Flashback: Mumbai

I know nothing about today's synchronised bombings in Mumbai. But here's a pertinent flashback to the 2008 Mumbai massacre care of Global Research TV.

The Accidental Terrorist

Summer reading idea. Erm, my novel. Available on Amazon.

Bin Laden oddities

Amar al Sadah, the mysterious fifth wife of Bin Laden is still being interrogated in Pakistan. I'm very interested to hear what she says. The latest speculation is that she tipped off the US about where Bin laden and his two other wives and children were hiding. Or, alternatively

The joke doing the rounds in Pakistan is that Bin laden gave himself away to the Americans as he found his life with three wives and many children too hot to handle

Also

On 13 May, the Times of India reported that Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said the claim that Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden had been hiding in the Abbottabad compound for the past six years "is not authentic."

Source:
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-05-13/news/29539863_1_al-sadah-abbottabad-compound-bin-laden

You'd think the Seal team would take a wife or three to get humint from. Anyway, the whole marriage arrangement sounds very bizarre:

International Channel Watch News says her marriage to Bin Laden was arranged by a prominent Al Qaeda leader in Yemen called Sheikh Mohammed Rashed Saeed Ismail.

The task of convincing the parents of Amal that Bin Laden was a suitable bridegroom lay on Ismail too. He told the parents that Bin Laden was looking for a wife and that the bridegroom was "famous and known for his piousness, humbleness, religion, strong belief, generosity and goodness. I told them that he would be a good husband for your daughter.”

Source: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/142095/20110506/bin-laden-wife-amal-al-sadah-fifth-5th-afghanistan-yemen-9-11.htm

Granted this was just before 911, but what an interesting person this Sheikh Ismail sounds. A quick search turns up not very much on him. Will he disappear back into the shadows?

'Zombie' Bin Laden could be new weapon in War on Terror

• Bin Laden more dangerous dead than alive

American Predator drones are constantly patrolling the site of Bin Laden's watery grave in case Al Qaida attempts a daring sea bed recovery. 'Officially, Bin Laden still exists and we're not going to risk terror striking out of a clear blue sea.'

A new Al Qaida video shows Bin Laden looking defiant even though he's dead and under the ocean. Fears are growing that the next terror attack could come from beneath the waves. 'This would be a Domesday scenario,' said a security source.

'Despite being dead, Osama Bin Laden is still spiritually leading Al Qaeda from the bottom of the ocean,' said a security source.

Bin Laden is sending out powerful messages to would be terrorists to act on their own. The biggest threat of terror attack comes from so-called 'lone wolf' extremists, who have never heard of 9-11 but could be inspired to carry out exactly the same attack.

This raises the prospect that Bin Laden could be brought back to life to make the world safer. The 'Zombie Bin Laden' option is being discussed behind closed doors at a top level. 'It would be better to have a Zombie Bin Laden we control, rather than a dead one under the waves that we can't,' a well-paid spook said.

Prior knowledge of Swedish 'suicide bomb'?

From DN.se

On Sunday evening the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT) reported that they had received information that hours before the bombings in Stockholm an employee of the Swedish Armed Forces sent a warning to an acquaintance that "something serious" could happen on Drottninggatan (Queen Street).

"The Swedish Armed Forces had no knowledge beforehand about plans or the circumstances surrounding the events. If that was the case, the Swedish Secret Service as the responsible authority in such matters would immediately have been informed," said Erik Lagersten, Information Director of the Swedish Armed Forces.

The police on Monday said they hadn't found anything confirming that this message was delivered as claimed..

RAF dogs patrol London streets

I'd rather we keep the dogs in their kennels and the soldiers in their barracks.

The sky is falling in again

Professor Anthony Costello of UCL's Institute for Global Health was on the BBC Today programme this morning putting the willies up people about the 'full blown climate crisis' that we shouldn't forget about in the midst of a full blown economic crisis or a full blown political crisis. Heaven forbid that we should, or professors at the Ministry of Fear, Climate Section would suffer a funding cut and that would mean less trips to the Himalayas to watch glaciers melt. Something they're perfectly capable of doing on their own and have done periodically, as far as we know, throughout time. The glaciers, that is.

Such alarmist talk is fuelled by the listing of any adverse or unusual climate event as unquestionable being caused by man's CO2 emissions. The question has to be asked - what behavior of the climate system would contradict models of global warming?

Could it be that it's just the weather? And that people die from bad weather because 2 billion of them are living on less than a dollar a day?

This morning, Professor Costello tried to give us a sweetener at the end of his fear sell. 'Moving to a low carbon lifestyle will have many health benefits,' he said. 'Less stress, less diabetes, less obesity and heart disease.'

Less stress indeed. These promises at the end of the rainbow sound like Mao's three years of struggle to bring in a thousand years of prosperity which was partly responsible for a body count of 80 millions.

It also reminds me of the promise that nuclear-generated electricity that would be 'too cheap to meter'. When the hidden agenda was about producing weaponised plutonium to bring the world further to the edge.

If there are less of the above health conditions, it may be because there are fewer people around. An 80% reduction in C02 emissions by 2050 is easily achievable in this context:

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

I have a vision of someone like Porritt popping up on TV telling people to take only one breath in every two to reduce CO2 emissions.

Now it's time to call for calm and quote Churchill.

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened”