British Intelligence: Al Qaeda Plotting Mass Attacks Against Western Targets

Al Qaeda militants in Syria are plotting attacks to inflict mass casualties in the West, possibly against transport systems or "iconic targets", the head of Britain's MI5 Security Service said on Thursday. Speaking after gunmen killed 12 people in an assault on a French satirical newspaper, MI5 boss Andrew Parker warned a strike on the United Kingdom was highly likely. "A group of core al Qaeda terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West," Director General Parker said in a rare public speech at MI5 headquarters in London. His last public speech was in October 2013. In the speech, planned before the killings in Paris, Parker said seasoned al Qaeda militants in Syria aimed to "cause large-scale loss of life, often by attacking transport systems or iconic targets" in the West.

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Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which angered Muslims by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad 10 years ago, will not republish Charlie Hebdo's cartoons due to security concerns, the only major Danish newspaper not to do so. "It shows that violence works," the newspaper stated in its editorial on Friday. Denmark's other major newspapers have all republished cartoons from the French satirical weekly as part of the coverage of the attack which killed 12 people in Paris on Wednesday..."We have lived with the fear of a terrorist attack for nine years, and yes, that is the explanation why we do not reprint the cartoons, whether it be our own or Charlie Hebdo's," Jyllands-Posten said. "We are also aware that we therefore bow to violence and intimidation."

“Was it hard to deny our readers these images? Absolutely. But we still have standards, and they involve not running offensive material,” Baquet told the Washington Examiner. “That includes the videos of beheadings, by the way...I agree that the cartoons are central to the story. And it was hard as hell not to publish them. But to understand the real sensitivity of this issues you would have to publish the most sensitive images,” Baquet said...“Have you seen them? They are sexual, and truly provocative. They are not the ones a handful of papers have run. Those are mild. If you really want to understand the issue, you would have to show the most over-the-top images,” he said. “And they don't meet our standards. They are provocative on purpose. They show religious figures in sexual positions. We do not show those.” Elsewhere, in separate statement to Politico, Baquet explained that the New York Times is also trying to avoid offending its Muslim readers: “[L]et's not forget the Muslim family in Brooklyn who read us and is offended by any depiction of what he sees as his prophet...I don't give a damn about the head of [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] but I do care about that family and it is arrogant to ignore them,” he said

In 1999, the New York Times republished an image of Chris Ofili's “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a painting “with a clump of elephant dung on one breast and cutouts of genitalia from pornographic magazines in the background,” Politico reported. Also, in 2005, 2006 and 2010, the New York Times republished anti-Semitic cartoons. Further, between 2009 and 2011, the New York Times published multiple images with racial overtones, Gawker reported.