• Bulgaria bus bombing underscores vulnerability of public transport: MTI experts

    The Mineta Transportation Institute’s (MTI) Database on Terrorist and Serious Criminal Attacks Against Public Surface Transportation records 3,159 attacks against public surface transportation between January 1970 and January 2012, in which 7,997 people were killed and 30,046 were injured; of these attacks, 47.4 percent were against buses, bus stations, and bus stops; they accounted for 55 percent of the fatalities and 41 percent of the injuries resulting from terrorist attacks during this period

  • The Top 3 Syrian security officials assassinated by rebels

    In the heaviest blow yet to the Assad regime, a bomb placed inside the fortress-like National Security headquarters in Damascus earlier today killed the three top commanders of the regime’s anti-insurgency effort: Defense Minster Dawoud Rajha; Deputy Defense Minister (and Assad’s brother-in-law) Assef Shawkat; and Hassan Turkmani, a former defense minister who was serving as head of the regime’s central command unit for crisis management a secure room; the bomb was placed in the secure room, where a meeting of the central command unit for crisis management was taking place, by a bodyguard assigned to Assad’s inner circle; the assassination, and the way it was carried out, demonstrate daring, operational competence, and excellent intelligence; the operation reflects, more generally, a noticeable increase in the lethality and effectiveness of the rebel forces, and the growing vulnerability of the regime

  • House designates Haqqani Network as a terrorist organization

    The U.S. House of Representative yesterday voted to designate the Haqqani Network as Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO); the network has been supported and armed by Pakistan, which uses the Haqqanis to attack U.S. and coalition soldiers, aid the Taliban, destabilize the Karzai government, and frustrate U.S. Afghan strategy; if the Senate approves the House bill, this would mean designating the Pakistani government, or at least some of its major agencies, as supporters of terrorism, making it legally difficult for the United States to continue and send billions of dollars in military and civilian aid to Pakistan

  • Short-sighted Tuareg leadership dooms independence quest

    With the quickening pace of preparations for a military intervention to remove an al Qaeda-affiliated Islamist group from a break-away region of Mali, and disrupt this group’s plan to turn the region into what African leaders call “Africanistan,” the leaders of the MNLA, the Tuareg movement which fought for the independence of the region, said the MNLA would not participate in the operation against the Islamists unless it receives guarantees from outside powers that the goal of the operation will not be to re-unify Mali; the cause of Tuareg independence never had much support among the Tuareg people, and was resolutely opposed by neighboring states; the MNLA refusal to help in removing the Islamists from Azawad all but guarantees that the dream of Tuareg independence will remain just that – a dream

  • More generals defecting, worries about Syria’s chemical munitions

    A few more Syrian generals defected to Turkey this weekend; the latest defections indicate a growing problem for the regime, as those defecting come from parts of the military where loyalty to the Assad family was key to promotion; among the defectors were two Alawite generals who were operations commanders of the Alawite Shabiha militia, one of the military units closest to Assad, a third general, a Sunni, headed the Syrian chemical warfare authority until 2008; last Thursday, Syria began to move chemical munitions from storage facilities to areas closer to the fighting; the United States informed Syria that Washington would view with extreme concern the removal from storage of any more chemical weapons

  • Competition among political forces, not religious fundamentalism, inflames anti-Americanism in the Muslim world

    Historically, domestic political divisions within Muslim politics have fallen between secular elite and fundamental Islamic elite factions, with both groups laying claims to anti-American grievances; that competition is most intense not in the most deeply observant Islamic countries, but rather in countries where divisions between secular and religious factions are sharpest; in those countries, competition between political forces — not religious fundamentalism — appears to spark the greatest anti-American sentiment

  • Iran could test-fly ICBMs capable of striking U.S. within three years: Pentagon

    A Pentagon report submitted to Congress on 29 June says Iran continues to make large strides in virtually all conventional, unconventional, and nuclear categories; the report focused most extensively on Iran’s inventory of ballistic missiles, and warned that Iran may be able to test-fly an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), capable of striking American soil, within three years’ time; Iran also continues to supply men, money, training, and even sophisticated weapons systems to some of the world’s best-known terror groups

  • Space radiation detection technology to be used for homeland security

    Common radioactive sources emit gamma rays while nuclear bomb material emits both gamma rays and neutrons; because neutrons and gamma rays are electrically neutral, it is difficult to ascertain properties such as the direction of origin or energy level of the radioactive source; University of New Hampshire scientists are re-engineering instruments originally built for detecting radiation in space for homeland security purposes

  • Another top Syrian defection signals growing Sunni disaffection

    Nawaf Fares, Syria’s ambassador to Iraq, has defected and joined the anti-Assad forces; Fares is also the chief of the Sunni tribe Uqaydat, which controls long stretches of the border area between Syria and Iraq; since 1970, one of the central motifs of the Assad regime – father and son – has been an emphasis on cohesion among the Syrian people in an effort  to unify the diverse Syrian society; the regime has enjoyed the support of Alawites, Druze, Christians, and moderate Sunnis; the defection of a second leading Sunni supporter of the regime in as many weeks — Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlas defected last week – is one more indication that Syrian society is fracturing along ethnic and religious lines

  • UN includes Iran in drafting treaty aiming to stop arms proliferation to terrorists, rogue states

    The UN Conference of the Arms Trade Treaty is tasked with drafting an international treaty aimed at stopping arms proliferation to terrorist groups and rogue states; the UN appoints Iran to be one of the vice presidents of the committee; the UN Watch watchdog groups says that appointing Iran to oversee the drafting of a treaty dealing with sending arms to terrorists “is like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud on the stock market”

  • Study: Islamist extremists emphasize self-defense, not world domination

    A common belief in the West is that al Qaeda wishes to impose Islam everywhere; this might be a pipe dream for the group, but a new study of their use of religious texts suggests that Islamists’ goals are much more modest

  • Experts: If Arafat was poisoned, it was not by polonium-210

    In a report last week, Al Jazeera claimed that the cause of Yasser Arafat death in 2004 was poisoning by the radioactive substance polonium-210, and that Swiss scientists found high concentrations of polonium in the cloths Arafat wore in his last days; experts say that the laws of physics make this theory impossible: Polonium-210 has a half-life of 138 days, meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every four-and-a-half months; since only miniscule amounts of the substance would suffice to kill someone, it is not possible that eight years after Arafat’s death, such high levels of the material would still be found in his belongings; put another way: for polonium-210 to be discovered today in Arafat’s clothing at such high levels would mean that such large quantities of the material had to be used – unnecessarily — eight years ago, that not only Arafat, but his entourage and many of the doctors, nurses, and patients at the Hôpital d’instruction des armées Percy where he was treated would be dead as well of radiation poisoning

  • Fort Hood incident report calls for sweeping changes in FBI’s approach

    A report of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting will recommend eighteen specific changes which will make the FBI more likely to detect such insider threats earlier; the report, written by William Webster, the former director of the FBI, will be on the desk of Robert Mueller, the current FBI director, next week; the report’s authors focused on the FBI and the agency’s more than a hundred Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) and how they handled and acted on counterterrorism intelligence before and after the shootings … and the FBI’s remedial measures in the aftermath of Fort Hood

  • Did Arafat die of radioactive poisoning?

    When Yasser Arafat was taken seriously ill in October 2004, and then died in a Paris hospital the next month, many Palestinians charged that he was poisoned by the Israeli Mossad; his widow refused to permit an autopsy, so the poisoning theory could never be proved; now, Swiss scientists who examined items of clothing Arafat wore in his last days say these items contain a significant – and highly unusual – levels of polonium-210, a toxic radioactive material; the Russian secret service used polonium in 2006 to kill Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who became a critic of Putin’s Russian government; Arafat’s widow and the Palestinian Authority call for Arafat body to be exhumed to determine whether or not he was poisoned

  • Viewing terrorist attacks on TV increases pain intensity

    A new study finds that exposure to media coverage of terrorist missile attacks increases pain levels in people already suffering from chronic pain