• Terrorism

    The CIA’s use of Predator drones against Islamic militants in the Middle East began shortly after the 9/11 attacks and has increased dramatically during the Obama administration. As the number of drone strikes in Yemen increased, AQAP militants began to develop tactics to hide themselves from a drone’s sensors.

  • Islam & blasphemy

    From the fatwa on author Salman Rushdie to the attack on the offices of French magazine Charlie Hebdo, the phenomenon of anti-blasphemy actions continues to be prominent in the Muslim world. The reality is, however, that the persecution of blasphemers as it is done currently is a very recent phenomenon. Generally, one could say that the Rushdie fatwa was the beginning of this trend, and the founders of Political Islam are the innovators of this trend. A long distance has passed to see Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in place of the thirteenth-century Muslim scholar Jalal ad-Din al-Rumi, who stood for openness and pluralism in Muslim thought and practice, but this underscores the argument that mainstream Muslims remain against the barbaric actions of fundamentalists. It must not be forgotten that many Muslims are suppressed in their countries for the same reasons that Charlie Hebdo was attacked.

  • Charlie Hebdo attack

    The two gunmen who attacked the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo — Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his brother Said, 34 — are French citizens of Algerian origin. Cherif Kouachi has been involved in radical Islamic activities in France for over a decade, and served time in jail for his 2005 attempt to go to Iraq to join the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda. In the last three years he was active in facilitating the travel of French Muslims to Syria to fight the Assad regime. The third man believed to have been involved in the attack, 18-year old high school student Hamyd Mourad, was allegedly the driver of the car in which the attacker arrived at the magazine’s office and then escaped. He turned himself in to the police, and is now being interrogated. Thousands of police officers and security services personnel have been conducting a massive manhunt for the two brothers, focusing on the city of Reims – a city of about 200,000 located eighty miles northeast of Paris, in the Champagne-Ardenne region.

  • Charlie Hebdo attack

    Now we must reaffirm the importance of absolute freedom of expression in an open society — regardless of how offensive it might be to some and, on occasion, how puerile it may become. Freedom of expression is absolute or it is nothing at all. It cannot be parceled out so that we are only free at particular times or in specific circumstances. That’s how it becomes a privilege rather than a right. That’s how the self-appointed guardians get to decide what is and isn’t acceptable. Unpalatable as it may be on occasion, we all have the responsibility to engage robustly with those we dislike, or even despise. We have to do it in a manner that excludes violence and encourages discourse, debate, and clarification. We must recognize and face the problem: An over-sensitive culture has emerged — not in some far-away place but right here in the West. Violent attacks like those in Paris are still rare but this is a culture that will engender many future acts of conflict unless we regain the real sense of what tolerance means. It is not indifference to others or turning a blind eye but healthy, pointed and, on occasion, offensive engagement.

  • Terrorism

    Two hooded Islamist gunmen have attacked the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing ten journalists and editors and two policemen and injuring seven, several of them in critical condition. The assailants entered the editorial offices of the magazine and opened fire with assault rifles, before escaping the building and engaging the police on the street outside in a heavy fire exchange, killing two of the police officers. They managed to get into their car and fleets with police in the street outside before escaping by car.

     

  • Agroterrorism

    The economic effects of a successful attack on the U.S. food supply would be devastating, as agriculture accounts for roughly 13 percent of the country’s gross annual domestic product. An introduction of deadly pathogens into U.S. livestock, poultry, or crops would not only result in a disease outbreak, but would disrupt the global food industry and drive up food prices. Agroterrorism is not limited to the intentional introduction of harmful pathogens into U.S. farms and livestock. Terrorists can also cyberattack industrial agriculture systems responsible for operating feeding machines, maintaining milk temperatures, and processing foods.

  • Butt bombs

    Five years after using a “bum bomb” for the first time – on 28 August 2009, against the Saudi deputy interior minister – al Qaeda bomb makers are at it again. Having actively searched for new and better ways to take advantage of privacy (“don’t touch my junk”) considerations which govern airport security checks, one of the organization’s bomb makers goes public. The latest issue of Inspire, the organization’s English-language magazine, contains a detailed 22-page article on how to construct a butt bomb and conceal it in one’s anal cavity. The article alsoadvises would-be suicide bombers on where to sit on the airplane to ensure the most destruction, and also recommends using the hidden bomb for assassination attempts.

  • Bioterror agents

    Soligenix, Inc. last month announced the publication of data demonstrating that the combination of RiVax and VeloThrax induces protective immunity to both ricin toxin and anthrax toxin exposure. RiVax is the company’s candidate vaccine for the prevention of exposure to ricin toxin using an antigen which is completely devoid of the toxic activity of ricin. VeloThrax is the company’s candidate vaccine which employs a derivative of recombinant protective antigen, termed Dominant Negative Inhibitor (DNI), which is a candidate for inclusion in a next generation anthrax vaccine.

  • Libya

    Since the November 2011 toppling of Col. Qaddafi, Libya has ceased to exist as a unitary, cohesive state. Different armed militias control different parts of the country, and two governments and two parliaments claim to be the country’s legitimate rulers: The internationally recognized government operates out of Tobruk in northeast Libya, while the Islamist-led Libya Dawn government – backed by Turkey and Qatar – operates out of the capital Tripoli, which Dawn occupied in August. Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s defense minister, said on Saturday that “the moment has come” to address the growing unrest in Libya, adding that France could launch a military intervention in Libya within three months. The French defense minister added that the question currently under discussion in Paris is not whether France will launch military strikes against the Islamist militias in Libya, but when.

  • Bin Laden raid

    Former U.S. Navy SEALs Chief Special Warfare Operator Robert O’Neill, who claimed to have killed Osama bin Laden in the Navy SEALsraid, is under criminal investigation for possibly sharing classified information. Even if the NCIS concluded that O’Neill did not release any classified information, the SEALs code of silence has still been violated, veterans say.

  • African security

    As Somali-based al-Shabaab loses ground in its home country to international forces backed by the United States, the United Nations, and the African Union, it has increased its attacks in Kenya, specifically, attacks on Christians who live in towns near Kenya’s border with Somalia. To counter al-Shabaab’s operations in Kenyan security forces have begun to launch attacks on suspected terrorists in Kenya. Human rights groups have documented assassinations and disappearances of terrorism suspects by Kenya’s counterterrorism units. Such raids only act as a recruitment tool for al-Shabaab, say analysts.

  • Human trafficking

    Counterterrorism initiatives tend to target drug trafficking rings operated by militant groups as a way to cut the funding of terror operations. Terror groups, however, including the Islamic State (ISIS) and Boko Haram, have always diversified their revenue stream by relying on the sale of women and children from captured villages to fund their operations. Analysts say that counterterrorism officials must begin to pay attention to human trafficking schemes, because in addition to generating revenue, human trafficking helps terror groups demoralize their enemies and supply fighting power.

  • African security

    Kenya has passed a controversial amendment to the country’s existing security laws, days after heated debates led to brawling on the floor of the Kenyan Parliament. Despite the fracas, the bill was passed with only minor changes, to the dismay of observers at home and abroad. Domestic and international attention has mainly focused on the impact the bill would have on the period of detention without charge, the tapping of communications without court consent, the erosion of media freedom and the limitations placed upon the right to protest. But the world has paid less attention to the severe implications the new amendments have for refugees in Africa’s second-largest refugee-hosting country.

  • Radicalization

    Following increased scrutiny of Prevent, the U.K. government’s counter-extremism strategy, Quilliam, a London-based counter-extremism think tank, released a White Paper which assesses the successes and failures of Prevent in its 10-year history, and makes recommendations for its improvement to deal with the current nature of the threat. The paper responds to the report from the Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee and adds to the debate surrounding the 2014 Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill.

  • African security

    Libya has issued a call to foreign firefighters to come to Libya to help fight a massive blaze at the country’s largest oil port, started by rocket fire from an Islamist militia attack. The barrage of rockets, launched by members of Libya Dawn, a coalition of Islamist and Misratan militias which is now in control of the capital Tripoli, set ablaze one of the giant storage tanks at Al Sidra on Thursday. The blaze has since spread through the tank farms, igniting seven of the nineteen storage tanks and sending flames and smoke hundreds of feet into the sky. To make sure the tank farm is destroyed, the Libyan Dawn authorities ordered local fire departments not to assist in extinguishing the fires, prompting the internationally recognized government, now situated in Tobruk, to issue a call for foreign fire fighters to come to Libya to help fight the spreading fire.

  • Nuclear safety

    Experts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) helped the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Off-Site Source Recovery Project (OSRP) recover more than one million curies of radioactive sources since 1999. LANL says that the accomplishment represents a major milestone in protecting our nation and the world from material that could be used in “dirty bombs” by terrorists. “Taking disused, unwanted and, in limited cases, abandoned nuclear materials out of harm’s reach supports the Laboratory’s mission of reducing global nuclear danger,” said Terry Wallace, principal associate director for global security at Los Alamos.

  • Terrorism insurance

    Major commercial insurers and lenders serving the real estate, tourism, and construction sectors were surprised by Congress’s failure to reauthorize the federal government’s terrorism insurance backstop,or at least extend it into 2015, when the new Congress can then reach a consensus. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act(TRIA) was established in November 2002 as a federal backstop to protect insurers in the event an act of terrorism results in losses above $100 million. It has been extended and reauthorized twice. The insurance industry had hoped that TRIA would be renewed for another six years. The bill — the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2014 — was passed by the House, but Senate Republicans and Democrats remained in disagreement through the end of the legislative session.

  • Terrorism

    Authorities and security experts in Australia believe that better monitoring of Man Haron Monis’ activities, not counterterrorism measures, could have prevented the armed siege last week when Monis held seventeen people hostage at a Sydney cafe, killing two of them before police shot him dead. Lone wolf terrorists are unlikely to catch the attention of counterterrorism agencies because they bypass the sophisticated planning deployed by most terrorist groups. Popular counterterrorism strategies, including communications surveillance, could do little to predict the actions of a lone wolf terrorist. “The attack package is a very low-grade effort,” says one expert. “You don’t tell anyone about it, and that makes it very difficult for intelligence agencies to pick these people up.”

  • Terrorism & health

    A new study of over 17,000 Israelis has found that long-term exposure to the threat of terrorism can elevate people’s resting heart rates and increase their risk of dying. This is the first statistics-based study, and the largest of its kind, which indicates that fear induced by consistent exposure to the threat of terror can lead to negative health consequences and increase the risk of mortality. “We found that fear of terrorism and existential anxiety may disrupt the control processes using acetylcholine, causing a chronic accelerated heart rate. Together with inflammation, these changes are associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke,” one of the researchers said.

  • Bioterrorism

    In a report released Friday, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) says the FBI relied on flawed scientific methods to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks which killed five people and sent seventeen others to hospitals. The report raises questions about the FBI’s firm conclusion that it was Army biodefense specialist Bruce Ivins was responsible – or solely responsible – for the attacks.