Category: Geopolitics

‘AL-QAEDA’S MR. NUCLEAR TO HEAD FRESH ATTACK ON U.S.’

Well since Iran didn’t pull off their Aug. 22nd surprise, now we have this Ramadan warning. Here is the original news article run through Google’s translator, which this is based on also includes another article about 300 Ramadan suicide bombers bound for Afghanistan.
Hamid Mir, the famed Pakistani journalist who obtained the only post-9/11 interviews with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. In an interview quoted on the website of the al-Arabiya television network, Mir spoke about his last trip to Afghanistan and his meeting with al-Qaeda members and Taliban leaders.

In his interview with Al.Arabiya.net, Mir said that the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters referred to attacks targeting the US-led coalition forces during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which begins on 24 September, and that the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden was in “good” health during a meeting he had recently with the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Mir also said that bin Laden has assigned a man named Adnan Al-Shukri Juma to carry out a new attack within the US which is intended to be larger than the 11 September, 2001 attacks. According to Mir, Adnan Jumaa has smuggled explosives and nuclear materials into the US through the Mexican border over the last two years and is hiding somewhere in America where the FBI has not been able to locate him.

KnoxNews: Columnists

Tom Barnett, in his pithy way, navigates the trauma of 9/11 with the long view of history that puts things into perspective.
This Long War did not begin with 9/11. As defined by the expanding global economy, previous iterations of this fight date to the early 19th century, when capitalism first took hold in Europe and America.

Since then, as our model of markets begetting democracies has spread around this Earth, we have encountered new resistance with each age.

First came the Marxists, who thought they’d strike when capitalism reached its inevitable collapse – as the fascists did later in Weimar Germany. Then it was the Bolsheviks who retreated in history to find a pre-capitalist Russia where they could wage their socialist revolution. Then the Maoists retreated further into the pre-industrialized countryside to trigger their peasant revolution.

And now we have al-Qaida’s Salafi jihadists, whose back-to-the-future fantasy involves hijacking Islamic societies all the way back to a pre-economic, 7th-century “good life.”

Immigration Rally’s Low Turnout Disappoints Advocates
A pro-immigration rally that promised to bring tens of thousands of marchers from across the nation to Washington yesterday managed to draw only a paltry number of demonstrators, raising questions about the movement’s tactics and staying power.

With fewer than 5,000 people attending, organizers from other localities expressed two worries about the turnout: that they were losing the momentum built up by the huge marches in the spring, and that the movement’s national organizers in Washington have lost touch with the people.

Foreign Policy: The Day Nothing much Changed
Yet, if you look closely at the trend lines since 9/11, what is remarkable is how little the world has changed. The forces of globalization continue unabated; indeed, if anything, they have accelerated. The issues of the day that we were debating on that morning in September are largely the same. Across broad measures of political, economic, and social data, the constants outweigh the variations. And, five years later, the United States’ foreign policy is marked by no greater strategic clarity than it had on Sept. 10, 2001.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were theatrical terrorism of the worst kind. But, even in an age when image usually trumps substance, the tragic drama of that day did not usher in a new era. No, if there was a day that changed the world forever, it was 15 years ago, not five. New Year’s Eve, 1991. It was on that day, far away from any cameras, that the Soviet Union finally threw in the towel, dissolving itself and officially bringing an end to the Cold War. From that moment on, the United States reigned supreme—“the sole superpower,” “the hyperpower,” “the global hegemon,” call it what you like.

Daily Press: Eustis chief: Iraq post-war plan muzzled
Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said “he would fire the next person” who talked about the need for a post-war plan. Continue reading “Iraq post-war plan muzzled”