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So with the recent global terrorism alert I realised that we don't have a place to discuss such events as they happen and how they are being dealt with/reacted to.

    OP text (regarding events that were recent st the time) 
First however I'd like to lay down a disclaimer, this is not a place to discuss the ethics of the "war on terror" it's for talking about current global threats, if you want to debate the ethics of the war on terror than make a thread for it, this is not the place.

So now I've done that, here's the latest as I'm aware of it. Normally I'd provide sources but I'm on my iPad so it's difficult to do so.

US embassies across the Great Middle East are closed until Saturday due to the current threat, the embassies of other western nations in Yeman have also been closed with staff being evacuated from the county.

Additionally a global travel alert has been issued for all US citizens, with US/UK citizens in Yeman being told to leave immediately.

Yeman's security services have been placing much of the country on lockdown, with the army out in force due to intelligence indicating that a large number of Al-Qa'ida operatives are in the country to work on the expected attack.

They (Yeman's security forces) have also just recently announced that they have foiled an attempt by AQ to blow up several oil pipelines and seize control of costal cities, howev they remain on high alert, so there is obviously more to come.


Mod edit:
  • As of July 2024, the OTC Israel and Palestine thread is locked indefinitely and that discussion should not migrate to other threads. Discussion of terrorism or extrajudicial activity related to either of them (including speculation about a connection to them) is banned here.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 28th 2024 at 12:37:25 PM

eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#10401: Oct 29th 2021 at 5:35:32 AM

Ever wondered why the IS flag has major Don't Dead Open Inside energy? Wonder no more. Newlines Magazine: The Hoax in the ISIS Flag. TL;DR:

  • The symbol is supposed to be the seal of Muhammad, which early sources described as saying "Muhammad, the Apostle [of] God".

  • Some medieval Islamic scholars argued (with little evidence) that the word order would've been reversed to put "God" on the top.

  • A 19th century European forger (who exactly, we still haven't pinned down) ran off with it and forged a bunch of letters that the Ottoman court ended up buying. When the Islamic State of Iraq unveiled its logo in 2007, it cited the seal on those same letters as the inspiration.

And that's how a globetrotting terror group ended up with a grammatically nonsensical slogan on its logo that looks like it's written by a five-year-old with a Sharpie.

    Article 
In 1854, a French diplomat named François Alphonse Belin made a bombshell announcement: the discovery of an original letter sent by the Prophet Muhammad to the governor of Egypt in the seventh century, complete with Muhammad’s personal seal. Biographies of the Prophet tell us he wrote such letters, but until then it was thought that none survived. Belin’s account of the discovery is thrilling, albeit fictitious. But the letter’s real history — and the histories of other letters purportedly written by Muhammad that surfaced soon after it — is no less fascinating. The forged letters passed through the hands of canny businesspeople, eager scholars and gullible sultans. They were eventually enshrined in the most unlikely of places: the official flag of the Islamic State group.

According to Belin, Muhammad’s letter had been unearthed by a Frenchman named Etienne Barthélémy when researching in the libraries of Coptic monasteries near the southern Egyptian town of Akhmim. Belin’s account of Barthélémy’s find is full of sensationalist flourishes: It depicts Barthélémy struggling heroically against exhaustion and bankruptcy to rescue ancient books from oblivion and bring them to the light of science. His perseverance was rewarded when he came upon an Arabic manuscript. Examining the damaged binding, he spied a sheet of parchment within it and began to pry the binding apart, having recognized the word “Muhammad” written in an ancient hand. Feverish with excitement, he bought the manuscript for closer scrutiny. Belin quotes a letter that Barthélémy sent to his family soon afterward, describing his painstaking efforts to decipher the letter and concluding: “Given the seal and the beginning of the first line, I am inclined to believe that this parchment is a letter from Muhammad addressed to the Coptic nation, and that this seal is that of the prophet of the Muslims.”

Though trained by the foremost Orientalists of his time, Belin had pursued a career in the French foreign service, working first as a translator and then as consul in Cairo and Istanbul. With his scholarly credentials and his prominent position, Belin’s judgment carried considerable clout. The detailed study of the purported letter that he published contained a transcription and French translation of the text, which calls on the Christian inhabitants of Egypt to convert to Islam and proposes dialogue on the basis of shared monotheism. Belin’s description of the document precisely matched the descriptions of Muhammad’s letter contained in early Muslim historical works, such as the ninth century “Conquest of Egypt” of Ibn Abd al-Hakam. In addition, Belin argued that the script of the letter resembled the ancient scripts used in the early Quranic manuscripts that French Orientalists had acquired (by force) during Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt. Thanks, no doubt, to Belin’s endorsement, the letter was bought by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Majid in 1858 for the staggering price of 500,000 Turkish piasters — equivalent to 73 pounds of gold.

Orientalist scholars, too, were caught up in the excitement. Although the journal of the German Orientalist society admitted in 1856 that the letter’s authenticity had not yet been established with certainty, it declared that Belin’s thorough study had made it very likely. Four years later, Theodor Nöldeke, in the first edition of his groundbreaking study of the Quran, claimed that the authenticity of the letter could not be doubted. Given this overwhelming agreement, the letter’s script was subsequently used to authenticate other texts. For example, in 1857 a newly discovered cache of copper coins was declared authentic on the basis of similarities between the script of the letter and that on the coins.

The first cracks in the consensus appeared in 1863, when another letter purportedly written by Muhammad came to light. This letter was likewise bought by the Ottoman sultan. Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer, the doyen of Orientalist studies in Germany at the time, openly mocked the second letter, writing that “the Italian who has forged or peddled it must have been born under a lucky star if he manages to fool truly learned Muslims.” Pointing out many crude errors in it, such as the misspelling of the addressee’s name, Fleischer suggested that “the man wanted to see whether the hen that laid such beautiful golden eggs for the seller of Muhammad’s [other] letter … is still alive.”

A more extensive and definitive critique came from the Austrian Orientalist Joseph Karabacek, who worked on the Arabic papyrus collection in Vienna, which contains some of the oldest documents written by Muslims anywhere in the world. According to Karabacek, a comparative paleographic analysis — focusing on the form of the script — of these ancient papyri and the letter to the Copts clearly showed the latter to be a forgery. The German scholarly community quickly accepted Karabacek’s conclusions. When Theodor Nöldeke published the second edition of his Quran book, he frankly reversed his earlier stance, declaring that the letters were “definitely not authentic.” (British Orientalists, far behind their mainland colleagues in the study of scripts, held out longer.)

In the Muslim world, the authenticity of the purported letters from Muhammad went undiscussed for some time, probably because the letters were initially hidden from the public eye. The Ottoman sultans, who had quickly amassed a total of four such letters, kept them within their collection of sacred relics (which also contained items such as Muhammad’s tooth, cloak and beard hair) and paid their respects to them on ceremonious annual visits. Questions were not raised until 1904, when an article in the Egyptian journal al-Hilal argued that the letters’ script betrayed a crude attempt to imitate early Islamic writing. But the letters received staunch support from the Hyderabadi scholar Muhammad Hamidullah, who, in a series of publications from 1935 to 1985, defended the authenticity not only of the four letters that had been in the sultan’s collection but also of two other letters in private hands.

Hamidullah’s central argument was that neither Muslim nor Orientalist scholars in the 19th century had sufficient knowledge of early scripts to produce such sophisticated forgeries, so the letters had to be genuine. But this is not true: Already half a century before Belin’s article, Orientalist scholars — foremost among them Belin’s teacher Sylvestre de Sacy — had studied and characterized the script of early Quran fragments, which they called “Kufic.” Radiocarbon dating has since established that these fragments do indeed date from the first century of Islam and comparing them to the letters makes it clear that the latter are fake: The scribes who wrote them were struggling to imitate a profoundly unfamiliar script. The baseline of the words is inconsistent, the spacing is off, and the letters are drawn unsteadily rather than written. Thanks to the internet, today one can browse dozens of samples of Quranic writing, as well as other documents and rock inscriptions, from the first decades of Islam. Next to these genuine samples, the purported letters look like Disneyland castles juxtaposed with their medieval models. But at a time when few people had access to genuine Kufic texts, the forgeries had a chance of passing successfully.

The seal at the end of the letters also raises questions. According to early descriptions, Muhammad’s personal seal contained the phrase “Muhammad, apostle [of] God,” with each word on a separate line, starting with “Muhammad” on the top. The phrase in this form is attested on very early Islamic coins. But by the 14th century, some Muslim scholars were beginning to speculate that the word order on the seal might actually have been the opposite: “God” on the first line, “apostle” on the second and “Muhammad” on the third. This arrangement would have placed God, rather than Muhammad, at the top, which these scholars felt would be more appropriate. The idea was taken up by al-Halabi (died 1635), the author of a fanciful but enduringly popular biography of Muhammad that featured all kinds of fictional embellishments. However, as Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (died 1449), an authority on reports about Muhammad, pointed out, there is no historical evidence to support the claim that the seal’s text began with “God.” It was a medieval invention.

So the letters are fakes. But who forged them, and why? Karabacek suspected Egyptian Copts, pointing to a well-known medieval practice in Christian and Jewish communities of forging letters in which Muhammad exempts the recipients from taxation. But these medieval letters were written for an obvious practical goal, their content was unattested in historical accounts, and they generally claimed to be mere copies rather than originals. By contrast, the letter touted by Barthélémy was marketed as the genuine one, from the hand of the Prophet himself. It replicated the text of a known document, mimicked the early Kufic script and was written on parchment rather than paper (an important detail, since paper was adopted in the Arab world only after Muhammad’s time).

The first suspect must be Barthélémy himself, a keen entrepreneur with knowledge of Oriental languages. He publicized his find actively among diplomats and academics and succeeded in securing Belin’s endorsement, which facilitated the enormously lucrative sale of the letter to the Ottoman court. Other suspect figures include two Europeans, Ribandi and Wilkinson, who acted as intermediaries in the sale, and an Italian who claimed to have obtained the second letter through daring subterfuge, traveling across Syria in native disguise (a trope of 19th-century Oriental adventure fantasies), purchasing the letter under false pretenses. The tales of these European “discoverers” are full of colorful clichés but remarkably thin on details. In which monastery did Barthélémy find the Arabic manuscript containing the first letter? From whom did the unnamed Italian buy the second letter?

The formulism and convenient omissions of these stories and the suspicious features of the letters themselves indicate that the letters were forged in the 19th century by Europeans who had enough scholarly training to produce credible fabrications as well as the requisite connections and business savvy to turn them into money. These men took the early historical reports that Muhammad sent letters to foreign rulers and spun them into artifacts that could pique the interest of the Ottoman sultan.

After the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the letters and other prophetic relics in the sultan’s collection were incorporated into the Topkapi Palace museum and displayed as tourist attractions. They also continued to hold devotional value for the pious, as shown by a 1920s post-Ottoman pamphlet featuring an image and a Turkish translation of the letter to the Copts.

But the letters received an entirely new lease on life in 2007, when the militant group then calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq adopted a flag that includes an exact replica of Muhammad’s purported seal, copied from the forged letters. In an anonymous document disseminated online, the group explicitly acknowledged the Topkapi letters as the source of the seal. To their credit, the militants were aware that the word order on the seal did not match early descriptions, but they argued that the discovery of the actual letters made further doubts about the correct order moot. That the letters might be fake, or that their script was questionable, was not mentioned.

When the group renamed itself the Islamic State in 2014 and established its short-lived caliphate, the forged seal of Muhammad became the symbol of the militants’ rule. It not only was used on the infamous black flag but also branded the Islamic State’s considerable propaganda output and was stamped on its documents. A European Orientalist fraud was broadcast to the world by a group claiming to be the rightful inheritors of the Prophet’s mantle.

The Islamic State embraced what it thought was Muhammad’s seal for the same reason that the Ottoman sultan was willing to pay exorbitant prices for Muhammad’s purported letters: to claim legitimacy. Whereas the sultan’s purchase of the letters was a continuation of his dynasty’s centuries-long campaign of amassing sacred objects, the Islamic State had little interest in the objects themselves; it merely sought to harness the symbolic significance of the seal, which could be easily reproduced and disseminated. It is, perhaps, understandable that neither the Ottomans nor the Islamic State were interested in examining the actual historicity of their symbols too closely.

Instead of springing from the pen of Muhammad’s scribes in the seventh century, the letters attributed to him were products of an enterprising class of men in the age of European colonialism who saw an opportunity to monetize the growing hunger of museums, libraries and private collectors for historical artifacts. Although local inhabitants of the Middle East also profited from such frauds, it was Europeans who occupied the most high-profile and lucrative positions in this thriving industry. They possessed the resources, the prestige and the scholarly tools that enabled them to identify and obtain genuine artifacts — and to credibly fabricate others. The case of Muhammad’s letters shows how unsavory origins could be camouflaged with sensationalist stories of discovery and scholarly window-dressing to satisfy an audience willing to believe that they were looking at the real thing. The Islamic State’s caliphate was in no way unique in this regard: Countless postcolonial states were built on colonial mythologies created and developed by Orientalist scholars. Yet the fact that the Islamic State — a group obsessed with its own authenticity and freedom from outside influences — fell for a 150-year-old European fraud is not without irony.

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#10402: Nov 3rd 2021 at 8:04:50 PM

Mawlawi Hamdullah was killed at Daud Khan Military Hospital after a gun battle there. He's one of the first from the Taliban to enter the Arg.

Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#10403: Nov 15th 2021 at 2:17:16 AM

Suspected car bomb attack at the parking area of Liverpool Women’s Hospital.

Unknown yet, but police think the attack didn’t go through somehow.

Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#10404: Nov 18th 2021 at 3:46:33 AM

A Vice News report on a female investigator who goes undercover in terrorist/incel forums.

Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#10405: Nov 23rd 2021 at 8:09:42 PM

London has designated Hamas as a terrorist group.

Forenperser Foreign Troper from Germany Since: Mar, 2012
Foreign Troper
#10406: Nov 24th 2021 at 1:48:18 AM

[up]Late to the party, I guess? tongue

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#10407: Nov 24th 2021 at 3:12:05 AM

IIRC, only those who have proven connection with its military forces are deemed terrorist.

A few countries don't designate Hamas as a whole as a terrorist group like Brazil, Syria, Iran and Switzerland.

Edited by Ominae on Nov 24th 2021 at 3:13:19 AM

eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#10408: Nov 26th 2021 at 10:14:58 AM

Reuters: U.S. expects to drop Colombia's FARC from terrorist list by late November.

    Article 
Nov 24 (Reuters) - The Biden administration's decision to remove Colombian rebel group FARC from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations will be implemented by late November or early December, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the United States was preparing to remove FARC from the list five years after the group signed a peace agreement with Bogota.

Founded in 1964, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym FARC, was responsible for summary executions and kidnappings of thousands of people, including Americans.

The U.S. State Department notified the U.S. Congress on Tuesday of its planned delisting of FARC. The Colombian government was formally notified on Wednesday.

The decision allows the United States to work with FARC members that are now entering private or political life, and those that have reintegrated with society as part of many USAID programs, the official said on Wednesday.

"It also allows us to target the full tools of the U.S. government and law enforcement to go after those individuals who did not sign the agreement and remain active in terrorist activities," the official added.

The official said the Biden administration intends to keep militant groups made up of former FARC rebels and a second group of ex-rebels that uses a variation of the FARC name on the list of terrorist organizations.

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#10409: Nov 26th 2021 at 10:42:16 AM

[up]X3 It’s the political/government arm that’s been added. So it’s the equivalent of declaring the UUP or Sinn Féin terrorist organisations during The Troubles, as they were the political arms of Unionist and Nationalist terrorist groups respectively.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
TerminusEst from the Land of Winter and Stars Since: Feb, 2010
#10410: Dec 5th 2021 at 5:15:02 AM

Finland arrests 5 over far-right terror plot

Five men suspected of planning a far-right motivated bomb and gun attack have been arrested, Finnish police said on Friday.

The men are from the southwestern municipality of Kankaanpaa and were born between the years 1995 and 1998. They were arrested on Tuesday morning after being under surveillance for two years, police said.

Finnish radio station Yle reported that some of them had previous convictions.

Police say the arrests mark Finland's first case of suspected far-right terrorism.

Accelerationists.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
Forenperser Foreign Troper from Germany Since: Mar, 2012
Foreign Troper
#10411: Dec 5th 2021 at 5:16:18 AM

Finland's first ever case of suspected far-right terrorism? That's surprising.

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
TerminusEst from the Land of Winter and Stars Since: Feb, 2010
#10412: Dec 5th 2021 at 6:38:58 AM

Stuff like this is exceedingly rare. Vast majority of the neo-Nazis tend to be limited to propaganda and demonstrations. The violence is largely sporadic and specific to certain circumstances like fighting black bloc types in various marches, violence against bystanders who looked at them funny and so on. We might see it tomorrow on our independence day as per usual. They are more akin to gangs than anything else and their convictions reflect that.

However, "Siege culture"-type accelerationism has started to take hold in some of those groups (like the Nordic Resistance Movement), so we might see more of this. Although from what I remember from earlier police/SUPO articles as well, these guys tend to operate separately from any known groups and are intensely secretive. In this case they did a series of mistakes that put them on the radar.

Edited by TerminusEst on Dec 5th 2021 at 6:43:11 AM

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#10414: Jan 12th 2022 at 2:50:17 PM

Scottish pro-independence outlet quoting a Catalan pro-independence one, so maybe take with a grain of salt, but: Secret service behind Barcelona terror attacks, says ex-cop.

    Article 
A former senior officer in Spain’s National Police Corps has said the 2017 terror attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils were organised by the country’s secret service in a bid to destabilise Catalonia before the independence referendum there.

However, Jose Manuel Villarejo said the attacks in August that year – which included a truck running over pedestrians on La Rambla in Barcelona – “were a serious mistake” on the part of former National Intelligence Service (CNI) director Feliz Sanz Roldan.

Ahead of the October 2017 indyref, the former commissioner said the CNI boss “wanted to give Catalonia a fright, but miscalculated the consequences”.

A total of 16 people died in the attacks – known as 17-A – including a woman who died as five members of the jihadist cell launched a knife attack on the beachfront at Cambrils, having driven there the day after the Barcelona attack.

All five men were shot dead by police. Three men who helped in the attacks were last year sentenced to jail terms of between eight and 53 years.

It later emerged that the alleged mastermind of the attacks, an imam in the city of Ripoll, was a CNI informant.

Villarejo is something of an “off the reservation” figure and has been involved with numerous “secret” operations with the CNI.

He has spent more than three years in custody and his remarks were made in court during a case involving police spying allegations.

The former commissioner said he could prove everything he had claimed: “All the evidence is in my archives. I authorise their release.

“We must think that the citizenry is not a minor and the law of secrets cannot be used to hide everything. It is an obsolete Francoist law from 1968.”

His claims triggered anger in Catalonia, where the government was considering a legal response.

Catalan President Peres Aragones said on social media: “17-A was a barbarity that has marked us forever. And if Villarejo’s words are true, explanations are needed now.

“We know very well how the state sewers work, so we demand that they be investigated in order to clarify the truth.

“I have also asked the legal services of the Generalitat [government] to study these statements and the relevant legal actions that can be taken. For the truth. For the victims, for the Catalans and for all those who are on the side of peace and democracy.”

In radio interviews, his vice-president, Jordi Puignero, said the Spanish state wanted to clarify Villarejo’s allegations over the CNI and the terror attacks, and has urged them to mount an investigation.

He also expressed concern that no-one from the state had so far contradicted his statements, or said they would be investigated.

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#10415: Jan 12th 2022 at 2:51:39 PM

...wheelbarrow of salt, more like...

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#10416: Jan 18th 2022 at 7:43:15 PM

Breivik showed up in court today to appeal for early release. He said that he was brainwashed through what he saw in the internet and promises to fight for the white race through peaceful activities.

Medinoc from France (Before Recorded History)
#10417: Jan 19th 2022 at 2:09:30 AM

So he's actually learned nothing. I hope the judges don't fall for it.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Forenperser Foreign Troper from Germany Since: Mar, 2012
Foreign Troper
#10418: Jan 19th 2022 at 10:03:47 AM

LOL. Way to shoot yourself in the foot. God, these racists are stupid.

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
TerminusEst from the Land of Winter and Stars Since: Feb, 2010
#10419: Jan 20th 2022 at 2:43:24 AM

No, he isn't. He knows he won't get out, so he puts on a show for his fans and reminds them that he exists along with his manifesto and ideas which still circulate in those circles.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#10420: Jan 20th 2022 at 4:02:12 AM

A hostage incident took place at the Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville near Dallas.

The person is a British Muslim man named Malik Faisal Akram who's known to MI:5. He has criminal records, but he was assessed to not be a national security threat.

Akram wanted Aafia Siddiqui to be released, but she said no.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60038207

DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#10421: Jan 20th 2022 at 5:11:52 AM

Aafia's case is interesting. She's a nuclear scientist with ties to terrorist groups. She tried to off the officers who were interviewing her in Pakistan, so they extradited her and she's serving an 80+ year sentence.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#10423: Jan 23rd 2022 at 9:26:11 PM

Incels are shifting their recruitment tactics to target young children.

Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#10424: Jan 28th 2022 at 8:03:56 PM

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/lisa-smith-denied-taking-part-in-syrian-fighting-in-2019-interview-trial-hears-1250362.html

Lisa Smith, the ex-Irish soldier who went to the Middle East as she was a pro-ISIL sympathizer, denied in her trial that she fought with ISIL fighters.

Edited by Ominae on Jan 29th 2022 at 1:48:32 AM

Forenperser Foreign Troper from Germany Since: Mar, 2012
Foreign Troper
#10425: Feb 4th 2022 at 11:39:11 AM

Daesh-Leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi is dead, according to US officials

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-60246129

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