Member of Israel’s Communications Ministry praying in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 3, 2023.
February 10, 2024 was four months since Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza, killing 1200 people, raping and brutalizing women, beheading babies, kidnapping 240 people. We know that Hamas tortured some, probably all of the hostages they freed. We know that they killed some of the hostages; we don’t know how many.
HAMAS IS ATTEMPTING GENOCIDE.
This picture, an Israeli Jew praying, holding a Torah scroll in his hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is believed to have been the trigger, the provocation, but not the cause.
“For Hamas, Israel’s mere existence is a provocation,” – Avi Shavit.
On Friday, the Boston Police Department announced plans to beef up security during the city’s Fourth of July festivities in the wake of new remarks from Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that he and his brother originally scheduled a bombing attack for Independence Day. The reference has renewed interest in the symbolic scheduling of terrorist strikes against the West. Continue reading →
Mark Memmott. an NPR journalist who is one of the hosts of the NPR blog “The Two-Way,” and his colleagues at NPR have done an outstanding job reporting this story. We’ll be checking back with NPR and other sources; it’s our hope to provide some context for these events, and what inferences and implications should be made and understood given the relative sophistication of the attack (we’ll explain why we think, in relative terms, this incident shows some signs of planning and sophistication) and the relatively low frequency of attacks in theaters, movie theaters,restaurants, arenas – places where the are large numbers of relatively relaxed people.
In other words, a target-rich environment.
Some of what’s known at present :
At least 14 people are dead, police say.
50 or so were reportedly injured.
One suspect is in custody.
The suspect has told police that there are explosives at his restaurant.
Some witness accounts report smoke bombs being used by the gunman, and at least one witness reported the use of tear gas.
Aside from the horror which the survivors, victims and their families must wrestle for the rest of their lives; there are law-enforcement and societal challenges. The theater and the mall in which it is located has become a crime scene. Law enforcement must get the victims and the survivors out of the theater; they must get the wounded to hospitals. Law enforcement must also interview the witnesses. The largest, most flexible government-owned space is a local public school.
Should we harden schools for use in emergencies? If so, we must install emergency generators on each of the 93,000 K-12 public schools in the USA. If so, should those generating systems be a mix of solar, wind, hydro, and battery systems or should they be diesel. Diesel generators are cheaper but diesel fuel costs money. Solar, wind, hydro and battery systems are more expensive but use no fuel, and can be used allthe time. If we use hybrid or electric school buses, then can we use the bus batteries to power the schools during a power failure?
An unfortunate reminder that in counterterrorism and response preparations, we need to focus on more than just commercial aviation:
ROME (Reuters) – A bomb exploded in front of a school in southern Italy on Saturday, killing a 16 year-old girl and wounding at least six others, two seriously, authorities said on Saturday.
The explosion, near the entrance of a girls’ school named after the wife of murdered anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, occurred as pupils were preparing to enter the school at the start of the school day, which in Italy includes Saturdays.
French trashcan design to deter bombing by making contents visible
Authorities said two gas canisters appear to have been placed in rubbish containers at the school, which local media said was located near the main court in Brindisi, a port city located in Apulia, on the “heel” of Italy.
“This is a tragedy,” Mimmo Consales, the mayor of Brindisi, told SkyTG24 news television, saying that two of the injured were in a “desperate condition” while four others were less seriously hurt.A surgeon told local TV Telenorba that one of the injured girls was currently undergoing a complicated surgery.
There was no claim of responsibility and no indication of who had placed the bomb but initial suspicions were directed at the mafia.
Consales noted that the incident occurred just a few days before the 20th anniversary of the murder of Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo, by a bomb in Sicily on May 23, 1992. An anti-mafia march had been planned later in the day.
“You can understand the symbolism of this and what it all signifies,” he said.
Television shots of the scene showed a cement wall blackened by fire next to the school’s entrance gate on a sunny spring day.
Schools in the region were closed and President Giorgio Napolitano issued a statement condemning the attack. A group of investigators, including the region’s top anti-mafia prosecutor, will meet later on Saturday to discuss the probe.
Editor’s note: since al-Qaeda and its allied forces claim that pornography is sinful, and that Westerners are obsessed and debased by it, isn’t a flash drive which appears to contain pornography the very first object immoral investigators would examine while conducting a search? Apparently Germany’s intellligence and law enforcement agencies aren’t so easily distracted. From CNN’s Documents give new details on al Qaeda’s London bombings
This story is based on a 46-page internal al Qaeda document, details of which were obtained by CNN. A senior U.S. counterterrorism official told CNN that U.S. authorities have concluded it was written by British al Qaeda operative Rashid Rauf. It was discovered by German cryptologists, along with more than 100 other documents, embedded inside a pornographic movie on a memory disk belonging to a suspected al Qaeda operative arrested in Berlin last May. The German newspaper Die Zeit was the first to report on the documents.
(CNN) — Rashid Rauf was one of al Qaeda’s most capable planners, a British citizen who operated for years in Pakistan and planned some of the terror group’s most ambitious attacks. And he wrote about them in great detail.
Rauf’s detailed analysis — meant for al Qaeda’s senior leadership — shows he was intimately involved in planning the devastating attack on the London transport system in 2005, and tells the inside story of the planning for that attack and another that failed just weeks later.
On July 7, 2005, four suicide bombers led by Mohammed Siddique Khan, a British citizen of Pakistani descent, killed 52 people on three London subway trains and a bus.
CNN’s coverage, including references to the relevant earlier events, is outstanding, and provides critical context via internal and external links on well-designed and easily navigable pages, including photographs coverage and video clips. Start with this link, CNN’s Documents give new details on al Qaeda’s London bombings (identical to the first link above).
See also plus the Telegraph’s Al-Qaeda commander’s guide to beating MI5, also with excellent links to relevant prior and parallel coverage, by Duncan Gardham, without whom we. likely would have missed the CNN coverage. Mr. Gardham is
The Daily Telegraph’s Investigations Correspondent. He has specialised in writing about international terrorism and espionage. Duncan has covered all the major al-Qaeda plots in Britain including the fertiliser bomb plot, the July 7 and July 21 bombings, the London and Glasgow car bombs, the trans-Atlantic airlines plot and the Manchester shopping centre plot. He has also written about counter-terrorism policy and international developments such as the death of Osama bin Laden.
We’ve been remiss in neither keeping up with his work nor directing our readers’ attention to it. An archive of his work for The Daily Telegraph can be found at this link: Duncan Gardham.
“We figured they’d cheat; they were Hezbollah, after all. But none of us—a team of four Western journalists—thought we’d be dodging military-grade flash bangs when we initiated this ‘friendly’ paintball match.” Paintballing With Hezbollah.
The prime suspect in the recent spree of murders in France turns out to have been under police surveillance, in Afghan custody at one point, American military custody at another – none of which seems to have had any effect on his actions. From Scott Sayare’s account, Cornered Suspect Admits Killing 7 in France, Officials Say
TOULOUSE, France — A 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent claimed responsibility on Wednesday for the methodical killings of four men and three children in this region over the past 10 days, officials said, after barricading himself in a small apartment building in Toulouse surrounded by hundreds of police officers.
The French authorities said he had traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, called himself a mujahedeen, or freedom fighter, and had been under surveillance for years. In a standoff that stretched past 14 hours, he fired several heavy volleys at the hundreds of police officers ringing the building, injuring two, though neither seriously. At one point the suspect threw a .45-caliber pistol from the window, the same kind used in each of the three attacks. The prosecutor leading the investigation said the man, Mohammed Merah, made a series of disclosures to a negotiator, including that he had been trained by Al Qaeda, and that the attacks were meant to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children, and to protest French military deployments abroad as well as a recent French law banning the full Islamic facial veil in public. He admitted to planning at least three more killings, said the prosecutor François Molins, speaking at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Merah claimed responsibility as the helmeted motorcyclist who killed three paratroopers in Toulouse and the nearby city of Montauban, all three of Arab descent, over the past 10 days, Mr. Molins said. Boasting that he had “brought France to its knees,” he also admitted to a brutally cold attack on Monday outside a Jewish school that killed a rabbi, two of his young children, and an 8-year-old girl, the prosecutor said. In that attack, the gunman held the girl by the hair to execute her, pausing to switch to a .45 when his 9-millimeter pistol jammed. Investigators believe he was wearing a camera around his neck at the school to record his murders. Mr. Merah had planned to kill a soldier Wednesday morning, and at some point to kill two police officers here, Mr. Molins said. The chief editor of France 24 said in a televised interview that she had spoken by telephone to a man who claimed to be the shooter in the hours before the police surrounded Mr. Merah’s building. “He was calm, was speaking in very good French and punctuated by Arabic expressions,” said the editor, Ebba Kalondo. She also said he spoke of planning more attacks and intending to post video of his killings online. The suspect had been detained by Afghan police at one point during his travels in Afghanistan and Paksitan, Mr. Molins said, and was transferred into American custody and returned to France. Afghan authorities did say a man named Mohammed Merah had escaped from a prison in the city of Kandahar in a mass jail break orchestrated by the Taliban in 2008. but that he was definitely an Afghan citizen.
Interior Minister Claude Guéant said that the Mr. Merah cornered in Toulouse had been under surveillance by the French domestic intelligence service for several years, “though nothing whatsoever allowed us to think he was at the point of committing a criminal act.”
| |Tweet |NYPD Shield, NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau, Terrorism Threat Analysis Group, “Countering Terrorism Through Information Sharing” sent me an email:
RE: NYPD SHIELD – Plans for All-Day “Mass Non-Violent Direct Action” On November 17th, 2011
Demonstrations are scheduled to take place in multiple locations throughout the five boroughs of New York City on Thursday, November 17th, 2011. To view a copy of our assessment containing information regarding these demonstrations, please log into our website at secure.nypdshield.org and click on the Plans for All-Day “Mass Non-Violent Direct Action” On November 17th, 2011PDF file under “Features.”
Regards,
NYPD SHIELD
I logged in. Downloaded the PDF. Here’s the text of the assessment:
Plans for All-Day “Mass Non-Violent Direct Action” on November 17th
Executive Summary
Demonstrations are scheduled to take place in multiple locations throughout the five boroughs of New York City on Thursday, November 17th.
Stated locations for mass demonstrations include the New York Stock Exchange and Foley Square.
Goals of the demonstrations include occupying subway trains, bridges in New York City, and Foley Square.
Advertisements for the demonstrations are being disseminated on various websites, online forums, social media groups, and blogs associated with the hacking group Anonymous, and the event has already received coverage in mainstream media sources.
Background
Recently, posts appeared on websites associated with groups engaged in protests in New York City and other cities announcing all-day citywide public demonstrations opn Thursday, November 17th. The demonstrations, labeled the day of Mass Non-Violent Direct Action!, are being heavily publicized and have three goals: 1) Shut Down Wall Street; 2) Occupy the Subways; and 3) Take The Square (referring to Foley Square). Organizers of the planned demonstration hope that many thousands of people will participate. Although the planned demonstrations call for non-violent direct action, in recent weeks protests in other cities in the United States and Europe have led to riots, clashes with law enforcement, physical assaults, and property damage.
Schedule of Public Actions on November 17th
Shut Down Wall Street
Time: 7:00 AM
Location: New York Stock Exchange, Lower Manhattan
Description: This demonstration is planned to begin at Zuccotti Park and lead to a mass-gathering in front of the New York Stock Exchange prior to the opening bell of the market.
Occupy the Subways
Time: 3:00 PM
Description: This demonstration is planned to involve multiple groups protesting on subway platforms and trains.
Take The Square
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Foley Square, Lower Manhattan
Description: This demonstration is planned to follow Occupy the Subways and to involve large groups gathering and then marching to “the bridges.”
I agree with the many of the Occupiers, and with members of the Tea Party, that there are profound systemic challenges facing the United States, and humanity; however, the goals noted above, along with Tea Party solutions as enunciated by Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Paul Ryan, etc., are patently absurd. While the Tea Party can shut down the Federal Government – many are members of Congress – the Occupiers cannot “Shut Down Wall Street.” They are unarmed. They wear t-shirts, sweat-shirts, and jeans. The NYPD officers surrounding Zuccotti Park are heavily armed and wear riot gear. Similarly, based on my personal observations and my reading news accounts, primarily in the NY Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, it seems that most of the physical assaults and much of the property damage described in the analysis portion of NYPD Shield’s “Threat Assessment” was committed by members of the police and directed against the protesters; including, for example, clearing Zuccotti Park and destroying the property of the occupiers, beginning 1:30 AM local time, Tuesday, November 15. (Note comment 19, to the NY Times Editorial “The Mayor Confronts the Occupiers“. The Mayor DIDN’T confront the occupiers. The Mayor sent in the police who arrested many and destroyed whatever property was left.)
Having said that, I must note that the writers and editors of Popular Logistics are not associated with the hacking group “Anonymous.” And I also would like to respectfully point out that NYPD Shield is, ironically, one of the “online forums, social media groups, and blogs” that is disseminating information – essentially advertising – the demonstrations. (Obviously, Popular Logistics is another.)
RTE News reports on the trial of Ilyich Ramiez Sanchez, also known as “Carlos the Jackal,” captured by French authorities in 1994, is on trial for bombings in France in 1989. From RTE News,
The international terrorist known as “Carlos the Jackal” has gone on trial in Paris in connection four bombings in France in the 1980s,.
11 people were killed and at least 150 were injured in the string of attacks.
The 62-year-old has made no secret of his past as the leader of a gang that carried out attacks on behalf of Warsaw Pact intelligence agencies and far-left or pro-Palestinian causes, but denies the latest French charges.
“I’m a professional revolutionary,” Carlos Ilich Ramirez Sanchez told judge Olivier Leurent this morning.
Speaking before the hearing, French stand-up comic Dieudonne Mbala Mbala, an activist close to far-right circles, demanded “Commander Carlos” be allowed to return home to Venezuela.
In court, Ramirez Sanchez’ lawyers denounced what they called the “unfair trial” – it is being held without a jury and before a panel of anti-terrorism magistrates.
Tweet Nuclear power diminishes National Security and the stability of the electric grid.
Consider the Brunswick, Fort Calhoun, Millstone, North Anna, and Oyster Creek nuclear power plants, and the Fukushima melt-downs. And consider the “Mobley Factor.”
The Brunswick nuclear plants in North Carolina, and the Millstone nuclear power plants in Connecticut were brought to “reduced power” in preparation for Hurricane Irene. The Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey was shut down. The North Anna nuclear plant, about 90 miles from Richmond, Virginia, was shut down Because of the earthquake that hit the east coast of the United States on Tuesday, August, 23, 2011( Popular Logistics coverage here). The Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, nuclear plant, pictured above, near Omaha, Nebraska, shut down in May, 2011, for refueling, remains shut down (losing $1.0 million per day) due to the flooding of the Missouri River that began June 6, 2011. (Popular Logistics coverage here and here, photos are here).
In an emergency we know that nuclear plants will be shut down, and therefore not generating power. However, they will require emergency power and emergency response resources.
“The Mobley Factor” refers to Sharif Mobley, an American currently in prison in Yemen, suspected of ties to Al Queda. Before going to Yemen, Mr. Mobley worked as a laborer in six nuclear power plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, including the Salem and Hope Creek plants in New Jersey, the Peach Bottom, Limerick and Three Mile Island plants in Pennsylvania, and the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland. Mr. Mobley had unrestricted access to those plants. Equipped with a cell phone he could have taken pictures, lots of pictures, also known as “Actionable Intelligence.”
Bloomberg News reported (here) “Federal regulations require nuclear reactors to be in a ‘safe shutdown condition,’ cooled to less than 300 degrees Fahrenheit, two hours before hurricane-force winds strike.” Paradoxical, but nuclear power plants – a source of power – depend on fossil fuel.
The Bloomberg News article continues, “Plant operators typically begin shutting down reactors 12 hours before winds exceeding 74 miles per hour are predicted to arrive, said Roger Hannah, a spokesman with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Region II office in Atlanta.”
Reuters (here) reported that the operators are working to bring online the various nuclear power plants shut down due to the hurricane and the earthquake.
STATE OWNER PLANT STATUS RESTART CAPACITY MW
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Connecticut Dominion Millstone 2 REDUCED UNKNOWN 884
Connecticut Dominion Millstone 3 REDUCED UNKNOWN 1,227
New Jersey Exelon Oyster Creek OFFLINE UNKNOWN 619
N. Carolina Progress Brunswick 1 REDUCED 24-36 Hours 938
N. Carolina Progress Brunswick 1 REDUCED 24-36 Hours 937
Virginia Dominion North Anna 1 OFFLINE UNKNOWN 980.5
Virginia Dominion North Anna 2 OFFLINE UNKNOWN 972.9
Nebraska Fort Calhoun OFFLINE UNKNOWN 484
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Norway has been hit by twin attacks – a massive bomb blast in the capital and a shooting attack on young people at a governing Labour Party youth camp
At least seven people were killed in the bombing, which inflicted huge damage on government buildings in Oslo city centre. Four more died at the camp, on an island outside Oslo, local media said. One witness later said he had seen more than 20 bodies on the island, but police have not confirmed this. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, whose Oslo offices were among those damaged by the bomb, described the situation as “very serious”. Norwegian media reports said the shootings on the island were carried out by a man in police uniform. Police said the suspected gunman had been arrested, and later said he was also linked with the bomb attack, reports said.
No group has said it carried out the attacks.
Hours after the bomb struck Oslo, officials said some people were still inside the damaged buildings, some of which were on fire.
To look at the Israeli blockade of Gaza and not ask:
Why exactly is Israel blockading Gaza?
What would the US do to a flotilla of would-be blockade runners from Venezuela to Cuba?
What would happen if the Palestinians would say to the Israelis ‘Ok, we hate you, we really hate you, but we’re going to stop trying to kill you and your children. Will you please lift the blockade?’
To look at the Israeli blockade of Gaza and not ask these questions is to look with the mind’s eye closed.
A senior Hamas commander was “assassinated in Dubai” by Israel on January 20, according to the Palestinan group. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the 50-year-old founder of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, according to a statement, “died a martyr on 20 January, in suspicious circumstances”. No further details were given. Hamas has stated that it will “retaliate for this Zionist crime at the appropriate moment”, and is calling for a joint enquiry into the death.
Mabhouh, exiled to Syria since 1989, was behind the abduction and murder that year of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sadon, and founded the paramilitary wing of Hamas named after a Syrian religious leader who waged war against the British in the 1930s. Mabhouh also masterminded several other attacks, to the point that Israeli authorities demolished his home in the Gaza strip. Mabhouh spent several periods in Israeli custody. After his most recent release, “he spent his life being hounded by the Zionist occupier until he succeeded in leaving the Gaza Strip”, according to Hamas.
This is not the first alleged killing by Israel of Hamas members. In 2004, the founder of Hamas was killed in an Israeli gunship attack, and, later that year, a senior Hamas member was assassinated when two missiles hit his car.
Dubai’s police chief said Monday that an 11-person team of trained killers with European passports carried out the mysterious assassination of a senior Hamas official last month in a Dubai hotel. The chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim, provided names and photographs of the suspects, along with a detailed account of how they tracked the Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and suffocated him within minutes of his arrival on Jan. 19 at Al Bustan Rotana hotel, near the international airport. The suspects, who disguised themselves with wigs and fake beards, left Dubai immediately after the killing on separate airlines, the chief said. He also said that two Palestinian suspects in the case were arrested in Jordan and extradited to Dubai, where they are now in custody. Mr. Mabhouh played a role in the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989. Hamas has accused Israel of his killing, and has vowed to retaliate.
[Bold/red emphasis added].
If, in fact, the “two Palestinian suspects” are, in fact, Palestinian, and were, in fact, participants in the killing, this would seem very much at odds with the public record of Israeli intelligence operations. Who are they, and what is their alleged involvement? We have no knowledge of the still-new Palestinian legal system, but any international extradition which takes place in less than a month seems, based on experience and knowledge of extraditions between other countries and within the United States, quite rapid.
See also
Robert Mackey’s excellent post, Assassins of Hamas Official Caught on Tape, Dubai Says, which was posted this morning on The Lede. Mr. Mackey makes the case that this is consistent in practice with an Israeli operation. He quotes Irish and British officials denying that the assassins’ Irish and British identity documents were false.
The BBC, in Dubai Hamas killing suspects’ passports ‘faked, reports not only Irish and British officials denying the legitimacy of the documents, but also French and German officials. The suspects used false documents from four countries: 6 British, 3 Irish, one German, and one French. BBC: Pictures of ’11 Europeans’ sought for Hamas killing.The eleven photographs certainly seem to be of people of European origin. The quotation marks around ’11 Europeans’ seem more sensibly to be modifying “European” more than “11.”
If the Israeli government is not responsible for this, its intelligence services probably appreciate the assumption that it is, for purposes of elevating its reputation and deterrence.
The strongest evidence that this was an Israeli operation seems to be that it was done competently. .
