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Showing posts from August 9, 2015

Iraqi Effort to Isolate, Retake Ramadi Advancing: US Military

Washington:  Iraqi troops are more than halfway through an operation to encircle Islamic State militants in Ramadi, after which they will launch a final offensive to retake the Iraqi city, a U.S. military spokesman said on Friday. Air Force Colonel Pat Ryder, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said Iraqi forces were making progress in the fourth week of their effort to isolate and cut off Islamic State fighters, who captured Ramadi three months ago in their biggest victory this year. "The objective here is to cut off ISIL's lines of communications to prevent or limit their resupply and reinforcement," Ryder, using an acronym for the militant group, said in a telephone briefing with Pentagon reporters. He said Iraqi troops were engaged in "tough, dangerous work" to encircle the city and then prevent Islamic State from bringing in more troops or supplies. The militants were trying to slow or stop Iraqi forces with hidden explosi

Islamic State Rings Rebel Bastion Near Aleppo: Syrian Monitor

Beirut:  The Islamic State on Friday besieged a strategic bastion of rebels fighting both them and the Syrian government after less than a week of combat in which at least 121 people died, a monitoring group said. Since Sunday, the Islamists have taken control of a series of areas near the strategic northern town of Marea in Aleppo province, which lies about 35 kilometres (22 miles) from Aleppo city and is on a major road to the Turkish border. "On Friday evening, the IS (Islamic State) wrested the village of Tlaline, thereby totally encircling Marea," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "The jihadists are now besieging the town from the east, north, south and southwest," he said. He added that the IS group also control the road to the west of the town which leads to the Turkish border 25 kilometres away. "Tlaline is in the hands of IS," said Mamoun al-Khatib, the head of Shahba, an ant

Young Couple Linked to Islamic State, Perplexing All#

Starkville, Miss.:  She was a cheerleader, an honor student, the daughter of a police officer and a member of the high school homecoming court who wanted to be a doctor. He was a quiet but easygoing psychology student. His father is a well-known Muslim patriarch here, whose personable air and habit of sharing food with friends and strangers made him seem like a walking advertisement for Islam as a religion of tolerance and peace. Today, the young woman, Jaelyn Young, 19, and the young man, her fiance, Muhammad Dakhlalla, 22, are in federal custody, arrested on suspicion of trying to travel from Mississippi to Syria to join the Islamic State. Friends and strangers alike said it was difficult to imagine two less likely candidates for the growing roster of young, aspiring American jihadis. "Something must have happened to her," Elizabeth Treloar, 18, said of Young, her friend. "She's too levelheaded, too smart to do this." Dakhla

Vote fraud mayor links to family of five held by terror police: TowerHamlets Council funded suspects cycling charity while shamedpolitician was in office

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14 Aug 2015 Lakhdar Djelloul, 51, wife Janice, 53, and three teenage daughters arrested   Officers suspect pair may have been preparing to flee country to join ISIS Couple ran cycling charity funded by council under mayor Lutfur Rahman Neighbours described them as ‘respectable’ pillars of the local community  A couple at the centre of a Scotland Yard terror probe ran a cycling charity funded by Tower Hamlets Council under its shamed mayor Lutfur Rahman. Lakhdar Djelloul, 51, his British Muslim convert wife Janice, 53, and their three teenage girls were arrested when officers swooped on their East London home. Officers suspect the pair, who have eight children, may have been preparing to flee the country to join  Islamic State  in Syria.  Scroll down for video  Lakhdar Djelloul, 51 Lakhdar's British Muslim convert wife Janice But their arrests shocked neighbours, who described them as ‘respectable’ pillars of the local community who appeared to have dedicate

India, US to Bolster Cyber Security Partnership, Combat Crime

Washington, United States:  Facing common threat from overseas cyber-attacks, India and the US today decided to join hands in combating cyber crime that would not only help them address these challenges, but also advance Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious goal of a digital India. Ahead of PM Modi's meeting with President Barack Obama in New York next month, officials of the two countries in a meeting here this week, "committed to robust cooperation on cyber issues" to increase global cyber security and promote the digital economy. The fourth India US Cyber Dialogue was led by the US Cyber security Coordinator and Special Assistant to the President Michael Daniel and by India's Deputy National Security Advisor Arvind Gupta. In a joint statement issued by the White House, the delegations discussed a range of cyber issues including cyber threats, enhanced cyber security information sharing, cyber incident management, cyber s

Where Did the Antiwar Movement Go?: War, Sunny Side Up, and the Summerof Slaughter (Vietnam and Today)

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Let me tell you a story about a moment in my life I’m not likely to forget even if, with the passage of years, so much around it has grown fuzzy.  It involves a broken-down TV, movies from my childhood, and a war that only seemed to come closer as time passed. My best guess: it was the summer of 1969. I had dropped out of graduate school where I had been studying to become a China scholar and was then working as a “movement” printer -- that is, in a print shop that produced radical literature, strike posters, and other materials for activists.  It was, of course, “the Sixties,” though I didn’t know it then.  Still, I had somehow been swept into a new world remarkably unrelated to my expected life trajectory -- and a large part of the reason for that was the Vietnam War. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t particularly early to protest it. I think I signed my first antiwar petition in 1965 while still in college, but as late as 1968 -- people forget the confusion of that era -- while I

What attracts women to terrorism?

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“I had a pistol in my belt, a grenade in my pocket and TNT in my bag. I was a woman dressed in a fashionable way. I opened my bag for security, but the man just saw my make- up and waved me through.” Leila Khaled was probably the most famous female hijacker in the world in the late 1960s; beautiful, dangerous and politically committed to doing whatever might further the Palestinian cause. She posed for an iconic photo – sultry-eyed, a Kalashnikov at her side, headscarf carefully draped over her head. She even subsequently resorted to painful plastic surgery to hide her famous face so she could carry on participating in hijack operations without being recognised.   But she was by no means the first woman to hit the headlines for using violence for political aims. One of her role models was Zohra Drif, a female bomber during Algeria’s war of independence from France in the 1950s. In September 1956 Drif planted a bomb in the Milk Bar café in Algiers. Among the victims wa

Britain's jihadi bride groomer: Schoolgirl radicalised in London mosquerecruited her three classmates to join ISIS in Syria

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02 Aug 2015 Sharmeena Begum, 15, fled East London home to join  ISIS  in December Three months later, three of her closest school friends also fled to Syria Initially  families  blamed internet for grooming Bethnal Green Academy girls Now it's claimed Sharmeena was groomed inside the East London Mosque and  persuaded  three friends to join her at the meetings Dreams: Sharmeena Begum had plans to be a doctor A teenage jihadi bride who groomed three of her school friends to join her in Syria to fight for  Islamic State  was radicalised at a women’s charity based at one of Britain’s biggest mosques, it has been claimed. Sharmeena Begum became one of the youngest British teenagers to join the murderous IS terror group when she fled from her home in East London and travelled to Syria last December aged 15. Three months later, three of her closest school friends – Amira Abase, 16, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Shamima Begum, 15 – also fled to Syria, triggering an internatio