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| Terrorism | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 9 2004, 09:30 PM (19,658 Views) | |
| Aerocobra | Sep 9 2004, 09:30 PM Post #1 |
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PHILIPPINE troops went on full alert today after the deadly bombing in Indonesia and amid fears of terrorism on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks, officials said. Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Lucero was announcing security measures planned for the September 11 anniversary at a press conference when news of the Indonesian blast spread. A powerful bomb exploded near the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, killing at least four people and wounding about 100. "The military is prepared to deter similar attacks nationwide," Lucero said. About 3000 soldiers in metropolitan Manila were immediately put on red alert – the highest of a three-level system – while commanders of the 120,000-strong military elsewhere were given discretion to raise the troops' status, the military said. The capital's 114,000-member police force also went on red alert. National police chief Edgar Aglipay said he deployed additional police to the Australian and US embassies in Manila. Lieutenant Colonel Lucero said the military had not identified any specific threats, but plainclothes intelligence officers and soldiers would be deployed to guard likely targets, including foreign embassies, shopping malls, hotels and government offices. The Philippines has been battling a slew of armed groups, including Marxist and Muslim separatist rebels and the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf extremist group, and is considered a likely terrorist target in South-East Asia. Western governments periodically warn their citizens to refrain from travelling in certain areas, especially in the country's volatile south, where Muslim guerillas are active. US officials also have expressed alarm over the reported presence of the regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in the southern Philippines, and have deployed troops to help train and arm Filipino soldiers battling the Abu Sayyaf and other insurgents. http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0...55E1702,00.html 
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| flipzi | Jul 8 2005, 06:26 PM Post #2 |
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Terrorism: An Introduction Is terrorism just brutal, unthinking violence? No. Experts agree that there is almost always a strategy behind terrorist actions. Whether it takes the form of bombings, shootings, hijackings, or assassinations, terrorism is neither random, spontaneous, nor blind; it is a deliberate use of violence against civilians for political or religious ends. Is there a definition of terrorism? Ruins of Pan Am 103, Lockerbie, Scotland, 1988. (AP Photo/Dave Caulkin ) Even though most people can recognize terrorism when they see it, experts have had difficulty coming up with an ironclad definition. The State Department defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." In another useful attempt to produce a definition, Paul Pillar, a former deputy chief of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, argues that there are four key elements of terrorism: It is premeditated—planned in advance, rather than an impulsive act of rage. It is political—not criminal, like the violence that groups such as the mafia use to get money, but designed to change the existing political order. It is aimed at civilians—not at military targets or combat-ready troops. It is carried out by subnational groups—not by the army of a country. Where does the word "terrorism" come from? It was coined during France's Reign of Terror in 1793-94. Originally, the leaders of this systematized attempt to weed out "traitors" among the revolutionary ranks praised terror as the best way to defend liberty, but as the French Revolution soured, the word soon took on grim echoes of state violence and guillotines. Today, most terrorists dislike the label, according to Bruce Hoffman of the RAND think tank. Is terrorism a new phenomenon? No. The oldest terrorists were holy warriors who killed civilians. For instance, in first-century Palestine, Jewish Zealots would publicly slit the throats of Romans and their collaborators; in seventh-century India, the Thuggee cult would ritually strangle passersby as sacrifices to the Hindu deity Kali; and in the eleventh-century Middle East, the Shiite sect known as the Assassins would eat hashish before murdering civilian foes. Historians can trace recognizably modern forms of terrorism back to such late-nineteenth-century organizations as Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), an anti-tsarist group in Russia. One particularly successful early case of terrorism was the 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb extremist, an event that helped trigger World War I. Even more familiar forms of terrorism—often custom-made for TV cameras—first appeared on July 22, 1968, when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine undertook the first terrorist hijacking of a commercial airplane. Is terrorism aimed at an audience? Usually, yes. Terrorist acts are often deliberately spectacular, designed to rattle and influence a wide audience, beyond the victims of the violence itself. The point is to use the psychological impact of violence or of the threat of violence to effect political change. As the terrorism expert Brian Jenkins bluntly put it in 1974, "Terrorism is theatre." Was September 11 part of an increasingly deadly trend in the evolution of terrorism? Yes. During the 1990s, there were fewer terrorist attacks, but they tended to kill more people. Experts attribute this trend—fewer attacks, more fatalities—to a rise in religiously motivated terrorism, which lacks some of the restraints of earlier versions of terrorism. They add that heightened vigilance and security has often made the hijackings and kidnappings popularized in the 1960s and 1970s more difficult, driving some groups toward simpler but sometimes deadlier bombing operations. Did anything hold back terrorists from mass killing in the past? Yes. Some terrorist groups before the 1990s often were limited by fears that too much violence could backfire. In other words, experts say, terrorist groups wanted to find the proverbial sweet spot: they sought to use enough shocking violence to bring attention to a cause they felt had been neglected, but they did not want to use so much violence that their audiences abroad would become permanently alienated. Nor did nationalist terrorist groups—such as the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Irish Republican Army (IRA)—want to go so far that they dried up support among their own people. These considerations often affected choices of targets as well as the level of violence. Between 1969 and 1993, for instance, less than a fifth of the IRA’s victims were Protestant civilians, reflecting a deliberate choice to avoid alienating potential Irish supporters. As the terrorism expert Brian Jenkins has put it, terrorists used to want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead. Have terrorists ever used weapons of mass destruction? Yes. In 1995, members of Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult, released sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo subway, killing 12 and wounding over 3,500—the first recorded use of chemical weapons by terrorists. The first deadly use of biological weapons by terrorists was the late-2001 U.S. mailings of anthrax-laced letters by persons still unknown. Are religiously motivated terrorists like al-Qaeda less restrained than other terrorists? Yes, generally speaking. Not only are these terrorists’ goals often vaguer than those of nationalist terrorists—who want, for example, an independent state, a much more concrete goal than Osama bin Laden’s sweeping talk of jihad—but their methods are more lethal. That’s because, experts say, the religious terrorist often sees violence as an end in itself, as a divinely inspired way of serving a higher cause. As RAND’s Hoffman notes, even such earlier archterrorists as Carlos the Jackal and Abu Nidal never “contemplated, much less attempted, the complete destruction of a high-rise office building packed with people.” But for al-Qaeda, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, the Palestinian group Hamas, and other religious terrorist organizations, mass killings are considered not only acceptable but “holy.” REFERENCE: http://cfrterrorism.org/terrorism/introduction.html |
 " Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them! - Art. II Sec 1, Philippine Constitution " " People don't care what we know until they know we care. " getflipzi@yahoo.com | |
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| flipzi | Jul 8 2005, 06:27 PM Post #3 |
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Jemaah Islamiyah wounded but still deadly--analysts July 08, 2005 Updated 05:13pm (Mla time) Agence France-Presse KUALA LUMPUR -- Southeast Asia has long braced for a terrorist attack on the scale of the London bombings, and although the region's militants are in retreat and disarray, they remain deadly, analysts said Friday. Tourist resorts, red-light districts and shopping centers, all teeming with foreign visitors, are considered top targets for the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which masterminded the July 2002 Bali bombings. Since that atrocity which left 202 people dead, mostly Australian tourists, security crackdowns have decapitated the organization and it has also been fractured by ideological disputes, experts believe. However, the strikes have continued, including car bombings at the Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003, which killed 12 people, and outside the Australian embassy last year in an attack that killed nine. "JI is still a very capable group, and certainly it is quite active in Southeast Asia," said Rohan Gunaratna, head of the Singapore-based International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research. "Although JI has suffered very significantly it is still capable of attacking, particularly in Indonesia and the Philippines, with operations on the scale of the Marriott and Australian High Commission bombings," he said. Jane's Intelligence Review's Asia correspondent Anthony Davis said the concerted efforts by Asia and foreign security services, which has seen some 400 alleged JI operatives arrested across the region, have struck a heavy blow. "They are an organization in disarray, they are being actively hunted by the Indonesian police, they have internal ideological problems," he said. "The level of intelligence alertness in the rest of the region, particularly in a country like Thailand which has every reason to fear the linking-up of JI and indigenous Muslim militants... is such as to preclude any such link-ups." Abdul Razak Baginda, executive director of the Malaysian Strategic Research Center, agreed that the region is unlikely to face a coordinated assault like the London bombing which saw four synchronized blasts within an hour. "I think their strategy is for piecemeal, small attacks like in Indonesia rather than a coordinated attack like the one in London... I don't think they have the capability," he said. But he warned that although JI has suffered setbacks, it posed a new threat by resurfacing as a many-headed collection of sleeper cells linked only by a common ideology -- much in the same way that Al-Qaeda affiliates work. "What we're going to see is the emergence of different individuals and different groups that may have a JI connection. Politicians refer to JI as if it's a coherent group that exists, but it's quite different," he said. "They are more dispersed in nature. There is no headquarters, there is no forward base," he said. Like the group, which carried out the London attack, after British security authorities foiled several large-scale plots, they would be looking for an opportunity to strike, he said. "They are lying low in order to wait for the right time, and this is not the right time because everyone is on guard at the moment," he said. Tony Tan, Singapore's Coordinating Minister for Security and Defense said Friday that even though their chain of command had been crippled, the JI threat remained very real. "The terrorists are regrouping in the countries around us, they will continue to try. One of these days despite all the measures we have taken they may succeed and we must be ready to deal with the consequences," he said. "While the coordination may not be as tight as before, the JI has changed now into a number of disparate groups, each of them working on their own but linked by a common cause," he said. Tan said the militants were still intent on carrying out their goal of toppling regional governments and establishing an Islamic caliphate stretching across Southeast Asia and into Australia. "The fact that the terrorists have been able to carry out such a coordinated and extensive series of attacks in London must make all of us realize that we cannot be complacent." http://news.inq7.net/express/html_output/2...-42797.xml.html |
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" Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them! - Art. II Sec 1, Philippine Constitution " " People don't care what we know until they know we care. " getflipzi@yahoo.com | |
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| saver111 | Jul 13 2005, 06:21 PM Post #4 |
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RP, Australia sign pact on terror financing By Agence France-Presse SYDNEY--Australia announced Tuesday that it had agreed to exchange financial intelligence with the Philippines under a pact aimed at preventing terrorist groups moving money around the world. Justice and Customs Minister Chris Ellison said the two countries would sign a memorandum of understanding on the issue later Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering in the northern Australian town of Cairns. The Philippines was removed from an international list of non-cooperative countries earlier this year after introducing laws to counter money laundering and terrorist financing, Ellison said in a statement. "The Philippines has established an effective financial intelligence unit meeting strict operational standards and last week they gained membership to the international Egmont group of financial intelligence units. "The signing of this memorandum of understanding will now enable the formal exchange of vital financial intelligence between Australia and the Philippines, strengthening the war on money laundering and terrorism financing in this region," Ellison said. Australia has signed similar agreements with 41 other countries across Southeast Asia, the Pacific, South America, Europe and North America. |
 Justice for Daniel Lorenz Jacinto HELP END PIRACY NOW!: http://www.itfseafarers.org/petition.cfm | |
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| Wushu | Jul 13 2005, 06:23 PM Post #5 |
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public awareness lang talaga.... |
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| saver111 | Jul 13 2005, 06:35 PM Post #6 |
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...and be not afraid!  http://www.werenotafraid.com/ |
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Justice for Daniel Lorenz Jacinto HELP END PIRACY NOW!: http://www.itfseafarers.org/petition.cfm | |
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| GKB02 | Jul 15 2005, 10:26 AM Post #7 |
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Support for Osama bin Laden and suicide bombings have fallen sharply in much of the Muslim world, according to a multicountry poll released on Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT The survey by the Pew Research Center examined public opinion in six predominantly Muslim nations: Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Jordan and Lebanon. It also examined views in nine North American and European countries as well as in India and China. In all, more than 17,000 people were questioned either by telephone of face-to-face. "There's declining support for terrorism in the Muslim countries and support for Osama bin Laden is declining. There's also less support for suicide bombings," said Pew Center director Andrew Kohut. "This is good news, but still there are substantial numbers who support bin Laden in some of these countries," he told a news conference. In Morocco, 26 percent of the public now say they have a lot or some confidence in bin Laden, down from 49 percent in a similar poll two years ago. In Lebanon, where both Muslims and Christians took part in the survey, only 2 percent expressed some confidence in the Saudi-born al Qaeda leader, down from 14 percent in 2003. In Turkey, bin Laden's support has fallen to 7 percent from 15 percent in the past two years. In Indonesia, it has dropped to 35 percent from 58 percent. However, in Jordan, confidence in bin Laden, who took responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and many other attacks, rose to 60 percent from 55 percent. In Pakistan, it went to 51 percent from 45 percent. A similar picture emerged when respondents were asked whether suicide bombings were justifiable. In Morocco, 13 percent said they often or sometimes could be justified, down from 40 percent in 2004. MORE JORDANIANS SUPPORT BOMBINGS In Indonesia, 15 percent expressed that view, down from 27 percent in the summer of 2002. Support for suicide bombings also fell in Pakistan and dropped dramatically in Lebanon. However, support rose in Jordan, to 57 percent from 43 percent in 2002. Kohut noted there had been devastating attacks on civilians in Indonesia, Morocco and Turkey in recent years and a rash of assassinations and bombings recently in Lebanon. Both in western countries and the Muslim world, respondents expressed fears about Islamic extremism. Seventy-three percent in Morocco and 52 percent in Pakistan saw Islamic extremism as a threat to their country. The figure was 84 percent in Russia, 78 percent in Germany, and an identical 70 percent in Britain and the United States. The poll was taken well before last week's bombings in London. When asked what caused Islamic extremism, 40 percent in Lebanon and 38 percent in Jordan blamed U.S. policies and influence; in Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, respondents were more likely to blame poverty, unemployment or poor education. Despite terrorism fears, majorities in Britain, the United States, France, Canada and Russia and pluralities in Spain and Poland expressed favorable views about Muslims. But in Germany and the Netherlands, opinion swung to an unfavorable view. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed in the Netherlands expressed an unfavorable view of Muslims. In Germany, 47 percent were unfavorable, compared with 40 percent who expressed favorable views. Anti-Jewish sentiment was overwhelming in the Muslim countries. In Lebanon, 100 percent of Muslims and 99 percent of Christians said they had a very unfavorable view of Jews, while 99 percent of Jordanians also viewed Jews very unfavorably. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050714/wl_nm/...ims_binladen_dc |
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| Wushu | Jul 18 2005, 10:07 AM Post #8 |
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from a cnn special report.... "the way to tackle terrorism is to employ similar tactics used by american police against organized criminal gangs" |
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| flipzi | Jul 19 2005, 07:42 PM Post #9 |
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A Moslem tells in his simple way what Allah says about terrorism. =========================================== khas ismael <alnisa_habibbi@yahoo.com> wrote: Koran saying: "Whoever kills a human being ... then it is as though he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a human life it is as though he had saved all mankind." "Islam's position is clear and unequivocal: murder of one soul is the murder of the whole of humanity; he who shows no respect for human life is an enemy of humanity. Even in times of war, Islam has rules - that is to spare the children, women and old or anyone not involve in that war. in fact during time of war, respect to the nature should also be observed. muslims also should be in the defensive party. May the Almighty Allah bless us all. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FilipinoAegis/message/1285 |
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" Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them! - Art. II Sec 1, Philippine Constitution " " People don't care what we know until they know we care. " getflipzi@yahoo.com | |
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| flipzi | Jul 19 2005, 07:51 PM Post #10 |
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From: Flipzi <getflipzi@yahoo.com> Date: Tue Jul 19, 2005 7:02 pm Subject: Re: The Battle within getflipzi "...It is not enough to simply condemn them; if the world is to win a war against terrorists it must also understand them...." I agree. Moreover, the Moslem people who understands what Islam is really about MUST DO THEIR PART in bringing back to Allah's light those who have gone astray or got confused and unfortunately ended up joining the wrong bands and were made to believe that terrorism is Allah's will. The sad thing here is that the Islamic priests and the Moslem groups are not doing much to erase the smudge of terrorism on Islam's reputation. Non-Moslems can indeed win this war by understanding what makes the Moslem people resort to terrorism and finding the appropriate solutions to solve this problem. Nonetheless, if the Islamic priests and the Moslem people themselves wont help in this endeavor, then more innocent lives will perish in this conflict and more Moslem community will suffer the repercussions. Worse, the war will drag on much longer as a result of the lack of cooperation from all parties concerned. If more people will join hands this war will end much sooner. Megawati Mustafa <megawati@undp.org> wrote: The Battle Within Islam Posted by site admin on July 12th, 2005 According to Greek legend, Sisyphus was punished by having to push a boulder to the top of a mountain in Hades. Upon reaching the summit, the boulder would fall to the base and he would begin again. It was a punishment that continued for eternity. Muslims share something of Sisyphus' frustrations. It seems that no sooner have community relations returned to a sense of normality, than something happens - a Bali, Beslan and now London that sends the figurative boulder rolling back down the hill. Muslims are today hostage not only to the public pronouncements of other Muslims, but to the conduct of their co-religionists throughout the world; whether it is the exponents of female genital mutilation in Africa or the child-killers of Beslan. Unlike other religions, Islam lacks a church to offer the definitive view on such matters. As such, it falls on every Muslim to defend and clarify. Although the perpetrators are yet to be identified, it is largely assumed that the London bombings were carried out by so-called Muslims. For all our assurances that Islam means peace, it is increasingly obvious that a minority of Muslims seek war.With each new terror attack or kidnapping, Muslims who maintain otherwise look increasingly like the emperor with no clothes. The fact is that there is a minority of Muslims who hold extreme ideas, and a minority may matriculate to terror. Ironically, the intellectual epicentre for much of this has been the United Kingdom. Over the years, the UK has provided sanctuary to countless extremists. Often convicted or wanted for trial in their own countries, these people have used London as a base to incite civil strife in Muslim societies from afar. It would be a bitter irony if it emerged that the London bombings were a by-product of these same poisonous rantings. Yet, ultimately, the painful lesson of London is that fighting terrorism using conventional methods and relying on intelligence gathering are not enough to secure one's society from attack. It is not enough to simply condemn them; if the world is to win a war against terrorists it must also understand them. There are 1400 years of scholarly consensus that Islamic law prohibits the murder of civilians, non-combatants, women, children and the elderly. There' s a litany of evidence in the form of verses of the Koran and statements from the Prophet that establish this as an inviolable tenet of our faith. Muslims who then commit terrorism can only be blinded by ignorance or a wilful indifference to religious teachings. The war on terror is ultimately a war against ignorance and misguidance. It is therefore a war that the West cannot win, as the only people able to confront the ideological underpinnings of Muslim terrorism are other Muslims. And they have been. Long before George W. Bush declared war on terror, one of the leading figures of fundamentalist Islam and late mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Ibn Baz, declared it compulsory for Muslims to exert themselves as much as possible in ending this evil. This is by no means an exceptional fatwa, or religious edict. The frequent demands that Muslims speak out seem oblivious to the fact that Muslims have been speaking out against extremism for as long as extremism has existed. But this dialogue takes place in mosques and in Islamic literature, not on talk shows or talkback radio. Yet, the recent bombings in London have, once again, brought anxieties to the fore about the loyalty of Western Muslims. There is the usual talk about Muslim fifth columns and the usual questions about the extent to which these terrorist attacks are rooted in Islam. Those concerned with such questions should consider that Muslims have themselves long been victims of terrorists: in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Algeria, Tanzania, New York and now London. Edgware Rd is the heart of London's Arab community, and the Aldgate bomb exploded among a huge Bangladeshi population and close to the East London mosque. If the perpetrators were indeed Muslims, then their indifference to the lives of their co-religionists provided a more powerful indictment of their motives and claims to religious legitimacy than anything that one could write. This was originally published in the Herald Sun, July 12th, 2005 ==================================================== The war on terror is ultimately a war against ignorance and misguidance. It is therefore a war that the West cannot win, as the only people able to confront the ideological underpinnings of Muslim terrorism are other Muslims. 
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" Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them! - Art. II Sec 1, Philippine Constitution " " People don't care what we know until they know we care. " getflipzi@yahoo.com | |
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