A decades-old letter of former Al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is going viral on TikTok after some users posted it on the video sharing platform and re-shared it on X (formerly Twitter). TikTok has removed the hashtag #lettertoamerica (with over 2 million views) from its search after bin Laden's 2002 'Letter to America' sparked a debate about US support to Israel in its current conflict with Hamas, reported NBC News.
Some social media users suggested that the Al Qaeda founder's document gives an alternative perspective about the US' involvement in conflicts in the Middle East - something that has been criticised by the White House. The issue gained prominence after users started sharing link to The Guardian's transcript of the letter, which was written a year after the September 11, 2001 attacks in which more than 3,000 people were killed. The Guardian removed the 21-year-old letter from its website. In the letter, bin Laden addressed the American people and sought to answer the following questions: "Why are we fighting and opposing you?" and "What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?" The letter includes anti-semitic language, as per NBC News. The letter sparked a debate on social media about the validity and morality of bin Laden's letter, with some expressing sympathy while others condemning or mocking it. People discussing the letter said it caused them to re-evaluate their beliefs around US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also said they are not praising or defending bin Laden's orchestration of the 9/11 attacks. TikTok's critics argued that it was evidence that the app, owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, had been secretly boosting propaganda to a captive audience of American youth. Bin Laden's letter also criticised US support for Israel and accuses the US of aiding the oppression of Palestinian people. The former Al Qaida chief also criticised US interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Chechnya and Lebanon, as per The Washington Post. Bin Laden, who was killed in a US special operation in Pakistan in 2011. The White House has criticised the sharing of the message, saying "no one should ever insult the 2,977 American families still mourning loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden". Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is among the politicians who have slammed the letter, calling for social media reform. "When you look at social media, I have long said that we have to ban TikTok. And if you didn't know why, there's another example today," Ms Haley, a 2024 GOP presidential primary candidate, told Fox News. TikTok spokesperson Ben Rathe said that videos featuring bin Laden's letter violate the platform's guidelines. Post a comment "Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism. We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform. The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate. This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media," he said
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Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, United States President Joe Biden has said. Al-Zawahiri was killed on Sunday in the biggest blow to the group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. “Justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said in a special televised address from outside the White House.
Intelligence had located al-Zawahiri’s family in Kabul earlier this year, Biden said, adding that no members of the family or civilians had been killed in the attack. An Egyptian surgeon with a $25m reward on his head, al-Zawahiri helped coordinate the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US that killed nearly 3,000 people. Earlier, US officials speaking on the condition of anonymity told reporters that the CIA carried out a drone attack in Kabul using two missiles. Al-Zawahiri was on his balcony at the time, they said. “It’s a significant blow,” Colin Clarke, research director at the Soufan Group, a global security firm, told Al Jazeera, adding that his presence in Kabul was also interesting in what it suggested about his relationship with the Taliban. “It tells us he’s gotten far more comfortable over the past year since the Taliban took over,” Clarke said. The Taliban confirmed the attack in Kabul, and condemned it as a “violation of international principles”. The strike was carried out on a residential house in the Sherpur area of Kabul, a diplomatic enclave where many Taliban leaders live now, Taliban chief spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement. “Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the US, Afghanistan and the region,” Mujahid said. In a statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul “grossly violated the Doha Agreement and repeated assurances to the world that they would not allow Afghan territory to be used by terrorists to threaten the security of other countries”. Washington and the Taliban signed the deal in 2020 paving the way for the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces in return for a guarantee from the Taliban not to allow groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) to operate on Afghan soil. The US forces withdrew just before an August 31 deadline in what turned out to be a chaotic exercise. Blinken said that by allowing the al-Qaeda leader to shelter in Afghanistan, the Taliban had also “betrayed” the Afghan people and “their own stated desire for recognition from and normalization with the international community”. Reporting from Kabul, Al Jazeera’s Ali Latifi said the drone strike took place in a “highly residential area of Kabul”. “It’s near a grocery store, near a bank, and a main street. It is an area where previous warlords, governors and ministers have lived under the previous government. It is not anywhere hidden,” he said. “That raises the question of how the current leader of al-Qaeda could walk into Kabul without the government knowing and that’s what the US is alluding to when they this is in violation of the Doha agreement”, he adding, noting that the Taliban also accused the US of violating the Doha deal.
In the build-up to the war on Iraq, Americans were told that eliminating Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, was necessary for world peace. This was due to his alleged possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) as well as his alleged links with Al-Qaeda, among a number of other claims about Hussein’s genocidal ambitions. Britain’s then-prime minister, Tony Blair, even likened Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler; this was at a time when anti-Middle Eastern sentiment was high and the 9/11 attacks were ripe in the minds of the Western public, who had been informed by then-US President George W. Bush that the ‘war on terror’ was akin to a ‘crusade’. It turned out that almost none of the major allegations about Saddam Hussein were true, despite the Iraqi president’s other crimes against humanity. Yet, with no evidence, Western media fell in line and presented the invasion of Iraq as a just war, despite the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva stating that it constituted a war of aggression and a flagrant violation of international law prior to the invasion occurring. ikely due in large part to the media coverage at the time, which had demonized everything Middle Eastern and Muslim, US public support for invading Iraq prior to ‘Operation Iraqi Liberation’ was between 52-64%, jumping up to 72% support on invasion day.
In the first two months of the ‘Shock and Awe’ invasion of Iraq, more than 7,186 Iraqi civilians were said to have been killed. Yet, at the time, Western media outlets were celebrating the US-UK victory as if none of this death and destruction had taken place, never truly asking where the alleged WMD were. A BBC reporter, Andrew Marr, said on April 9 of British PM Tony Blair that “He said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath and in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proven conclusively right.” The blindly pro-US-UK government coverage went on, despite reports of US and UK war crimes. For example, on April 2, 2003, US aircraft struck a Red Crescent maternity hospital in Baghdad, resulting in a massacre according to The Guardian. Within less than two years of the invasion, it is said that as many as 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed, yet George W. Bush still managed to get re-elected in 2004. This was with the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) not granting permission for the invasion, countless reports of civilian targets being hit, and calls from anti-war voices for the prosecution of Bush and Blair for war crimes. On October 6, 2003, Time Magazine was still running cover for the Bush administration, only offering small criticisms of how President Bush miscalculated “fixing Iraq,” whilst The Economist went with a headline in May that read: ‘Now, the waging of peace’, which was endorsing the idea of nation-building in Iraq and ignoring the alleged war crimes. Eventually, all the major news outlets in the West, including the likes of CNN, BBC, Fox News, and others, bowed their heads in shame of their one-sided reporting on what had occurred in Iraq and what Noam Chomsky called their participation in ‘manufacturing consent’. ADEN, Yemen, May 18 -- Yemen's security forces managed to capture one of the most prominent al-Qaida leaders during an anti-terrorism operation launched on Saturday in the country's southwestern province of Taiz. "An elite anti-terrorism security operation managed to capture one of the most dangerous al-Qaida leaders named Bilal Ali Wafi who is wanted as a global terrorist," officer Abdul-Basit Baher said. He added that the anti-terrorism security troops raided an old house in the western countryside of Taiz province and succeeded in capturing Wafi who refused to surrender himself and attempted to use children and women as human shields. A security member was injured during the shooting that erupted while attempting to capture Wafi in his hometown village, he added. Yemeni security authorities previously accused Wafi of masterminding a series of attacks and assassinations against the country's security and government officials. Wafi was operating as a prominent member of the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and participated in a terrorist attack in 2012 against a military parade in capital Sanaa, killing more than 100 soldiers and injuring nearly 300 others, Yemeni authorities said. In October 2017, the United States and other Gulf countries designated 11 Yemenis including Wafi as terrorists who were wanted by security authorities. The Yemen-based al-Qaida branch AQAP, which mostly operates in eastern and southern provinces, has been responsible for many attacks against security forces in the country. The provinces of Abyan and Shabwa, former main strongholds of AQAP, have also been the scene of sporadic attacks or heavy clashes between the United Arab Emirates-backed security forces and al-Qaida militants from time to time. The AQAP, seen by the U.S. as the global terror network's most dangerous branch, has exploited years of deadly conflicts between Yemen's government and Houthi rebels to expand its presence, especially in the southern and southeastern provinces. Enditem LONDON, December 23 -- Al Qaeda has been revitalised and is planning to commit new and spectacular attacks on the West, according to a senior British minister. The group, which committed the 9/11 hijackings in 2001 that killed almost 3,000 people in New York City, is now trying to plot attacks on airports and develop technology that can bring down airliners. British Security Minister Ben Wallace, in an interview with The Sunday Times, said Al Qaeda posed such a threat that it was keeping top ministers “awake at night”. Such technology may include drones with explosives attached or miniaturised bombs capable of being smuggled on to airliners. The group’s most powerful wing is in Yemen and is known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but it also has a presence in Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and the Maghreb. His comments come only days after US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw US troops from Syria. Experts and diplomats have given warnings that the withdrawal may embolden militant groups such as Al Qaeda, which has used the chaos of the civil war to plot attacks on the West. The militant group, which has had a reduced profile in recent years after the growth of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, has long targeted aviation for spectacular attacks. In 2006, British police discovered a transatlantic Al Qaeda plot to bring down airliners using liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks. The result was increased security measures on flights regarding the carrying of liquids. Three years later, Al Qaeda’s top bomb maker Anwar Al Awlaki discussed a plot with a young Nigerian volunteer in Yemen, sending him on a mission to bring down an airliner with explosives in his underwear. His explosives failed to detonate when his underwear caught fire as the plane approached Detroit on Christmas Day. Awlaki would later become the first American citizen deliberately killed on the orders of a US President without charge because of the threat he posed to national security. NAIROBI, December 22 -- An explosives-packed vehicle detonated at a military checkpoint near Somalia's presidential palace, killing at least 16 people and wounding more than 20 others. The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab extremist group, which often targets Mogadishu, claimed responsibility for the attack. Those killed include three staffers from the London-based Universal TV station, including prominent journalist Awil Dahir Salad, said police Capt Mohamed Hussein, who gave the toll of dead and wounded. The bomber targeted the checkpoint near the rear entrance of the heavily fortified palace, Hussein said. A lawmaker and a deputy mayor of Mogadishu were among those wounded, he said. Soldiers also were among the dead, Col Ahmed Mohamud said. The blast and a second, smaller one nearby appeared to target those heading to work on what was a business day in the Horn of Africa nation. A plume of smoke rose over the capital as ambulances rushed to the scene. "At first I saw a vehicle driving to and fro, then we tried to stop people walking here and there, and then in the blink of an eye the vehicle exploded, causing havoc,'' traffic police officer Mohamed Harun told The Associated Press. Al-Shabab, the most active Islamic extremist group in sub-Saharan Africa, was pushed out of Mogadishu years ago but continues to control large parts of rural southern and central Somalia. The US military, which partners with Somali forces and a 20,000-strong African Union peacekeeping mission, has greatly increased airstrikes against al-Shabab under the Trump administration. At least 47 US strikes have been carried out this year. WASHINGTON, December 15 -- Most consumers don't know about it, but Cloudflare is a tech giant that helps keep a huge portion of the internet running. According to a report from the Huffington Post, at least seven of its customers are under sanctions by the US Treasury Department, and six are on the US Department of State's list of foreign terrorist groups. One of the groups named in the report is the Taliban, which isn't on the State Department's foreign terrorism group list. Also named in the report are several Palestinian groups, al-Shabaab and the Kurdistan Workers' Party, all of which are on the list. The designation is meant to make things like international commerce and travel harder for the groups on the list. "Designations of foreign terrorist groups expose and isolate these organizations, deny them access to the US financial system, and create significant criminal and immigration consequences for their members and supporters," the State Department says on its website. What's more, the Treasury Department's sanctions, which apply to all seven groups, are meant in part to prevent US businesses from providing services to foreign terrorist groups. A Treasury Department spokeswoman said the department doesn't comment on individual matters that involve US companies doing business with sanctioned groups or any potential enforcement actions. The State Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Cloudflare's general counsel, Doug Kramer, told CNET the company has a process for checking whether a potential customer is sanctioned by the Treasury Department. What's more, if it finds any current customers are already on the sanctions list, it'll end services to them. Kramer declined to confirm whether the groups were clients, saying it's company policy not to name customers. The Huffington Post reported that it learned the groups were Cloudflare customers after asking independent experts to evaluate the groups' websites. "It's a very difficult task and one that a lot of tech companies have struggled with," Kramer said, "because there's not always a one-to-one correlation between a domain name and a specific group." Cloudflare manages requests by web users to visit its clients' websites, among other services. It doesn't host websites. If hackers want to take down a website by overwhelming it with requests, something called a DDoS attack, Cloudflare can stop them. The list of customers is one example of how major tech companies, as they take over more and more of the internet's infrastructure, can end up providing services for groups that promote violence and extremist ideas. It's an issue the company has faced in the past. Cloudflare faced scrutiny in August 2017 for providing -- and then ending -- services to the neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer. The controversy started after other web service companies, like GoDaddy and Google, removed their support for the website a few days earlier, in the aftermath of the Charlottesville demonstration and death of counter-protester Heather Heyer. The Daily Stormer published an offensive article about Heyer, and tech companies began to stop providing the website with internet services. At the time, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in a statement the company doesn't pick and choose its customers based on their ideological beliefs. However, the Daily Stormer had gone too far by spreading rumors that Cloudflare supported its neo-Nazi ideology, he said. "Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion," Prince said. At the same time, Prince called his own company's decision "dangerous," saying it could open the door to a less free internet governed by large companies. "Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online," he said. Kramer said Cloudflare still takes the same approach it did in the case of the Daily Stormer. The company won't pick and choose its customers based on content alone. "We've continued to take the position that we think there's much more harm than good to be done if we start to decide what content should be up and what shouldn't," Kramer said. The company will comply with sanctions from the Treasury Department, he said, adding, "We don't want to go beyond the determinations of what government officials and regulators think." Infowars and Silicon Valley: Everything you need to know about the tech industry's free speech debate. PARIS, January 18 -- France quietly buried on Saturday the two brothers involved in the country’s worst terror attacks in decades and banned an anti-Islamist demonstration in Paris to head off possible civil unrest. Said Kouachi, the elder of the two brothers who together gunned down 12 people Jan. 7 in their attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, was buried in the eastern city of Reims, 144 kilometers (89 miles) east of Paris. He was buried overnight despite Reims city officials’ objections and concerns that the grave could become a shrine for extremists. Antoine Flasaquier, a lawyer for the elder brother’s widow, said the burial took place overnight “in the greatest discretion and dignity.” Flasaquier said the widow did not attend the burial for fear she’d be followed by reporters and give away the location of the grave. Said lived in Reims before police killed him and his brother Jan. 9. “I don’t want a grave that serves to attract fanatics. I don’t want a place that promotes hate,” Reims Mayor Arnaud Robinet said in an interview on France Info radio Thursday. City officials say they wanted to avoid “all useless and indecent polemic” over the burial and said Kouachi would be buried in an anonymous grave “to avoid all risk of disturbance to the peace and to preserve the town’s tranquility.” Meanwhile, a local mayor told AFP on Sunday that Cherif has been buried amid tight security outside of Paris. He was buried just before midnight Saturday at a cemetery in Gennevilliers, where he used to live, officials said. No relatives attended the funeral and the grave is unmarked. Earlier in the week Robinet said he’d “categorically refuse” a request by Kouachi’s family to bury Said and Cherif. Other burial Two other terrorists killed in shootouts with police following last week’s attacks await burial. There has been no word of plans for burying Amedy Coulibaly, who killed five people including four hostages at a kosher market in Paris before he was killed by police Jan. 9. The debate over the burials echoed the one nearly three years ago over Mohamed Merah, who killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in Toulouse in 2012. Then-President Nicolas Sarkozy intervened to allow the burial over the objections of Toulouse's mayor. France bans anti-Islamist protest Also Saturday, the Paris administrative tribunal ruled that Paris police were authorized to ban an “Islamists out of France” rally planned Sunday by two groups that promote secular and republican values. One organizing group, “Secular Riposte,” said on its Web site that it would instead hold a news conference on Sunday. Resistance Republicaine, another organizer, said it would still hold similar rallies in the southern cities of Bordeaux and Montpellier on Sunday. |
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