BZ
Gun Free Zones
Category Archives: terrorism
Another reason I like Benjamin Netanyahu:
French President Hollande didn’t want Bibi at the Paris march, but Netanyahu came anyway.
Netanyahu, Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, France’s President Francois Hollande, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, EU President Donald Tusk, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas march during a rally in Paris. Jan. 11, 2015. (AP)
From ZeroHedge.com:
Hollande Furious After Netanyahu Participates In Paris March, Disobeying French President’s Request
by Tyler Durden
There was one world leader who was out of step with the rest of political elite during yesterday’s theatrical procession of world leaders for French unity and for press freedom (even as the bulk of them engage in prosecution of freedom of speech across their own nations): Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, as Reuters reports, he managed to “ruffle a few feathers while taking part in the “Charlie Hebdo” rally in Paris on Sunday” because this was an event his office initially said he would not be attending following a specific request form French president Hollande not to come to Paris, but ultimately ended up participating in much to the Chagrin of the French president.
As Reuters further reports, “a video posted on Facebook, the news footage mockingly set to the Looney Tunes cartoon music, showed Netanyahu maneuvering his way to the front of the rally with the help of several bodyguards, allowing him to be photographed arm-in-arm with other leaders, including French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Those pictures were quickly posted on Netanyahu’s Twitter feed, while the banner on his Facebook page was changed to a photograph of him in the front row, shoulder-to-shoulder with Hollande, Merkel, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and EU leaders Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk.
Not shown in the picture was Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who was standing alongside Tusk, six feet (two meters) from Netanyahu. The two broke off peace talks last April and tensions between them have risen since, with Netanyahu accusing Abbas of inciting violence against Israelis.
The irony is that neither Netanyahu nor Abbas initially planned to be in Paris.
What happened is that according to sources in Netanyahu’s office said that in a phone call on Friday evening an adviser to Hollande had suggested it would be “complicated” and “uncomfortable” if the Israeli leader attended the Sunday march, largely because of security concerns.
There is more, of course. Go here.
But anything that gets the goat of Hollande is, frankly, nifty in my book.
BZ
In Fornicalia: Snipers Attacked A Silicon Valley Power Station Last Year And Nobody Told Us
From SFist.com:
Around 1 a.m. on April 16th last year, a team of attackers cut phone lines and took out 17 power transformers at a PG&E substation south of San Jose, nearly causing a blackout throughout Silicon Valley. According to the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it was the “most significant incident of domestic terrorism” involving the nation’s power grid. No one has been charged or arrested in the attack.
The Wall Street Journal, broke news of the attack today, pieced together a timeline of events that unfolded in the middle of the night, just yards from Highway 101:
The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables. Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.
The team of gunmen knew what they were doing in the caper too: they targeted oil-filled cooling systems that bled out until the transformers overheated and crashed rather than shooting up the explosion-prone transformers themselves. The crash triggered an alarm at a PG&E control center 90 miles away, but police on the scene around 1:51 a.m. couldn’t get past a locked fence and assumed everything was fine.
And I would say: yes. That is a terrorist event. It was a purposeful event, an incident requiring skill and pre-planning and the proper equipment to order to execute it fully. Its sophistication required professional application. Attackers knew camera blind spots.
Nearly a year later and FBI officials in San Francisco tell the WSJ, the Bureau doesn’t think a terrorist organization was behind the attack, but they are “continuing to sift through the evidence.” PG&E’s official statement claimed it was the work of vandals, but made no mention of the nearly 100 fingerprint-free shell casings that were found at the scene. Former FERC chairmain Jon Wellinghoff, meanwhile, saw fit to go public with the details after military experts confirmed the scene looks like a professional job.
The snipers — plural — shot for roughly 20 minutes. I repeat: this was no act of “vandalism.” This certainly could be a sort of “dress rehearsal” for a similar event or series of future events. 52,000 gallons of oil leaked. AK-47 shell casings were found. Lights were utilized for coordination. Rocks were left for points of assault.
From FoxNews.com:
According to a chronology assembled by the Journal based on state and federal filings by PG&E, the operation lasted 52 minutes. It began when communications cables in two vaults near the substation were cut. Then, unknown snipers fired over 100 shots from rifles aimed at the substation’s transformers, knocking out 17 of them. Utility workers needed 27 days to repair the damage, and officials only avoided a blackout in the area by rerouting power around the site and asking power plants in nearby Silicon Valley to produce more electricity.
An attack on a facility or facilities like this are serious because the equipment used in these stations is extremely expensive and highly customized. Replacement of transformers or other technical pieces of equipment could take over a month and up to a year, depending upon the type of materiel affected.
This should be a major wake-up call, particularly considering al Qaeda made mention of the tact that it could terrorize the US by merely setting a series of forest fires.
Heads-up, America.
Final Note — HERE’S THE DISTURBING POINT:
Given the bias of the current Obama Administration, including Mr Obama himself and AG Eric Holder — both of them clear racists — the FBI has not trumpeted far and wide about an arrest or a series of arrests involving local and/or domestic Caucasoid terrorists. Because, given said bias, had that been true you know those press conferences would have been released and heralded.
And just who does that leave? I’m sure you can do the math on that one.
BZ
NOT COVERED: “Mexico official: Stolen cobalt-60 found”
Did you even hear that it was missing?
From the Associated Press:
By Olga R. Rodriguez
Mexico City (AP)
Mexico’s nuclear safety director says that missing radioactive cobalt-60 has been found near where the stolen truck transporting the material was abandoned in central Mexico state.
Juan Eibenschutz says the area is a kilometer from the nearest town and so far poses no threat or need for evacuation.
Stolen Cobalt-60? From Mexico?
Perhaps, ahem, a few questions for Mexico? Yes?
BZ
Russia to provide “security,” on US soil, during national emergencies?
According to EMERCOM of Russia in a press release:
Several documents signed during joint work of Russian Emergency Ministry and FEMA rss
26 June 11:32
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and the USA Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are going to exchange experts during joint rescue operations in major disasters. This is provided by a protocol of the fourth meeting of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Working Group on Emergency Situations and seventeenth meeting of Joint U.S.-Russia Cooperation Committee on Emergency Situations, which took place in Washington on 25 June.
In addition, the parties approved of U.S.-Russian cooperation in this field in 2013-2014, which envisages exchange of experience including in monitoring and forecasting emergency situations, training of rescuers, development of mine-rescuing and provision of security at mass events.
Let me repeat this tidbit in case you missed it: “provision of security at mass events.”
Meaning: Soviet “experts” providing “security” on US soil. In most countries, who is most “expert” in providing security? The military or police forces. And what does “security” mean in occasion of a “mass event”? It won’t mean people with frowns and brochures. In my interpretation of words, “security” at “mass events” means military personnel who are armed and loaded.
Translated: armed Russian personnel on our soil to “secure” our civilian population.
Under this agreement via Homeland Security, will it include what are termed NSSEs — National Special Security Events — which include such things as international summits, conventions, even presidential inaugurations?
Anyone besides me have questions to include: why has this completely fallen off the US American Media Maggot radar?
BZ