We continue to keep a close eye on developments in the Middle East Powder Keg:
Hamas has warned Israel against waging war on the Gaza strip in retaliation for the deaths of three kidnapped Israeli youths, threatening that "the gates of hell will open" should action be taken.
The response came after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed: "Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay", following the discovery of the bodies of the three missing youths yesterday.
The Israeli military struck 34 targets across the Gaza Strip overnight after more than 20 rockets were fired from the territory into Israel since late Sunday.
Hamas, however, responded warning against any broad offensive on the territory. Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: "Netanyahu should know that threats don't scare Hamas, and if he wages a war on Gaza, the gates of hell will open on him."
Israel's military said a Palestinian was shot dead when he threw a grenade at forces carrying out an arrest raid hours after the discovery of the bodies of the Israeli teenagers.
A spokesman said the clash occurred in the West Bank town of Jenin. It was the first casualty since the bodies were found.
“Following over 18 rockets which were fired at Israel since Sunday evening, IAF aircraft carried out a precision strike against 34 targets in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said.
Four people were injured, according to Israel Radio citing Palestinian sources.
“The IDF will continue to act in order to restore the peaceful living to the civilians of the state of Israel. The Hamas terror organization and its extensions are solely responsible for any terror activities emanating from the Gaza Strip,” IDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said.
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip early Tuesday landed in the Eshkol Regional Council, causing damage to several cars and a fire close to a packaging plant, which was quickly put out by emergency services.
Another rocket landed in the Sdot Negev region, causing no damage or injuries.
A former NATO commander warned Monday that it was “only a matter of time” before a Sunni insurgent group that has captured parts of Iraq and Syria turns its attention to attacks in Europe.
Retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis urged U.S. and European allies to do more to prevent jihadists with western passports from returning home to stage terror attacks.
"Those AK-toting fundamentalists are a bit busy at the moment destroying two Shiite/Alawite regimes in Iraq and Syria, respectively, but the eye of Sunni extremism will inevitably turn its attention to the capitals of Europe," he wrote.
Terrorism experts have long warned about foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq with western passports returning to their home countries to carry out attacks.
Terrorism experts have long warned about foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq with western passports returning to their home countries to carry out attacks.
Lawmakers say the threat has grown following the ascent of ISIS, which is now threatening Iraq’s capital Baghdad.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said last week there was a possibility ISIS could team up with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, another terror group considered to be the biggest operational threat to the U.S.
“So you have all of these new relationships happening in a way that’s really concerning,” he told reporters.
Stavridis, the dean of Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, also called for NATO to send at least a hundred special forces to assist the 300-strong U.S. team in Iraq. President Obama deployed U.S. forces to help Baghdad counter ISIS.
"Why is this uniquely a U.S. mission? The NATO Special Forces Command is fully capable of putting such a force package together under direction of the Supreme Allied Commander for operations and moving them forward alongside Americans," Stavridis said.
Stavridis also recommended sending NATO special forces into Syria and Iraq to provide intelligence and prepare for "possible NATO operations” in those countries.
"This region of the world is spinning rapidly out of control, with dangerous implications for both Europe and the United States. The alliance has enormous capability, but does it have the political will to lean into this dangerous situation?" he said.
Stavridis said NATO should focus on Syria’s border with Turkey, an ally of the military coalition.
"NATO needs a quick shot of strong Turkish coffee to get its energy level up and make some decisions about engagement — because what's emerging now is a clear and present danger along the southern flank of the alliance," he said.
Stavridis also urged the West to counter online jihadist propaganda from ISIS and other Sunni extremist groups.
Over the weekend two additional cases of the swine flu (H1N1) virus were confirmed among Central American illegal immigrant minors being detained in South Texas, and two more were found to be exhibiting “flu like symptoms,” compounding anxieties over communicable diseases being spread within the meager confines of overloaded detention facilities.
In addition to the confirmed case in San Antonio last week, on Saturday, KGBT confirmed via a Border Patrol Union representative that two more cases of the H1N1 virus were detected in minors being held in two separate detainment facilities in Brownsville, Texas.
Chris Cabrera, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council #3307, “said both cases involve juveniles and both were confirmed on Friday by medical personnel located at both facilities,” reports KGBT.
Cabrera also divulged approximately 120 people were being isolated due to exposure with the afflicted juveniles.
On Sunday, Cabrera revealed two more children at a Border Patrol station in Brownsville were also isolated after exhibiting “flu like symptoms,” however, H1N1 in those cases has not been confirmed.
“If someone is released and they are symptomatic, it could spread rapidly” Cabrera warned. “It’s contagious, we are transporting people to different parts of the state and different parts of the country,” he also expressedearlier this month, referring to the practice of transporting immigrants to other parts of the country.
With reports of sickness spreading in detention facilities, many contend the immigrant surge poses a serious risk to public health. Last week, we learned at least one H1N1 diagnosis cropped up at the makeshift immigrant processing center at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.
On Friday, Congressman Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo) also disclosed some Central American detainees were found to be harboring diseases such as tuberculosis, scabies and chicken pox, and that “according to Border Patrol, 4 or 5 of their agents have tested positive for those diseases.”
A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say.
In spite of the threat, several former camp workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the dangerous conditions at the camp. They said taxpayers deserve to know about the contagious diseases and the risks the children pose to Americans. I have agreed to not to disclose their identities because they fear retaliation and prosecution.
“There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made it clear we would be arrested,” a psychiatric counselor told me. “We were under orders not to say anything.”
The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the Baptist Family & Children’s Services, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.
The sources say security forces called themselves the “Brown Shirts.”
“It was a very submissive atmosphere,” the counselor said. “Once you stepped onto the grounds, you abided by their laws – the Brown Shirt laws.”
She said the workers were stripped of their cellphones and other communication devices. Anyone caught with a phone was immediately fired.
“Everyone was paranoid,” she said. “The children had more rights than the workers.”
She said children in the camp had measles, scabies, chicken pox and strep throat as well as mental and emotional issues.
“It was not a good atmosphere in terms of health,” she said. “I would be talking to children and lice would just be climbing down their hair.”
A former nurse at the camp told me she was horrified by what she saw.
“We have so many kids coming in that there was no way to control all of the sickness – all this stuff coming into the country,” she said. “We were very concerned at one point about strep going around the base.”
Both the counselor and the nurse said their superiors tried to cover up the extent of the illnesses.
“When they found out the kids had scabies, the charge nurse was adamant – ‘Don’t mention that. Don’t say scabies,’” the nurse recounted. “But everybody knew they had scabies. Some of the workers were very concerned about touching things and picking things up. They asked if they should be concerned, but they were told don’t worry about it.”
The nurse said the lice issue was epidemic – but everything was kept “hush-hush.”
“You could see the bugs crawling through their hair,” she said. “After we would rinse out their hair, the sink would be loaded with black bugs.”
The nurse told me she became especially alarmed because their files indicated the children had been transported to Lackland on domestic charter buses and airplanes.
“That’s what alerted me,” she said. “Oh, my God. They’re flying these kids around. Nobody knows that these children have scabies and lice. To tell you the truth, there’s no way to control it.”
Many dubbed Obama’s proposed force the “Brown Shirts,” a term often used to describe a Nazi assault force and one that has repeatedly been associated with extremist nationalists for their unwavering willingness to take and execute orders without question or contemplation. Brown shirt brigades were tasked with, among other things, arresting dissidents, silencing criticism and wholesale executions of those who could not be reeducated.
For the majority, the notion that such a force would be assembled in the United States was nothing but another conspiracy originating from the lunatic right wing. But in October of 2012 the Department of Homeland Security quietly graduated their first corp of civilian responders under the new program. And since then it is likely that thousands more have been trained and deployed across the country to be called upon in the event of an emergency.
And if there were ever an emergency that required a military level response in the United States, many believe it is happening right now on the Southern border as hundreds of thousands of migrants make their way illegally into America. Because of the sheer number of people heading to the U.S. and the complete failure, whether by chance or by design, of the Obama administration to secure the border, America is now faced with housing, feeding, clothing and providing medical care for more people than it was prepared to handle.
In response, rather than deploy Homeland Security or the National Guard to stop the migration at its source, the Administration has instead set up makeshift internment camps, some of which put scores of people in a room the size of a studio apartment. As a result, disease has spread and civilian emergency personnel have been tasked with providing care.
But among the doctors and caregivers is also a private security force that has been hired to keep the peace. And according to several people working inside the camps, the security groups have turned their attention not towards keeping peace between the migrants, but rather, at keeping the goings on of the facilities completely secret from the general public.
According to the unnamed source, who could not provide video documentation of these events because cell phones are not allowed in the facility, the security force is reportedly calling itself the “Brown Shirts.” The insider says they have been given orders to arrest anyone speaking to the public or using cell phones, and have implemented what is being referred to as “Brown Shirts Law.”
A group of Russian hackers known as Energetic Bear are systematically targeting hundreds of Western energy companies with malware that could disrupt power supplies, it has been claimed.
Private cybersecurity researchers say the primary motive behind the attacks appears to be industrial espionage, but the software also allows the hackers to seize control of control systems from afar.
This could allow the culprits to sabotage facilities or disrupt power supplies to homes and businesses.
The attacks have affected more than 1,000 organisations in more than 84 countries, according to researchers at CrowdStrike, and were first discovered in August 2012.
The California-based company has since observed unusually sophisticated attacks on healthcare bodies, defence contractors and government agencies.
Now computer security company Symantec has revealed that the hacking group - which it nicknames Dragonfly - has remote-control capability over some power systems.
A statement from Symantec said: "Among the targets of Dragonfly were energy grid operators, major electricity generation firms, petroleum pipeline operators, and energy industry industrial equipment providers.
"The majority of the victims were located in the United States, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, and Poland."
Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued an open letter to her successor last year and warned that a “massive and serious” cyber attack targeting the U.S. power grid was imminent. Such an event, said Napolitano, would have an immediate impact on everything from powering your home to grocery food deliveries.
At the very moment Napolitano made her comments, whether she knew it or not, a group of eastern European hackers believed to be working closely with Russia’s electronic spy agency had compromised upwards of 1,000 key infrastructure components around the world that included wind turbines, gas pipelines, aviation system and power plants.
According to cyber security firm Symantec these state-sponsored hackers breached industrial control systems’ equipment by first hacking the physical computersresponsible for managing grid components and then forcing them to download malware that made it possible to take control of the entire system remotely.
Once in, the hacking group known to security engineers as ‘Dragonfly’ was not only able to monitor the operational status of every component on the accessed networks, but they had gained the ability to shut them down completely – with a single click of the mouse.
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