Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Thursday's Winds of War briefings are given by me, Colt, of Eurabian Times.
TOP TOPICS
- About 20 Chechen terrorists have taken a school hostage in North Ossetia. Sky News put the total number of children held captive at 132, plus teachers and parents - the total might be as high as 300. The situation is progressing rapidly, but this blogger is translating Russian news as soon as he gets it. The leader of the group claims to be a representative of Salakhin Riadus Shakhidi, the suicide wing of Shamil Basayev's organisation. They're demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and the release of 27 terrorists arrested after the June raid in Ingushetia. The gym in which the children are being held is said to be rigged with explosives, a la Moscow theatre. Dan Darling has some background here.
- The Russians have called a meeting at the UN Security Council. I'd speculate that this is the prelude to war between Russia and Georgia. Snippets from various news reports suggest that Russia desperately wanted to link this terrorism to 'international terrorism' - al-Qaeda. If that happens, Russia would feel free to act against Georgia; the Pankisi Gorge has long been a base of operations for al-Qaeda attacking Russia. (If anyone has more on this, please post it below.)
- A Chechen suicide bomber killed 11 and wounded over 50 outside a Moscow subway on Tuesday. She is thought to be the sister of one of the bombers who brought down a Russian airliner last week. As with the airliners, the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility. That morning, the Russian daily Izvestia said that the two Chechen women who blew up the airliners had been with two more suspected suicide bombers. One down... Presumably related, the Russians are increasing security at their nuclear sites.
- 16 Israelis were killed and 100 wounded when two suicide bombers simultaneously destroyed two buses in Be'ersheva. Hebron Hamas claimed responsiblity - the fence separating Hebron from southern Israel has yet to be completed. Hamas in Hebron is notoriously secretive - Shin Bet have yet to prevent one of their attacks. Israel's Chief of Staff threatened to "deal with" the P.A., Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas (he hasn't yet - why would he now?). An airstrike on Syria is certainly possible right now. A Hamas leader in Lebanon has threatened attacks abroad if any of it's leaders outside Israel are targeted.
- Jeff Quinton at Backcountry Conservative has a good selection of links about the barbaric murders of twelve Nepalese hostages in Iraq. In Kathmandu, a curfew was imposed after mobs attacked a mosque and an Arab airline office.
Other Topics Today Include: Iran reports; domestic security; Pakistan arrests; Libya's missing nuclear equipment; Syrian occupation of Lebanon; Baluchistan bomb; Taliban truck bomb kills 7 in Kabul; al-Qaeda in Africa; Vatican not a target; Syrian foreign policy; crotch-stuffing terrorists; U.S. photos show Iraqi WMD.
IRAN REPORTS
- Iran is going to start enriching over 40 tons of uranium. Because of this, the United States wants UN sanctions on Iran.
- Iran has arrested dozens of "spies" for the MKO, who supposedly passed nuclear secrets to Iran's enemies.
- Vladmir Putin has said that Iran must not become a nuclear power.
- The crackdown continues; the latest victims are the sinfully seductive... shop dummies.
- Unless this is a smoke-screen, it looks like Israel will be playing defence with Iranian nukes, not offence.
- For now, at least, the Bush administration believes the best option with Iran is diplomacy.
DOMESTIC SECURITY BRIEFINGS
- In a truly weird incident outside Nashville, a truck driver pulled over for speeding is being investigated for terror ties. When the state trooper was returning from his cruiser to the truck with a citation, the driver backed in to the police car. There was a confrontation, and the trooper fired several shots at the driver, striking him in the chest. Somehow, the driver got the cop's gun; he drove for a mile before realising he was shot. The driver was an Arab from New York. That, his behaviour and the tensions at the moment led to him being investigated for terror ties. No word what was in the trailer.
- German authorities have expelled a man previously jailed on suspicion of membership in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Tawhid network.
- A U.S. judge has asked that the convictions of three Arab men on terrorism charges be dismissed.
- Washington National Guardsman and Muslim convert Spc. Ryan Anderson is to be court-martialed for trying to pass information about weaknesses of the M1A1 tank to al-Qaeda.
THE WIDER WAR
- Pakistan has picked up two al-Qaeda men in Quetta, one Saudi and on Egyptian.
- The IAEA says that some of Libya's nuclear equipment is missing. They are also suspicious that North Korea might be playing a role as a provider of nuclear technology.
- The United States and France are co-sponsoring a Security Council resolution calling on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon.
- How's this for a nasty thought: al-Qaeda vs. oil pipelines in Africa.
- A bomb in a Baluchistan shop killed two Pakistani intelligence officers and a shopkeeper.
- Riyadh police opened fire on a car full of suspected terrorists, killing one and wounding three
- Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have claimed responsibility for a truck bombing in Kabul that killed seven people, including two U.S. citizens.
- The not all that convincing Abu-Hafs al-Masri Brigades say that, while Italians are fair game, the Vatican is not.
- A good analysis of Syria's foreign policy under Bashar al-Assad.
- A bit of dark humour from Gaza. The latest trick is to hide the bomb in the terrorist's crotch.
- Under enormous international pressure, the U.S. has released satellite imagery of Iraq's military before the war. As you can see, the threat was both imminent and exceptional.
Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.
Apparently, the terrorists in Ossetia have removed their masks. They're probably not planning on leaving alive.
>>Iran is going to start enriching over 40 tons of uranium. Because of this, the United States wants UN sanctions on Iran.
What a brilliant idea! Surely new sanctions against Iran will be just as successful as they were against Cuba or Iraq.
Yeah, lets make sure the Mullahs in Iran are the ONLY Iranians with resources. That's real smart. Maybe if the general population suffers from the sanctions enough they'll learn to love the US and overthrow their evil government.
Colt: Do you see any hope at all for the hostages in the school? The withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya cannot be a realistic term of negotiation. How long could the seige go on?
An editorial in Gazeta.ru (a partial translation of which I posted on my blog) makes the following point. Chechnya is unstable. The whole Caucasus is unstable. You can't stabilize Chechnya without stabilizing the Caucasus. They go on to call for an end to political posturing (they accuse both Putin and his opposition of that) and firm action.
How firm their action can be when they've already leveled significant parts of Chechnya frankly concerns me.
jinnderella:
Do you see any hope at all for the hostages in the school?
Honestly, I don't. The terrorists are dispersed around the building, which is booby-trapped inside and mined outside. Gas is out of the question, because of the dogs and young kids - the terrorists will know they are being gassed before it starts to effect them. They're prepared to die. I expect they'll wait for an assault, then blow themselves up.
I'm reading that there may be closer to 800-1000 hostages. And one report that there is a gun-battle in the next village...
Dave Schuler:
How firm their action can be when they've already leveled significant parts of Chechnya frankly concerns me.
Think "Georgia".
BTW the list of hostages released published by Utro.ru shows that 14 of the hostages released were below the age of 3. Remainder of Utro.ru's list are women presumably enough to carry the infants and toddlers out.
Think "Georgia".
Yup. That's what worries me. Presumably that's what the UNSC meeting will be about.
I've been watching the situation between Russia and Georgia deteriorate for some time now, and with this latest Chechen offensive on Russia, it seems as if this could definitely be the spark that leads to a war between them.
"We are very close to a war (with Russia), the population must be prepared," - Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili 8/24/04 (before all these attacks happened.
Now, I have admired some of the reforms that Saakashvili has undertaken since he came to power in the coup. But, militarily, were Putin to launch an invasion, is there really anything the Georgian military can do about it? Putin would likely conquer and annex Georgia into the Russian Federation as Dan Darling said yesterday. I would hate to see Saakashvili deposed so soon. I blog a little bit more about it here.
Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite has been traveling in Israel, and was in Beersheva when the buses exploded. He has several posts on this at: http://www.antichomsky.blogspot.com/
I read the Chicago Sun-Times article about Iran’s 40 tons of uranium, linked above.
Taking what I’ve learned about Uranium and its isotopic distribution, and the separation processes that are used (gaseous diffusion, centrifuge, magnetic mass spectrography) I’m not convinced the article has got the figures right, if they’re talking about purified Uranium rather than some unrefined pitchblende, as seems to be the case if I haven’t misunderstood.
I would not normally question such figures, but as an animation producer/designer, I ended up in the 1980’s developing a series of civil defense programs for FEMA which required me to understand and convey a lot of basic information about nuclear weapons effects (blast, medical effects of ionizing radiation, shielding, detection, EMP, etc.) So the article caught my eye with its figures that don’t sound correct to me.
The fissionable isotope of Uranium (U-235) comprises only .7 percent (that is, SEVEN TENTS OF ONE PER CENT) of naturally-occuring ores. This ratio is maintained through processing of the ore that yields pure Uranium metal or Uranium Oxide, another conveniently transportable form, sometimes referred to as “yellowcake” because of its color.
40 tons = 40 × 2000 lb= 80,000 lbs
U-235 = 80,000 x .007= 560 lbs.
(converting English to metric)
560 lbs = (560 × 4.53592) Kg= 2540 Kg of U-235
If crude critical mass is only 52 Kg, then 2540 Kg of U-235 should yield...
2450 / 52 critical masses, or 47 (FORTY-SEVEN) nuclear fission bomb cores.
That figure of course, would be modified by inefficiencies and wastage known to occur in normal processing procedures. Considering that the Uranium has to be rendered to a fine enough powder that it can be processed ATOM BY ATOM--- or molecule by molecule as Uranium HexaFlouride for instance--- to separate each isotope from the others, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a certain inefficiency.
Maybe my math is off (I’m no scientist!!!!!) and maybe the figures cited in the article would be correct for the yield if they were starting with Uranium Oxide.
But here is a quote directly from the article, <>
My admittedly crude, and quite possibly incorrect calculations show a yield TEN TIMES greater than the article indicates. That's a lot of bombs.
I would LOVE to be shown to be UTTERLY UTTERLY WRONG. Please, someone with a better background in physics than I have, CORRECT ME.
David March, animator & fiddler
Virginia Beach, VA
>>560 lbs = (560 × 4.53592) Kg= 2540 Kg of U-235
Nope. 2.2 lb = 1 kg. So it's only 254 Kg of U-235, or enough for ~4 bombs. That's not so bad, now is it?
Thanks for the correction. I didn't have anyone I could call at 4am to check on metric conversions. Well, no one that wouldn't come and throttle me for waking them with such a question.
Boy, this is where an education that skimped on hard sciences.... and a general Lack of DISCIPLINE... are highlighted.
I grovel.
I looked up several metric conversion charts but still ended up mis-using the figures by plugging them in the wrong way
Dang.
Russia is not preparing to launch an invasion of Georgia, full-scale or otherwise. Political rhetoric for local consumption looks a lot more foreboding when translated, and read from afar. And Saakashvili's speaking style especially lends itself to such misperception.
I spend much of the year in Georgia. Russian-Georgian cooperation has been growing in many spheres, and Russia can exert its influence in many ways without the, um, headaches of "annexing" Georgia. Not to mention that the US and UK wouldn't appreciate "our" pipeline being threatened.
As for Pankisi, it's not Tora Bora. It's a valley like a thousand others in Georgia, except inhabited by ethnic Chechens (Kists). The Georgian security forces now have a presence there, as they did not several years ago, and the few Al Qaeda operatives who were there are now on holiday in sunny Guantanamo.
Tbilisi denies presence of Chechen rebel bases in Pankisi Gorge
Tbilisi. (Interfax-AVN) - Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili has denied statements that Chechen rebels bases are present in the Pankisi Gorge.
"Russia officially recognizes in the international arena that there are neither Chechen rebel bases, nor terrorists in the Pankisi Gorge. Therefore, all accusations against Georgia are unfounded," Zurabishvili said at a press briefing in Tbilisi on Thursday, commenting on statements by Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Geo-Political Sciences.
Ivashov said at a news conference on Thursday that, in fact, Georgia is a rear base for carrying out terrorist attacks against Russia. He also said that "rebel bases are located not only in the Pankisi Gorge, but in other parts of Georgia as well, including at medical centers." Corresponding financial centers for terrorism are also located in Georgia, Ivashov said.
Zurabishvili said that "Russia itself has said that the monitoring of the northern sectors of the Georgian-Russian border, conducted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, should be terminated, since there is no more threats in that region."
Georgia thinks, said Zurabishvili, that the monitoring mission should be continued on the Chechen, Ingush and Dagestani stretches of the Georgian-Russian border, "so no one in the world will have any queries about what is happening on this border."
Georgia is asking to extend the monitoring mission to the North Ossetian stretch of the border, Zurabishvili said.