Category Archives: Terrorism

Photography in the age of terrorism

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It isn’t as easy as it used to be.

A group of photographers in London have investigated how easy it is to shoot around the city. The six photographers, backed up with six videographer, attempted to take photographs around the City of London (the city’s financial district), to see what resistance they encountered. The experiment, conducted as part of the London Street Photography Festival, showed several private security guards trying to impede the photographers (often with vague allusions to ‘security and ‘terrorism’). The Police were called in three cases, but, in each instance, the Officers were well aware of the laws concerning photography and appear to have resolved the situations amicably.

 

I’ve enjoyed taking street photos in over 300 cities in 19 countries and nobody seemed to care much – well other than Russia when someone started waving a gun.

I haven’t been to London recently, though.

Celebrating the murder of children

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After the terrorist butchering of an Israeli family, residents in Gaza celebrated the fact by passing out sweets in the street.

While war is horrible and the death of children in war even more horrible, it doesn’t compare to the especially insidious evil needed to deliberately murder your enemy’s children – particularly at close range.

And it takes an especially odious religion – Islam – to fuel the impulse to celebrate such an atrocity.

From here:

Do you think the State Department noticed that no one in Arizona, Mexico, or even Mars took to the streets to celebrate the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords? No one seemed to think it was a “natural” act — the Islamic term du jour to rationalize the throat-slitting massacre of a sleeping Jewish family: 36-year-old Udi Fogel, his 35-year-old wife, Ruth, and, yes, their three children: 11-year-old Yoav, 4-year-old Elad, and Hadas, their 3-month-old baby……..

Muslims, in fact, are more often exhorted by their scriptures to brutalize non-Muslims than Christians are urged by the gospels to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. Yet, though we assume the latter are meant to take the message to heart, we are somehow sure Islam doesn’t really mean what it says — that when Muslims strike terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, it must be Israel’s fault, or America’s, or something, anything, other than Islam, the only common denominator in these attacks.

The ultimate stupid defence

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From here:

Shareef Abdelhaleem, the final member of the Toronto 18 to be sentenced for his crimes, has been handed a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years.

Abdelhaleem, 35, was sentenced Friday just before noon for his role in a homegrown terror plot to detonate bombs at the Toronto offices of CSIS, the Toronto Stock Exchange and an Ontario military base. He was found guilty last year of participating in a terrorist group and intending to cause an explosion.

Ahead of his sentence, Shareef delivered a 23-minute rambling speech, in which he claimed he never intended to harm anyone. He also said that Canadians have been silent on the blatant injustice of his case.

He asked the judge to sentence him as if he were a “white Catholic and not a Muslim.”

Shareef has no idea what he is asking for: a white Catholic who threatened to blow up CSIS and the Toronto Stock Exchange would merit a lynch mob outside the courtroom with guest appearances from Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to egg them on.

Tie foreign aid to protecting Christians

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Here’s a novel idea: stop giving money to countries whose citizens systematically murder Christians. It’s too sensible to ever happen.

From here:

(ANSA) – Rome, January 3 – European Union aid should be tied to respect for human rights in countries where Christian minorities are under attack, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Monday after a New Year’s Day church bombing in the Egyptian city of Alexandria that killed 21 Coptic Christians.

EU aid “should be reduced if not eliminated” for “those countries that do not collaborate” in protecting Christians, Frattini said.

Lest anyone protest that giving terrorists money will wean them from their nasty habits, this study points out that the reverse is more likely to be the case:

There is also no evidence that sympathy for terrorism is greater among deprived people…

…[T]he poorest countries, those with low literacy, or those whose economies were relatively stagnant did not produce more terrorists. When the analysis was restricted to suicide-attacks, there was a statistically significant pattern—but in the opposite direction. Citizens of the poorest countries were the least likely to commit a suicide-attack. The nationalities of all foreign insurgents captured in Iraq between April and October 2005 also produced no evidence that poorer countries produced more insurgents. If anything, there was weak evidence the other way.

Over 100 Canadian Christians threatened by Al Qaeda

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From The Star:

VANCOUVER—More than 100 Canadian-Arab Christians are listed on an Al Qaeda-affiliated website, apparently targeted because of their alleged role in attempting to convert Muslims.

Some of those named say concerned Canadian intelligence officials have contacted them.

The Shumukh-al-Islam website, often considered to be Al Qaeda’s mouth piece, listed pictures, addresses and cellphone numbers of Coptic Christians, predominantly Egyptian-Canadians, who have been vocal about their opposition to Islam.

In a forum on the website, one member named Son of a Sharp Sword, says “We are going to return back to Islam and all of the Mujahedeen (holy warriors) will cut off their heads.”

It would, no doubt, encourage these Christians if leaders of some of the mainline Canadian denominations  voiced their support. Fred Hiltz? Susan Johnson? Mardi Tindal? Anyone?

What made Khuram Sher turn to terrorism?

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What was it that made terrorism the last option for this young man?

Rejection?

Or was it his failure to grow a convincing beard? A genetic predisposition to sartorial gaucheness, perhaps? We will never know for sure, but having just watched this, I feel like blowing something up, too.

Covering up in the UK: the Camera Burka

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From the BBC:

Bags are to be put over scores of surveillance cameras in parts of Birmingham with large Muslim populations, after local objections.

Safer Birmingham Partnerships (SBP) said 216 cameras were put up, including hidden ones, mainly in the Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook districts.

The cameras were financed through a counter-terrorism fund, but the SBP said they would tackle all crime.

This is the new approach to combating terrorism. Psychological warfare: confuse potential terrorists by ignoring them, confident that they will become so befuddled that they will all spontaneously give themselves up.