First there was al-Jazeera, which put the tiny Emirate of Qatar on the map and added a new arena of competition to Middle Eastern politics. With money to burn and a hankering for publicity, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is trying to see if the same game will play in Latin America with his new satellite channel teleSUR. Latin America is a more open media environment than the Middle East so teleSUR faces tougher competition than al-Jazeera but it will have something its predecessor lacks - Chavez. If teleSUR is the Latin al-Jazeera, Chavez is the Latin Gamel Abd al-Nasser. He already has his own must watch talk show in Venezuela and has used his oil wealth to back mass protests throughout Latin America.

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed arch-terrorists, was also inspired by al-Jazeera and started their own satellite channel al-Manar and now the Sri Lankan super-terrorists the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are starting their own channel National Television of Tamileelam (NTT) to counter Sri Lankan government propaganda.

Supposedly the new channel will broadcast throughout Asia, but India in particular should be concerned. The Tamil Tigers are fighting for an independent state for the ethnic Tamils of Sri Lanka. But just north, southern India is home to about 50 million ethnic Tamils and blowback from Sri Lanka's conflict has reached India before (particularly the LTTE's assassination of India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.)

The Tamil Tigers have also had tactical alliances with Jihadi groups and far-left terrorists including the Palestinians worldwide. They also have an international network of supporters and fleet of ocean-going ships. A satellite channel only extends their potential global reach.

NTT will have a real challenge improving Tamil Tiger PR. Right now the Tamil Tigers have a cease-fire with the Sri Lankan government - but they appear to continue to be importing weapons and, according to UNICEF, recruiting child soldiers.

TechCentralStation just ran my article on the growing violence from radical environmental and animal rights terrorists.

'There is a Use for Violence in Our Movement'
By Aaron Mannes

With the recent bombings in London, most concerns about terrorist strikes on the US focus on the jihadist movement. But the next major terrorist strike in the US could come from an unexpected direction -- the extremist animal rights and environmental movements.

According to FBI Deputy Assistant Director John Lewis, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) are "one of today's most serious domestic terrorism threats." Skeptics, including The New York Times editorial page, argue that this threat is over hyped as these groups have confined themselves to property crime, unlike the well-established record of deadly right-wing terrorism. But waiting for terrorist groups to turn to murder is pre-9/11 thinking and the growing violence and sophistication of ALF and ELF are worrisome.

The FBI's Lewis testified to the Senate:

"Attacks are also growing in frequency and size. Harassing phone calls and vandalism now co-exist with improvised explosive devices and personal threats to employees. … Extremists of these movements adhere to strict security measures in both their communications and their operations."

The membership is well educated with many graduate students in their ranks. ALF and ELF are a non-hierarchical group with self-forming autonomous cells that are in one-way contact with the "press offices." The press offices provide ideological and practical guidance and participate in conferences where members can be recruited and trained. Cells, in turn, report actions to the press offices by anonymous e-mail. Closing the press offices has limited utility, since it is easy to start another website while breaking up a cell has minimal impact on the movement as a whole. These are not the operations of amateur coffeehouse revolutionaries, but of a sophisticated underground network of dedicated members.

Equally troubling, the internal rhetoric of the movement is shifting. Traditionally ALF freed lab and farm animals, insisting that they would never purposefully harm a human. But affiliated groups in Europe have beaten opponents, and Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn's assassin was an animal rights activist. At an August 2003 Animal Rights Conference in Los Angeles, an ALF spokesman, Dr. Jerry Vlasak, stated:

"I think there is a use for violence in our movement. And I think it can be an effective strategy. Not only is it morally acceptable. … I don't think you'd have to kill -- assassinate -- too many vivisectors before you would see a marked decrease in the amount of vivisection going on."

When an audience member stated that this was the same as the pro-life movement killing abortionists, Vlasak responded, "Absolutely, I think they've had a great strategy going."

The ALF and ELF worldview is also expanding. Their rhetoric (which can be read on a number of websites including www.animalliberationfront.com) has become infused with Marxist and anarchist ideology, criticizing the familiar litany of globalization, American imperialism and capitalism. In March 2003, just before the Iraq war, ELF ideologue Craig Rosebraugh called for, "strategies and tactics which severely disrupt the war machine, the U.S. economy, and the overall functioning of U.S. society." In his book, The Logic of Political Violence, Rosebraugh wrote: "[R]evolution in the United States … cannot be successful without the implementation of violence." Transferring ALF's and ELF's enemies from particular industries and companies to society as a whole could inspire larger scale terrorist attacks.

ALF and ELF could also link with international terrorists as they have affiliates in Europe and connections to the radical left internationally. Daniel Andreas San Diego (who is on the FBI's most wanted list for a series of attempted 2003 bombings of animal research facilities) demonstrated this kinship when he sent an e-mail claiming credit for the bombings that ended with a salute to international terrorists, including the Real IRA, Columbia's FARC and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (which is closely linked with the Islamist terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah). Such links would increase ELF and ALF capabilities and radicalism and could lead to Americans being recruited to international terrorist groups.

Domestic terrorism from the right has been far more deadly than domestic terrorism from the left and law enforcement has responded appropriately. Rightwing extremist groups are monitored and infiltrated. But ALF and ELF have been less vulnerable to law enforcement countermeasures, consequently they are more likely to undertake a major operation successfully. Downplaying the threat of ALF and ELF by arguing that these groups have not yet perpetrated Oklahoma City type attacks ignores the seminal lesson of 9/11. These groups need to be stopped before they turn to large-scale violence.

After the Taba bombings I wrote about how Dr. Dhiaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamist fundamentalism at Egypt's leading think tank, the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, publicly accused Israel of masterminding the bombings.

He does it again (albeit a bit more carefully), blaming Israel for the Sharm al-Sheikh bombings in al-Ahram Weekly, a government sponsored English language weekly that is published by the al-Ahram Foundation, which includes Rashwan's employer the Center for Political and Strategic Studies. He describes al-Qaeda as a bogeyman concealing the real culprits, arguing:

Those who planned the Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh attacks were aware that they are sensitive security areas and relatively tough targets. In all likelihood, their purpose was to humiliate the Egyptian state and show that it is too feeble to protect its own borders. Such a message is not a typical Al-Qaeda one. Al-Qaeda normally goes for soft targets and maximum media effect.

He then notes that the most revealing detail of the Sharm al-Sheikh attacks was that it was claimed by the Battalions of Martyr Abdullah Azzam. Rashwan writes that Azzam was a, "Palestinian Islamist who died in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets in the late 1980s. Azzam had no known links with any terror organizations or operations."

This is false. Azzam was killed in a carbombing in Peshawar in November 1989. The assassins have never been identified although it is generally suspected that it was part of the feuding within the mujahedin movement over what direction to take the movement in the wake of the February 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Azzam was a leading fundraiser and organizer of the mujahedin movement. He founded Makhtab al-Khidmat, the Services Office to funnel money and recruits to Afghanistan. Azzam met Bin Laden when he lectured at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (where Bin Laden was a student) and helped recruit Bin Laden to joining the jihad in Afghanistan. Azzam visited the U.S. several times to raise money and found a network of offices. While his immediate focus was Afghanistan, he considered the U.S. to be an appropriate target for jihad eventually. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was planned out of the Brooklyn office of Azzam's organization and al-Qaeda was built from elements of the Services Office that Azzam had founded.

The charitable interpretation is that Rashwan does not know these things, which means he is not much of an expert on Islamic extremism. (Perhaps I should send him a copy of my book?)

Rashwan ends on this note:

This [Battalions of Martyr Abdullah Azzam] is an odd choice of name, especially that earlier attacks in Turkey, Madrid and London were claimed by the Battalions of Abu Hafs Al-Masri, an Egyptian who was a former military leader of Al-Qaeda and related by marriage to Osama Bin Laden. It would have made more sense to claim the attack in Egypt in the name of an Egyptian, you'd think. So, why would the bombers go for a Palestinian rather than an Egyptian? This may seem as a minor detail, but it could offer insight into the identity of those who mounted the attacks.

Considering Rashwan's past statements accusing Israel of masterminding the Taba bombings, he is not so subtly alluding here to the likelihood that whoever was behind the attacks wanted to discredit the Palestinians as well as embarrass Egypt - and who would want to do that - besides Israel?

The real issue here is that a top expert in Egypt, who has a position at a government-funded think tank produces such shoddy, skewed analysis. This says volumes about the state of intellectual discourse in Egypt and the Arab world today.