Feral Jundi

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Al Qaeda: Nigerian Arrested In Failed Plane Attack, Hero Passenger Stops Him

Filed under: Al Qaeda,Nigeria — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 12:40 AM

Federal authorities have been told that Abdulmutallab allegedly had taped some material to his leg, then used a syringe to mix chemicals with the powder while on the airplane, one official said.

But doing so “caused him to catch on fire,” Richelle Keepman, who sat a few rows in front of Abdulmutallab, told WDIV-TV.

Another passenger on Flight 253, Syed Jafry of Holland, Mich., told the Detroit Free Press that he noticed a glow three rows ahead in the Airbus 330, then smelled smoke. The next moment, Jafri recounted, “a young man behind me jumped on” Abdulmutallab. 

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    Now that is what I am talking about!  This booger eater not only fails to do what he set out to do, but a passenger on the plane actually reacted to the guy and jumped on him.  That’s like the equivalent of jumping on a hand grenade, and this hero needs to be recognized.

   This falls in line with the ‘hero in waiting’ stuff that Philip Zimbardo introduced and I keep talking about here.  It’s not going to be a cop, or a soldier, or whatever that is going to protect people all the time and in every situation.  Most of the time, it’s going to be a civilian with the courage and conviction to do what has to be done, and during those mad minutes.  We should be celebrating heroes that stepped up to stop these animals and make them examples as to the kinds of citizens the world needs in order to stop Al Qaeda and any other criminals or murderers.

   Another way to look at this is the one thing that can stop a super empowered individual, whom has the intent to do bad things, is another super empowered individual intent on doing good things. We need heroes in waiting, and this attack is a prime example of why. So start watching those Surviving Disaster shows and get the word out! –Matt

Edit: Cannoneer #4 just posted a similar deal in praise of the passengers that took this guy down.

Edit#2: 12/27/2009 Jasper Schuringa was the hero.  Here is his Facebook page, and I guess he is a director and into film stuff.

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Nigerian arrested in failed plane attack claims links to al-Qaeda

By Michael Leahy and Spencer S. HsuSaturday, December 26, 2009; 12:16 AM

A Nigerian man, claiming to be linked to al-Qaeda, allegedly tried to set off an incendiary device aboard a transatlantic airplane Friday as it descended toward Detroit’s airport in what the White House called an attempted act of terrorism.

The man was quickly subdued after another passenger leapt on top of him, others on the plane said, and Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam landed safely around 1 p.m. Friday. The suspect was being treated at a hospital for burns he suffered while igniting the device, the Transportation Security Administration said.

The FBI is investigating the incident. President Obama, celebrating Christmas in Hawaii, was informed about it, a spokesman said, and he asked aides to ensure that all measures are in place to provide secure air travel.

Officials said they are not prepared to raise the terrorism alert level, currently at orange — or the second-highest of five levels — for domestic and international air travel. However, the Homeland Security Department said late Friday that passengers “may notice additional screening measures, put into place to ensure the safety of the traveling public on domestic and international flights.”

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Film: Terror in Mumbai

Filed under: Film,India — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 7:21 AM

   Outstanding.  This is the kind of film I like, just because it breaks down what happened and allows the viewing public to see first hand how to combat something like this.  Knowing is half the battle, and we have to expect that attacks like this will happen again, and in all corners of the world.  Get prepared, and study how these things work I say.  Be a ‘hero in waiting’, and foil these attacks by being able to recognize the signs and actions of it, and inserting a monkey wrench into the terror machine. That smart phone in your hand, is your weapon, along with anything else you can think of to cause harm to or stop this kind of attack.  Or you can coward away, and expect someone else to save you. –Matt

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Terror in Mumbai

Synopsis

TERROR IN MUMBAI features exclusive audio tapes of the intercepted phone calls between the young gunmen and their controllers in Pakistan, and testimony from the sole surviving gunman.

The Mumbai attackers’ targets included the city’s main railway station, a popular cafe, two major hotels and a Jewish center. Leaving the city’s iconic Taj Mahal Hotel in flames, and Mumbai’s woefully unprepared police and security forces paralyzed with fear, the attacks sent an ominous message to governments around the world.

“Much as the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. did in 2001, the events that unfolded last November in Mumbai served as a terrifying wake-up call, not just to India but to the rest of the world,” says narrator Fareed Zakaria, who appears on camera in the opening and closing of the film. “It broadened the spectrum of our enemies and brought attention to the number of different terrorist groups that exist, who may be bigger and better organized than we ever imagined. The fact that a small group of gunmen was able to inflict so much pain, and the government of the second most populous nation on earth was unable to stop them for three days, should change our sense of the dangers out there.”

In the words of one of the operation’s masterminds, who remotely controlled the terrorists’ every deadly move by cell phone from neighboring Pakistan, “This was just the trailer. Just wait till you see the rest of the film.” The assailants belonged to the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or “Army of the Righteous,” which aims to “liberate” Muslims living under Indian rule in Kashmir. Their mission: global jihad against the “infidels.”

TERROR IN MUMBAI presents a moment-by-moment account of the horrific attacks through interviews with survivors and Indian police officials, archival news coverage, extensive video surveillance footage of the terrorists in action, and chilling audio excerpts of cell-phone conversations intercepted by security forces. The phone intercepts provide a grotesque running commentary as the controllers, watching events unfold on live TV, direct the gunmen, telling them where the security forces are, which of their hostages should be killed and how to do it. With the killers wounded and asking what to do next, the tapes reveal the controllers calmly urging them to fight to the death and not allow themselves to be taken alive.

Guests from the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels tell how the terrorists first staged mass executions, then worked their way through the corridors, killing whenever they managed to enter a room. An elderly couple recounts how they were spared by the terrorists when it was realized they were fellow Muslims, while all around them were mowed down in a hail of bullets. Perhaps the most unsettling testimony comes from Ajmal Amir Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist, who answers his captors’ questions with startling frankness from a gurney soon after being captured.

While the Mumbai attacks differed in many ways from the Al Qaeda assault on the U.S. on September 11, 2001, the personal motives of the Laskar-e-Taiba terrorists bear some of the same hallmarks, notably the belief that there would be material wealth for their families and heavenly glory for themselves if they died for the cause of jihad.

What remains unclear is how this quest for holiness meshed with the indiscriminate nature of the killings, which mowed down Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Law Enforcement: Civilian Response to Active Shooter Situations, From a Police Officer

Filed under: Law Enforcement,Tactical Thought Process — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 12:56 AM

   This is a great post from New American Truth, and thanks to Matt for sending me this one.  This goes back to the best counter to a super empowered individual wishing to do bad–and that is a super empowered individual who has the mindset and tools for stopping this type of individual.  An active shooter has seconds and minutes to do their damage, and a citizen with a gun could be the one thing that could stop this individual from doing more damage.  Ideally you would want law enforcement to be everywhere and at all times to stop something like this, but that just isn’t going to happen. –Matt

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Civilian Response To Active Shooters Situations

In recent weeks, with active shooter events having occurred at a mall, a church and as children got off a school bus, I’ve seen some postings in various online forums from civilians who hold concealed carry permits asking, “How should we react to this?” The question they are asking, in general, is what they should be doing if they’re on the scene and the shooting starts. I was at first conflicted as to how to answer this question. Then, having developed an answer, I strongly prefaced it with “this is just my opinion”. There are far too many “what if”s that come into play when considering a response to an active shooter – even for police officers who are off duty. Those “what if”s multiply ten fold for a civilian who is legally armed and happens to be on hand when a shooting starts. What to do?

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Monday, October 19, 2009

Somalia: A New Template for Fighting Terrorism, and More Thoughts on CSS Global

Filed under: Africa,Somalia — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 12:53 PM

   Interesting article, but I noticed that there was no mention of CSS Global and their latest contract with the Somali government?  Security contractors running around and providing protection to Somali government officials, tends to get noticed by the people, and I wonder if anyone in DC or any other think tank has thought about this latest deal?

   Maybe CSS Global can pull it off, and do really well.  Although I wonder why a more well known company with more proven capacity wasn’t chosen for this daunting task?  Islamic extremists read the paper too, and you can bet they have some welcoming gifts ready for any company wanting to come in and do this kind of work.

   The biggest advantage any group has in Somalia, is to reawaken the Blackhawk Down syndrome we have in regards to Somalia.  To make operating there, a living nightmare, and make it very public and bloody.  That is what they like to do in failed states, and warfare is sport in Somalia.

   The other angle, and this is classic guerilla warfare, and that is to create a Blackwater Bridge scenario.  Kill some contractors, drag their bodies through the streets (a la Blackhawk Down style), and then hang them up for the world to see on some telephone pole or bridge.  The intended result is to get us angry, rally the fighters, recruit more guys, infuse doubt within the people about the foreigner’s capability and try to suck the foreigner into a country with actual ground troops as opposed to just contractors. They want us to go in there and kick ass, or at least try to, because that only rallies the people around the ‘wannabe’ home team.  Or at least that is what Al Shabab is thinking.

   Or maybe that is our intention?  Allow a company with little experience and capability into a death trap like Somalia, and hope for a Blackwater Bridge scenario?  No troops would be killed–just security contractors.  But those contractors are American, and it would bring attention to the situation there. It would make Al Shabab look like animals.   Then we could use that as a means for getting more involved in Somalia. It sounds farfetched, but I keep going back in my brain about CSS Global and their background.

   You need your Varsity teams for Somalia, and CSS Global is kind of the Junior Varsity of teams.  Is this a matter of lowest bidder, or CSS Global selling Somalia on capability?  Who knows, and maybe a CSS Global or State Dept. representative can explain what is going on here?  I want to believe that they are the best for the job, but their history really doesn’t point to that.  Am I off base here?  Let me know what you guys think? –Matt

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In Somalia, A New Template for Fighting Terrorism

10/17/2009

Jeffrey Gettleman

The New York Times

Somalia isn’t just a nagging geopolitical headache that won’t go away. It is also a cautionary tale. Few countries in modern history have been governmentless for so long, and as the United States has learned, it would be nice to think you could ignore this wild, thirsty, mostly nomadic nation 7,000 miles away. But you can’t.

Al Qaeda is working feverishly to turn Somalia into a global jihad factory, according to recent intelligence assessments, and the way the United States chooses to respond could serve as a template for other fronts in the wider counterterrorism war. Just last month, American helicopters swept over the dusty Somali horizon to take out Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a wanted Qaeda suspect who had been hiding out in Somalia for years and training a new bevy of killers; some of those trainees are believed to be Somali-Americans who could easily slip back into the United States and do some serious damage as suicide bombers.

In a way, the daring daylight strike against Mr. Nabhan, which was supposedly part of the Obama administration’s shift from targeting terrorists with cruise missiles that often kill civilians, was a flashback. Few in Somalia — or the American military — have forgotten Black Hawk Down, the battle in October 1993 when Somali militiamen in flip-flops killed 18 American soldiers, including members of the Army’s elite Delta Force. It was a searing humiliation for the Pentagon, which had just emerged from the first gulf war pumped up on smart bombs and laser-guided missiles, but in Somalia found itself back in a Vietnam-style quagmire where high technology was no match for local rage.

Black Hawk Down made the United States gun-shy for years, contributing to its failure to intervene against genocide in Rwanda and, for a time, in Bosnia, too. The battle itself was immortalized in a so-so film and a great book — required reading for some courses at West Point.

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Saturday, October 3, 2009

Law Enforcement: Police Departments Back Anti-terror Citizens Watch

Filed under: Law Enforcement,Technology — Tags: , , , , , , , — Matt @ 11:01 AM

     I should file this under ‘super empowered sheepdogs’ or SEI, because that is what we will need to combat super empowered individuals (SEI) and groups. I brought up the Joker from the movie Dark Knight in past posts, as the epitome of a SEI. These SEI’s are individuals that learn about their cause and how to prosecute it, all on their own. They can conduct operations that can cause a lot of death and damage, and with tools like the internet, they are intellectually empowered to create all sorts of mayhem. Law enforcement cannot be everywhere and at all times, so it is important to tap on to the one resource out there that can be everywhere and at all times.  That resource is you.

     Now one idea for iWatch is to make it into a mobile application.  Not only could you update what to look for on each smart phone through updates, but iWatch could send alerts with new info, straight to the iWatch mobile application.  The other thing they could do is put the ‘most wanted’ list on iWatch, with a last known location (LKL) function attached to that list.  I would set it up where the iWatch app notifies you when you are in the area of a LKL of a most wanted individual or individuals.  It would be a reminder of who to look for, based on specific areas.

     The way I could see it working is that you have your iPhone or PDA in your pocket, and then as you are walking around, you get a notification.  You as the user could set up your notifications and alerts to your personal preference, but either way, you get a notification in the form of a alarm or vibration.  You pull out your phone, hit the alert tab on your iWatch icon, and then it gives you the details.  Now you will have a picture in your head for that specific area.  And now the odds of a offhand spotting of a booger eater increases.  Or even an offhand spotting of a vehicle listed or of suspicious activity.  There are all types of things you could do with this.  Hell, you could even do like Crime Stoppers, and attach bounties and awards to this, to further increase the odds of a capture. –Matt

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Police departments back anti-terror citizens watch

By EILEEN SULLIVAN (AP) – 2 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Big city police chiefs are backing an anti-terrorism community watch program to educate people about what behavior is truly suspicious and ought to be reported to police.

Police Chief William Bratton of Los Angeles, whose department developed the iWATCH program, calls it the 21st century version of Neighborhood Watch.

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