Posted on 2 Comments

LT Col. Scott Mann : San Bernardino Shooting : We Need a New Definition for Terrorism in America

San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook

San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook
December 04,2015

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Scott Mann, is a former Lt. Col and Green Beret. He is the CEO of Mission America and author of the best selling novel “Game Changers”.

He spent 23 years in the Army Special Forces Career involved in Foreign Internal Defense, Counter-insurgency, and Stability Missions. He served in the Special Operations for over 18 years and has been a Green Beret for over 15 years in combat deployments in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan.

–            Experience in targeting Al Quida foreign fighters

–            Designed and implemented strategy in Afghanistan that could defeat ISIS now

–            Still teaches Green Berets, FBI, and Law Enforcement on ISIS vulnerabilities He is one of the only former Lt. Col’s that is actively still involved in the day-to-day transition of Green Berets from active duty into civilian life.

He has been quoted frequently and seen on MSNBC with Alex Witt, Fox News, Fox News Radio, among other high profile media appearances. As a reminder, he is based in Tampa and can come in via Satellite or Skype.

Statement:

We need a new definition for terrorism in America:

-The politically correct titles “lone-wolf”, “self-radicalized”, and “homegrown terrorism”  are outdated terms that are putting Americans at more risk at home.

I have been fighting terrorism my entire adult life. I knew that this shooting in California was Islamist violent  extremists within minutes of the attack – I alluded to this in a tweet just minutes after it broke on the wire.

I am not unique here. Anyone who has been fighting this threat knew right away what this was…Islamist violent extremism taking root in America.

According  to several wire reports, the female shooter , Tashfeen Malik posted a pledge to Isis leader Baghdadib on Facebook.

But that is not enough to act on these days.

In fact, many leaders and some in the media were quick to say that it was unsure if “ISIS actually ordered the attack.”

Further, law-enforcement officials equivocated the attack by calling it “self radicalization”.

As if somehow these factors make it less impactful and threatening on our country.

When two people are able to massacre 14 people and wound many more – when they leave behind a remote controlled Explosive Device, and engage police with. Assault rifles while rolling in an SUV,  – it is just as real and potentially threatening as the Paris attacks – maybe more. Here is why:

The old terror model of foreign fighters trained and mobilized from dark, foreign lairs has gone the way of Osama Bin Laden.

There is a new sheriff in town.

It has been replaced with some Americans and other extremists who are here legally, and radicalized, trained, and resources through a powerful global network that is both virtual and physical.

In fact, this is the new face of strategic terrorism in America. It is how I S I S and Al Qaeda will conduct their hardest hitting and most relevant attacks against us.

ISIS clearly tells us this in their latest Nov 24th English speaking propaganda video.

They brag about “goading us into dropping bombs that cost 250k while they mobilize surrogates to kills us with bullets that cost less than a dollar.”

Meanwhile, our senior leaders and many in the media downplay this by using terms like “Lone Wolf” and “self radicalized.” We point out that ISIS may not have directed the attack.

I can’t help but shutter at what they were building. The improvised explosives they were constructing make them just as threatening to our safety at home as the 19 Hijackers trained in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

We should be grateful – I suppose – that for whatever reason these two extremists decided to accelerate their plan and not put into use all of those IEDs that were in their apartment.

When IEDs start going off in our shopping malls, street intersections, and elementary like they did in Fallujah, Iraq in 2006,America will change forever.

I hope we don’t wait until that horrific moment to change our definition of what terrorism in our country has already become.

They are here – we had better get serious about dealing with them.

Posted on 5 Comments

Flags At Half Staff Honoring the Victims of the Attack on San Bernardio

half mast flag

To honor the victims of the attack on San Bernardino, California the flags will be lowered.

A PROCLAMATION

As a mark of respect for the victims of gun violence perpetrated on December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions through December 7, 2015. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this third day of December, in the year of our Lord two thousand fifteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fortieth.

BARACK OBAMA

Posted on 2 Comments

Did Political Correctness Kill , Neighbor Suspicious, Didn’t Report For Fear Of Being Called RACIST!

FAROOQ SAEED

 

December 3,2015

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

San Bernardino CA, In a report from KABC in Los Angeles, a neighbor of the Muslim terror suspect in Redlands, California, says that other neighbors were suspicious of the Middle Eastern men and their activities, but didn’t do anything out of it for fear of “profiling” them.

Hours after the attack, authorities followed a tip to the home on Center Street in Redlands. As Police officers approached, the two suspects fled in a dark SUV. A police chase ensued, ending back in San Bernardino, where the two suspects — one male and one female — were killed in the gun battle with police.

Police report that both suspects were armed with assault rifles and handguns and a third person who fled from the shooting scene was detained after an extensive search but It was not immediately clear if that person was involved in the Inland Regional Center shooting.

Neighbors in Redlands expressed shock that the suspects had ties to their area. KABC also reported that a man who has been working in the area said he noticed a half-dozen Middle Eastern men in the area in recent weeks, but decided not to report anything since he did not wish to racially profile those people.

Posted on 1 Comment

Officials: San Bernardino shooter apparently radicalized, in touch with terror subjects

San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department

By Greg Botelho, Kyung Lah and Ben Brumfield, CNN

Updated 1:01 PM ET, Thu December 3, 2015 | Video Source: CNN

San Bernardino, California (CNN)[Breaking news update at 12:59 p.m. ET]

The San Bernardino massacre shooters had extensive amounts of ammunition and in their home at the time they were killed in a shootout with police, the city’s police chief said Thursday.

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said that Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, fired between 65 and 75 rifle rounds during the shooting at a county health department holiday party, then unloaded about that number in a later confrontation with police.

Fourteen died in the holiday party carnage and 21 more were wounded, according to Burguan. He said two police officers suffered injuries in the subsequent shootout.

Authorities later found thousands more rounds of ammunition at the couple’s residence, 12 pipe bombs and hundreds of tools that “could be used to construct IEDs or pipe bombs,” the chief said.

Burguan said “we still don’t have a motive,” but speculated that the couple may have been planning more carnage.

“They were equipped … and they could have done another attack,” the chief said.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/03/us/san-bernardino-shooting/index.html

Posted on 4 Comments

FBI implies Terrorism in San Beradino Attack

Obama-Golf
December 2,2015 9:25pm
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

San Beradino CA, the staff of the Ridgewood blog through the miracle of modern technology was able to garner some little reported information about the San Bernadino shooting . For some odd reason the name of the main suspect which was reported on police scanner as Farooq Saeed was being suppressed by the media for some time. Here is what was reported there were 3 heavily armed with body armor PROFESSIONAL SHOOTERS,  14 DEAD 17 WOUNDED at a GOVERNMENT ️(COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT) AGENCY CHRISTMAS PARTY clearly picking the 2nd floor on the building ignoring the 1st floor. The shooters clearly CAME IN WITH A MISSION at this point it is hard to imagine how this can not be a Terrorist event? Later it was reported by the ATF  that there was a pipe bomb was found on one of the suspects and they suspect some were in the building . So far one shooter was male one female who were killed during pursuit. The one very odd point is why did they single out the second floor only.

The media seems to be trying to push the “an argument  ” at the event caused the shooting ,later the police said could not establish any causality to that. That “argument” caused it seemed patently absurd given all the other evidence . Of coarse denials of international terrorism from unspecified Federal officials are coming in hot and heavy  as well as calls for gun control ,oy vey. One person was being detained and it was not immediately clear weather they were male or female or how they are implicated .

Posted on 7 Comments

Christie says he’ll ‘never’ approve giving drivers licenses to undocumented N.J. residents

wanted

Drivers Licenses For Undocumented Immigrants Clears Assembly Panel

Legislation that would grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants passed the Assembly Homeland Security and State Preparedness Committee in a 3-2 voteon Monday. Alyana Alfaro, PolitickerNJ.com Read more

Christie on Drivers’ Licenses for Undocumenteds: ‘Dangerous and Irresponsible’

As the Assembly Homeland Security and State Preparedness Committee considers drivers’ licenses for undocumented workers, Gov. Chris Christie issued qa statement in opposition. Max Pizarro, PolitickerNJ.com Read more

 

By Claude Brodesser-Akner | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com TRENTON

TRENTON — As Gov. Chris Christie mulls a bid for the White House, some of his positionson immigration may be evolving. But one remains steadfastly the same.

“I’m not giving driver’s licenses to people who are undocumented. That’s it,” Christie said flatly, speaking on his monthly radio show on New Jersey 101.5.

Christie called the state-issued driver’s license “the single most important form of identification. It gets you onto airplanes. … I cannot give driver’s licenses to people who I cannot be sure who they are … and I’ve had that position right from the beginning.”

Christie was named U.S. Attorney for New Jersey on September 10, 2001. The 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred on his second day on the job.

“When it first happened … all I could think about was the job — what is this going to mean?” Christie told The Associated Press on the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks in 2011.

https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/04/christie_says_hell_never_approve_giving_drivers_li.html

Posted on 2 Comments

Francois Hollande is making Obama look like a fool

Francois Hollande

By Andrea Peyser

November 16, 2015 | 2:17am

It’s beyond surreal that the president of France is making the American president look like a cheese-eating amateur.

The terror attacks in Paris Friday took scores of livesand thrust the entire civilized world into paroxysms of grief and despair. Then something unexpected happened.

French President François Hollande stepped up to the soccer goal. And he displayed the kind of leadership one normally does not associate with the randy politician presiding over the land of vintage Champagne and Brie.

No sooner had ISIS claimed responsibility for the butchery than Hollande got in front of TV cameras and told the traumatized public that the savagery was an “act of war.’’ He vowed to pound ISIS into submission.

Compare that to the American president’s initial reaction. President Obama, who once ridiculed ISIS (or “ISIL,” as he calls it) by comparing it to a junior varsity squad, was loath to point fingers. “I don’t want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this,” he said.

https://nypost.com/2015/11/16/francois-hollande-is-making-obama-look-like-a-fool/

Posted on 5 Comments

It’s time for Obama to make a choice: Lead us or resign

obama-on-phone

By Michael Goodwin

November 14, 2015 | 10:01pm

In any time and place, war is fiendishly simple. It is the ultimate zero-sum contest — you win or you lose.

That eternal truth is so obvious that it should not need to be said. Yet even after the horrific slaughter in Paris, there remains a distressing doubt about whether America’s commander in chief gets it.

President Obama has spent the last seven years trying to avoid the world as it is. He has put his intellect and rhetorical skills into the dishonorable service of assigning blame and fudging failure. If nuances were bombs, Islamic State would have been destroyed years ago.

He refuses to say “Islamic terrorism,” as if that would offend the peaceful Muslims who make up the vast bulk of victims. He rejects the word “war,” even as jihadists carry out bloodthirsty attacks against Americans and innocent peoples around the world.

He shuns the mantle of global leadership that comes with the Oval Office, with an aide advancing the preposterous concept that Obama is “leading from behind.” He snubs important partners like Egypt, showers concessions on the apocalyptic mullahs of Iran, and called the Islamic State the “jayvee team” even as it was beginning to create a caliphate.

https://nypost.com/2015/11/14/its-time-for-obama-to-make-a-choice-lead-us-or-resign/

Posted on Leave a comment

Paris attacks put dagger through heart of liberal Europe

Paris

Attacks threaten viability of Schengen agreement and the vision of tolerant, multi-cultural society that is “essence” of Europe, analysts warn

By Peter Foster, Europe Editor

12:22PM GMT 14 Nov 2015

The Paris attacks that killed at least 128 people on Saturday night will put renewed pressure on Europe Schengen agreement and threaten the “very essence” of the European way of life, as far-right parties seek to capitalise on the attacks, analysts have warned.

With Paris now enduring this second major terror bloodbath in under a year, questions are now being asked about how much longer both Europe’s open border system and vision of a tolerant, multi-cultural society can survive.

“With Paris in lockdown and France closing its borders, we can see all too clearly that what is at stake here is the very essence of our way of life in Europe,” said Davis Lewin, the deputy director of the Henry Jackson Society, a conservative think-tank.

Designed to facilitate the free movement of goods and labour that is the economic life-blood of the continent, the Schengen system has also enabled the easy transfer of both weapons and, potentially jihadist fighters, across those same borders.

Following the attacks, Francois Hollande, the French President also re-imposed border controls in a bid to ensure that none of the Paris terrorists or their support network in France were able to escape, as occurred after the Charlie Hebdo atrocity.

Even before the Paris attacks, Donald Tusk, the EU president, had warned that Europe faced a “race against time” to save the 20-year-old system, which is seen as one of the Union’s most concrete achievements.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11995821/Paris-attacks-have-put-a-dagger-through-the-heart-of-liberal-Europe.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11995821/Paris-attacks-have-put-a-dagger-through-the-heart-of-liberal-Europe.html

Posted on 5 Comments

Americans are buying tons of gold

0831_gold_630x420

This summer’s market mayhem caused Americans to buy gold bars and coins at levels unseen since the financial crisis.

When people are scared about the economy and financial markets, they rush to gold. Boy, were they worried in recent months.

U.S. demand for gold bars and coins surged 207% during the third quarter, the World Gold Council said on Thursday.

The skyrocketing demand signaled a level of interest in gold investment “not seen since the global financial crisis,” the group said.

The U.S. Mint backs up that assessment. It said gold Eagle coin sales surged to nearly 400,000 ounces last quarter, the highest level in more than five years.

https://money.cnn.com/2015/11/12/investing/us-gold-demand-surges-markets-fed/index.html

Posted on Leave a comment

Al Qaeda Mag Urges Attack on Koch Brothers, Buffett, Bloomberg

Buffett and Obama

SEP 9 2015, 4:16 PM ET
by ROBERT WINDREM and TRACY CONNOR

A notorious al Qaeda magazine is encouraging lone-wolf terrorist attacks on U.S. economic leaders, including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett.

The list in Inspire magazine also included industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch, internet entrepreneur Larry Ellison, and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. A prominent economist was also on the list but asked that his name be withheld. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was named, though not Janet Yellen, who succeeded him.

Also pictured was Jim Walton, one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, although he was misidentified in the caption as his late father, Sam Walton. Several other names on the list were misspelled.

The slickly produced magazine article begins with a photo illustration showing blood-spattered pictures of several of the leaders next to a dripping gun. Its stated goal is to derail the “revival of the America Economy.”

The article says the “economic personalities” and “wealthy entrepreneurs” can get off the list by withdrawing their money from U.S. banks, investing their wealth outside American soil, and denouncing support for Israel.

Posted on Leave a comment

AFTER 9/11, LESSONS UNLEARNED

US-ATTACKS-9/11-ANNIVERSARY

by Elan Journo | September 11, 2014

Thirteen years have passed since jihadists rammed jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Doubtless the images of the Twin Towers collapsing are indelible, and the toll in human life was achingly massive. In time, though, memory fades. By themselves, our impressions of the past are insufficient to guide our thinking and action. We need consciously to identify lessons from our experience.

What should we learn? Here are three crucial lessons, still unlearned.

Lesson #1: America’s selfless foreign policy encouraged Islamist aggression.

Writing days after the attacks, Leonard Peikoff explained that: “Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the U.S. The climax was September 11, 2001.” My talk, “The Road to 9/11,” looks at several episodes of pre-9/11 Islamist aggression and the self-effacing responses of the Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton Administrations. Standing apart from conventional thinking, ARI advocates for a foreign policy guided by the moral ideal of rational egoism, a policy that resolutely protects the lives and freedom of Americans.

What does that look like? Peter Schwartz’s monograph, The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America lays out what an egoist approach looks like in theory and practice (purchase Kindle ebook or paperback). My book, Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism, analyses the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and applies Ayn Rand’s ethics to foreign policy, defining a path to victory against the enemy. (Read the introduction.)

Lesson #2. The enemy is not just Bin Laden, or Al Qaeda, but the Islamist movement.

“Know your enemy” is a necessary condition for figuring out how to defeat the threat. Tragically, neither before nor after 9/11 did American policymakers understand the enemy. It is hopelessly superficial to think of the enemy as “terrorists” (many groups use that tactic) or “haters” or “hijackers of a great religion,” or Al Qaeda, etc. Bin Laden has been dead three-plus years, and Al Qaeda has been damaged — but clearly the threat persists.

 

 

https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/foreign-policy/middle-east/After-911-Lessons-Unlearned#filter-bar

Posted on 3 Comments

Officials: 2 military facilities attacked in Tennessee

Youssef Abdulazeez

The shooter also was killed. Law enforcement sources told CBS News that the shooting suspect was identified as 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. According to a U.S. law enforcement source, Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait and came to the United States in 1996. It’s unclear if and when he became an American citizen https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-police-officer-shot-near-tennessee-army-recruiting-center/

Officials: 2 military facilities attacked in Tennessee

Jul 16, 2:40 PM (ET)

By LUCAS L. JOHNSON

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — At least one gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire at two military facilities Thursday in Tennessee, sending troops scrambling for safety in an Army recruiting office, officials said.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said “lives have been lost from some faithful people who are serving our country,” though he did not say how many people were killed or wounded.

Chattanooga police said in a tweet Thursday afternoon that the active shooter situation was over, though there was no word on what had happened to the suspect or suspects.

Mayor Andy Berke said at a news conference that there’s “an officer down” at a military reserve center. He did not release any other details. Berke called it a “very terrible situation.

https://apnews.myway.com/article/20150716/us–chattanooga_shooting-260b6ea385.html

Posted on Leave a comment

Records show Clinton withheld emails about oil, terrorism

hillary-clinton-what-difference-does-it-make

BY SARAH WESTWOOD | JUNE 27, 2015 | 12:01 AM

Hillary Clinton withheld Benghazi-related emails from the State Department that detailed her knowledge of the scramble for oil contracts in Libya and the shortcomings of the NATO-led military intervention for which she advocated.

Clinton removed specific portions of other emails she sent to State, suggesting the messages were screened closely enough to determine which paragraphs were unfit to be seen by the public.

For example, one email Clinton kept from the State Department indicates Libyan leaders were “well aware” of which “major oil companies and international banks” supported them during the rebellion, information they would “factor into decisions” about about who would be given access to the country’s rich oil reserves.

The email, which Clinton subsequently scrubbed from her server, indicated Clinton was aware that involvement in the controversial conflict could have a significant financial benefit to firms that were friendly to the Libyan rebels.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/records-show-clinton-withheld-emails-about-oil-terrorism/article/2567169

Posted on Leave a comment

A Republican lawmaker on the House Homeland Security Committee on Sunday blasted the idea that white supremacists could be more dangerous than Muslim extremists.

1416083745336_wps_65_Jihadi_John_Alan_Henning

GOP rep: White supremacist threat overstated

By Timothy Cama

A Republican lawmaker on the House Homeland Security Committee on Sunday blasted the idea that white supremacists could be more dangerous than Muslim extremists.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said he totally “disregarded” a New York Times report, based on findings from the New America Foundation, that white supremacists, anti-government extremists and others have killed nearly twice as many people as radical Muslims since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“Every murder is horrible,” King said in ABC’s “This Week.” “There is no comparison between these white supremacists and an internationally coordinated movement which, if the attacks were not stopped, we could have thousands and thousands of deaths.”

things the NY Times recently missed :

2015.06.27 (Maiduguri, Nigeria) – Two female suicide bombers murder three people at a leprosy hospital.
2015.06.26 (Mosul, Iraq) – A physician is dragged from his hospital and executed by religious radicals.
2015.06.26 (Ain al-Arab, Syria) – Children are among eighteen more victims found after an Islamic State rampage.
2015.06.26 (Sousse, Tunisia) – Two Islamists massacre thirty-nine innocents with machine-guns at a beach resort popular with foreign tourists.
2015.06.26 (Kobani, Syria) – Over one-hundred more civilians are butchered when the Islamic State overrun a Kurdish town and go ‘house to house’.
2015.06.26 (Kuwait City, Kuwait) – Sunni radicals stage a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque, calling it the ‘temple of the rejectionists’ and leave over two dozen dead.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/246400-gop-chairman-white-supremacist-threaten-overstated