Elderly Georgians Arrested For Terror Plot Involving Ricin, Assassinations, Blowing Up Buildings
Everyone gripes about how ridiculous it is when security checks for bombs inside the shoes of 75-year-olds at the airport…but it turns out that Grandpa in fact is a menace. Via the Daily Mail:
Federal agents arrested four suspected members of a Georgia militia on charges of plotting attacks with toxins and explosives against unnamed government officials. The four – all over 65 years old – who authorities arrested on Tuesday, were expected to appear in federal court in Gainesville on Wednesday afternoon.
Court documents state that 73-year-old Frederick Thomas told others he intended to model their actions on the online novel Absolved, which involves small groups of citizens attacking U.S. officials.
Thomas is part of a group that also tried to obtain an unregistered explosive device and sought out the complex formula to produce ricin, a biological toxin that can be lethal in small doses, according to a federal complaint.
The four listed…
Iranian Terror Plot: Why?
Iran Affairs is skeptical regarding Iran’s strange alleged plot to conduct a terrorist bombing and assassination on U.S. soil, announced by our Justice Department yesterday:
I’m sure you’ve heard about the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US and bomb the Israeli embassy etc. which was supposedly “directed by factions of the Iranian government” (whatever that means.)
Simple question: Why? Suppose the alleged plot was successful – then what? Apart from risking a major diplomatic incident, what would Iran have to gain from doing any of this? Would Saudi Arabia or Israel simply disappear? Are the Iranians just crazy people who like to blow up places for no real gain?
There have been many such ‘terror plots’ foiled in the US – and the one thing they all had in common was that there was a government informant who was involved and even instigated the plot by recruiting some otherwise hapless…
Scientists Cast More Doubt On FBI’s Anthrax Story
Prof. Martin E. Hugh-Jones
The FBI’s story about Bruce Ivins being the sole perpetrator of the 2001 post-9/11 Anthrax attacks was never very convincing, to say the least. Now three brave scientists are contradicting the FBI’s all-too-convenient version of events publicly. The cynic in me worries for their health… Report from the New York Times:
A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.
Now, three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.
F.B.I.…
The 2001 Anthrax Mystery: Case Not Closed
CNN’s Joe Johns reports for a documentary investigation into the anthrax letter attacks of 2001. As well documented by authors Eric Nadler and Bob Coen, just because the FBI says they found the perpetrator, the case is far from closed.
Death by Mail: The Anthrax Letters Debuts Sunday, October 2 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT.
Al-Qaeda Tells Iran: Stop Spreading 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
In its commemorative ten-year-anniversary 9/11 issue, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine attacks Iran for spreading doubt and conspiracy theories regarding the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. (Also: I think al-Qaeda uses the same stock photo services as pharmaceutical websites.) Posted via Public Intelligence.
There have been plenty of conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11. These conspiracy theorists believe that the U.S. government manufactured the attacks while others believe that it was the Israeli Mossad who was behind them. They site claims such as the Pentagon was not hit by a plane but by a rocket, and that the World Trade center building number seven was brought down by a controlled demolition. The prescribers to these theories have been some scattered individuals here and there who do not posses the research capabilities and capacities that are only available to governments. However, there has been one exception: the government of…
9/11 Coloring Book Sparks Controversy
Via The Raw Story:
A 9/11 coloring book has emerged on the brink of the tenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. It is entitled “We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom,” and was published by Missouri-based Really Big Coloring Books.
The color book begins with Osama bin Laden plotting to attack the United States and ends with bin Laden being shot by a Navy SEAL. A spokesperson for the publisher said that seeing bin Laden get shot “provides closure” for children.
Dawud Walid, Michigan representative for the Council on American Islamic Relations, called the book disgusting because it portrays all Muslims as terrorists.
The CIA And NYPD Join Forces To Violate Your Civil Rights
Huffington Post’s Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman reveal the dubious activities that the NYPD has been engaging in, with CIA help, in the never-ending “war on terror”:
In New Brunswick, N.J., a building superintendent opened the door to apartment No. 1076 one balmy Tuesday and discovered an alarming scene: terrorist literature strewn about the table and computer and surveillance equipment set up in the next room.
The panicked superintendent dialed 911, sending police and the FBI rushing to the building near Rutgers University on the afternoon of June 2, 2009. What they found in that first-floor apartment, however, was not a terrorist hideout but a command center set up by a secret team of New York Police Department intelligence officers.
From that apartment, about an hour outside the department’s jurisdiction, the NYPD had been staging undercover operations and conducting surveillance throughout New Jersey. Neither the FBI nor the local police had any idea.
Since…
Media Roots Radio: Spying, Fear & Self-Censorship, Building Up Your Community
Via Media Roots:
This discussion covers U.S. imperialism: wars, costs, media and government propaganda; the culture of fear, self-censorship and the erosion of privacy in the US; information as power and how communication is an important tool to strengthen and build communities.
Anti-Nanotechnology Terrorist Sect Strikes In Mexico
Extremists in Mexico are trying to save humanity from our own technology before it’s too late through mail-bomb attacks against researchers — some people just really do not like messing around with particles at the atomic level. Via Newser:
A radical group that opposes nanotechnology has has claimed responsibility for at least two bombing attacks on researchers in Mexico and it praises the “Unabomber,” whose mail-bombs killed three people and injured 23 in the United States.
A manifesto posted Tuesday on a radical website mentions at least five other Mexican researchers whose work it opposes, and lauded Theodore Kaczynski, who is serving a life sentence for bombs that targeted university professors and airline executives. It was issued in the name of a group whose title could be translated as “Individuals Tending Toward the Savage.”
Mexico State prosecutors’ spokesman Sonia Davila said authorities are investigating the authenticity of the manifesto, but said its description…
In U.S., Muslims And Atheists Most Opposed To Violence
Is violence targeting civilians ever justified in the name of a worthy cause? U.S. Christians say yes, atheists and Muslims say no. Raw Story writes:
New data from polling firm Gallup shows that out of all the religious groups in the U.S., Muslims are most likely to reject violence, followed by the non-religious atheists and agnostics.
Through interviews with 2,482 Americans, Gallup found that 78 percent of Muslims believe violence which kills civilians is never justified, whereas just 38 percent of Protestant Christians and 39 percent of Catholics agreed with that sentiment. Fifty-six percent of atheists answered similarly.
The survey was designed to measure religious and non-religious attitudes toward violence 10 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Perhaps most tellingly, 92 percent of Muslims surveyed said they did not believe any Muslim in their community had sympathy toward al Qaeda terrorists.
When Gallup put the question a bit more pointedly, asking if it would…
No 9/11 10th Anniversary Threats
From Reuters:
There have been no credible or specific threats against the United States yet ahead of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday.
U.S. officials have been on high alert for possible plots to reprise in some form of the September 11, 2001 attacks in which al Qaeda operatives hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
“We have no specific or credible threats involving the 9/11 anniversary to date,” she told reporters during a news conference on an unrelated subject…
How ‘Experts’ Are Used in News
Charlie Brooker’s take on how news ‘experts’ are doing little more than guessing, which is more or less what we could do, in the Guardian:
I went to bed in a terrible world and awoke inside a worse one. At the time of writing, details of the Norwegian atrocity are still emerging, although the identity of the perpetrator has now been confirmed and his motivation seems increasingly clear: a far-right anti-Muslim extremist who despised the ruling party.
Presumably he wanted to make a name for himself, which is why I won’t identify him. His name deserves to be forgotten. Discarded. Deleted. Labels like “madman”, “monster”, or “maniac” won’t do, either. There’s a perverse glorification in terms like that. If the media’s going to call him anything, it should call him pathetic; a nothing.
On Friday night’s news, they were calling him something else. He was a suspected terror cell with probable links to…
Is Anders Behring Breivik A Dominionist?
Leah L. Burton writes on PoliticusUSA:
In regards to Dominionist linkages to the bloody slaughter in Norway, here are our findings so far:
a) In particular, with a video manifesto (which has been linked on YouTube until it was pulled there, and which has since shown up on LiveLeak) the shooter makes some very specific references that show he has familiarity with, and probably shares terminology with (if not overtly sharing intel with) “Christian patriot” militia groups in the US (including material that has been posted on racist and far right-wing forums in the US, use of particular catch phrases associated with the “Christian Patriot” movement in the US, and others). I’ve just spent nine hours typing up an extensive analysis of the video; he is clearly connected with religious-nationalist groups in Europe and in the US. The degree of references to material originating in the US, in fact, indicate he has…
The Blue Eyes Of Terror Challenge The World To Respond
Move over Osama bin Laden—I know you already have had in the physical sense —because you now have an emulator who borrows your tactics and inverts your ideology.
Anders Behring Breivik, is Norway’s candidate for the new world’s top living evil-doer and terror supremo having admitted to killing 93 young people and blowing up buildings in Oslo.
While Bin Laden castigated crusaders, Breivik salutes them in a 1518 page manifesto of madness. And his lawyer has rationalized his murder spree in a similar way to those who defended Al Qaeda as defending Islam.
The two are almost carbon copies. The Norwegian posted videos on You Tube while Bin Laden relied on TV communiqués.
One was killing in the name of Islam, the other in the name of Christianity.
Foreign Policy reports, ”Breivik’s lawyer said that his client admitted to the killings, but rejected ‘criminal responsibility.’” He described Breivik as being motivated to carry out the…
‘Jihadi’ Terror Attack In Norway
[Update: This story was posted at a time when some portions of the media were reporting – incorrectly – that these acts were perpetrated by an Islamic group called "Helpers of the Global Jihad."
That was not the case and it's a lesson learned that one should not believe everything one reads on the disinformation website or, indeed, any other news source, including the New York Times, the source of the story. Read as many different sources as you can and then form your own opinion is never bad advice for us or anyone on this planet.]
The big story of the day so far, developing of course via multiple news channels. From the New York Times and CNN (video):
OSLO — Powerful explosions shook central Oslo on Friday afternoon, blowing out the windows of several government buildings, including one housing the office of the Norwegian prime minister. The state television broadcaster, citing the police,…
Surgically Implanted Bombs Are New Terror Threat
Get ready, the U.S. Government’s TSA is warning airlines of a new twist on suicide bombing that will undoubtedly lead to more intrusive searches at airports. Christi Parsons reports for the LA Times:
The government has warned airlines that terrorists are considering surgically implanting explosives into people in an attempt to circumvent screening procedures, according to U.S. officials.
There is no indication of an immediate plot, but the new information could lead to additional screening procedures at the nation’s airports. Existing scanners would not necessarily detect bombs implanted under a person’s skin, experts said.
While the information suggests such a threat would come from overseas rather than domestic groups, federal officials are ordering precautions both in the U.S. and abroad, the official said.
The idea of surgically implanting bombs has been examined by intelligence agencies in the past, but new information has suggested that terrorist groups are seriously considering the technique, officials said.
A spokesman…
U.S. Expands Its Drone War Into Somalia
Mark Mazzetti writes in the New York Times:
The clandestine American military campaign to combat Al Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen is expanding to fight the Islamist militancy in Somalia, as new evidence indicates that insurgents in the two countries are forging closer ties and possibly plotting attacks against the United States, American officials say.
An American military drone aircraft attacked several Somalis in the militant group the Shabab late last month, the officials said, killing at least one of its midlevel operatives and wounding others.
The strike was carried out by the same Special Operations Command unit now battling militants in Yemen, and it represented an intensification of an American military campaign in a mostly lawless region where weak governments have allowed groups with links to Al Qaeda to flourish.
The Obama administration’s increased focus on Somalia comes as the White House has unveiled a new strategy to battle Al Qaeda in the post-Osama…
The Terror Chess Set: Taliban And World Trade Center Included
How terrorist attacks have become a game. The Telegraph reports:
The Terror Chess sets feature hand-painted Taliban militants with a woman in a burka as the queen.
In the British set, the king is Tony Blair and the queen is the Queen, while the rook is Big Ben.
Jeffrey Train, a 48-year-old former Canadian soldier who designed the figures, said he had sold around 1,500 sets, mainly as souvenirs to troops serving in the 140,000-strong international coalition in Afghanistan.
In the American set they are replaced by Barack Obama, the Statue of Liberty and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.
Ranged against the insurgents are soldiers from a choice of coalition countries including American, Canada and Britain.
[Continues at The Telegraph]
Pakistani Journalist Found Dead After Criticizing Pakistan’s Chief Intelligence Agency
Via The New York Times:
The Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad knew he was a marked man. Mr. Shahzad, who covered national security and terrorism, had received repeated threats from Pakistan’s powerful spy agency. Yet he courageously kept doing his job — until somebody silenced him. His body, his face horribly beaten, was buried on Wednesday.
Suspicion inevitably falls on Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s chief intelligence agency. For the sake of justice, and the shredded credibility of Pakistan’s government, his murderers must be found quickly and held accountable.
Mr. Shahzad disappeared from Islamabad on Sunday, two days after he published an article suggesting a militant attack on a naval base in Karachi was retaliation for the navy’s attempt to crack down on Al Qaeda militants in the armed forces. American analysts doubt an Al Qaeda cell infiltrated Pakistani security, but they have long worried about individual sympathizers.
Whatever the case, the attack humiliated the ISI…
Was A Furby Threat to National Security?
A blast from the past. CNN reported back in 1999…
Can the cute, popular toy Furby be a threat to national security? The government thinks so, and has banned it from National Security Agency premises in Maryland.
Furby is embedded with a computer chip that allows it to record words. Because of that ability, NSA officials were worried “that people would take them home and they’d start talking classified,” one Capitol Hill source told The Washington Post.
In a warning to employees, the NSA said, “Personally owned photographic, video and audio recording equipment are prohibited items. This includes toys, such as ‘Furbys,’ with built-in recorders that repeat the audio with synthesized sound to mimic the original signal.”
“We are prohibited from introducing these items into NSA spaces. Those who have should contact their Staff Security Office for guidance,” a memo said.
