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Saturday, August 20, 2011
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Why the Mainstream Media Are Clueless About the Religious Right
Though it has shaped American politics for the last 40 years, the religious right still baffles reporters.
August 16, 2011 |
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Every four years, just as a presidential campaign kicks up, legions of media types who make their living outside the right-wing echo chamber emerge as a militia of Margaret Meads, descending on flyover country, trying to make sense of that exotic phenomenon, the religious right. In the end, those who actually get it are few.
From the attitudes shown by media toward the religious right, you'd never know that more than one-quarter of the U.S. population identify as evangelicals, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and among white self-identified evangelicals, 62 percent told Pew in 2006 that they believe the Bible to be the literal word of God.
These, by and large, are the people who determine the outcome of the Republican presidential primary, thanks to the early stacking of states heavily populated by evangelicals, and the propensity of most evangelicals to align with the Republican Party. And yet, we who cover these races often know very little about the voters whose person-on-the-street interviews they're recording, except to know that these people are very different from us in their view of the world. So as everyday doctrines come to light in one or another campaign incident, the media either find themselves aghast at the implications, or simply choose to ignore them.
Surprise
Take, for instance, Rep. Michele Bachmann's profession of the doctrine of "wifely submission." When a 2006 video of Bachmann surfaced showing her at a church gathering professing her submission to her husband, media types grew quite excited. At the Fox News debate in Ames, Iowa, last week, Washington Examiner columnist Byron York asked Bachmann, "As president, would you be submissive to your husband?" Before Bachmann could speak, York's question was met with a round of boos and hisses from the audience, whose members likely heard in his question a challenge to one of their fundamental doctrines. (Bachmann, aware that she was playing to a national television audience, dodged the question, saying that she and her husband respected each other.)
The doctrine of wifely submission is common to a number of evangelical faiths, espoused by faithful who range from dour fundamentalists who forbid dancing to writhing, tongues-speaking Pentecostals. The largest among these denominations is the Southern Baptist Convention, the second largest religious body in the United States. York was certainly entitled to his question, and the people of the United States were entitled to a better reply than that which Bachmann gave them. But what we in the media are not entitled to is any sense of shock that a conservative Christian such as Bachmann believes such things. Such surprise simply means we haven't been paying attention.
Denial
When media types aren't expressing surprise at the everyday beliefs of the ordinary Americans who comprise the Republican primary electorate, they often turn to denial. Take the curious case of Rep. Ron Paul, Texas, who came within 200 votes of Michele Bachmann's first-place finish in the Ames, Iowa, straw poll. Paul's perennial, quixotic presidential campaign (the 2012 contest marks his third run for the nomination) has clearly had a profound impact on the ideology expressed by all of the GOP presidential candidates, but Paul, even after winning the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference for a second year in a row, is just another Rodney Dangerfield to the media. The man just can't get no respect.
Yet, in consistently putting forward themes derived directly and indirectly from the doctrines of Christian Reconstructionists and the John Birch Society, Paul has made it safe for Texas Gov. Rick Perry to name as "treason" the printing of money by Fed, for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to spout off about states' rights and the 10th amendment, and for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum to espouse a no-exceptions anti-abortion position.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Support human rights in Somalia and around the world. Become a member of Amnesty International.
Right now, Somalia is seized by a drought and famine causing widespread hunger and driving people from their homes.
War is also forcing people out. A decades-old, widespread armed conflict has been placing children in the crossfire of its battles for years.
Amnesty International is raising the alarm about abuses - mostly war crimes - affecting children in Somalia. Children are recruited into armed groups and used as soldiers, denied access to food and medical care, attacked while in school, and killed or injured in numerous attacks in densely populated areas.
"One day I went to school and when I came back for lunch my family was not there and the house was destroyed."
- A 15 year old girl from Mogadishu
Support human rights in Somalia and around the world. Become a member of Amnesty International.
The international community has not investigated war crimes and other grave human right abuses in Somalia, a first step to accountability. Instead, the Somali people are left on their own in a deadly cycle of violence with no justice.
Amnesty's new report, "In the Line of Fire: Somalia's Children Under Attack," tells the story of a 15 year old boy from Mogadishu:
"They took my brother. He was recruited by al-Shabab [an armed Islamist group] when he was eight years old. He was taken while he was playing football. We went to the place where we know that they make them fight and we found his dead body there."
Armed conflict leaves lasting scars, including family separations, trauma from horrific abuses, and lack of education and opportunities for an entire generation - even in areas where it is safe to bring such support, such as refugee camps in countries neighboring Somalia.
As a 19 year old Somali woman put it, "The youth are the people who can build peace in our country. We just need a chance."
Make a difference today. Become a member of Amnesty International.
Wildlands Under Attack -- You Can Help
As you read this, Congress is on a one-month recess. But for rich fat-cat polluters and their K Street lobbyists, these are busy days.
While many critical conservation programs have already suffered deep cuts, developers, miners, drillers, industrial ranchers and other private interests are gathering like lions at a kill as our country braces for even more devastating cuts in conservation funding.
We need to stop this perverse pillaging of the wild.
Please make an urgent donation today. For a limited time, with any donation of $12 or more you’ll receive our stunning 2012 Wilderness calendar so that you can see what we need to protect every day of the year.
We are seeing a dangerously unbalanced approach to our debt crisis. Conservation programs key to ensuring our long-term public and environmental health are being cut to the bone, while corporate polluters like oil companies receive billions in taxpayer dollars each year.
It seems like almost nothing is off limits as these corporate interests seek to raid our most beloved wild places.
The Wilderness Society is the only organization whose sole mission is to protect America’s wild places — not as a relic of our nation’s past, but as a thriving, central part of America’s future and as part of our lives. You may have received this calendar in the mail from TWS recently and may have already sent in a gift. If so, we thank you for your generosity. If you have not yet given, please give now to help us fight for all the cherished wild places.
Your support will help The Wilderness Society continue to fend off assaults by private interests and extremists. We work on the ground every day with local communities - to protect the places we all love. Places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Alaskan Rainforest, and the Grand Canyon.
Summer is a time when many of us take the opportunity to experience the wild for ourselves. If you are like me, a hike in the woods feeds something deep inside — it restores and inspires us. One of our greatest challenges is to guarantee that our children inherit a world filled with natural beauty and pristine landscapes.
When Congress returns, there will undoubtedly be a battle to save wild lands from becoming corporate dumping grounds. We will need to fight for clean drinking water, breathable air, and against the irreversible damages to the habitat that America’s wildlife need to survive. It’s a fight we must not lose.
If you feel the same way, please join me today in supporting our urgent work on behalf of the wild.
Please make a generous donation today.
Sincerely,
Melanie Beller
Vice President of Policy, The Wilderness Society
P.S. We’re especially proud of our 2012 Wilderness calendar. It features breathtaking images shot by Wilderness Society members and selected as the very best photos by our online community. I know it will inspire you every day!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Will Riots In The Streets Lead To Crackdowns On Internet Freedom?
Because the internet is a form of the public, restrictions on social media could be applied to the streets (and vice versa).
August 11, 2011 |
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The government is contemplating tactics against the UK riots that set dangerous precedents.
In Parliament today, prime minister David Cameron said authorities and the industry were looking at "whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality". Well, at least he did posit it as a question of right and wrong.
It would be wrong, sir. Who is to say what communication and content should be banned from whom on what platform? On my BlackBerry? My computer? My telephone? My street corner?
Cameron also said, according to a Guardian tweet, that he would look at asking online services to take down offending photos. Again, who decides that content is offending? If you give authority to government and telco and social companies to censor that, what else can and will they censor?
Beware, sir. If you take these steps, what separates you from the Saudi government demanding the ability to listen to and restrict its BBM networks? What separates you from Arab tyrannies cutting off social communication via Twitter or from China banning it?
This regulatory reflex further exposes the danger of British government thinking it can and should regulate media. Beware, my friends. When anyone's speech is not free, no one's speech is free. I refer the honourable gentleman to this. Censorship is not the path to civility. Only speech is.
There is also debate about tactics to restrict anonymity in public. Cameron wants police to have the authority "in certain circumstances" to require face masks to be removed: instead of a burqa ban, a hoodie ban. One MP in the current debate also suggested rioters be sprayed with indelible ink. In addition, Cameron said that CCTV pictures – and, one assumes, pictures on social networks and the afore-derided BBM – would be used to identity and arrest rioters. I understand the motive and goal to control crime. I don't necessarily oppose the moves, for I argue in Public Parts that what one does in public is public.
But again, be aware of the precedents these actions would set. Be aware how they could be used under other circumstances. In Public Parts, I compare the use of social media to identity Egyptian secret police from ID photos taken from their liberated headquarters with the use of social media to identity protestors in Iran. A tool used for good can be used for bad.
The bottom line of these debated tactics would be this: anonymity would be banned in public; it would require that one be public in public.
Right now, online, we are having many debates about anonymity and identity.
So now we need to look at how the public street in London compares with the public street on the internet, on Facebook, Twitter, BBM, blogs and newspapers. What government does on the streets it could do on the internet, and vice versa. Each is a form of a public.
I was just writing a post defending the need for anonymity and pseudonymity online for the use of protestors and whistleblowers and the oppressed and vulnerable. I was also writing to defend social services that try to require real identity as their prerogative to set the tone of their services (rather than discussing that in the context of Facebook or Google+, look at it in the context of, say, LinkedIn, where pseudonymity would rob it of its essential utility and value). I was going to suggest that services such as Google+ find a middle ground where real identity is encouraged – even with verification of true identity as an optional service – but pseudonymity is permitted, with more power given not to the service but to the user to filter people and media and comments on that basis (allow me as a user to, for example, read the comments of people who have the courage to stand behind their words with their names). There is much nuance to be grappled with in these issues and in these new circumstances.
August 11, 2011 |
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The government is contemplating tactics against the UK riots that set dangerous precedents.
In Parliament today, prime minister David Cameron said authorities and the industry were looking at "whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality". Well, at least he did posit it as a question of right and wrong.
It would be wrong, sir. Who is to say what communication and content should be banned from whom on what platform? On my BlackBerry? My computer? My telephone? My street corner?
Cameron also said, according to a Guardian tweet, that he would look at asking online services to take down offending photos. Again, who decides that content is offending? If you give authority to government and telco and social companies to censor that, what else can and will they censor?
Beware, sir. If you take these steps, what separates you from the Saudi government demanding the ability to listen to and restrict its BBM networks? What separates you from Arab tyrannies cutting off social communication via Twitter or from China banning it?
This regulatory reflex further exposes the danger of British government thinking it can and should regulate media. Beware, my friends. When anyone's speech is not free, no one's speech is free. I refer the honourable gentleman to this. Censorship is not the path to civility. Only speech is.
There is also debate about tactics to restrict anonymity in public. Cameron wants police to have the authority "in certain circumstances" to require face masks to be removed: instead of a burqa ban, a hoodie ban. One MP in the current debate also suggested rioters be sprayed with indelible ink. In addition, Cameron said that CCTV pictures – and, one assumes, pictures on social networks and the afore-derided BBM – would be used to identity and arrest rioters. I understand the motive and goal to control crime. I don't necessarily oppose the moves, for I argue in Public Parts that what one does in public is public.
But again, be aware of the precedents these actions would set. Be aware how they could be used under other circumstances. In Public Parts, I compare the use of social media to identity Egyptian secret police from ID photos taken from their liberated headquarters with the use of social media to identity protestors in Iran. A tool used for good can be used for bad.
The bottom line of these debated tactics would be this: anonymity would be banned in public; it would require that one be public in public.
Right now, online, we are having many debates about anonymity and identity.
So now we need to look at how the public street in London compares with the public street on the internet, on Facebook, Twitter, BBM, blogs and newspapers. What government does on the streets it could do on the internet, and vice versa. Each is a form of a public.
I was just writing a post defending the need for anonymity and pseudonymity online for the use of protestors and whistleblowers and the oppressed and vulnerable. I was also writing to defend social services that try to require real identity as their prerogative to set the tone of their services (rather than discussing that in the context of Facebook or Google+, look at it in the context of, say, LinkedIn, where pseudonymity would rob it of its essential utility and value). I was going to suggest that services such as Google+ find a middle ground where real identity is encouraged – even with verification of true identity as an optional service – but pseudonymity is permitted, with more power given not to the service but to the user to filter people and media and comments on that basis (allow me as a user to, for example, read the comments of people who have the courage to stand behind their words with their names). There is much nuance to be grappled with in these issues and in these new circumstances.
"Fertile Ground": White Nationalists Are Organizing Within the Tea Party
There is plenty of evidence that overt racists have entered Tea Party affiliated organizations.
August 15, 2011 |
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Addressing a rally in April 2011, white nationalist lawyer William Johnson lamented the media scrutiny he drew with his recent failed campaign for a judgeship in California.
"Ron Paul endorsed me for Superior Court judge, and I was on my way," Johnson said. "No sooner than I'd put my hat in the ring than ... it came out that Johnson is a white nationalist, that Johnson wants to create a separate white ethno-state, that Johnson supports the 14 words of [white power domestic terrorist] David Lane, that 'We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,' and the media went wild with all of that, and Ron Paul withdrew his endorsement of me...because he did not believe in a separate white ethno-state and he didn't know that I did."
A white ethno-state? The 14 words?
Johnson sounded like he was at a neo-Nazi conference, as in 1986 when he addressed the Aryan Nations World Congress. But the banner hanging over the stage was not a Swastika flag. It read: "Tax Day Tea Party."
The April 16 rally in San Juan Capistrano, California, corresponded with more than 100 Tea Party rallies scheduled across the country for that Saturday. It was promoted on the website of Tea Party.org, also known as 1776 Tea Party, one of six well-established Tea Party umbrella groups. Its true organizers, however, were from American Third Position, or A3P, a white nationalist political party founded by racist skinheads. A3P did not respond to repeated inquiries for this article. Neither did 1776 Tea Party.
Since April 2010, A3P members have organized, co-sponsored or freely distributed literature at no fewer than 10 Tea Party rallies in six states, including Augusta, Georgia; Harrison, Arkansas; Baton Rogue, Louisiana and throughout California, where A3P was founded in May 2009 by Freedom 14, a racist skinhead crew seeking to establish a more respectable-seeming political front group.
Although it would be unfair to characterize the Tea Party movement on the whole as white nationalist, it's clear that large gatherings of angry, conservative, predominately white Americans are viewed with relish by groups like A3P.
"The Tea Parties are fertile ground for our activists," said A3P Pennsylvania Chairman Steve Smith. "Tea Party supporters and the A3P share much common ground with regard to our political agendas."
The A3P official position on race in America is clear: "If current demographic trends persist, European-Americans will become a minority in America in only a few decades time. The American Third Position will not allow this to happen."
Johnson, the national chairman of A3P, has previously called for deporting all non-whites, regardless of citizenship.This includes anyone with any "ascertainable trace of Negro blood" or more than one-eighth "non-European or non-white blood." A3P directors include white nationalist radio host James Edwards and California State University, Long Beach, professor of psychology Kevin MacDonald, who according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading authority on hate groups, is "the neo-Nazi movement's favorite academic" because he theorizes that Jews are "genetically driven to destroy Western society."
At least two of the Tea Party rallies where A3P has distributed white nationalist literature were organized by local chapters of Tea Party Patriots, the largest Tea Party group in the country.
Tea Party Patriots co-founder and national chairman Mark Meckler told Media Matters that it's "numerically impossible" for his group to have representatives monitoring every rally sponsored by Tea Party Patriots.
August 15, 2011 |
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Addressing a rally in April 2011, white nationalist lawyer William Johnson lamented the media scrutiny he drew with his recent failed campaign for a judgeship in California.
"Ron Paul endorsed me for Superior Court judge, and I was on my way," Johnson said. "No sooner than I'd put my hat in the ring than ... it came out that Johnson is a white nationalist, that Johnson wants to create a separate white ethno-state, that Johnson supports the 14 words of [white power domestic terrorist] David Lane, that 'We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,' and the media went wild with all of that, and Ron Paul withdrew his endorsement of me...because he did not believe in a separate white ethno-state and he didn't know that I did."
A white ethno-state? The 14 words?
Johnson sounded like he was at a neo-Nazi conference, as in 1986 when he addressed the Aryan Nations World Congress. But the banner hanging over the stage was not a Swastika flag. It read: "Tax Day Tea Party."
The April 16 rally in San Juan Capistrano, California, corresponded with more than 100 Tea Party rallies scheduled across the country for that Saturday. It was promoted on the website of Tea Party.org, also known as 1776 Tea Party, one of six well-established Tea Party umbrella groups. Its true organizers, however, were from American Third Position, or A3P, a white nationalist political party founded by racist skinheads. A3P did not respond to repeated inquiries for this article. Neither did 1776 Tea Party.
Since April 2010, A3P members have organized, co-sponsored or freely distributed literature at no fewer than 10 Tea Party rallies in six states, including Augusta, Georgia; Harrison, Arkansas; Baton Rogue, Louisiana and throughout California, where A3P was founded in May 2009 by Freedom 14, a racist skinhead crew seeking to establish a more respectable-seeming political front group.
Although it would be unfair to characterize the Tea Party movement on the whole as white nationalist, it's clear that large gatherings of angry, conservative, predominately white Americans are viewed with relish by groups like A3P.
"The Tea Parties are fertile ground for our activists," said A3P Pennsylvania Chairman Steve Smith. "Tea Party supporters and the A3P share much common ground with regard to our political agendas."
The A3P official position on race in America is clear: "If current demographic trends persist, European-Americans will become a minority in America in only a few decades time. The American Third Position will not allow this to happen."
Johnson, the national chairman of A3P, has previously called for deporting all non-whites, regardless of citizenship.This includes anyone with any "ascertainable trace of Negro blood" or more than one-eighth "non-European or non-white blood." A3P directors include white nationalist radio host James Edwards and California State University, Long Beach, professor of psychology Kevin MacDonald, who according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading authority on hate groups, is "the neo-Nazi movement's favorite academic" because he theorizes that Jews are "genetically driven to destroy Western society."
At least two of the Tea Party rallies where A3P has distributed white nationalist literature were organized by local chapters of Tea Party Patriots, the largest Tea Party group in the country.
Tea Party Patriots co-founder and national chairman Mark Meckler told Media Matters that it's "numerically impossible" for his group to have representatives monitoring every rally sponsored by Tea Party Patriots.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Ahmadinejad Calls Bushehr N. Power Plant "Symbol of Iran- Russia Ties"
Ahmadinejad Calls Bushehr N. Power Plant "Symbol of Iran- Russia Ties"
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stressed the necessity for the further expansion of Iran-Russia ties given the current changes in the global economy and politics, and lauded the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant as a symbol of the two countries' cooperation.
Russia's role in the construction of the nuclear plant in Bushehr not only marks the good relations between the two countries, but also signals to the world community Iran's intensions to build nothing but a nuclear power plant, President Ahmadinejad told Russia Today.
"Iran and Russia are neighbors at least in terms of geography. This is something that cannot be changed," Ahmadinejad stated, adding, "Earlier I had very productive talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin besides negotiations with President Medvedev. I hope we can extend our relations, specially considering the current changes in the global economy and politics. Iran and Russia could offer joint solutions to the current international problems."
As regards the upcoming inauguration of Iran's first nuclear power plant, Ahmadinejad said, "I have already talked to President Dmitri Medvedev, who told me there is no obstacle to the plant launching its operations at the scheduled time."
The Iranian president announced that the plant is now in inauguration phase and is expected to be fully operational by the end of this year.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman had earlier announced that Iran's first nuclear power plant would join the national power grid by the end of August.
"We hope that the Bushehr power plant would become operational by the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan (late August)," Ramin Mehman-Parast said in his weekly press conference here in Tehran earlier this year.
Mehman-Parast added that construction phase of the plant "have almost become completed and it is currently in the testing stage".
"Iranians would, by that time (late August), officially celebrate" the operation of the Bushehr power plant.
Iran signed a deal with Russia in 1995, according to which the plant was originally scheduled for completion in 1999. However, the project was repeatedly delayed by the Russian side due to the intense pressure exerted on Moscow by the United States and its western allies. Russia finally completed construction of the plant last summer.
On October 26, Iran started injecting fuel into the core of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in the initial phase of launching the nuclear reactor.
The facility operates under the full supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
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Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Al Qaida trying to harness toxin for bombs, US officials fear Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/al-qaida-trying-to-harness-toxin-for-b
Washington: American counterterrorism officials are increasingly concerned that the most dangerous regional arm of Al Qaida is trying to produce the lethal poison ricin, to be packed around small explosives for attacks against the United States.
For more than a year, according to classified intelligence reports, Al Qaida's affiliate in Yemen has been making efforts to acquire large quantities of castor beans, which are required to produce ricin, a white, powdery toxin that is so deadly that just a speck can kill if it is inhaled or reaches the bloodstream.
Intelligence officials say they have collected evidence that Qaida operatives are trying to move castor beans and processing agents to a hideaway in Shabwa Province, in one of Yemen's rugged tribal areas controlled by insurgents. The officials say the evidence points to efforts to secretly concoct batches of the poison, pack them around small explosives, and then try to explode them in contained spaces, like a shopping mall, an airport or a subway station.
President Obama and his top national security aides were first briefed on the threat last year and have received periodic updates since then, top aides said. Senior American officials say there is no indication that a ricin attack is imminent, and some experts say the Qaida affiliate is still struggling with how to deploy ricin as an effective weapon.
These officials also note that ricin's utility as a weapon is limited because the substance loses its potency in dry, sunny conditions, and unlike many nerve agents, it is not easily absorbed through the skin. Yemen is a hot, dry country, posing an additional challenge to militants trying to produce ricin there.
But senior American officials say they are tracking the possibility of a threat very closely, given the Yemeni affiliate's proven ability to devise plots, including some thwarted only at the last minute: a bomb sewn into the underwear of a Nigerian man aboard a commercial jetliner to Detroit in December 2009, and printer cartridges packed with powerful explosives in cargo bound for Chicago 10 months later.
"The potential threat of weapons of mass destruction, likely in a simpler form than what people might imagine but still a form that would have a significant psychological impact, from Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, is very, very real," Michael E. Leiter, who retired recently as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said at a security conference last month. "It's not hard to develop ricin."
A range of administration officials have stated that the threat of a major attack from Al Qaida's main leadership in Pakistan has waned after Osama bin Laden's death in May, on top of the Central Intelligence Agency's increasing drone assaults on Qaida targets in Pakistan's tribal areas over the past three years.
But the continuing concern over a ricin plot underscores the menace that regional Qaida affiliates, especially Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, now pose to the United States and American interests overseas.
"That line of threat has never abated," said a senior American official, who referred to the terrorist group by its initials. "That's been taken seriously by this government. What we know about A.Q.A.P. is that they do what they say."
Al Qaida's arm in Yemen has openly discussed deploying ricin and other deadly poisons against the United States. "Brothers with less experience in the fields of microbiology or chemistry, as long as they possess basic scientific knowledge, would be able to develop other poisons such as ricin or cyanide," the organization posted to its online English-language journal, Inspire, last fall, in an article titled "Tips for Our Brothers in the United States of America."
Senior administration officials say ricin is among the threats focused on by a secret government task force created after the printer-cartridge plot. The task force is working closely with Saudi intelligence officials and the remnants of Yemen's intelligence agencies, and it is using information gleaned from the shipboard interrogation of a Somali terrorist leader with ties to the Yemeni branch of Al Qaida, who was captured by Navy Seal commandos in April.
The intelligence reports indicating ricin plots by Al Qaida's Yemeni affiliate were first uncovered during reporting for a book, "Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaida." It will be published next week by Times Books, an imprint of Henry Holt & Company.
American officials now say that Al Qaida's most direct threat to the United States comes from the Yemeni affiliate. These officials have also expressed growing alarm at the way the affiliate is capitalizing on the virtual collapse of Yemen's government to widen its area of control inside the country, and is strengthening its operational ties to the Shabab, the Islamic militancy in Somalia, to exploit the chaos in both countries.
"It continues to demonstrate its growing ambitions and strong desire to carry out attacks outside its region," Daniel Benjamin, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, said in a speech last month, referring to Al Qaida's Yemeni branch.
The affiliate has also become a magnet for terrorists fleeing the increasing pressure from drone strikes in Pakistan, and is recruiting specialists in bomb-making and other skills. "These guys have got some notoriety," said a senior United States official who follows Al Qaida and its affiliates closely. "They have a natural, charismatic attraction value for people who want to be jihadists and plot against the West."
"A.Q.A.P.'s senior leaders are a lot like an organization that's largely a brain that exists on its own and has to recruit its arms and legs to actually execute things," the official continued.
Largely because of the Americans in the Yemeni affiliate's top leadership, including Anwar al-Awlaki, a cleric born in New Mexico who is in hiding in Yemen, American counterterrorism and intelligence officials fear the affiliate's innovative agility. "The fastest-learning enemy we have is A.Q.A.P.," said the senior United States official.
In recent months, as the Yemeni government has become nearly paralyzed, the Obama administration has stepped up pressure on the Qaida affiliate there. It has escalated a campaign of airstrikes carried out by the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command with the C.I.A.'s help. The C.I.A. is building a base in the region to serve as a hub for future operations in Yemen.
The Pentagon's air campaign in Yemen was renewed in May after a nearly yearlong hiatus; since then the military has carried out at least four airstrikes in the country.
The ricin plots believed to be emanating from Yemen are the latest example of terrorists' desire to obtain and deploy unconventional weapons in attacks. In 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin nerve gas on underground trains in Tokyo, killing 12 people and injuring more than 5,000, and nearly paralyzing one of the world's leading economies for weeks.
In 2003, British and French operatives broke up suspected Qaida cells that possessed components and manuals for making ricin bombs and maps of the London subway system.
A ricin-dispersing bomb detonated in a major subway system or in a mall or at a major airport would not result in mass destruction on the scale of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, counterterrorism specialists said. But it could inflict disproportionate psychological terror on big-city transportation systems. "Is it going to kill many people? No," said Mr. Leiter, the former counterterrorism official. "Is it going to be a big news story and is it going to scare some people? Yes."
Months after the initial ricin intelligence reports surfaced last year, Saudi intelligence officials revealed a twist to the ricin plot: Qaida operatives were trying to place the toxin in bottles of perfume, especially a popular local fragrance made of the resin of agarwood, and send those bottles as gifts to assassinate government officials and law enforcement and military officers. There is no indication that Al Qaida ever succeeded with this approach, intelligence officials said.
Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/al-qaida-trying-to-harness-toxin-for-bombs-us-officials-fear-126375&cp
Yunus meets Hillary Clinton
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus met the US secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, at her office in the state department on Thursday.
They discussed a broad range of issues relating to microcredit and social business as tools to fight poverty, and other issues relating to women and global justice, according to a message from Yunus Centre.
Yunus is in Washington to address a convention of US and international NGOs organised by InterAction, an umbrella organisation of more than 180 US NGOs.
This convention was attended by 1,000 guests including more than 350 professionals from the international NGOs, government, business and philanthropic sectors.
The US secretary of state was pleased to hear about the progress of Grameen America, which now has four branches in NYC, one branch in Omaha, Nebraska, one branch about to be launched in Indianapolis, in spreading microfinance programmes in the USA, and the expansion of social business activities around the world.
Yunus invited Hillary Clinton to attend the Global Social Business Summit to be held in Vienna, Austria which will take place on November 10-12 this year, as well as the Global Microcredit Summit in Valladolid, Spain from November 14-17.
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