The National Security Agency (NSA) is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S. government communications and information systems, which involves information security and cryptanalysis/cryptography.
The NSA has been in the news lately as there are allegations the agency is listening to domestic phone calls and emails. President Obama has reiterated that the surveillance is only on foreigners. But the NSA can listen to anything, anybody, anywhere anytime.
NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland
When all is said and done, the NSA is trying to protect the citizens of the United States, as well as other western nations. We must remember the 9/11 attacks, the towers collapsing, the airliner flying into the pentagon and the airliner nose diving into the field. The Muslim terrorists have not given up. They are still scheming and planning. They will try to attack again. This is what has been called the never-ending war. Revenge is something irritated Muslims will relentlessly pursue. Look at Israel and Palestine. The privacy advocates should realize this and look at the threat. It is a real and present danger! The NSA is trying to contain this threat.
The Canadian Mounties, along with other law enforcement agencies, thwarted another nefarious plot by Muslim Jihadists. These Jihadists just won’t give up. Their war is going to be a long war. Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda screwheads used to make references to the bloody Crusades for Mohammad sake! But the Mounties stopped this latest batch of incompetent holy warriors. Throw the key away.
On a CNN chat section below the RCMP terror bust story the Americans were joking about Dudley Do Right. Well our Mouted Cops did it right!
I think a lot of these brainwashed Jihadists are in it for the Islamist Matyr heaven. It actually doesn’t look too bad.
(CNN) — The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are expected to announce Monday afternoon that Canadian law enforcement officials have “thwarted a plot to carry out a major terrorist attack, arresting suspects in Ontario and Quebec,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
An official with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police tells CNN that the plot intended to target “transport links,” but would not provide further details. The source confirmed that there is no link between the Canadian investigation and the Boston bomb attack, and added there was no known link with the Canadians involved in the terror attack on the Algerian gas plant in January.
The CBC, which is a CNN affiliate, quoted “highly placed sources” as saying the suspects were under surveillance for more than a year.
No connection exists between the disrupted plot in Canada and the Boston Marathon bombings, U.S. government sources told CNN’s Carol Cratty.
The CBC reported that the investigation was “part of a cross-border operation involving Canadian law enforcement agencies, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.”
Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2013
Created by Bill Roggio and Alexander Mayer
Since 2004, the US has been conducting a covert program to target and kill al Qaeda and Taliban commanders based in Pakistan’s lawless northwest. The program has targeted top al Qaeda leaders, al Qaeda’s external operations network, and Taliban leaders and fighters who threaten both the Afghan and Pakistani states.
The charts below look at the following: 1) the number of US airstrikes inside Pakistan per year; 2) civilian casualties vs. Taliban/al Qaeda casualties; 3) the distribution of strikes over time by tribal agencies; 4) the overall distribution of strikes, by tribal agencies; 5) the distribution of strikes over time by territories targeted; 6) the overall distribution of strikes, by territories targeted; and 7) the number of high value targets killed in territories managed by individual Taliban commanders.
The data is obtained from press reports from the Pakistani press (Daily Times, Dawn, Geo News, The News, and other outlets), as well as wire reports (AFP, Reuters, etc.), as well as reporting from The Long War Journal. Given the Taliban’s control of the areas where strikes occur, and a dearth of reporters in those areas, the exact numbers for casualties are difficult to know.
The US ramped up the number of strikes in July 2008, and has continued to regularly hit at Taliban and Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan. There have been 334 strikes total since the program began in 2004; 324 of those strikes have taken place since January 2008.
The U.S. has been determined to try to have no civilian casualties. However a lot of these Islamist terrorists hide in civilian populated areas. The U.S. has improved its intelligence and targeting technologies to keep civilian casualties to the bare minimum.
Since 2006, there have been 2,492 leaders and operatives from Taliban, Al Qaeda, and allied extremist groups killed and 153 civilians killed. Data for 2004 and 2005 are not available at this time.
Using drones to cut off the head of the snake causes disorganization within the terrorist organizations. The foot soldiers in these organizations do not get proper directives and planning becomes chaotic. Remember it was terrorists who hid out in these same tribal areas that sat around and planned 9/11. Keeping these deranged religious zealots off-balance with pin point drone strikes is the perfect counter strategy.
The United States military realizes the great advantages that drones provide to its tactical objectives around the world. From the 140 foot wingspanned Global Hawk to the Hellfiring Predators used over Pakistan and Afghanistan, the U.S. has developed a wide-ranging arsenal of reconnaissance and attack drones. The stealth drone is now preparing to deploy on the U.S. Navy’s super aircraft carriers.
X-47B stealth drone targets new frontiers
The US Navy’s cutting-edge robot fighter plane aims to be the first unmanned aerial vehicle to take-off and land at sea.
As a fighter plane prepares to take off from a naval carrier at sea, the pilot and deck crew go through a tightly choreographed series of hand signals to tell each other they are ready to launch. It ends with a final “salute” from the pilot to indicate that the aircraft is ready to be catapulted off the deck.
But when the X-47B, the US Navy’s newest prototype combat aircraft, prepares for its first carrier launch early next year, there will be no salute. That’s because there will also be no pilot. Instead, the X-47B will blink its wingtip navigation lights, a robotic nod to the human salute (and mimicking what the Navy does for night launches), before the catapult officer presses the launch button, and the robotic aircraft is flung off the front of the ship
After years of development, and recent land-based tests, the highly anticipated carrier flight for this stealthy, tailless, unmanned drone is imminent. “It should be in early in 2013,” says Carl Johnson, vice president and program manager at defence firm Northrop Grumman, which builds the X-47B. “We have to coordinate ship schedules as well as all the other airspace issues.”
The X-47B is a strike fighter-sized prototype drone developed as part of the United States Navy’s UCAS-D (Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration) programme, which aims to develop technologies necessary to field a combat drone on carriers. As a result, it has folding wings and is built for the rigors of sea life, including salt water, deck handling and of course take-off and landing from an aircraft carrier.
The craft was revealed in 2008 but is only now undergoing sea tests aboard the USS Harry S. Truman, including moving around on the carrier. Whilst this kind of trial may not sound remarkable, in some ways it’s one of the more challenging steps toward proving that the X-47B, which weighs in at 20,000 kg (44,000 lb) and has a 20m (62 ft) wing span, is ready for flight.
Getting around on a crowded flight deck is difficult, says Johnson, because the aircraft must maneuver very close the edge of the carrier, sometimes pivoting so that it appears that half the airplane is hanging off the ship. “The precision involved in doing that is very difficult with a pilot following directions from a person on the deck,” says Johnson. “It’s very difficult to do that as well with an unmanned system.”
Specifications (X-47B)
General characteristics
Crew: None aboard (semi-autonomous operation)
Length: 38.2 ft (11.63 m)
Wingspan: 62.1 ft extended/30.9 ft folded (18.92 m/9.41 m)
The French-led international assault on Islamist-held northern Mali is about to get a lot more explosive. With a big assist from the U.S., U.K. and other allies, Paris is deploying heavier vehicles, high-tech artillery pieces and its most sophisticated helicopter gunship, the Tiger.
Tiger Attack Helicopter
The reinforcements reflect France’s surprise at discovering that Mali’s rebels possess some dangerous weaponry of their own.
“The defense minister has recognized that the enemy resistance was tougher than initially envisioned,” Joseph Henrotin, a French analyst and military academy instructor, tells Danger Room. When French ground troops counter-attacked towards the battleground town of Konna in central Mali on Jan. 15, they encountered rebels equipped with “technical” trucks. Photos have depicted militants riding in a wide variety of these improvised, gun-armed pickups, long a mainstay of African warfare.
“Our enemies were well-armed, well-equipped, well-trained and determined,” an unnamed French diplomat told Ireland’s RTE News.
French air force Mirage and Rafale fighter-bombers destroyed some, but not all, of the Islamists’ vehicles. That left the survivors to face the combined French-Malian ground assault, which has been carefully maneuvering northward from the capital of Bamako since the middle of last week.
Stiff rebel resistance was not entirely unplanned for, according to Gen. Bertrand Clément-Bollée, commander of French land forces. Clément-Bollée told one French defense blog that Paris had designated a series of increasingly heavy army formations for potential intervention in Mali. The first were the lightweight troops of France’s small, but permanent, garrisons in Mali, Chad, Burkina
Faso and other countries. Under the French army’s “Cheetah” deployment model, paratroopers, helicopters and two mechanized brigades based in France were also in line to deploy to Mali as needed, the general said.
French Paratroops
According to Clément-Bollée, the first of the Cheetah forces activated shortly after the Jan. 11 opening salvo. “We had a very rapid need for a company of the 92nd Infantry,” he revealed. The 92nd is equipped with the wheeled Véhicule Blindé de Combat d’Infanterie, a sort of light tank armed with a 25-millimeter cannon. Twenty or so of the 26-ton VBCIs were airlifted into Mali to join the lighter armored cars and recon vehicles belonging to the garrison units.
The French army’s 5th Regiment, which operates the Tiger gunship — Europe’s answer to the U.S. Army’s Apache — began arriving in Mali last week, Clément-Bollée said. Older Gazelle gunships participated in the first wave of French air attacks on rebel troops. One of the Gazelles was hit by gunfire and its pilot died. Compared to the Gazelle, the Tiger boasts heavier armor and weaponry and more sophisticated long-range sensors, allowing it to shoot from greater distance.
The heaviest Cheetah forces for Mali — available but not necessarily deployed – include: two more companies of VBCIs plus a number of Leclerc heavy tanks and units equipped with the Caesar, an ultra-modern, truck-mounted 155-millimeter artillery piece.
Henrotin says the first Caesars bound for Mali are “currently underway.” The French magazine Le Progrés appears to corroborate this claim with a photo depicting artillerymen from the 68th Regiment, which possesses Caesars as well as mortars and other equipment, preparing to go to Mali.
But it’s unclear if the soldiers were taking the heavy guns with them or just mortars. Clément-Bollée, for his part, seemed reluctant to list in detail all the Mali reinforcements. “Our enemies also read,” he said.
In any event, Paris lacks the airlift capacity to haul all the hardware bound for Africa. “At the strategic airlift level, the capability gap has been since long considered as problematic,” Henrotin says. Early on, Paris appealed for help from allied nations. Canada and the U.K. were the first to offer up C-17 transport planes — one and two, respectively; the U.S. sent five of its own C-17s over the weekend. The four-engine C-17 is big enough to carry a Caesar and any other French vehicle.
Besides the transport planes, Washington has not yet agreed to contribute any other forces to the fight. “Our support of French operations in Mali does not involve what is traditionally referred to as boots on the ground,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said. As Paris escalates its involvement in Mali with heavier and more powerful weaponry, it does so without the guarantee that if the battle turns against the French, allied nations will rush to the rescue.
I went to see the Kathryn Bigelow movie Zero Dark Thirty and it was very much worth the time. The movie is about the C.I.A’s hunt for kingpin Arab terrorist Osama Bin Laden and his subsequent discovery and execution by U.S. Navy Seals.
The movie follows the investigation into the whereabouts of Bin Laden by a small cadre of C.I.A. operatives. Eventually they narrow the search down to a trusted courier of Bin Laden. The courier leads the U.S. intelligence agents to Bin Laden’s hideout in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
Throughout the movie there is great skepticism within the U.S. intelligence community that Bin Laden is in the fortress like hideout. But some C.I.A agents are convinced he is there. Ultimately it comes down to C.I.A director Leon Panetta and President Barack Obama to make the final decision to make the Seal mission a go.
Don’t underestimate the critical and audacious decision President Obama had to make. He showed guts, fortitude and gumption in allowing the mission to proceed. Many things could have went wrong (a stealth blackhawk helicopter did crash, no Seal or Army casualties) from the Seals getting captured, stranded and possibly killed. In the end some sound and pragmatic intelligence and stellar military execution led to the death of mass murderer terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
This is how the Republicans in the U.S. viewed the hunt for Bin Laden as opposed to the determination of President Obama.
Two days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush stated: “The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden.” He added: “It is our No. 1 priority and we will not rest until we find him.”
Six months later, on March 13, 2002, in an interview with CNN, Bush stated:
Well, deep in my heart, I know the man’s on the run if he’s alive at all. And I — you know, who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not? We hadn’t heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is really — indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror’s bigger than one person. And he’s just — he’s a person who has now been marginalized. His network is — his host government has been destroyed. He’s the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. … And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, you know, again, I don’t know where he is. I’ll repeat what I said: I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban. But, you know, once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became — we shoved him out more and more on the margins.
On July 3, 2006, the CIA announced that late in 2005 they had closed down the unit code-named Alec Station which had been tasked for over a decade with the mission of hunting down Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants. The CIA stated that tracking bin Laden was still a high priority, but that the agency was changing its focus to regional trends instead of specific individuals.
In 2008, during a presidential debate, Barack Obama stated:
And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.
In response, Republican presidential candidate John McCain stated:
You know, my hero is a guy named Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt used to say walk softly — talk softly, but carry a big stick. Sen. Obama likes to talk loudly. In fact, he said he wants to announce that he’s going to attack Pakistan. Remarkable. You know, if you are a country and you’re trying to gain the support of another country, then you want to do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion. When you announce that you’re going to launch an attack into another country, it’s pretty obvious that you have the effect that it had in Pakistan: It turns public opinion against us. … We need to help the Pakistani government go into Waziristan, where I visited, a very rough country, and — and get the support of the people, and get them to work with us and turn against the cruel Taliban and others. And by working and coordinating our efforts together, not threatening to attack them, but working with them, and where necessary use force, but talk softly, but carry a big stick.
On June 2, 2009, just over four months into his presidency, President Obama sent a memo to CIA Director Leon Panetta directing him to provide, within 30 days, a detailed operational plan for locating bin Laden and bringing him to justice.
Sources: Atlanta Journal Constitution, CNN, New York Times
U.S. Navy Seal Team Six breaching the perimeter of the Bin Laden compound from Zero Dark Thirty
The M134 Minigun is a 7.62 mm, six-barreled machine gun with a high rate of fire (2,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute). It features Gatling-style rotating barrels with an external power source, normally an electric motor. The “Mini” of the name is in comparison to designs that use a similar firing mechanism but larger shells, such as General Electric’s earlier 20-millimeter M61 Vulcan, and “gun” for a caliber size smaller than that a cannon, typically 20 mm and higher.
“Minigun” refers to a specific model of weapon, originally produced by General Electric. But the term “minigun” has popularly come to refer to any externally powered Gatling gun of rifle caliber. The term is also used to refer to guns of similar rates of fire and configuration sometimes, regardless of power source and caliber.
GAU-17/A mounted on a US Navy SOC-R speedboat, being operated by a Special Warfare Combatant Craft Crewman (SWCC) during a training exercise.
USAF helicopter crewman in Vietnam firing a minigun in 1968
This guy is going to have to watch his back. In the middle of the night a Muslim extremist assassin could ram a pick-up loaded with dynamite through his picture window. Or a terrorist sniper could take him out as he walks through the mall parking lot. Or if the Islamic terrorist assassin really wants to get to wine and virgin heaven, he could terrorize the family by slowly beheading the guy in front of the wife and kids. Or the reprobate Arab …
Canadian linked to anti-Islam film seeks protection
Coptic Christian Nader Fawzy denies involvement, worries about his family’s safety
A Coptic Christian activist say he fears for his family’s safety after being accused of playing a role in the notorious anti-Islam film that has sparked violence throughout the Muslim world.
Nader Fawzy, speaking at a news conference in Toronto on Saturday, said he has been the target of threats emanating from Egypt over the Innocence of Muslims trailer released on the internet over the summer.
Fawzy has long been an activist for Egypt’s Coptic Christian community, which makes up one-tenth of that country’s population.
Fawzy said his name appeared in a published list of people involved in the film, an action he says amounts to a fatwa, or religious edict.
‘There is no safety at all. Once the fatwa is published, anyone can come to kill me or my kids or my family in Egypt.’—Nader Fawzy
He told reporters on Saturday he believes the Egyptian government put his name on the list out of revenge for his work as a Coptic activist.
“Once there is a fatwa, you don’t know who is coming to kill you, to shoot you,” he said. “It’s not just about the Egyptian government anymore. There is no safety at all. Once the fatwa is published, anyone can come to kill me or my kids or my family in Egypt.”
The Egyptian government has issued arrest warrants for both Fawzy and another Egyptian-born Canadian, Jacques Attalla of Montreal, claiming they were involved in the film. Both Coptic Christians deny having anything to do with it.
But the men fear that being named in the warrants has made them targets for Muslim extremists, who’ve been encouraged by senior clerics to kill all those connected to the film.
Egypt’s prosecutor general has issued arrest warrants for a number of Coptic Christians, primarily living in the United States, for alleged involvement with the controversial film, made in California.
Many people are now criticizing President Obama for his drone strikes in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan. The critics – many who are American – contend the drone strikes on terrorist leaders are pure and simple assassination. No regard for the rule of law. Blatant murder of innocent civilians. Oh how we forget so soon. What in the hell was 9/11? No law observed there, 3,000 innocent civilians murdered.
The drone strikes may be escalating the hatred towards America in the region, as if there wasn’t enough hatred already, but they are extremely effective. The Al Qaeda leadership is in turmoil, they are terrified by the strikes and are being kept off-balance. Do people really think that if the strikes stopped the Al Qaeda terrorists would stop planning horrific attacks against the U.S. and other western countries?
Al Qaeda is in this battle for the long haul, they have issued fatwa after fatwa that their goal is the destruction of the infidel world, that their absolute goal is a radical Islamic world governed by sharia law. They intend to bring the world back to the dark ages by whatever means possible. These are warped and evil people. And Barack Obama is just as determined to wipe these menacing bastards out! And he is doing a bloody good job.
These Al Qaeda bozos just won’t give up. Last week it was body bombs, implanted bombs inside the body of the recruited suicide holy warrior. This week it is a new advanced underwear bomb. These terrorist idiots can’t get creative enough to buy or steal a surface to air missile and shoot down a passenger jet. They have to get a suicide martyr to board the plane and try to detonate a bomb implanted next to his bum crack, or worse, up his bum crack!
David Horsey
L.A. Times
Those sultans of style at Al Qaeda have released their line of lingerie for spring and it’s a blast. Tucked away in their secret atelier in Yemen, the fanatics of fashion have come up with an updated version of the exploding underwear that caused such a stir on Christmas Day 2009 when a hapless African lad tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit and only managed to severely singe his private parts.
Al Qaeda bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan Asiri is reputed to be the designer of the new nasty knickers. This week, the CIA, working with Saudi Arabia’s spy service, gave the world a first look at Asiri’s handiwork — a pair of extra-large briefs packed with a small bomb without metallic parts that might set off airport security alarms.
Asiri and his Al Qaeda crew, of course, wanted to keep their exploding panties under wraps until they were revealed on the runway — an airport runway — but a CIA informant posing as a suicide bomber ruined their plan. The operation that exposed the underwear also revealed the location of a major Al Qaeda operative, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Quso. The CIA delivered a lethal greeting to Quso as he stepped out of his car somewhere in Yemen on Sunday, demonstrating that, when it comes to blowing things up, a drone is a great deal more effective than a pair of tighty-whiteys.
Yemen is one of the few places on Earth where those ample panties your grandma used to wear have a lot more allure than a scanty thong from Victoria’s Secret. Voluminous lingerie allows extra space to house explosives. Apparently, for the boys at Al Qaeda there is nothing sexier.
Putting bombs in underwear seems a weirdly logical choice for these misogynistic, sexually repressed zealots. These are, after all, the kind of men who would whip a woman for displaying a bare ankle. If a daughter were raped, they would stone the unclean wench. If the girl ran away or married the wrong man, they would kill her for bringing dishonor upon the family.
If a man would do all of that, it seems perfectly reasonable that he would think nothing of asking some fool to stuff a bomb in his crotch and blow up anything within range of his pulverized pudenda. (The question of how this affects the suicide bomber’s functionality with all those virgins awaiting him in Paradise I will leave to Al Qaeda’s imams to sort out.)
I do have some advice for the underwear designer Asiri: It might be wise to get your summer collection off the drawing board and into production soon. There is a drone out there with designs on you.
