Archive for May 5, 2015

The Texas ISIS attack was not averted owing to US “human intelligence” deficit

May 5, 2015

The Texas ISIS attack was not averted owing to US “human intelligence” deficit, DEBKAfile, May 5, 2015

Elton_Simpson_30.4.15Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, Texas

(“Racial” profiling? Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before? Oh. Wait. That would offend Islamists. — DM)

 

That Simpson and Soofi were permitted to get so far is best explained by a certain weakness in the human intelligence capabilities of US and Western intelligence, the shortage of undercover agents able to mingle in communities and populations with the potential for producing radical elements capable of committing terrorist murder and suicide in the name of their faith. These agents must be able to pass unnoticed in mosques, bazaars and cafes, and have an ear for local dialects, street talk and inflections, so as to catch onto dangers through innuendo.

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The two American gunmen who Sunday, May 3, tried – and failed – to shoot up an exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, northeast of Dallas, sounded a wakeup call for US intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies – even before the Islamic State warned that this first attack on US soil would not be its last. The two homegrown terrorists, Elton Simpson, a Christian who converted to Islam, and Nadir Soofi, son of a Pakistani father and American mother, carried submachine guns and explosives and wore body armor – attesting to the existence of an organization behind the attack.

That organization is believed to be made up of small sleeper cells of two to three terrorists each, ready to spring into action on orders from distant controllers.

Both were young men in their mid-twenties. The half-Pakistani Muslim Soofi scraped a living from cleaning carpets, while Simpson was out of work. They failed to perpetrate mass murder because they made every possible mistake. And so after inflicting a scratch on one of the unarmed guards, both were shot dead by local police officers securing the “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest” at the Curtis Culwell Center, which offered a $10,000 prize for the best artwork or cartoon depicting the Prophet.

For the past two years, Simpson and Soofi have been running posts and images on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram extolling the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and all its works, threatening American Christians with revenge and declaring that terrorist attacks were coming.

Shortly before the Dallas event opened, an explicit threat to mete out punishment to those insulting the Prophet Mohammad in Texas, like in Denmark and Paris, appeared on a Twitter account (since de-activated) belonging to AbuHussainAlBritani, known to security services as an ISIS platform.

Simpson had been known as an FBI target since 2010. Then, he made no secret of his plans to travel to Somalia, take advanced studies in Islam and die as a martyr. He was arrested , convicted only of making a false statement to the forces of the law and released on probation. After that, a double agent persuaded him to talk for hundreds of hours on tape, candidly admitting that he intended one day in the future to take part in a deadly terrorist operation.

Yet Simpson was not detained, or even placed under extra surveillance.

Data flowing from Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is critical in the war on terror: social networks like Twitter and Facebook serve terrorists around the world widely for passing information, arranging rendezvous, filling in the gaps of operational directives and, above all, disseminating their messages.
The US National Security Agency, as well as European and other agencies, maintain blanket surveillance of the social networks, transferring their content in almost real time to giant computers at agency headquarters for filtering and analysis. It is hard to understand how the radical online messages and outspoken tweets by Soofi and Simpson, which left no room to doubt their intentions, escaped interface by those computers with their past records and views.

The pair was therefore free to drive from Arizona to Texas in late April, in a car registered in one of their names, and armed with machine guns.

They pulled up at the Curtis Culwelll center, where the Mohammed cartoon exhibit opened in the presence of Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which has sponsored anti-Islamic advertising campaigns across the country, and Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician and anti-Islamic campaigner who is on an al Qaeda hit list. When they reached their destination, they were not stopped until they actually started shooting – and only then thanks to the fast reflexes of a police guard on the spot.

That Simpson and Soofi were permitted to get so far is best explained by a certain weakness in the human intelligence capabilities of US and Western intelligence, the shortage of undercover agents able to mingle in communities and populations with the potential for producing radical elements capable of committing terrorist murder and suicide in the name of their faith. These agents must be able to pass unnoticed in mosques, bazaars and cafes, and have an ear for local dialects, street talk and inflections, so as to catch onto dangers through innuendo.

Digital intelligence, however extensive, is no substitute for human intelligence. It takes an undercover human agent on the ground to pick up on terrorist threats in time to thwart attacks.

N. Korea Submarine Missile Allows Covert Nuclear Strike on US

May 5, 2015

N. Korea Submarine Missile Allows Covert Nuclear Strike on US, Israel National News, Ari Yashar, May 5, 2015

(Perhaps North Korea and Iran can make a deal — North Korea gets sanctions-relief money and Iran gets missile equipment and nukes for its submarines. Or maybe Iran could just pay North Korea to attack the U.S. mainland.– DM)

img369953Military submarine (illustration) Reuters

[I]t was reported last month that US President Barack Obama hid intel from the UN about North Korea transferring rocket components needed to create a nuclear missile to Iran even during the nuclear talks, to try and prevent the UN from acting on the information with increased sanctions.

[O]nce the KN-11 and mobile KN-08 “systems go operational, it potentially gives North Korea a dual threat for attacking the United States with nuclear or chemical weapons – a threat generated from difficult to detect mobile platforms on both land and sea.”

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In a worrying step showing North Korea’s rapidly expanding nuclear strike capabilities, the Communist regime recently held a test of a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), the first time it has launched a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead from underwater.

According to US defense officials cited by the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday, the test took place on April 22 from an underwater test platform near the coastal city of Sinpo in the southeast of the country, and tested what the US is calling a KN-11 missile.

The test appears to have been successful, and is the third KN-11 test showing the high-priority of the nuclear missile program for North Korea. Previous tests in January and last October were from a sea-based platform not underwater and a land-based platform.

The KN-11 joins the KN-08 mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) as being part of a varied North Korean missile arsenal on platforms that would be hard for the US to detect, and consequently allow a strike that would be difficult to shoot down.

Admiral Bill Gortney, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command, admitted last month that North Korea could hit the continental US with a nuclear strike. That admission accompanied the announcement that NORAD is reopening its nuclear-EMP-proof Cheyenne Mountain bunker, apparently amid renewed concerns of an EMP attack by which a nuclear weapon would be detonated over the US, knocking out all of its electronic devices, and thereby rendering it defenseless to secondary nuclear strikes.

The latest launch test also comes after Chinese experts warned the US last month that American estimates are wrong and North Korea actually has 20 nuclear weapons, with that arsenal to double next year thanks to the regime’s higher than anticipated advanced enrichment capabilities.

Nuclear strikes the US won’t see coming

Admiral Cecil D. Haney, commander of the Strategic Command, confirmed the SLBM launch test in comments to the Senate on March 19, reports the Washington Free Beacon. The program is in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Regarding the UN, it was reported last month that US President Barack Obama hid intel from the UN about North Korea transferring rocket components needed to create a nuclear missile to Iran even during the nuclear talks, to try and prevent the UN from acting on the information with increased sanctions.

Former US Defense Intelligence Agency official Bruce Bechtol, Jr. told the paper that North Korea’s SLBM program is meant to give it the ability to strike the US, and to not have the strike be detected in advance.

“With an SLBM they get both,” said Bechtol. “The submarine can get the platform to launch the missile within range of the continental United States, Alaska, or Hawaii. Thus, once operational, this immediately brings key nodes in the United States within range of what would likely be a nuclear armed missile.”

He noted that once the KN-11 and mobile KN-08 “systems go operational, it potentially gives North Korea a dual threat for attacking the United States with nuclear or chemical weapons – a threat generated from difficult to detect mobile platforms on both land and sea.”

Obama is bringing the US to “tragedy”

A number of American officials responded sharply to the KN-11 test, placing the blame squarely on Obama’s shoulders.

“This missile, along with the KN-08, happened on Obama’s watch and nothing has been done,” one US intelligence official told the Washington Free Beacon.

Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton added his criticism, saying, “by utterly ignoring North Korea’s growing missile threats, Obama has allowed the threat of rogue state proliferators to fall out of the center of the national political debate.”

“This is a potential tragedy for the country,” Bolton warned.

Air Force Lt. Gen. (ret.) Thomas McInerney said that the KN-08 and KN-11 programs constitute “threats to the continental United States and have been developed under the Obama administration’s leadership.”

“Leading from behind is a failed strategy as evidenced by this very dangerous strategic threat to the continental United States of nuclear attack by a very unstable North Korean government,” said McInerney.

The general also spoke about Obama’s admission that the nuclear deal being formed with Iran will allow it to obtain a nuclear weapon in under 15 years if it doesn’t breach conditions and obtain it sooner, noting that the deal “puts the United States in the most dangerous threat of nuclear attack since the height of the Cold War but from multiple threats – North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran.”

Opponents of the nuclear deal being formulated with Iran ahead of a June 30 deadline have warned it follows in the footsteps of the failed deal sealed by then-President Bill Clinton with North Korea in 1994.

Despite the deal, North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, just over ten years after the agreement.

Cartoonists are Controversial and Murderers are Moderate

May 5, 2015

Cartoonists are Controversial and Murderers are Moderate, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 5, 2015

garland1-450x330

[I]f you believe the media, cartoonists are more controversial than killers. A former Muslim sketching a cartoon of Mohammed is bigoted, but justifying attacks on Jews is moderate. Plotting to overthrow the United States and replace it with an Islamic theocracy is right up the alley of your local civil rights group, but a cartoon contest threatens the nation and all of creation by bringing down the wrath of men who spent their time at moderate and Muslim organizations which only occasionally support terrorism.

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Controversial, intolerant and provocative. Mainstream media outlets broke out these three words to describe the “Draw the Prophet” contest, the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Pamela Geller.

While the police were still checking cars for explosives and attendees waited to be released, CNN called AFDI, rather than the terrorists who attacked a cartoon contest, “intolerant.” Time dubbed the group “controversial.” The Washington Post called the contest, “provocative.”

Many media outlets relied on the expert opinion of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a multi-million dollar mail order scam disguised as a civil rights group, which had listed AFDI as a hate group. Also listed as hate groups were a number of single author blogs, including mine, a brand of gun oil and a bar sign.

The bar sign, which hangs outside a bar seven miles outside Pittsburgh, appears to be made out of metal and plastic. It is reportedly unaware that it is a hate group and has made no plans to take over America.

The SPLC’s inability to conduct even the most elementary fact checking did not stop news networks from inviting its talking head on to suggest that AFDI got “the response that they — in a sense — they are seeking.” Neither CNN nor MSNBC were impolitic enough to mention that no AFDI supporter had used its materials to plan a killing spree, while at least one of SPLC’s supporters had done just that.

But being “controversial” and “provocative” has nothing to do with who is doing the shooting. It’s a media signal that the target shouldn’t be sympathized with. The Family Research Council, which was shot up by a killer using the SPLC’s hate map, is invariably dubbed “intolerant.” The SPLC, which targeted it, is however a “respected civil rights group” which provides maps to respected civil rights gunmen.

A contest in which Bosch Fawstin, an ex-Muslim, drew a cartoon of a genocidal warlord is “controversial” and “provocative,” while the MSA, which has invited Sheikh Khalid Yasin, who has inspired a number of terrorists, including apparently one of the Mohammed contest attackers, is a legitimate organization that is only criticized by controversial, intolerant and provocative Islamophobes.

Khalid Yasin has held such controversial and provocative views as claiming that the US created AIDS, that gays should be stoned to death and that women should be beaten. But the mosques and MSAs that he has appeared at have not been described as controversial, intolerant and provocative for inviting him.

Elton Simpson, the first gunman, attended the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. The mosque was listed as being controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood’s North American Islamic Trust front group.

The Muslim Brotherhood holds such controversial and provocative views as “waging Jihad” against American infidels, “raising a Jihadi generation that pursues death” and “destroying the Western civilization from within.” Despite these extremely provocative and intolerant views, the Muslim Brotherhood is usually described by the media as a “moderate” group.

The Brotherhood’s American arm believes in launching a “Grand Jihad” to Islamize America. Its final phase calls for “Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation” in the United State.

Some might say this is a slightly more controversial activity than drawing cartoons of a dead warlord.

The Islamic Community Center of Phoenix featured an appearance by Lauren Booth, a convert to Islam employed by Iran, who has been photographed with the leader of Hamas, and holds such controversial and provocative views, as the Boston Marathon bombing being faked and attacks on Jews being justified as “a frustrated backlash.

Some might say Booth’s views are controversial, provocative and intolerant. And that the gunman’s mosque was intolerant for inviting her. But don’t expect the media to call out terrorist intolerance.

Booth came as part of a fundraising effort for the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which funded the defense for Islamic Jihad boss Sami al-Arian and aided some of the terrorists involved in the provocative and controversial Fort Dix terror plot to “kill as many soldiers as possible.”

If the two Mohammed cartoon gunmen had survived, the Muslim Legal Fund of America might be having Lauren Booth spout Jewish conspiracies to fundraise on their behalf.

But if you believe the media, cartoonists are more controversial than killers. A former Muslim sketching a cartoon of Mohammed is bigoted, but justifying attacks on Jews is moderate. Plotting to overthrow the United States and replace it with an Islamic theocracy is right up the alley of your local civil rights group, but a cartoon contest threatens the nation and all of creation by bringing down the wrath of men who spent their time at moderate and Muslim organizations which only occasionally support terrorism.

Cartoons can be provocative, but the only people inspired to kill over them, are killers. No one took a shot at Gary “Punching Up” Trudeau, despite decades of mocking conservatives. None of the assorted arts projects that involve defiling and mocking the sacred symbols of Christianity and Judaism resulted in gunmen in body armor trying to storm a cartoon competition. And yet it keeps happening with Islam.

Satire exposes sociopaths and sociopathic ideologies. And it’s the very attack on the “controversial” and “provocative” contest that shows why exposing them is so important.

Elton Simpson had already been on the radar of the FBI. He should have been in jail, but Judge Mary H. Murguia, a Clinton appointee who has been bandied about as a possible Obama Supreme Court nominee, chose to believe a claim by his public defender that when he was taped talking about Jihad, it might have meant “an internal struggle to maintain faith,” instead of killing non-Muslims.

Simpson had said that Allah loves those who fight non-Muslims, that Jihadists go to paradise and stated, “I’m tellin’ you man. We gonna make it to the battlefield… it’s time to roll.”

But that was just too ambiguous for Judge Murguia, who wrote, “It is true that the Defendant had expressed sympathy and admiration for individuals who “fight” non-Muslims as well as his belief in the establishment of Shariah law, all over the world including in Somalia. What precisely was meant by “fighting” whenever he discussed it, however, was not clear.”

“Neither was what the Defendant meant when he stated he wanted to get to the ‘battlefield’ in Somalia,” she added.

If nothing else, events like these help clarify the question of just what “fighting” non-Muslims involves, and whether it’s an internal struggle to maintain faith or an external struggle waged with assault rifles.

Satire helps expose the idiocy and absurdity of our betters, whether it’s Gary Trudeau or Judge Murguia. Every act of Islamic terror discredits them and their dishonest worldview even further. And they know it.

We cannot fight Islamic terrorism until we deal with it and we cannot deal with it as long as we are burdened by a political establishment that frantically censors any mention of its existence or its agenda.

The two gunmen did not attack the cartoon event simply because they were offended, but because they believed that their religion gave them a mandate to impose Islamic law on Americans. Until we deal with this supremacist reality, any effort to fight Islamic terrorists will be futile and will ultimately fail.

The Mohammed cartoons are so vital because they expose the theocracy at the heart of Islamic terrorism. When Muslim terrorists attack cartoonists, they’re not fighting our foreign policy; they are killing and dying to impose the foreign policy of the Muslim Brotherhood and its numerous daughter groups, such as Al Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS, on us.

The controversial and provocative cartoonists go into battle with pencils in their hands. The terrorists come with body armor and assault rifles. This clash is what real political dissent looks like.

The cartoonists believe in the controversial, intolerant and provocative idea that America should not be a theocracy. But the only people who should be provoked by that provocative idea are the Jihadists who want to impose a theocracy on America and the useful idiots lying and denying on their behalf.

Iranian Supreme Leader following Lausanne Declaration: Nothing Has Been Achieved So Far

May 5, 2015

Iranian Supreme Leader following Lausanne Declaration: Nothing Has Been Achieved So Far, MEMRI TV via You Tube, May 5, 2015

(Khamenei delivered this speech last month, but this fourteen minute video includes some comments I had not seen him make previously. — DM)

Islam Has Worn Out Its Welcome In America. (And Many Other Countries As Well)

May 5, 2015

Wild Bill – Did Pamela Geller Bait the Muslims?


(Why yes…now that you mention it, yes they have worn out their welcome. – LS)

Aspiring Terrorists in Texas Learn Valuable Lesson About Second Amendment Rights.

May 5, 2015

GUNS: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GARLAND AND PARIS
by AWR HAWKINS 3 May 2015 Via Breitbart


(Give serious consideration to getting a concealed carry permit. You have the right to defend yourself here in the US and many other countries throughout the world. Check your laws closely, then carry, carry, carry. The Keltec PMR 30 pictured above is my current carry. 22 magnum, light, 30 round mag. Not a big caliber, but powerful as hell and plenty of rounds to make sure you hit your mark. Right now, the left would like nothing more than to disarm the police here in the US. This is an extremely dangerous trend as we saw in Paris. Be prepared. Don’t let this happen in your neighborhood. Stay safe everyone. – LS)

When armed terrorists attacked Charlie Hebdo headquarters over Muhammad cartoons on January 7, unarmed police officers were forced to flee for their lives. When armed men attacked people gathered in Garland, Texas, on May 3 over Prophet Muhammad cartoons, armed police cut them down — and the Daily Mail reported that the body of one was left lying the street while police searched for explosives.

The difference between Garland and Paris can be summed up in one word: guns.

On January 7, CBS News relayed reports from Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that the first two officers to arrive “were apparently unarmed” and “fled after seeing gunmen armed with automatic weapons and possibly a grenade launcher.” The UK’sIndependent reported that “three policemen arrived on bikes but had to leave because [the attackers] were armed.”

BBC reported the Paris gunmen killed 12 in their attack on Charlie Hebdo headquarters; that number includes 8 Charlie Hebdo “eight journalists, two police officers, a caretaker and a visitor.”

Moreover, the terrorists were able to continue their attack at different points in and around the city for the next 48 hours.

On January 19, Breitbart News reported that French police were demanding more guns as well as guns that were more powerful.  The Charlie Hebdo attack was very lopsided — in favor of the terrorists — because of policing and arms policies, and had revealed a very important point: Gun control was not working.

Fast forward to Garland, Texas on Sunday, where approximately 75 attendees gathered in the Curtis Culwell Center to attend a contest for the best cartoon of Muhammad. The contest was sponsored by New York-based American Freedom Defense Initiative.

Just before the contest ended, two armed men allegedly drove up near the Culwell Center and shot and wounded a security guard before both were killed by heavily-armed Garland PD.

According to a City of Garland May 3 press release:

As today’s Muhammad Art Exhibit event at the Curtis Culwell Center was coming to an end, two males drove up to the front of the building in a car. Both males were armed and began shooting at a Garland ISD security officer. The GISD security officer’s injuries are not life-threatening. Garland Police officers engaged the gunmen, who were both shot and killed.

There was no prolonged, two-day pursuit of attackers, nor were there unarmed police officers dodging bullets on their bicycles. But there were plenty of guns in the hands of good guys who were keeping watch over the cartoon contest and who were charged with stopping any bad guys with guns who might show up.