'Egypt's embattled Muslim Brotherhood regime is paying gangs of thugs to rape women and beat men who gather in Tahrir Square to protest the power grab of President Mohamed Morsi, say activists.
In a bitter replay of the Arab Spring protests that brought down President Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago, protesters have flooded the Cairo square to denounce Morsi, who has stripped the judiciary of power and is rushing through an Islamist constitution. And while Mubarak is now in prison for using violence to quell protests targeting him, Morsi's regime is now accused of doing the same.
"This is still happening now," Magda Adly, director of the Nadeem Center for Human Rights, told The Times of London. "I believe thugs are being paid money to do this ... the Muslim Brotherhood have the same political approaches as Mubarak."
Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have gathered in the square to protest the new constitution and to call for Morsi's ouster. Morsi briefly fled the Itihadiya presidential palace in Cairo Wednesday, after the complex was surrounded by tens of thousands of protesters chanting slogans reminiscent of those used during the revolution that ousted Mubarak. The protesters scrawled anti-Morsi graffiti and waved giant banners carrying images of revolutionaries killed in earlier protests.
A protester the newspaper identified as Yasmine said she was attacked while videotaping demonstrations. She said about 50 men surrounded her and began tearing off her clothes, grabbing her breasts and sexually assaulting her. She said she suffered internal injuries and was unable to walk for a week.
The Daily Mail reported that most attacks take place at night when men form a human chain around women, then move in for the assault. Two men told the paper they were paid to attack women.
"We're told to go out and sexually harass girls so they leave the demonstration," one said.
The current crisis pits his Muslim Brotherhood and their ultraconservative Islamist allies against a coalition of youth groups, liberal parties and large sectors of the public. It began on Nov. 22, when Morsi decreed himself and his party above the judiciary and escalated after the Muslim Brotherhood pushed through a draft constitution without the participation of liberals and Christians.'
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/12/05/egypt-muslim-brotherhood-accused-paying-gangs-to-rape-women/
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Egypt
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Fwd: Bank Denial of Service attacks
'The bank attacks are remarkable because they seem unstoppable, even with advance warning. Just how bad are banks suffering at the hands of attackers? Rodney Joffe, senior technologist at Internet infrastructure provider Neustar, said the best some banks can do to prepare is to have a sincere-sounding apology at the ready, backed up with a plan B that points customers to an alternative method of communication such as a call center.
"There is in fact no way to defend against it properly," said Joffe, who has helped banks try to recover from the attacks. "We can mitigate the attacks to some extent, but it is very difficult to keep systems up…This is one of our worst nightmares."
The criminals identify themselves in their warnings as the "al-Qassam Cyber Fighters," purportedly part of Hamas' al Qassam military wing. The basic attack is nothing new: It's a denial of service attack designed to make the banking websites unavailable. Bank sites are flooded with bogus Internet traffic so they are overwhelmed, and can only give the equivalent of a busy signal to customers. But these attacks are very different, experts say, because of the sheer amount of bogus traffic that's generated…
But the biggest nightmare, he said, is that banks don't "defeat" the attacks with countermeasures. The criminals simply stop and turn their attention on another target, leaving bank security officials wondering when they might be victimized again. Capital One, for example, has suffered at least two separate service disruptions.'
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Fwd: Unesco/Iranian VP speech
From: larry.r.trout
'on Tuesday, the New York Times published an article about the efforts of the Palestinians from Battir, an Arab village southwest of Jerusalem, to have their ancient terraced irrigation system recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They claim the designation is necessary and urgent because if they don't get it, Israel may build a portion of the security barrier through the village and harm the irrigation system.
Isabel Kershner, the Times' reporter, referred to the irrigation system as "a Roman-era irrigation system."
But as the bloggers Yisrael Medad and Elli Fischer pointed out, it is a Jewish irrigation system from the Second Temple period. And while Battir is a reasonable candidate for World Heritage Site status, it is first and foremost a Jewish heritage site. Battir is the Arab name for the ancient Jewish village Betar, the site of Bar- Kochba's last stand against the Roman Empire.
It is the last place where Jews were sovereign until the establishment of the State of Israel.
But Kershner didn't mention any of that.
Doing so would lead to too many inconvenient truths – about the nature of Palestinian nationalism, about UNESCO, about Jewish rights to the land. So the historical significance of Battir was left unreported, and the nature of the irrigation system was reported incorrectly.'
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=275677
'Mr. Rahimi, second in line to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the Talmud teaches to "destroy everyone who opposes the Jews."
The "Zionists" are in firm control of the illegal drug trade, Mr. Rahimi said, asking foreign dignitaries to research his claims. "Zionists" is Iran's ideological term for Jews who support the state of Israel.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran will pay for anybody who can research and find one single Zionist who is an addict," Mr. Rahmini said. "They do not exist. This is the proof of their involvement in drugs trade."
What made his remarks even more striking is that Iran's fight against illegal drugs is one of the few issues on which the Islamic republic can count on Western sympathy. Iran's battle to stop the flow of drugs coming in from neighboring Afghanistan has often been mentioned as a potential field of cooperation during negotiations over the country's nuclear program…
Mr. Rahimi, who spoke after Mr. De Leo, told stories of gynecologists' killing black babies on the orders of the Zionists and claimed that the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was started by Jews, adding that mysteriously, no Jews died in that uprising.
He also said the Talmud teaches Jews to think that they are a superior race. "They think God has created the world so that all other nations can serve them," he said. Halfway through his speech, Mr. Rahimi said there was a difference between Jews who "honestly follow the prophet Moses" and the Zionists, who are "the main elements of the international drugs trade."
A European diplomat said afterward: "This was definitely one of the worst speeches I have heard in my life. My gut reaction was: why are we supporting any cooperation with these people?"'
Fwd: Al-Qaeda destroying Muslim shrines?
The onslaught by armed militants from the fundamentalist Ansar Dine was launched amid the unrest in Mali's vast desert north that erupted in the chaotic aftermath of a March 22 coup in Bamako.
"They have raped Timbuktu today. It is a crime," said a source close to a local imam in Timbuktu, known as the "City of 333 Saints". Witnesses told AFP the group, holding parts of northern Mali, have so far destroyed three ancient shrines.
"The tombs of Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi Moctar and Alpha Moya in Timbuktu were destroyed Saturday by the Qaeda-led group ... who are heading towards other tombs," said one witness, whose report was confirmed by the source close to the imam. In addition to three historic mosques, Timbuktu is home to 16 cemeteries and mausoleums, according to the UNESCO website…
"Ansar Dine will today destroy every mausoleum in the city. All of them, without exception," spokesman Sanda Ould Boumama told AFP through an interpreter from the city.
The Ansar Dine spokesman suggested Saturday's action was in retaliation for the UNESCO decision on Thursday to put the World Heritage site, a cradle of Islamic learning founded in the fifth century, on its endangered list. "God is unique. All of this is haram (or forbidden in Islam). We are all Muslims. UNESCO is what?" he said, declaring that Ansar Dine — which wants to impose sharia law in the region — was acting "in the name of God."'
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\07\01\story_1-7-2012_pg4_3
Friday, June 29, 2012
Fwd: Egypt
'In his first public speech addressing tens of thousands of mostly Islamist supporters, Egypt's president-elect Mohammed Morsi has vowed to free the blind sheik jailed in the U.S. for a plot to blow up New York City landmarks.
Morsi, Egypt's first Islamist and civilian president-elect, promised Friday to work to free Omar Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual leader of men convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.'
'After the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993, the FBI began to investigate Rahman and his followers more closely. With the assistance of an Egyptian informant wearing a listening device, the FBI managed to record Rahman issuing a fatwa encouraging acts of violence against US civilian targets, particularly in the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area.[not in citation given] The most startling plan, the government charged, was to set off five bombs in 10 minutes, blowing up the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge and a federal building housing the FBI.[not in citation given] Government prosecutors showed videotapes of defendants mixing bomb ingredients in a garage before their arrest in 1993.[not in citation given] Rahman was arrested on 24 June 1993, along with nine of his followers.[10] On 1 October 1995, he was convicted of seditious conspiracy, and in 1996 was sentenced to life in prison.[11]
Rahman is currently serving his life sentence at the Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina.[12]
Legacy
Abdel-Rahman's imprisonment has become a rallying point for Islamic militants around the world, including Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. In 1997, members of his group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya conducted two attacks against European visitors to Egypt, including the Luxor massacre. In addition to killing women and children, the attackers mutilated a number of bodies and distributed leaflets throughout the scene demanding Rahman's release.[citation needed]'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Abdel-Rahman