ICSR

Thirteen people were killed and 31 wounded when Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist, opened fire at Fort Hood in Texas.

Some good coverage from the Telegraph:

The major is a psychiatrist who had been treating soldiers returning from Iraq for post-traumatic stress and alcohol and drug abuse problems.

"He was making outlandish comments condemning our foreign policy and claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans," Col Lee told Fox News.

"He said Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor and that we should not be in the war in the first place." He said that Maj Hasan said he was "happy" when a US soldier was killed in an attack on a military r
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"My son is 20 years old and I am his mother aged 43", wrote Mrs Lauderdalle from Yorkshire to Prime Minister Clement Attlee in February 1948. She went on to say: "I appeal to you to let my boy come home from Palestine".

Another mother sent a letter to the Prime Minister saying, "I am writing to you to demand my son to leave Palestine before he is slaughtered by the Arabs or Jews. I am enclosing this picture published in the Daily Mail today. Thank God! It is not my boy. As I saw the face, I thought for a moment it was him, and I was absolutely devastated. But they are some other mother's boy. Why should our boys die for the sake of lousy Jews and Arabs? It is not our war".

These are two out of hundreds of letters sent to Prime Minister Attlee urging him to withdraw from Palestine. And now we&rsq
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I have been traveling around the UK the last few weeks. Two things appear to be atop everyone's concerns, the "rise of the right" and the fact that the British government may be using the "Prevent" counter-radicalization and counter-terrorism program to spy on Muslim communities. I plan on dealing with each in separate posts, but first on the "rise of the right".

For those who have missed it, the United Kingdom is finding it has an increasingly belligerent and noisy right-wing which is not only managing to make unpleasant speeches and protests, but are also able to win votes in elections. The far right British National Party has won a growing number of seats in first local elections, and most stunningly in the 2009 European Parliament elections it was able to secure two seats
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Last year, the US Department of Defense banned its personnel from using portable USB drives (thumb drives, memory sticks, insert jargon of choice), a decision it is on the verge of partially rescinding.  After a spate of incidents in which data was mislaid as a result of employee negligence, the DoD opted for this relatively simple measure in order to increase operational security (OPSEC).  Someone should have impressed upon Houria Chahed Chentouf the importance of keeping such devices safe and secure:

The court heard she accidentally dropped a memory stick containing the documents when she was being questioned at Liverpool John Lennon airport on October 16 last year after arriving on a flight from Amsterdam.  The memory stick, which had been concealed in her clothing, co
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The idea that the US would in any way provide assistance to a terrorist group affiliated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda must seem laughable to many. Yet this is exactly what the Iranian government and an array of international observers believe to be the case. In the wake of last week's revelation that Ahmed Wali Karzai is apparently on the CIA payroll, it's worth remembering the long history of covert US support for unpalatable characters and the resilience of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' thinking.

Let's not also forget that the 'global war on terror' is not the only focus of US strategic thinking, and there are bound to be times where its objectives conflict with other important strategic considerations – such as the ongoing US confrontation with Iran.

To be clear from the outset: the US emphatically denies providing any support to Jundallah, w
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