kills 7
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Bomb 1/4-Mile From Musharraf's HQ Kills 7
By ANJUM NAVEED | October 30, 2007
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — A suicide attacker set off a bomb at a checkpoint a quarter-mile from the military headquarters where President Gen. Pervez Musharraf was staying Tuesday, killing seven people, police said.
The blast will likely feed fears for the country's stability just as it prepares for crucial parliamentary elections and faces a growing threat from Islamic militants.
The man walked up to the checkpoint in the city of Rawalpindi a quarter-mile from Army House. Musharraf was safely inside at the time, his spokesman Rashid Qureshi said.
Police said three of their officers and four civilians were killed along with the lone assailant. Fourteen policemen and four civilians were wounded, he said.
"When police officers asked him to halt, the attacker got panicked. And as the police tried to capture him, he blew himself up," city police chief Saud Aziz told The Associated Press. "Our officers died to protect the citizens of Pakistan."
The attack left the area around the checkpoint, which guards a road leading to Army House and the residences of several top generals, strewn with flesh and torn clothing.
An Associated Press photographer saw emergency workers remove the body of an elderly man killed as he was riding by on a bicycle.
Police said women and children aboard a passing minibus were also among the dead and wounded. Television footage showed schoolbags abandoned on the seats of the vehicle, whose windows were blown out.
Investigators cordoned off the area to retrieve evidence. A policeman climbed an overhanging tree to dislodge part of the bomber's severed head.
Fortified army posts at the checkpoint and the nearby gate to the residence of Gen. Tariq Majid, the army's No. 3 commander, were scarred with shrapnel and spattered with blood.
While there was no claim of responsibility, Pakistan has been rocked by a string of suicide bombings mostly blamed on Islamic extremists.
An attack on the homecoming parade of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Oct. 18 in the southern city of Karachi killed more than 140 people.
In Rawalpindi, a garrison city just south of the capital Islamabad, two blasts on Sept. 4 killed 25 people and wounded more than 60, many of them on a Defense Ministry bus.
Despite the violence, Bhutto announced plans to travel to Rawalpindi on Nov. 9 but said she would not hold processions.
"There are two options," Bhutto told reporters while visiting some of those wounded in the Karachi bombing. "Either we have to sit home due to this (threat), or keep contacting people. And I will continue to go to the masses, but address them at a public meeting."
Pakistan has suffered a surge in suicide attacks since Musharraf's decision in July to crack down on militants tightening their grip on areas along the Afghan frontier.
U.S. officials warn the area has become a haven for Taliban militants fighting in Afghanistan and that al-Qaida may be using it to plot fresh attacks on the West.
Last week, Pakistan sent troops to tackle supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric in the northwestern district of Swat. Officials say four days of violence in the once-peaceful mountain region has left around 100 people dead.
Musharraf, who has survived at least three attempts on his life, is widely expected to join forces with Bhutto in a U.S.-friendly alliance, provided her party fares well in January parliamentary elections.
Both are stressing the need for moderates to pool their strength to defeat extremism and terrorism — making them prime targets for Islamic hard-liners who deride them as U.S. stooges.
Extremists are trying hard to secure a "big catch," said Sheikh Rashid, a senior Cabinet minister and close political ally of Musharraf: "This is a very critical time and critical situation."
Associated Press writer Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
By ANJUM NAVEED | October 30, 2007
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — A suicide attacker set off a bomb at a checkpoint a quarter-mile from the military headquarters where President Gen. Pervez Musharraf was staying Tuesday, killing seven people, police said.
The blast will likely feed fears for the country's stability just as it prepares for crucial parliamentary elections and faces a growing threat from Islamic militants.
The man walked up to the checkpoint in the city of Rawalpindi a quarter-mile from Army House. Musharraf was safely inside at the time, his spokesman Rashid Qureshi said.
Police said three of their officers and four civilians were killed along with the lone assailant. Fourteen policemen and four civilians were wounded, he said.
"When police officers asked him to halt, the attacker got panicked. And as the police tried to capture him, he blew himself up," city police chief Saud Aziz told The Associated Press. "Our officers died to protect the citizens of Pakistan."
The attack left the area around the checkpoint, which guards a road leading to Army House and the residences of several top generals, strewn with flesh and torn clothing.
An Associated Press photographer saw emergency workers remove the body of an elderly man killed as he was riding by on a bicycle.
Police said women and children aboard a passing minibus were also among the dead and wounded. Television footage showed schoolbags abandoned on the seats of the vehicle, whose windows were blown out.
Investigators cordoned off the area to retrieve evidence. A policeman climbed an overhanging tree to dislodge part of the bomber's severed head.
Fortified army posts at the checkpoint and the nearby gate to the residence of Gen. Tariq Majid, the army's No. 3 commander, were scarred with shrapnel and spattered with blood.
While there was no claim of responsibility, Pakistan has been rocked by a string of suicide bombings mostly blamed on Islamic extremists.
An attack on the homecoming parade of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Oct. 18 in the southern city of Karachi killed more than 140 people.
In Rawalpindi, a garrison city just south of the capital Islamabad, two blasts on Sept. 4 killed 25 people and wounded more than 60, many of them on a Defense Ministry bus.
Despite the violence, Bhutto announced plans to travel to Rawalpindi on Nov. 9 but said she would not hold processions.
"There are two options," Bhutto told reporters while visiting some of those wounded in the Karachi bombing. "Either we have to sit home due to this (threat), or keep contacting people. And I will continue to go to the masses, but address them at a public meeting."
Pakistan has suffered a surge in suicide attacks since Musharraf's decision in July to crack down on militants tightening their grip on areas along the Afghan frontier.
U.S. officials warn the area has become a haven for Taliban militants fighting in Afghanistan and that al-Qaida may be using it to plot fresh attacks on the West.
Last week, Pakistan sent troops to tackle supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric in the northwestern district of Swat. Officials say four days of violence in the once-peaceful mountain region has left around 100 people dead.
Musharraf, who has survived at least three attempts on his life, is widely expected to join forces with Bhutto in a U.S.-friendly alliance, provided her party fares well in January parliamentary elections.
Both are stressing the need for moderates to pool their strength to defeat extremism and terrorism — making them prime targets for Islamic hard-liners who deride them as U.S. stooges.
Extremists are trying hard to secure a "big catch," said Sheikh Rashid, a senior Cabinet minister and close political ally of Musharraf: "This is a very critical time and critical situation."
Associated Press writer Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Filed under
Karachi,
Pakistan,
Pervez Musharraf,
Rawalpindi,
suicide,
terrorism
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, October 30, 2007
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WaPo : Suicide bomber kills 7 near Musharraf army home
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Suicide bomber kills 7 near Musharraf army home
By Augustine Anthony | Reuters | October 30, 2007
RAWALPINDI (Reuters) - A suicide attack killed at least seven people, including the bomber, on Tuesday less than a kilometer from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's army residence in Rawalpindi, police said.
The attacker blew himself up next to a police checkpoint just meters from the gates to the residence of one of Musharraf's most senior officers, General Tariq Majid, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Recently promoted, Majid had not yet moved in.
A Reuters photographer saw a head hanging from the branches of a tree. Typically the upward force from a suicide bomber's exploding vest blows the head off.
U.S. ally General Musharraf was meeting army commanders at General Headquarters some 2 km (one mile) away at the time of the blast, officials said.
Hours later, inaugurating a highway in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Musharraf spoke of the militancy fanning out from tribal areas in the province.
"If we do not stop this deluge, if we do not check this extremism and terrorism, there could be serious problems for Pakistan," Musharraf said in a speech.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan is suffering mounting political uncertainty and insecurity, as U.S. ally Musharraf, who came to power in a coup eight years ago, tries to engineer a transition to civilian-led democracy while remaining at the helm.
The latest attack took place on a road where many of Pakistan's top brass reside.
Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz said three policemen and three passers-by were among those killed, while 11 people were wounded in the blast.
ATTACKER CHALLENGED
"Our policeman challenged the attacker who exploded himself near their picket," Aziz said. "He was on foot."
Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said the bomber was aged between 19 and 23, with long hair and a fair complexion.
A witness, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the location, described the scene.
"I was sitting in my house when I heard the explosion. I came out and saw body parts scattered all around," he said. "I could not look, I went back into the house, it was terrible."
A Reuters journalist saw body parts on the road and blood splattered on a perimeter wall of General Majid's residence.
Television footage showed a corpse slumped over a bicycle, and pools of blood on the road, as police picked up debris around the charred police post, before the area was hosed down.
Flying splinters struck a passenger mini-bus passing on the other side of the two-way road, causing it to crash into a wall, injuring a woman and two children, police said.
Musharraf is known to have survived at least three al Qaeda inspired assassination attempts, two in December 2003, and one last July as his plane took off from Rawalpindi's airport.
COURT CHALLENGE
There has been speculation that Musharraf could declare emergency powers and delay national elections due in January if the Supreme Court, in a ruling expected later this week, decides his re-election by parliament on October 6 was invalid.
The court is hearing challenges to Musharraf's right to have stood for re-election while still army chief, though he has promised to quit the army and be sworn in as a civilian leader.
An attack by possibly two suicide bombers killed 139 people at a procession in the southern city of Karachi on October 18 to welcome home former prime minister Benazir Bhutto from self-imposed exile.
Bhutto, like Musharraf, is regarded as friendly to the West and they have both vowed to stamp out militancy.
Suicide and roadside bomb attacks on security forces have multiplied since commandos stormed the Red Mosque in the capital, Islamabad, in July to crush a Taliban-style movement. More than 100 people were killed in the fighting.
The security situation in the country has continued to deteriorate, with scores of people killed in the past few days alone in fighting between security forces and followers of a rebel cleric in the scenic valley of Swat in NWFP.
Investors' nervousness over the political uncertainty and mounting insecurity showed as the Karachi Stock Exchange's benchmark index closed more than 2.5 percent down.
(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider, Zeeshan Haider and Simon Gardner and Sahar Ahmed)
© 2007 Reuters
By Augustine Anthony | Reuters | October 30, 2007
RAWALPINDI (Reuters) - A suicide attack killed at least seven people, including the bomber, on Tuesday less than a kilometer from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's army residence in Rawalpindi, police said.
The attacker blew himself up next to a police checkpoint just meters from the gates to the residence of one of Musharraf's most senior officers, General Tariq Majid, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Recently promoted, Majid had not yet moved in.
A Reuters photographer saw a head hanging from the branches of a tree. Typically the upward force from a suicide bomber's exploding vest blows the head off.
U.S. ally General Musharraf was meeting army commanders at General Headquarters some 2 km (one mile) away at the time of the blast, officials said.
Hours later, inaugurating a highway in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Musharraf spoke of the militancy fanning out from tribal areas in the province.
"If we do not stop this deluge, if we do not check this extremism and terrorism, there could be serious problems for Pakistan," Musharraf said in a speech.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan is suffering mounting political uncertainty and insecurity, as U.S. ally Musharraf, who came to power in a coup eight years ago, tries to engineer a transition to civilian-led democracy while remaining at the helm.
The latest attack took place on a road where many of Pakistan's top brass reside.
Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz said three policemen and three passers-by were among those killed, while 11 people were wounded in the blast.
ATTACKER CHALLENGED
"Our policeman challenged the attacker who exploded himself near their picket," Aziz said. "He was on foot."
Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said the bomber was aged between 19 and 23, with long hair and a fair complexion.
A witness, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the location, described the scene.
"I was sitting in my house when I heard the explosion. I came out and saw body parts scattered all around," he said. "I could not look, I went back into the house, it was terrible."
A Reuters journalist saw body parts on the road and blood splattered on a perimeter wall of General Majid's residence.
Television footage showed a corpse slumped over a bicycle, and pools of blood on the road, as police picked up debris around the charred police post, before the area was hosed down.
Flying splinters struck a passenger mini-bus passing on the other side of the two-way road, causing it to crash into a wall, injuring a woman and two children, police said.
Musharraf is known to have survived at least three al Qaeda inspired assassination attempts, two in December 2003, and one last July as his plane took off from Rawalpindi's airport.
COURT CHALLENGE
There has been speculation that Musharraf could declare emergency powers and delay national elections due in January if the Supreme Court, in a ruling expected later this week, decides his re-election by parliament on October 6 was invalid.
The court is hearing challenges to Musharraf's right to have stood for re-election while still army chief, though he has promised to quit the army and be sworn in as a civilian leader.
An attack by possibly two suicide bombers killed 139 people at a procession in the southern city of Karachi on October 18 to welcome home former prime minister Benazir Bhutto from self-imposed exile.
Bhutto, like Musharraf, is regarded as friendly to the West and they have both vowed to stamp out militancy.
Suicide and roadside bomb attacks on security forces have multiplied since commandos stormed the Red Mosque in the capital, Islamabad, in July to crush a Taliban-style movement. More than 100 people were killed in the fighting.
The security situation in the country has continued to deteriorate, with scores of people killed in the past few days alone in fighting between security forces and followers of a rebel cleric in the scenic valley of Swat in NWFP.
Investors' nervousness over the political uncertainty and mounting insecurity showed as the Karachi Stock Exchange's benchmark index closed more than 2.5 percent down.
(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider, Zeeshan Haider and Simon Gardner and Sahar Ahmed)
© 2007 Reuters
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NYT : Suicide Bomber Strikes Within a Mile of Musharraf
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Suicide Bomber Strikes Within a Mile of Musharraf
By SALMAN MASOOD and GRAHAM BOWLEY | October 31, 2007
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Oct. 30 — A young man blew himself up about one mile from the offices of Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in this garrison town near Islamabad, the capital, today, killing seven people including himself and wounding 14 others, according to police officials and the Interior Ministry.
General Musharraf was working in his office in Rawalpindi at the time of the attack, a spokesman for the president said. He often prefers to work out of his military office there, in the tightly guarded city that is home to the headquarters of Pakistan’s military. General Musharraf, an important ally of the United States in its campaign against terrorism, survived two assassination attempts here in 2003.
The president’s spokesman, Rashid Qureshi, denied that the president was a target of the attack and said the bomber was stopped well before he entered the security zone around the military compound.
The suicide bomber, who was estimated to be between 19 and 23 years old, was on foot and tried to force himself past a police checkpoint when he was stopped by two officers, according to a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Javed Iqbal Cheema. At least four policemen were among the dead.
The attack comes at a tense moment in Pakistan politics. On Oct. 18, as Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader, was returning to Pakistan after eight years of self-exile, bomb blasts aimed at her procession through Karachi killed 140 of her supporters.
Since then Ms. Bhutto has raised the temperature of the country’s politics even further. As she seeks to contest parliamentary elections, she has been outspoken in particular against terrorism, and against the religious and jihadi groups rooted in Pakistan.
She has been in power-sharing negotiations with General Musharraf, who early this month was reelected president. However, constitutional challenges to his eligibility for that contest have yet to be decided by the Supreme Court, leaving him with an incomplete victory.
At the same time, General Musharraf’s authority has been challenged by growing unrest in tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan, where there have been a rising number of deadly attacks on military targets by militants sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The violence has also reached into the center of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Last month, powerful coordinated explosions set off by two suicide bombers in the heart of Rawalpindi killed at least 25 people, some from Pakistan’s intelligence agency, and wounded at least 68, according to government and military officials.
Earlier this month, four people were killed and five others injured when one of the three helicopters escorting the president on a visit to Kashmir crashed, but military officials ruled out the possibility of an assassination attempt, attributing the crash to a technical problem
In July, unidentified gunmen fired on General Musharraf’s plane as it took off from Rawalpindi as government forces laid siege to a mosque complex in nearby Islamabad, where Islamic militants were holed up. The general escaped unhurt.
Salman Masood reported from Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and Graham Bowley from New York.
By SALMAN MASOOD and GRAHAM BOWLEY | October 31, 2007
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Oct. 30 — A young man blew himself up about one mile from the offices of Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in this garrison town near Islamabad, the capital, today, killing seven people including himself and wounding 14 others, according to police officials and the Interior Ministry.
General Musharraf was working in his office in Rawalpindi at the time of the attack, a spokesman for the president said. He often prefers to work out of his military office there, in the tightly guarded city that is home to the headquarters of Pakistan’s military. General Musharraf, an important ally of the United States in its campaign against terrorism, survived two assassination attempts here in 2003.
The president’s spokesman, Rashid Qureshi, denied that the president was a target of the attack and said the bomber was stopped well before he entered the security zone around the military compound.
The suicide bomber, who was estimated to be between 19 and 23 years old, was on foot and tried to force himself past a police checkpoint when he was stopped by two officers, according to a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Javed Iqbal Cheema. At least four policemen were among the dead.
The attack comes at a tense moment in Pakistan politics. On Oct. 18, as Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader, was returning to Pakistan after eight years of self-exile, bomb blasts aimed at her procession through Karachi killed 140 of her supporters.
Since then Ms. Bhutto has raised the temperature of the country’s politics even further. As she seeks to contest parliamentary elections, she has been outspoken in particular against terrorism, and against the religious and jihadi groups rooted in Pakistan.
She has been in power-sharing negotiations with General Musharraf, who early this month was reelected president. However, constitutional challenges to his eligibility for that contest have yet to be decided by the Supreme Court, leaving him with an incomplete victory.
At the same time, General Musharraf’s authority has been challenged by growing unrest in tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan, where there have been a rising number of deadly attacks on military targets by militants sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The violence has also reached into the center of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Last month, powerful coordinated explosions set off by two suicide bombers in the heart of Rawalpindi killed at least 25 people, some from Pakistan’s intelligence agency, and wounded at least 68, according to government and military officials.
Earlier this month, four people were killed and five others injured when one of the three helicopters escorting the president on a visit to Kashmir crashed, but military officials ruled out the possibility of an assassination attempt, attributing the crash to a technical problem
In July, unidentified gunmen fired on General Musharraf’s plane as it took off from Rawalpindi as government forces laid siege to a mosque complex in nearby Islamabad, where Islamic militants were holed up. The general escaped unhurt.
Salman Masood reported from Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and Graham Bowley from New York.
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Dawn : Five dead in suicide blast near Musharraf's HQ
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Five dead in suicide blast near Musharraf's HQ
AFP | October 30, 2007
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- A suicide bomber blew himself up near President Pervez Musharraf's army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Tuesday, killing five people and injuring 11 others, officials said.
“It was a suicide attack. The area is sensitive -- we don't know what the exact target was. Five people were killed,” Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid told AFP.
The blast happened within a kilometre of Musharraf's military camp office in the city, and was also near the office of the chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, witnesses said.
Private television channels said the attack occurred as Musharraf was meeting with top officials to discuss the security situation following a spate of recent attacks.
It was not immediately clear if that meeting was held in the Rawalpindi office.
But the interior ministry denied that the bomber meant to target the army.
“The suicide bomber blew himself up at a police post, killing five people. Eleven others were wounded including five policemen. It appears to be an attack targeting police,” Interior ministry spokesman Javed Cheema told AFP.
Police official Mohammad Tahir said that the bomber was on foot and was stopped by police at a checkpoint in the city.
“He then detonated explosives strapped to his body,” he said.
The victims included two policemen and a cyclist, he added.
AFP | October 30, 2007
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- A suicide bomber blew himself up near President Pervez Musharraf's army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Tuesday, killing five people and injuring 11 others, officials said.
“It was a suicide attack. The area is sensitive -- we don't know what the exact target was. Five people were killed,” Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid told AFP.
The blast happened within a kilometre of Musharraf's military camp office in the city, and was also near the office of the chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, witnesses said.
Private television channels said the attack occurred as Musharraf was meeting with top officials to discuss the security situation following a spate of recent attacks.
It was not immediately clear if that meeting was held in the Rawalpindi office.
But the interior ministry denied that the bomber meant to target the army.
“The suicide bomber blew himself up at a police post, killing five people. Eleven others were wounded including five policemen. It appears to be an attack targeting police,” Interior ministry spokesman Javed Cheema told AFP.
Police official Mohammad Tahir said that the bomber was on foot and was stopped by police at a checkpoint in the city.
“He then detonated explosives strapped to his body,” he said.
The victims included two policemen and a cyclist, he added.
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Guardian : Terror plot closes British Embassy
Monday, October 29, 2007
Terror plot closes British Embassy
Press Association | October 29, 2007
The security of the British Embassy in Azerbaijan was under review after it was closed to visitors amid reports of a foiled terror attack against foreigners.
Diplomatic sites in the capital Baku were said by the Azerbaijani government to have been among the targets of a planned "large-scale, horrifying terror attack".
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the situation was being "kept under review" and no decision had yet been made on when the building would reopen.
The closure has been added to the official travel advice but there has been no move to warn against travel to the mostly-Muslim state which borders Russia and Iran.
Although the FCO website notes that the political situation there is "calm", it also warns that the country faces a terror threat and that attacks could be "indiscriminate and against civilian targets and places frequented by foreigners".
Azerbaijan's national security ministry said its forces tracked down the radical Islamic group plotting the attack in a weekend sweep in which one was killed and others arrested.
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2007, All Rights Reserved.
Press Association | October 29, 2007
The security of the British Embassy in Azerbaijan was under review after it was closed to visitors amid reports of a foiled terror attack against foreigners.
Diplomatic sites in the capital Baku were said by the Azerbaijani government to have been among the targets of a planned "large-scale, horrifying terror attack".
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the situation was being "kept under review" and no decision had yet been made on when the building would reopen.
The closure has been added to the official travel advice but there has been no move to warn against travel to the mostly-Muslim state which borders Russia and Iran.
Although the FCO website notes that the political situation there is "calm", it also warns that the country faces a terror threat and that attacks could be "indiscriminate and against civilian targets and places frequented by foreigners".
Azerbaijan's national security ministry said its forces tracked down the radical Islamic group plotting the attack in a weekend sweep in which one was killed and others arrested.
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2007, All Rights Reserved.
IHT : Bush's dangerous liaisons
Monday, October 29, 2007
Bush's dangerous liaisons
By Francois Furstenberg | October 28, 2007
MONTREAL: Much as George W. Bush's presidency was ineluctably shaped by Sept. 11, 2001, so the outbreak of the French Revolution was symbolized by the events of one fateful day, July 14, 1789. And though 18th-century France may seem impossibly distant to contemporary Americans, future historians examining Bush's presidency within the longer sweep of political and intellectual history may find the French Revolution useful in understanding his curious brand of 21st-century conservatism.
Soon after the storming of the Bastille, pro-Revolutionary elements came together to form an association that would become known as the Jacobin Club, an umbrella group of politicians, journalists and citizens dedicated to advancing the principles of the Revolution.
The Jacobins shared a defining ideological feature. They divided the world between pro- and anti-Revolutionaries - the defenders of liberty versus its enemies. The French Revolution, as they understood it, was the great event that would determine whether liberty was to prevail on the planet or whether the world would fall back into tyranny and despotism.
The stakes could not be higher, and on these matters there could be no nuance or hesitation. One was either for the Revolution or for tyranny.
By 1792, France was confronting the hostility of neighboring countries, debating how to react. The Jacobins were divided. On one side stood the journalist and political leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, who argued for war.
Brissot understood the war as preventive - "une guerre offensive," he called it - to defeat the despotic powers of Europe before they could organize their counter-Revolutionary strike. It would not be a war of conquest, as Brissot saw it, but a war "between liberty and tyranny."
Pro-war Jacobins believed theirs was a mission not for a single nation or even for a single continent. It was, in Brissot's words, "a crusade for universal liberty."
Brissot's opponents were skeptical. "No one likes armed missionaries," declared Robespierre, with words as apt then as they remain today. Not long after the invasion of Austria, the military tide turned quickly against France.
The United States, France's "sister republic," refused to enter the war on France's side. It was an infuriating show of ingratitude, as the French saw it, coming from a fledgling nation they had magnanimously saved from foreign occupation in a previous war.
Confronted by a monarchical Europe united in opposition to revolutionary France - old Europe, they might have called it - the Jacobins rooted out domestic political dissent. It was the beginning of the period that would become infamous as the Terror.
Among the Jacobins' greatest triumphs was their ability to appropriate the rhetoric of patriotism - Le Patriote Français was the title of Brissot's newspaper - and to promote their political program through a tightly coordinated network of newspapers, political hacks, pamphleteers and political clubs.
Even the Jacobins' dress distinguished "true patriots": those who wore badges of patriotism like the liberty cap on their heads, or the cocarde tricolore (a red, white and blue rosette) on their hats or even on their lapels.
Insisting that their partisan views were identical to the national will, believing that only they could save France from apocalyptic destruction, Jacobins could not conceive of legitimate dissent. Political opponents were treasonous, stabbing France and the Revolution in the back.
To defend the nation from its enemies, Jacobins expanded the government's police powers at the expense of civil liberties, endowing the state with the power to detain, interrogate and imprison suspects without due process. Policies like the mass warrantless searches undertaken in 1792 - "domicilary visits," they were called - were justified, according to Georges Danton, the Jacobin leader, "when the homeland is in danger."
Robespierre - now firmly committed to the most militant brand of Jacobinism - condemned the "treacherous insinuations" cast by those who questioned "the excessive severity of measures prescribed by the public interest." He warned his political opponents, "This severity is alarming only for the conspirators, only for the enemies of liberty." Such measures, then as now, were undertaken to protect the nation - indeed, to protect liberty itself.
If the French Terror had a slogan, it was that attributed to the great orator Louis de Saint-Just: "No liberty for the enemies of liberty." Saint-Just's pithy phrase (like Bush's variant, "We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself") could serve as the very antithesis of the Western liberal tradition.
On this principle, the Terror demonized its political opponents, imprisoned suspected enemies without trial and eventually sent thousands to the guillotine. All of these actions emerged from the Jacobin worldview that the enemies of liberty deserved no rights.
Though it has been a topic of much attention in recent years, the origin of the term "terrorist" has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and pundits alike. The word was an invention of the French Revolution, and it referred not to those who hated freedom, nor to non-state actors, nor of course to "Islamofascism."
A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur.
Francois Furstenberg, a professor of history at the University of Montreal, is the author of "In the Name of the Father: Washington's Legacy, Slavery and the Making of a Nation."
By Francois Furstenberg | October 28, 2007
MONTREAL: Much as George W. Bush's presidency was ineluctably shaped by Sept. 11, 2001, so the outbreak of the French Revolution was symbolized by the events of one fateful day, July 14, 1789. And though 18th-century France may seem impossibly distant to contemporary Americans, future historians examining Bush's presidency within the longer sweep of political and intellectual history may find the French Revolution useful in understanding his curious brand of 21st-century conservatism.
Soon after the storming of the Bastille, pro-Revolutionary elements came together to form an association that would become known as the Jacobin Club, an umbrella group of politicians, journalists and citizens dedicated to advancing the principles of the Revolution.
The Jacobins shared a defining ideological feature. They divided the world between pro- and anti-Revolutionaries - the defenders of liberty versus its enemies. The French Revolution, as they understood it, was the great event that would determine whether liberty was to prevail on the planet or whether the world would fall back into tyranny and despotism.
The stakes could not be higher, and on these matters there could be no nuance or hesitation. One was either for the Revolution or for tyranny.
By 1792, France was confronting the hostility of neighboring countries, debating how to react. The Jacobins were divided. On one side stood the journalist and political leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, who argued for war.
Brissot understood the war as preventive - "une guerre offensive," he called it - to defeat the despotic powers of Europe before they could organize their counter-Revolutionary strike. It would not be a war of conquest, as Brissot saw it, but a war "between liberty and tyranny."
Pro-war Jacobins believed theirs was a mission not for a single nation or even for a single continent. It was, in Brissot's words, "a crusade for universal liberty."
Brissot's opponents were skeptical. "No one likes armed missionaries," declared Robespierre, with words as apt then as they remain today. Not long after the invasion of Austria, the military tide turned quickly against France.
The United States, France's "sister republic," refused to enter the war on France's side. It was an infuriating show of ingratitude, as the French saw it, coming from a fledgling nation they had magnanimously saved from foreign occupation in a previous war.
Confronted by a monarchical Europe united in opposition to revolutionary France - old Europe, they might have called it - the Jacobins rooted out domestic political dissent. It was the beginning of the period that would become infamous as the Terror.
Among the Jacobins' greatest triumphs was their ability to appropriate the rhetoric of patriotism - Le Patriote Français was the title of Brissot's newspaper - and to promote their political program through a tightly coordinated network of newspapers, political hacks, pamphleteers and political clubs.
Even the Jacobins' dress distinguished "true patriots": those who wore badges of patriotism like the liberty cap on their heads, or the cocarde tricolore (a red, white and blue rosette) on their hats or even on their lapels.
Insisting that their partisan views were identical to the national will, believing that only they could save France from apocalyptic destruction, Jacobins could not conceive of legitimate dissent. Political opponents were treasonous, stabbing France and the Revolution in the back.
To defend the nation from its enemies, Jacobins expanded the government's police powers at the expense of civil liberties, endowing the state with the power to detain, interrogate and imprison suspects without due process. Policies like the mass warrantless searches undertaken in 1792 - "domicilary visits," they were called - were justified, according to Georges Danton, the Jacobin leader, "when the homeland is in danger."
Robespierre - now firmly committed to the most militant brand of Jacobinism - condemned the "treacherous insinuations" cast by those who questioned "the excessive severity of measures prescribed by the public interest." He warned his political opponents, "This severity is alarming only for the conspirators, only for the enemies of liberty." Such measures, then as now, were undertaken to protect the nation - indeed, to protect liberty itself.
If the French Terror had a slogan, it was that attributed to the great orator Louis de Saint-Just: "No liberty for the enemies of liberty." Saint-Just's pithy phrase (like Bush's variant, "We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself") could serve as the very antithesis of the Western liberal tradition.
On this principle, the Terror demonized its political opponents, imprisoned suspected enemies without trial and eventually sent thousands to the guillotine. All of these actions emerged from the Jacobin worldview that the enemies of liberty deserved no rights.
Though it has been a topic of much attention in recent years, the origin of the term "terrorist" has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and pundits alike. The word was an invention of the French Revolution, and it referred not to those who hated freedom, nor to non-state actors, nor of course to "Islamofascism."
A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur.
Francois Furstenberg, a professor of history at the University of Montreal, is the author of "In the Name of the Father: Washington's Legacy, Slavery and the Making of a Nation."
CNN : Iran: U.S. applies 'double standards' toward terrorists
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Iran: U.S. applies 'double standards' toward terrorists
* Iran accuses U.S. of double standard in dealing with terrorism against Turkey
* Turkey is restraining a full-scale military operation amid diplomatic pressure
* Turkish PM maintains his country has the right to attack rebels in Iraq
* Erdogan is expected to meet with Bush at the White House in November
October 28, 2007
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the United States of applying a double standard in dealing with terrorism by its lack of action against Kurdish rebels who launch attacks against Turkey from northern Iraq.
Ahmadinejad's comment came in a phone conversation with Turkish President Abdullah Gul on the same day Turkey's prime minister said his country would not hesitate to send troops across the Iraq border if needed to pursue the rebels -- formally named the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- who are seeking to carve an independent state out of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
The Turkish government -- which so far has restrained itself from undertaking a full-scale military operation amid diplomatic pressure -- wants Iraq to handle the rebels inside Iraqi territory and has been saying it can't wait indefinitely for Iraq to do so.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Saturday that "whenever an operation is needed to be carried out, we will do that. We do not need to ask anything from anyone for that."
The United States, which believes an offensive will make the unstable region even more volatile, is making attempts to stop such an attack. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be in Ankara Thursday for bilateral meetings with Erdogan and Turkish President Abdullah Gul.
No Turkish incursion into northern Iraq is expected until after Erdogan meets with President Bush at the White House on November 5.
President Ahmadinejad also made phone calls to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki Saturday night to offer his country's help in mediating the crisis and he met Sunday with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, the Iranian foreign ministry said.
Ahmadinejad, in his call with Gul, took a swipe at the United States' occupation in Iraq, suggesting it was the root cause of Turkey's problems with the rebels.
"Occupiers have prepared ground for disunity and are supporting terrorists with their double standards," a Iranian Foreign Ministry statement quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, after meeting with Babacan Sunday, said he suspected the United States had "behind the scenes agreements" that made them reluctant to restrain the PKK rebels.
"Nevertheless, I am hoping the United States will mend their ways and help with terrorism in the region," Mottaki said.
Mottaki said that Ahmadinejad, in his call to the Iraqi leaders, "expressed his concern about terrorist actions taking shape in the region and stressed the need to find solutions."
* Iran accuses U.S. of double standard in dealing with terrorism against Turkey
* Turkey is restraining a full-scale military operation amid diplomatic pressure
* Turkish PM maintains his country has the right to attack rebels in Iraq
* Erdogan is expected to meet with Bush at the White House in November
October 28, 2007
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the United States of applying a double standard in dealing with terrorism by its lack of action against Kurdish rebels who launch attacks against Turkey from northern Iraq.
Ahmadinejad's comment came in a phone conversation with Turkish President Abdullah Gul on the same day Turkey's prime minister said his country would not hesitate to send troops across the Iraq border if needed to pursue the rebels -- formally named the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- who are seeking to carve an independent state out of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
The Turkish government -- which so far has restrained itself from undertaking a full-scale military operation amid diplomatic pressure -- wants Iraq to handle the rebels inside Iraqi territory and has been saying it can't wait indefinitely for Iraq to do so.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Saturday that "whenever an operation is needed to be carried out, we will do that. We do not need to ask anything from anyone for that."
The United States, which believes an offensive will make the unstable region even more volatile, is making attempts to stop such an attack. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be in Ankara Thursday for bilateral meetings with Erdogan and Turkish President Abdullah Gul.
No Turkish incursion into northern Iraq is expected until after Erdogan meets with President Bush at the White House on November 5.
President Ahmadinejad also made phone calls to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki Saturday night to offer his country's help in mediating the crisis and he met Sunday with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, the Iranian foreign ministry said.
Ahmadinejad, in his call with Gul, took a swipe at the United States' occupation in Iraq, suggesting it was the root cause of Turkey's problems with the rebels.
"Occupiers have prepared ground for disunity and are supporting terrorists with their double standards," a Iranian Foreign Ministry statement quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, after meeting with Babacan Sunday, said he suspected the United States had "behind the scenes agreements" that made them reluctant to restrain the PKK rebels.
"Nevertheless, I am hoping the United States will mend their ways and help with terrorism in the region," Mottaki said.
Mottaki said that Ahmadinejad, in his call to the Iraqi leaders, "expressed his concern about terrorist actions taking shape in the region and stressed the need to find solutions."
Dawn : Explosion hits anti-PKK rally in Turkey
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Explosion hits anti-PKK rally in Turkey
Reuters | October 28, 2007
ISTANBUL -- An explosion hit a demonstration against the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Turkish city of Izmit on Sunday, slightly injuring three people, state news agency Anatolian reported.
Reuters | October 28, 2007
ISTANBUL -- An explosion hit a demonstration against the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Turkish city of Izmit on Sunday, slightly injuring three people, state news agency Anatolian reported.
WaPo : Suicide Bombing in Pakistan Kills 15
Monday, October 01, 2007
Suicide Bombing in Pakistan Kills 15
By RIAZ KHAN | The Associated Press | October 1, 2007
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A burqa-clad woman blew herself up and killed at least 15 people Monday at a crowded police checkpoint in northwestern Pakistan, police said. It was believed to be the first time a female suicide bomber has struck inside the country.
The bombing, which injured 22 others, apparently was in a rickshaw that was being examined at a police checkpoint around 8:25 a.m. local time in the town of Bannu, said police officer Habib Khan.
Bannu police chief Ameer Hamza Mahsud said that investigation of the bomb site confirmed that the attacker was a woman who was riding in the rickshaw. He added that police had prior intelligence about the possibility female suicide bombers would strike in the town.
While there have been reports of some women being trained to carry out suicide bombings in Pakistan, Monday's attack appeared to be the first confirmation of such an attack.
Mahsud said the casualty figures were high because scores of people were milling about at a nearby bus stand.
The blast killed four police officers and 11 other people, including the bomber, army spokesman Maj. Gen Waheed Arshad said. Because the attack occurred in a public place, he said he did not believe it was aimed at security forces.
The district hospital in Bannu reported that at least seven of the injured were in critical condition.
Bannu is near the North Waziristan tribal region, about 110 miles south of Peshawar.
In recent months, militants have staged almost daily attacks on security forces in North Waziristan since scrapping a peace agreement with the government.
Militants accused authorities of violating the September 2006 deal by redeploying troops to checkpoints vacated under terms of the accord. Officials said the troops returned because of deteriorating security. Most of the combat has taken place in the rugged mountains along the Afghan border where the U.S. fears al-Qaida is regrouping and that Osama bin Laden is hiding.
Pakistan is a key ally of the U.S. in its war on terror and says it has about 90,000 troops in the northwest tribal areas to combat militancy and prevent infiltration into neighboring Afghanistan.
By RIAZ KHAN | The Associated Press | October 1, 2007
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A burqa-clad woman blew herself up and killed at least 15 people Monday at a crowded police checkpoint in northwestern Pakistan, police said. It was believed to be the first time a female suicide bomber has struck inside the country.
The bombing, which injured 22 others, apparently was in a rickshaw that was being examined at a police checkpoint around 8:25 a.m. local time in the town of Bannu, said police officer Habib Khan.
Bannu police chief Ameer Hamza Mahsud said that investigation of the bomb site confirmed that the attacker was a woman who was riding in the rickshaw. He added that police had prior intelligence about the possibility female suicide bombers would strike in the town.
While there have been reports of some women being trained to carry out suicide bombings in Pakistan, Monday's attack appeared to be the first confirmation of such an attack.
Mahsud said the casualty figures were high because scores of people were milling about at a nearby bus stand.
The blast killed four police officers and 11 other people, including the bomber, army spokesman Maj. Gen Waheed Arshad said. Because the attack occurred in a public place, he said he did not believe it was aimed at security forces.
The district hospital in Bannu reported that at least seven of the injured were in critical condition.
Bannu is near the North Waziristan tribal region, about 110 miles south of Peshawar.
In recent months, militants have staged almost daily attacks on security forces in North Waziristan since scrapping a peace agreement with the government.
Militants accused authorities of violating the September 2006 deal by redeploying troops to checkpoints vacated under terms of the accord. Officials said the troops returned because of deteriorating security. Most of the combat has taken place in the rugged mountains along the Afghan border where the U.S. fears al-Qaida is regrouping and that Osama bin Laden is hiding.
Pakistan is a key ally of the U.S. in its war on terror and says it has about 90,000 troops in the northwest tribal areas to combat militancy and prevent infiltration into neighboring Afghanistan.
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