POTUS at G20 Presser, an Iranian Willing Accomplice

Posted on November 16, 2015November 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

Barack Obama missed several moments that could and should have been Reagan moments directly after the Paris attacks. Rather than get on Air Force 1 and fly to Turkey for the G20 Summit, Obama should have publically and via telephone to the world leaders, forget Turkey, we are all going to Paris to stand with France in the face of Islamic State. He should have said we have no fear, we don’t need security detail, as a global coalition against evil, we stand with Paris to defeat a common enemy….imagine the head that would have turned if they heard that. Well one can dream eh? Rather, Obama gave what is probably his worst presser during his entire presidency. Instead of standing with France, he called the attacks a ‘setback’.

The media asked Barack Obama questions, which were themselves begging him to lead the world, to use our power, our military to equalize the world again, but Obama replied his strategy was best. He insulted those who asked the questions and those who challenged his posture. He even referred to them as ‘popping off’. The media remains shocked at Obama’s responses.

Obama stressed that going after ISIS in Iraq and Syria will help reduce the threat from foreign fighters, while acknowledging it “will not be enough to defeat ISIL in Syria and Iraq alone.”

Obama also defended the current strategy — which involves airstrikes and a limited number of military advisers on the ground.

“There will be an intensification of the strategy that we’ve put forward,” he said. “But the strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work.”

He said, “It will take time.” And he insisted that the U.S. has not “underestimated” the ISIS threat.

“ISIL leaders will have no safe haven anywhere,” Obama vowed.

Obama is a willing accomplice of Iran and is trapped by Iran. Obama has set the table for Iran and the Shiites to control all Sunni territory.

ForeignAffairs: The choice seems simple. On one side are regally attired mullahs, the type that have protected Persia’s pre-Islamic treasures and even tweet in English. On the other side is the Islamic State (ISIS), with its conquest, rape, and pillage. Muhammad-Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, has made the pitch better than anyone. “The menace we’re facing—and I say we, because no one is spared—is embodied by the hooded men who are ravaging the cradle of civilization,” he warned, dangling out the possibility of rapprochement between Washington and Tehran against ISIS.

Beneath such expressions of concern, however, is a more cynical strategy. Iran is using ISIS’ ascendance in the Middle East to consolidate its power. The country is now the key ally keeping Iraq’s Shiites and the Alawite Bashar al-Assad regime standing against well-armed and tenacious Sunni jihadists. In those battles, Tehran will likely do just enough to make sure the Sunnis don’t conquer the Shia portions of Iraq and Assad’s enclave in Syria, but no more. Meanwhile, in ISIS’ wake, Tehran will strengthen its own radical Shia militias.

The result could be a permanent destabilization of the Arab heartland. That would be a major victory for the Islamic Republic, which has seen its fortunes rise as Egypt and Turkey have become mired in crises and as Saudi Arabia, Iran’s one remaining serious Sunni rival, has gotten bogged down in a war in Yemen.

Dabiq, Paris and Attackers Identified

Posted on November 16, 2015November 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

Dabiq #7 PJMedia: On February 12, 2015, the Islamic State (ISIS) released the seventh issue of its English-language magazine Dabiq. The 83-page issue celebrates the recent attacks in Paris, justifies the burning of the Jordanian pilot, and calls for Muslims in the West to join ISIS, among other topics discussed. It also includes interviews with Hayat Boumeddiene, the wife of Paris kosher supermarket attacker Amedy Coulibaly, and with Belgian ISIS fighter Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the leader of the Verviers cell that planned major attacks in Belgium. Much more here.

Images of the moment suspect in Paris attacks was captured.

MiddleEastEye: French prosecutors said seven people carried out the attacks in Paris on Friday, all of whom were either killed by police or killed themselves with suicide vests. Meanwhile, French police are hunting with Belgian police for a suspected “sleeper cell” linked to the attacks.

Authorities have released the identities – or assumed identifies – of five thought to be directly involved in the Paris attacks, and two others believed to have either planned or aided them. Here are the details and backgrounds of those known so far:

Alleged mastermind – Abdelhamid Abaaoud

A French official told the AP news agency on Monday that Abaaoud is a Belgian and the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks. They released few details, but also linked him to an an attempted gun attack on a Amsterdam-Brussels-Paris train on 21 August, which was thwarted by passengers. RTL radio in France reported that the 27-year-old is of Moroccan origin and “one of the most active Isis executioners” in Syria. He was interviewed in the Islamic State (IS) English-language propaganda magazine Dabiq under the nom de guerre, Abu Umar al-Baljiki.

Bataclan attacker – Samy Amimour

Described by prosecutors as a 28-year-old Frenchman. Amimour was one of three people who attacked the Bataclan concert venue, with 89 people confirmed dead. Prosecutors said Amimour had been charged in a terrorism investigation in 2012, was placed under judicial supervision and was the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Amimour was reported as having lived in the north-eastern suburb of Drancy.

Prosecutors said Amimour was “known to anti-terrorist investigators for being charged on October 19, 2012 for conspiracy to commit terrorism” over a foiled attack in Yemen. He violated his judicial supervision in 2013, prompting judges to issue an international arrest warrant. His family told AFP, in an interview before Friday’s attacks in Paris took place, that he had gone to Syria in 2013.

Bataclan attacker – Ismael Omar Mostefai

The 29-year-old French national was identified by French officials by DNA from a severed fingertip. Mostefi had a record of petty crime in France and had been identified by police as “radicalised”. Turkey on Monday said that they had warned France on two occasions about Mostefi’s activities.

He was reported to have been raised in Courcouronnes in Essonne, 25km south of Paris. His parents, or at least his father, is believed to have been of Algerian descent and his family now lives in the small town of Romilly-sur-Seine, a small town 130km east of Paris.

Mostefi’s 34-year-old brother contacted police on his own initiative before being taken into custody, along with his father. The father’s home in Romilly was searched, along with his brother’s home in nearby Bondoufle.

Stade de France bomber – Ahmad al-Mohammad

A suicide bomber, who blew himself up outside the Stade de France stadium, was found with a Syrian passport with the name Ahmad al-Mohammad, a 25-year-old born in Idlib. The prosecutor’s office says fingerprints from the attacker match the passport, which passed through Greece in October. Greece says he was one of two attackers who passed through their territory in the months before the attack. Serbia yesterday said the passport was also registered at the Presevo border crossing on 7 October, where he formally sought asylum.

Whether Mohammad is the real name of the attacker remains in doubt, however. The passport had been reported fake in the days after the attacks in Paris, and there is a thriving trade in the Middle East for such items. Prosecutors in France on Monday said the name “remained to be verified”.

Stade de France bomber – Bilal Hadfi

Identified by investigation insiders as a 20-year-old French national who had been living in Belgium. He is reported to have fought for the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

Restaurant attacker – Brahim Abdeslam

Officials identified Abdelslam as an attacker who blew himself up near a cafe on the Boulevard Voltaire. He was described as a French national and the brother of Salah Abdelslam, who is the subject of an arrest warrant over the Paris attacks.

Alleged fixer – Salah Abdelslam

Abdelslam, a 26-year-old born in Brussels, was arrested late Monday morning. Authorities said Abdeslam rented a Volkswagen Polo that carried attackers to the Bataclan concert venue. French officials told the AP news agency on Saturday that police had questioned and released him early in the day after stopping a car carrying three men near the Belgian border. An arrest warrant, describing Abdelslam as armed and dangerous, had been issued hours before.

ISIS propaganda hub appeared on the Darknet

Posted on November 16, 2015November 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

The popular security expert Scot Terban (aka @krypt3ia ) discovered a few hours after the Paris attacks, a new ISIS propaganda hub appeared on the Darknet.

SecurityAffairs: The Paris attacks shocked the world, the war is overwhelmingly coming into our homes and the intelligence experts fear that this is just the beginning. The ISIS knows how to spread his message, none in the past was able to organize a so effective propaganda. Each media is masterfully handled by terrorists, social networks, instant messaging app, gaming platforms and forums course in the darknet.

In June, the Europol announced the creation of a team that aims to find key figures in propaganda campaigns run by ISIS members seeking to recruit foreign fighters. The Isis‘s machine propaganda is scaring as efficient, it generates something like 100.000 daily tweets, and it’s used to recruit foreign fighters to support the group.

The Isis is gaining a lot of power in the last years, for the first time a terrorist organization has resources and capabilities to proclaim itself a State.

For this reason, the Europol announced the creation of a new Europe-wide police unit to search for the core leaders of Isis’s social media propaganda campaign. The police unit will track the leaders responsible for an average of 100.000 tweets a day.

The Paris attacks have raised the level of attention on the organizations that could have supported the terrorist operations from the inside. What are the channels used by terrorists to communicate and what technologies they used?
Many intelligence experts point to the revelations of Snowden as an element that has greatly benefited the terrorists to escape the control exercised by the police. Terrorists are aware that intelligence agencies are carefully monitoring telecom communications, emails, instant messaging apps and much more.

That’s why groups like the ISIS are looking for new channels to reach wider audiences, such as the gaming consoles and the Dark Web, two environments where it is necessary a significant effort to track and identify the source of the messages.

paris attacks

A few hours after the cruel Paris attack, Daesh (al-dowla al-islaamiyya fii-il-i’raaq wa-ash-shaam, a.k.a. ISIS/ISIL) launched his propaganda on the Dark Web.

The website contains translations in English, Turkish, and Russian from the recent statement issued by Daesh claiming credit for the Paris attacks.

The new propaganda center was discovered by the popular researcher Scot Terban (aka @krypt3ia ), who reported it to the colleagues at Salted HASH.

The expert noticed a post that explained the need to create a new hub for propaganda, this is the response to the numerous operations against other websites used by the ISIS that were seized by law enforcement of targeted by hacktivists online. The terrorists decided to move on the Darknet to make the Daesh more resilient to take over attempts.

“Terban came across the new Al-Hayat hub while performing jihadi research over the weekend.” states Salted HASH. “In a post on the Shamikh forum (a known jihadi bulletin board), someone posted the new address and instructions for reaching it.”

The new website includes a collection of propaganda video and images produced by Al-Hayat Media Center, the media division of Daesh. It is known to the intelligence because it is used to spread content glorifying the jihad against the infidel West, including poems for mujahids and songs (Nasheeds).

In the past, Daesh already had propaganda and recruitment hubs on the Darknet, but as explained by the expert it is the first time ever it published proof of those claims.

Terban has mirrored the website and its files, the intention of the expert is to analyze them and publish more details in the coming days. The site is a mine of information , it includes data from various sources, including standard bulletin boards used by the ISIS terrorists.

“The site mirrors many of the other standard bulletin boards that the jihadi’s have had over the years replete with videos and sections in all languages. Given that this site has popped up today in the Darknet just post the attacks in Paris, one has to assume that an all out media blitz is spinning up by Al-Hayat to capitalize on the situation,” Terban wrote.

The new Daesh hub demonstrates that even if the ISIS is aware of the Internet surveillance of western government, it considers the use of technology as strategical.

The Dark Web is a privileged environment for cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers due to the anonymity offered by its services. The Dark Web is difficult to monitor for intelligence agencies and it is not so easy to locate members of terrorist organizations like the ISIS that share propaganda content. In the principal black markets hosted on the deep web it is possible to purchase any kind of illegal product and service, but in the dark part of the web it is possible to find propaganda videos and images. Hidden services in the Deep Web also offer the possibility to download the mobile apps used by the jihadists to communicate securely and to transfer Bitcoins to terrorist cells in every place of the world.

The new Daesh hub also suggests ISIS sympathizer the use of Telegram, a secret encrypted messaging platform that is largely adopted by terrorists.

Telegram is “A Secret Chat is a one-on-one chat wherein all messages are encrypted with a key held only by the chat’s participants.” It is an essential tool for all the individuals that need to protect their communication from prying eyes.

Telegram’s Channels used by the terrorists allow them to reach tens of thousand followers instantly.

How ISIS Learns the Tactics, the eBook Series

Posted on November 16, 2015November 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

The terror cells across the globe are hardly operating in the Dark Ages, but rather they are tech savvy and are using published books on the internet written by experts. They have developed plans far beyond what world leaders are equipped to handle both in the realms of diplomacy or militarily.

Europe is returning to the Dark Ages [due to the financial recession]. Armed gangs are forming into militias for racist politicians, and a young Muslim minority is their enemy. All this while a Caliphate is growing across the Mediterranean sea next door. How does this mix of chaos lead to the conquest of Rome (the capital of Europe)? Read: Black Flags from Rome – to find out how.

Paris, photo on the left.

Europeans go to Syria: Many young Sunni Muslims from Europe would go in Aid convoys to Syria to help the oppressed Syrians who had been abandoned by the entire world. They would provide them humanitarian aid, and give them moral support. Some would even join armed groups there similar to how the earlier generation had defended Bosnia. Many of them simply wanted the war to end, for peace to prevail, and for the Syrian Muslims to live a safe life without Bashar al-Assad being a dictator over them. However, as hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed by Bashar, the West could not justify Bashar’s stay in power, but they were also uncertain about how the strongest [Islamic] fighting groups in Syria would rule after his removal. So they simply waited, hoping to see a clearer perspective on who could win the war. Depending on who the victor was, they would plan accordingly. The Islamic State re-awoke within the midst of this Syrian war, after the exit of American troops from Iraq in 2010. Many of the Muslim emigrants who came to help the Syrians joined the Islamic State. Sunni armed groups who were being funded by Arab regimes were paid to fight the Islamic State instead of the real enemy Bashar al Assad, so the Islamic State fought back. The Western powers would not get involved in physical ground combat because they had just withdrawn from a failed war in Iraq (their public wouldn’t be happy with it.) This opportunity gave the Islamic State to grow stronger, with more fighters and more territory and resources as the world watched on.

Those who had left Europe to join the Islamic State would now be able to help other Europeans’ get into Syria. They would give them Tazkiyah (recognition of ‘purity’ from being a spy or agent). The Tazkiyah meant that the fighter of the Islamic State in Syria trusted his friend to join the Islamic State. As a result, thousands of new generation Muslims from Europe and from around the world were able to get into Syria and train in the Training camps of the Islamic State. Here they could learn basic armed/shooting combat, assassination techniques, how to make exp0sives from homemade materials etc.

As soon as the Syrian Jihad begun, the Islamic State competed with other groups to capture the vast Syrian-Turkish border. All groups wanted to control this border so they could access Turkey. Turkey was strategic because it was the place where its fighters could buy equipment from, from where all foreign fighters would enter to join the Islamic State and most importantly – where its experienced fighters would leave Syria (as ‘refugees’) into Turkey, and from Turkey would enter into Europe. [Note: many Syrian refugees were even escaping to Italy due to the civil war in Syria. No doubt, some of these refugees were undercover fighters of Al Qa’idah and the Islamic State. They were quick to take the opportunity of entering into the different countries of Europe (most probably as early as 2012). All this was happening under the nose of the European intelligence services whose job during this time (2012) was only to prevent European Muslims from entering Syria. (This shows how quick the Islamic groups were in planning ahead. Years before Europe even knew where its Muslim citizens were going – experienced Islamic fighters had already found safety in Europe.) While the experienced Islamic State fighters left Syria for Europe, the European Muslims who had emigrated to the Islamic State would train within the Training camps, and nobody doubted -neither the Islamic State, nor the West- that some of these trainees would be sent back to Europe to form their own secret cells to continue the Jihad and to seek revenge for the Western occupation of Muslim lands. These fighters would simply receive their training and be told to go back to their European home countries, to go into ‘sleeper cell’ mode until the Khalifah (Caliph) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ordered to start attacks in Europe.

Paris Had Their 9/11, who is Next? Interpol

Posted on November 16, 2015November 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

Sorry, but some unvarnished truth is required now and beginning to understand the threat is the first step to safety and self preservation but more, it is both an offensive and defensive measure. This post will be data rich.

July 2015: Interpol has issued a warning to countries operating in the Mediterranean to be on the alert for an attempt by ISIS militants to carry out some sort of operation at sea over the next few days, Italian military sources have told Migrant Report.

Three U.S. governors have taken proactive measures to stop refugees from coming into their respective states but White House senior staffer on the National Security Council, Ben Rhodes stated that the refugee program will continue regardless of matters in Europe and Paris.

Michigan, Alabama, Louisiana are the governors asserting their 10th Amendment authority. The question then becomes if this program continues what other states will be forced to take the refugees?

PARIS (Reuters) – Fingerprints from one of the suicide bombers behind the attacks at the Stade de France in Paris matched the prints of a man registered in Greece in October, a French prosecutor said on Monday.

“At this stage, while the authenticity of a passport in the name of Ahmad al Mohammad, born Sept. 10 1990 in Idlib, Syria needs to be verified, there are similarities between the fingerprints of the suicide bomber and those taken during a control in Greece in October,” the Paris prosecutor said in a statement.

The prosecutor also said a second bomber at the Bataclan concert hall had now been identified. The prosecutor named him as 28-year old Samy Ammour from Drancy, north of Paris and said he was known to counter-terrorism units after being placed under investigation and judicial control for attempting to go to Yemen.

He disappeared in the autumn of 2013 and an international arrest warrant was issued for him.

“Five of the terrorists killed have now been identified,” prosecutor added.

The mastermind of the Paris attack has been identified:

A French official has named the suspected mastermind behind the Paris attacks as a Belgian man called Abdelhamid Abaaoud. He recently traveled to Syria and returned to Belgium.

June 2015: Juergen Stock cited this shift as an emerging trend at a UN Security Council meeting along with changing travel methods being used by foreign fighters seeking to join groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

Stock was a keynote speaker at a meeting attended by half a dozen ministers including US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to assess progress in implementing a US-sponsored resolution adopted last September requiring all countries to prevent the recruitment and transport of would-be foreign fighters preparing to join extremist groups.

On Friday, the Security Council adopted a presidential statement calling for a significant increase in border controls, improved cooperation at all levels “including preventing terrorists from exploiting technology, communications and resources.”

Johnson said the United States will be developing a new passenger data-screening and analysis system within the next 12 months which will be made available to the international community at no cost for both commercial and government organizations to use.

In a report obtained by The Associated Press on April 1, the panel of experts monitoring UN sanctions against al-Qaeda said the number of fighters leaving home to join al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group in Iraq, Syria and other countries has spiked to more than 25,000 from over 100 nations. The panel said its analysis indicated the number of “foreign terrorist fighters” worldwide increased by 71 percent between mid-2014 and March 2015.

There is no intelligence problem from or by an any government intelligence apparatus, but rather the voids are in the laps of the political wings where they themselves remain in a fetal position due to political correctness. Barack Obama is in that mix.

One of the Paris attacks terrorist was previosly charged, the French prosecutor François Molins said.

Fingerprints from one of the suicide bombers behind the attacks at the Stade de France in Paris matched the prints of a man registered in Greece in October, the prosecutor said on Monday.

It is known that International terrorism warrant was issued for one of the attackers by Interpol.

This post will be rich in links, so some real study is required here.

BRUSSELS (AFP) – One of the suicide bombers in the Paris attacks had links to a Belgian Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant believed to be the mastermind of an extremist cell dismantled in January, a report said on Monday (Nov 16).The name of Paris attacker Brahim Abdeslam appears in several police files alongside leading militant Abdelhamid Abaaoud relating to criminal cases in 2010 and 2011, Flemish-language newspaper De Standaard reported.
Let’s be clear: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram, the Shabab and others are all violent Sunni Salafi groupings. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has been the official sponsor of Sunni Salafism across the globe.

Most Sunni Muslims around the world, approximately 90 percent of the Muslim population, are not Salafis. Salafism is seen as too rigid, too literalist, too detached from mainstream Islam. While Shiite and other denominations account for 10 percent of the total, Salafi adherents and other fundamentalists represent 3 percent of the world’s Muslims.

Unlike a majority of Sunnis, Salafis are evangelicals who wish to convert Muslims and others to their “purer” form of Islam — unpolluted, as they see it, by modernity. In this effort, they have been lavishly supported by the Saudi government, which has appointed emissaries to its embassies in Muslim countries who proselytize for Salafism. The kingdom also grants compliant imams V.I.P. access for the annual hajj, and bankrolls ultraconservative Islamic organizations like the Muslim World League and World Assembly of Muslim Youth.
Seven terrorist attacks have been thwarted in the last six months, David Cameron has revealed as he oversees the biggest increase in security in the UK since the 7/7 bombings, including the recruitment of nearly 2,000 new spies.Â He warned that the deadly terrorist attacks that hit Paris on Friday night, killing 129 people, “could happen here” and Britain faced a continued threat by Isis.
The French Prime Minister has warned that more terror attacks are being prepared against France and other European nations as police raids continue across the continent.
The fifth named attacker is Ahmad al Mohammad, a Syrian. He is the man who entered the EU through Greece in October as an asylum seeker. The authenticity of his passport, which said he was born in Idlib in 1990, has not been confirmed.

He blew himself up at the Stade de France.
Samy Amimour was one of the attackers at the Bataclan, French media reports.
Prosecutors have confirmed the identity of the fourth named suicide bomber. He is Samy Amimour, born in 1987 in Paris, living in Drancy. He was reportedly known to security services following a terror case in 2012.