Paris under attack

kscarbel2 · September 12, 2016

Associated Press / September 11, 2016

Australian politician and One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson has again called for Muslims to be banned from entering Australia and slammed the idea that 'lone wolf' terror attacks are carried out by people who are mentally ill.

Joining fellow Senator Derryn Hinch on Monday, they gave support to new anti-terror bills set to be introduced into Parliament this week.

'We've seen that these refugees we've brought in are actually terrorists themselves, so let's take a hard stance on this. We don't know who these people are,' she said.

'There's no sign saying I'm a good Muslim of I'm a bad Muslim. We have to start protecting ourselves and our country.'

Senator Hanson then reacted angrily when Sunrise presenter Natalie Barr pointed out that some recent attackers were mentally ill.

'I don't believe that. They are saying they have been radicalised, and that is the case. Have a look at what they're teaching in the mosques.

'That concerns me as well. Get tough in this country. I don't want to see another Australian killed. What a load of rubbish.'

Senator Hanson reinforced her election pledge that banning Muslim people from migrating to Australia was the only thing that should be done.

Despite acknowledging that 'a lot of Muslims are not terrorists', she repeatedly made it clear that the Australian government must take a 'hard line stance' on the matter.

She called for the complete ban 'because of the mess Australia is in'. The two anti-terror bills are set to be passed by the government in Parliament later this week.

kscarbel2 · September 12, 2016

Associated Press / September 11, 2016

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Sunday, "There will be new attacks. There will be innocent victims."

"Today the threat is at a maximum, and we are a target," Valls said. "Every day intelligence services, police, foil attacks, dismantle networks, track terrorists. There are about 15,000 people in France who are monitored, because these people are in the process of radicalisation."

"We have almost 700 jihadists -- French or French residents -- fighting in Iraq and Syria," Valls said. "Out of these 700 jihadists, I'd like to remind (people) that there are 275 women and several dozens (of) minors."

An additional 196 French jihadists died in Iraq and Syria, he said.

France has been under a state of emergency since IS attacks on Paris in November killed 130 people in what President Francois Hollande called an "act of war".

However, a recent commission of inquiry found the state of emergency was only having a "limited impact" on improving security.

It questioned the deployment of between 6,000 and 7,000 soldiers to protect schools, synagogues, department stores and other sensitive sites.

"Every Frenchman suspected of being linked to terrorism, because he regularly consults a jihadist website, or his behaviour shows signs of radicalisation or because is in close contact with radicalised people, must by preventively placed in a detention centre," says former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

david wild · September 12, 2016

I do not know why anyone has any fear, turd for brains and his look a like turd (CLINTON) claim everything is under control, I fear they are correct, they are most likely behind it all.

kscarbel2 · September 13, 2016

BBC / September 13, 2016

Three Syrian men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of being sent by ISIS to launch attacks.

The men - aged 17, 18 and 26 - were detained after a series of pre-dawn raids in the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony on Tuesday.

Police have seized "extensive material".

Investigations so far indicate the three men came to Germany in November 2015 with the intention of "carrying out a previously determined order [from ISIS] or to await further instructions".

The men traveled through Turkey and Greece on false passports.

Investigators believe the men volunteered for the mission, and the 17-year-old was trained in handling weapons and explosives.

They were arrested when 200 police and security officers raided several premises including three refugee shelters.

kscarbel2 · September 16, 2016

Associated Press / September 14, 2016

A radical Islamist wielding a meat cleaver struck a New York City police officer in the head on Thursday in midtown Manhattan, and two other officers chasing the suspect were also hurt during the incident, police said.

The attacker has been identified as Akram Joudeh, 32.

The attack occurred after two on-duty officers were responding to reports of a crime in progress just before 5 p.m. local time near MadisonSquareGarden.

Three officers were taken to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Mason said the man drew the cleaver from his waist band after two of the officers confronted him, and then the suspect ran. A stun gun had no apparent affect on him.

A third officer, who was off duty and in the area at the time, helped chase the suspect, who ran down the street with the large butcher's knife in his hand.

At one point, the suspect jumped on top of a police car and, as officers attempted to subdue him, the off-duty officer was struck in the head by the cleaver, causing a gash.

After the officer was struck, police opened fire on the suspect. Joudeh was shot multiple times on West 32 Street, near Penn Station.

Joudeh is in the hospital in critical but stable condition at BellevueHospital.

Police were called out at around 5pm after Joudeh was seen trying to remove a boot off his car on West 31 St and Broadway. The vehicle had been parked in the middle of the street.

When police approached, Joudeh went into a rage, pulling out the cleaver and fleeing while 'waving it around.'

A sergeant attempted to stop the suspect with a taser, but for reasons unknown it apparently had no effect.

Officers chased him through the heavily-patrolled area to West 32 St, near Penn Station, where he mounted the grill of a marked police car.

Off-duty detective Brian O’Donnell attempted to tackle Joudeh, and was hit in the face with the cleaver.

Officers tried to talk Joudeh into dropping the weapon, but he refused - at which point they fired 18 times, hitting him with multiple bullets.

Two other officers sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

Joudeh had a long criminal record with 15 arrests.

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kscarbel2 · September 19, 2016

The New York Times / September 18, 2016

A radical Islamist Somali immigrant, identified as Dahir A. Adan, age 22, stabbed nine people on Saturday night at Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

The FBI is investigating as a “potential act of terrorism.”

Adan, who arrived in the U.S. fifteen years ago, was asking people if they were Muslim and stabbing those who said they were not.

Nine people were injured in the 8:00pm attack before an off-duty police officer fatally shot the knife-wielding man.

The nine victims included seven men and two women who ranged in age from 15 to 53.

The attacker, who was dressed in a security guard uniform, mentioned Allah and asked at least one victim if he was Muslim. All nine victims were expected to survive.

Chief William Blair Anderson of the St. Cloud police told reporters at the scene, “It has hit home for us,” adding, “But I want everybody in St. Cloud to know that we will be diligent and we will get to the bottom of this.”

“It’s an awful day, honestly,” Chief Anderson said.

In a phone interview on Sunday morning, Mayor Dave Kleis said the mall, Crossroads Center, was an active crime scene and would remain closed. He praised the off-duty police officer, who he said had “clearly saved lives and protected the other individuals.”

“This is exactly what keeps me up at night, and last night it did,” Mr. Kleis said. “This could happen in any community in this country, and certainly we have seen it happen. Certainly it is something that really scares a community.”

Mayor Kleis [improperly] identified the off-duty officer as Jason Falconer, a police officer in nearby Avon, Minnesota.

Kleis said video footage of the shooting showed Officer Falconer confronting the attacker in a Macy’s store and shooting him as he charged with a knife.

“For me watching it, it looked like a training video for what law enforcement should do,” Kleis said.

The mayor said the wounded included seven men, one woman and a teenage girl, all from the St. Cloud area.

The stabbing event in Minnesota occurred on the same day that 29 people in New York City were injured in an explosion and that an explosive device detonated near the route of a race in New Jersey.

The FBI is becoming convinced that the New York and New Jersey episodes were connected, but have given no indication of a link to the stabbing in St. Cloud.

Chief Anderson said officers had searched two local residences on Sunday in connection with the case. He said the police had had at least three prior interactions with the attacker, mostly for minor traffic violations.

St. Cloud, a city of about 67,000 residents, is about an hour’s drive northwest of Minneapolis.

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kscarbel2 · September 19, 2016

The New York Times / September 18, 2016

A radical Islamist bomb that injured 29 people on Saturday in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, and another that failed to detonate, were filled with shrapnel and made with pressure cookers, flip phones and Christmas lights that set off a powerful explosive compound.

Both bombs were designed to create maximum chaos and fatalities — they also provided a trove of clues even as any suspects remained unnervingly at large.

The bomb that exploded, at 23rd Street, was filled with small bearings or metal BBs. A second device on 27th Street that did not explode appeared to be filled with the same material.

Radical Islamist Afghan immigrant Ahmad Khan Rahami, age 28, has been arrested in Elizabeth, New Jersey for the bombing and charged with five counts of attempted murder and two gun charges. Bail was set at $5.2 million [Bail ???]. A video places him with a duffel bag at both the 23rd and 27th Street bomb locations. Fingerprints off a cellphone utilized on the improvised bombs identified Rahami.

The FBI says Rahami made a trip back to Afghanistan in April 2013, and several to Pakistan over the last decade. He has a firearm license.

Officials are increasingly focused on the possibility that the attack was connected to a bombing that took place 11 hours earlier in New Jersey. There, three pipe bombs were tied together, placed in a trash can and also employed by a flip cellphone as a timing mechanism. Only one of the three pipe bombs detonated and no one was injured. The explosive in that device appeared to be black powder.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said “there is no evidence of an international terrorism connection with this incident.”

It was unclear why Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio dismissed with such certainty a tie to international terror.

Experts said the New York bomb’s construction offered conflicting clues. The explosive material was similar to a commercially available compound called Tannerite. It is made by combining ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder, is frequently used in exploding targets at firearms ranges and has rarely been used in improvised explosive devices in the United States. But the materials are easy to buy here because each one on its own is not an explosive.

At the same time, other evidence from the bomb seemed to point overseas. Pressure cookers have been a container of choice for many improvised explosive devices over the years. They were used in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 based on a model in publications put out by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.

An expert on IEDs used by terrorists around the world said that a device constructed with a cellular phone as a timer and Christmas lights as an initiator would indicate a higher-than-average competence than is usually found in the United States. “Most of what we in the United States is a pipe bomb with black powder or smokeless powder or a simple hobby fuse,” said the expert. “This would be the high-end of sophistication for IEDs in the United States.”

Late on Sunday, FBI agents were seen tearing apart a car of an Uber driver, who said the law enforcement officials were searching for possible evidence related to the attack.

The bomb in Manhattan was placed under a steel dumpster, and was powerful enough to catapult it across the street.

The 29 people who were wounded mostly suffered cuts and abrasions and had all been released from the hospital by Sunday morning.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill said the unexploded device was found by two state troopers as they walked down 27th Street after calls to 911 alerted the police to a suspicious device. It was being examined by bomb technicians at a police facility in Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx.

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kscarbel2 · September 19, 2016

The Guardian / September 19, 2016

Five explosive devices have been found in a backpack near Elizabeth train station in New Jersey.

Two men called police after discovering the backpack with wires and a pipe coming out of it in a garbage can around 8:30 p.m. Sunday at North Broad Street and Julian Place.

One of the devices exploded at 12:30 a.m. Monday when a bomb squad robot tried to disarm it by cutting a wire.

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kscarbel2 · September 20, 2016

Associated Press / September 19, 2016

Five armed Afghan men in an SUV were arrested Sunday night around 9:30 p.m. in connection with the New York explosion, following a traffic stop conducted by the FBI and NYPD on the Belt Parkway near the Verrazano–Narrows Bridge.

The men were believed to be headed out of town or on their way to the airport.

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kscarbel2 · September 28, 2016

Isis poses 'sustained' threat to US for years to come despite loss of territory

The Guardian / September 27, 2016

Intelligence chiefs warn that pushing Isis out of Iraq and Syria will lead to the spread of operatives around the world rather than the end of the jihadi army

The United States will face years of “sustained vulnerability” from Islamic State fighters even after the fall of its so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria, intelligence chiefs have warned.

Giving evidence in the wake of the recent bombings in New York and New Jersey bombings, they told a Senate panel on Tuesday that pushing Isis out of the territory it has claimed will lead to a diaspora of operatives in the US and Europe rather than the destruction of the jihadi army.

Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, expanded upon an emerging consensus within US intelligence circles, saying: “The effects we’re looking to see are simply going be delayed or lag behind the physical progress on the battlefield,” Rasmussen told the Senate homeland security and government affairs committee.

“It’s not surprising. It puts us in a period of sustained vulnerability that I don’t think any of us are comfortable with, but it’s a reality.” He doubted that such a period would end within a year of the caliphate’s downfall.

Not only has the US-led war against Isis in Iraq and Syria not “significantly diminished” the group’s external terrorism operations, Rasmussen testified, “we don’t think battlefield or territorial losses alone will be sufficient to completely degrade the group’s terrorism capabilities – necessary, but not sufficient.”

James Comey, the director of the FBI, told senators he believed “at least hundreds” of Isis operatives would exfiltrate from Iraq and Syria for years, with a potency exceeding the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s 1980s counterinsurgency in Afghanistan that led to al-Qaida.

“There will be a terrorist diaspora some time in the next two to five years like we’ve never seen before,” Comey said, particularly “up into Europe”.

His remarks come as the FBI is coming under sustained political pressure to expand its investigative focus on potential homegrown terrorists after it closed several preliminary inquiries, due to lack of pretext, on people who went on to commit attacks.

While losing its oil-rich territory in Iraq and its smuggling channels in Syria will diminish the group’s finances, Rasmussen noted that Isis’s major expenses lie in governing the approximately 6 million people residing in its caliphate, not funding operatives – let alone inspiring more, or loosely aiding those it inspires.

Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, told senators that his department was moving to a way of understanding different categories of domestic terrorism beyond those at one end of the spectrum which were clearly directed by a terrorist group like Isis, and another subset involving independent “lone wolf” instances of self-radicalization.

Emerging recent patterns in terrorism have prompted an understanding of “terrorist-enabled attacks”, where perpetrators may draw on methods widely shared by jihadi groups. He also identified “terrorist-validated attacks”, where “a terrorist organization takes credit after the fact” for an assault which it approves of, but had no part in.

Comey extensively praised FBI agents and their partners in New York and New Jersey law enforcement for the rapidity with which a suspect in the 17-18 September bombings was identified, arrested and charged, saying the close coordination was “unimaginable” 15 years ago.

But two prominent legislators, including the Senate’s leading privacy advocate, grilled Comey about revelations that the FBI had closed preliminary investigations on Orlando nightclub killer Omar Mateen and New York/New Jersey defendant Ahmed Khan Rahami.

Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who lost a bid for the GOP presidential nomination to Donald Trump and a self-declared “stickler for probable cause”, chided the FBI for closing the preliminary inquiries while seeking new powers to obtain communications data on a lower evidentiary standard.

Comey, who pledged to forthrightly study and admit FBI mistakes, twice said Paul misunderstood the facts of the cases. The FBI has defended the closures for lacking a sufficient evidentiary basis at the time to sustain.

But Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, prompted Comey to concede that the FBI did not conduct a review of the Orlando killer’s social media postings, which were public and would not have required a warrant to peruse, particularly since Comey has for years expressed alarm about extremism on social media.

To combat the anticipated jihadi diaspora, the National Counterterrorism Center’s Rasmussen urged the US to overhaul its highly controversial watch-listing system for border and travel protection over the next decade. Though the US is “probably the most aggressive identity collectors of potential terrorists”, Rasmussen told the Senate panel, the system is vulnerable to false identities.

“It is still a name based system and it needs to transform into a biometric system,” Rasmussen said.

Edited September 28, 2016 by kscarbel2

kscarbel2 · October 12, 2016

Bear in mind that only 12.5% to 15% of the news you read is complete and accurate (less on CNN since Ted Turner exited), but I long suspected that Qatar and Saudi Arabia, if not all six of the Gulf Cooperation Council* countries were funding ISIS.

* Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates

Look at the date of her memo to Podesta, August 2014. And yet, you haven't heard a word from our government. Go figure.

Now, during her tenure as Secretary of State, it is said that the Clinton Foundation received "donations" from both Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The plot thickens.

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Associated Press / October 12, 2016

The Clinton campaign today tried to tamp down a mounting controversy over a newly disclosed, and potentially explosive, email in which the former secretary of state accuses the Saudi and Qatari governments of secretly funding the Islamic State.

On Aug. 17, 2014 — eight months before she declared her candidacy for president — Clinton sent a detailed strategy for combating the Islamic State, which she referred to as ISIL, in an email to John Podesta, then a White House counselor and now her campaign chairman.

Along with a military campaign to roll back the terror group in Iraq, the Clinton email talks about confronting the Saudis and the Qataris, both key U.S. allies, over what she refers to as governmental backing of ISIL.

The Clinton email states: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

As a basis for the assertions, Clinton in the email cites “Western intelligence, U.S. intelligence and sources in the region.”

The email was among thousands hacked from Podesta’s private Gmail account and released this week by WikiLeaks in what appears to be an attempt to embarrass the Clinton campaign. The campaign has struggled to respond to the contents of the emails, insisting it does not want to authenticate material that it and the U.S. government now believe came from a Russian state-sponsored cyberattack. The campaign would not say whether Clinton personally wrote the email, which reads like a position or policy paper, although it was sent from her private email account.

“These are hacked, stolen documents by the Russian government, which has weaponized WikiLeaks to help elect Donald Trump,” Glen Caplin, a senior Clinton campaign spokesman, told Yahoo News. “We’re not going to confirm the authenticity of any specific alleged communication.”

At the same time, a campaign aide also argued that the sentiment expressed in the email “isn’t new.”

Clinton “has repeatedly called out the Saudis and Qataris for supporting terrorism,” said the aide, declining to be named. [Why ???]

As evidence, the aide pointed to Clinton’s remarks in a speech last November. “And, once and for all, the Saudis, the Qataris, and others need to stop their citizens from directly funding extremist organizations, as well as schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path toward radicalization,” she said then.

In yet another instance cited by the aide, Clinton asserted in a September 2015 speech at the Brookings Institution that “nobody can deny that much of the extremism in the world today is a direct result of policies and funding undertaken by the Saudi government and individuals. We would be foolish not to recognize that. “

But in that and other remarks, Clinton appeared to be referring to general Saudi support for Islamic mosques that have been accused of spreading extremist ideology while calling out its government for not cracking down on private citizens sending money to terror organizations. In her email to Podesta, she goes beyond this, saying the Saudi and Qatari governments themselves are funding ISIS — a far more serious allegation with potentially more dramatic diplomatic implications. And one that has riled up critics of Saudi Arabia here in the U.S.

“Clearly, this Clinton email shows the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is continuing to covertly fund and logically support terrorist groups that kill Americans,” said Kristen Breitweiser, one of the leaders of the 9/11 family members who have been lobbying for recently enacted legislation — opposed by the Obama administration — that would allow them to sue the Saudis in federal court over their support for al-Qaeda. “Apparently, everybody in Washington knows that the Saudis are doing this, yet the White House and the State Department are against holding them accountable.”

Breitweiser added about the contents of the email: “This is a clear example of the difference between how people speak to each other privately compared to what they say publicly.”

Clinton broke with Obama over the legislation Breitweiser lobbied for; her campaign said she would have signed the bill allowing U.S. citizens to sue countries that sponsored terrorism into law.

The Saudi government, through Qorvis Communications, one of its lobbying and public relations firms, responded to questions about the email Tuesday, saying it would not comment on “leaked documents,” but adding that the allegations of government funding are “preposterous and simply defy logic.”

“Saudi Arabia is on the forefront of fighting terrorism in the region and around the world,” the Saudi statement said. “Daesh (an Arabic term for the Islamic State) is a sworn enemy of Saudi Arabia. It has called for the overthrow of the Saudi government and made the gulf kingdom its main target because it is the birthplace of Islam and home to the Two Holy Mosques.”

Noting the military and other actions the Saudi government has taken to fight the Islamic State — including “an aggressive public education and ideological campaign” to discredit the group, the Saudi statement added: “Saudi Arabia has long-maintained that it will thoroughly investigate any reports of funding of terrorist organizations by Saudi citizens or institutions.”

It’s unclear if Clinton actually wrote the email herself or was simply passing along a policy paper that was written by an aide or some other source. The lengthy document is in many respects unlike any of the mostly terse emails from her private email account that have been made public by the State Department. (Some former top U.S. national security experts last week warned that the Russians may seek to “doctor” leaked material, but the Clinton campaign has yet to offer evidence that any of the WikiLeaks emails were forged or tampered with.) And the rest of the positions outlined in the email — such as stepped-up air campaign and arming the Kurds — match closely with Clinton’s publicly stated positions on how to fight ISIS.

Still, the email goes much further than Clinton or President Barack Obama have before in publicly pointing a finger at U.S. allies for funding ISIS. But it does appear to reflect views that have been shared privately by some in the White House.

A few months after Clinton sent this email, Vice President Joe Biden was forced to apologize for similar remarks. He told a group of students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that “our allies” contributed to the rise of ISIS.

“The Turks… the Saudis, the Emirates, etc., what were they doing? They were so determined to take down [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad,” Biden said then.

Asked about the content of the Clinton email, White House spokesman Edward Price said: “We’ll decline to comment on purportedly leaked emails.”

Clinton sent the email to Podesta when he still worked for Obama as counselor. He became Clinton’s campaign chair in January of 2015.

Adding to the potential awkwardness for her campaign, Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta, runs one of Washington’s biggest lobbying firms, which in September 2015 signed a contract to lobby for the Saudi government.

A few weeks later, Tony Podesta held a Clinton campaign fundraiser, attended by John Podesta, and has since been listed as one of the campaign’s chief “bundlers” or premier fundraisers. The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment about whether the candidate believes it is appropriate to accept campaign donations from someone who has lobbied for a government she believes is sponsoring terrorism.

Podesta refused a request for comment.

kscarbel2 · October 12, 2016

Bear in mind that only 12.5% to 15% of the news you read is complete and accurate (less on CNN since Ted Turner exited), but I long suspected that Qatar and Saudi Arabia, if not all six of the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries* were funding ISIS.

* Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates

Look at the date of her memo to Podesta, August 2014. And yet, you haven't heard a word from our government. Go figure.

Now, during her tenure as Secretary of State, it is said that the Clinton Foundation received "donations" from both Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The plot thickens.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Associated Press / October 12, 2016

The Clinton campaign today tried to tamp down a mounting controversy over a newly disclosed, and potentially explosive, email in which the former secretary of state accuses the Saudi and Qatari governments of secretly funding the Islamic State.