Multiple terrorist teams have arrived and are in position in Europe and are believed to have received go-ahead commands to carry out “Mumbai-style” attacks in Germany, France or other locations. Pre-security areas in airports are thought to be likely targets.
Mounting ‘Chatter’ by Jihadi Extremists Has Law Enforcement Nervous
Among the possible targets in the suspected European terror plot are pre-security areas in at least five major European airports, a law enforcement official told ABC News. Authorities believe terror teams are preparing to mount a commando like attack featuring small units and small firearms modeled after the Mumbai attack two years ago.
The State Department issued a highly unusual “Travel Alert” Sunday for “potential terrorist attacks in Europe,” saying U.S. citizens are “reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure.”
One scenario authorities fear is a repeat of the 1985 attack on the Rome and Vienna airports, when Palestinian extremists threw grenades and opened fire on travelers waiting at ticket counters injuring 140 and killing 19, including a small child. ...
Authorities have detected a dramatic increase in online chatter among jihadist websites the last week, in what experts believe could be other terrorists banning together in anticipation of terror attack plans in Europe and hoping to engage themselves in prospective plots.
The escalating discussions in the virtual meeting rooms for al Qaeda supporters have praised terror attacks plan and suggested targets, communicating with fellow believers just as the terrorist teams at the center of the current suspected plots likely did, experts said.
On Christine Amanpour’s October 3rd broadcast of ABC Television’s This Week, Anjem Choudary, a former British solicitor and Muslim cleric, spokesman for the group Islam4UK, predicted global Islamic rule, including over the United States.
“We do believe as Muslims the East and the West will be governed by the Sharia,” Choudray. “Indeed we believe that one day the flag of Islam will fly over the White House. Indeed, there’s even an oration of the Prophet where he said, ‘The day of judgment will not come until a group of my Ummah conquer the one house.’”
British director, film-writer Richard Curtis (best-known in America for Four Wedding and a Funeral) evidently thought what he was doing to nonconformists with the latest 10/10 carbon reduction eco-campaign in his No Pressure short film was funny, but viewers are reacting with distaste to its gleefully sanguinary totalitarianism.
The film’s makers are evidently trying to remove it from public view, and climate skeptics are working hard keeping it available.
James Delingpole
The Independent reports on a less-than-warm White House appearance last February.
Most of his contemporaries have mellowed with age, but as he approaches his 70th birthday, Bob Dylan remains splendidly reluctant to embrace efforts to turn him into part of the fusty establishment he once railed against.
That, at least, is the experience of President Barack Obama, who has revealed that he was given what amounts to the bum’s rush by the musician when he visited the White House to perform at a concert celebrating the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.
Dylan, 69, was “sceptical” about performing his protest song “The Times They Are A-Changin” to the assembled dignitaries at February’s event. And while most musicians who perform for the most powerful man in the world ask for a “meet and greet” during their visit, Mr Obama told Rolling Stone magazine that Dylan refused to even speak with him. “He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practising before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that.”
After performing, it was the same story. “He finishes the song, steps off the stage – I’m sitting right in the front row – comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin and then leaves. And that was it. He left. That was our only interaction with him.”
Mr Obama nonetheless described the experience as “a real treat,” adding: “That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little sceptical about the whole enterprise.”
...Al Qaida was/is reportedly planning a Mumbai-style attack against cities in Western Europe. ...
...The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, is refusing comment. That’s often a sign that the information is credible, and the spy masters are upset that someone blabbed before all the suspects could be rounded up, or the plot was completely foiled.
...Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal says a recent surge in U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan is part of an effort to disrupt possible attacks in Europe.
...And the U.S. is also a potential target, according to ABC News and Britain Sky News.
But before you say this is nothing out of the ordinary, consider this unusual twist that might related. On Tuesday, federal, state and local law enforcement agents were stopping—and inspecting—all west-bound tractor-trailers traveling on I-20 out of Atlanta. At the height of the evening rush hour, no less.
A spokesman for the TSA told WSB-TV that the search was part of a “training exercise.” But the station’s investigative reporter, Mark Winne, learned from other sources that the inspections are part of a counter-terrorism operation.
Obviously, there’s a big difference between an “operation” and an “exercise.” Additionally, we’ve never heard of this type of drill being conducted on a major interstate highway, during rush hour, with participation by all levels of law enforcement. So, it sounds like something beyond training prompted that traffic jam on I-20 Tuesday afternoon.
But, before we connect that final dot, it is worth noting that the European plot apparently didn’t involve large trucks or radioactive devices. The trucks being searched on I-20 west of Atlanta were screened with a radiation detector (and other devices), according to WSB.
For the second time in three days, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have conducted a major counter-terrorism operation along I-20 in Atlanta. For several hours, beginning this morning and continuing into the afternoon, officials searched scores of tractor-trailer rigs traveling along the highway.
A spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, Jon Allen, told WSB-TV that the operation was aimed at prevent any type of activity that anybody may have to disrupt transportation systems.”
Mr. Allen described the search effort as a form of “highway homeland security.” But at that point, his comments took a turn for the odd. Interviewed by WSB’s Mark Winne—one of the first journalists to learn that Tuesday’s search was an operation and not an exercise—Mr. Allen said the federal air marshal service was the lead agency for the roadway inspections in Atlanta. ...
Admittedly, this has not been a very good week for TSA’s regional public affairs department. As Tuesday’s search got underway west of Atlanta (and traffic slowed to a crawl on I-20), a TSA spokesman insisted the activity was a training exercise. That explanation lasted until Mr. Winne contacted other law enforcement officials, who revealed it was a counter-terrorism operation.
——————————— Dave Lindorff, at leftist CounterPunch, Weekend October 1-3 edition:
Now the Government is X-Raying You While You Drive
Americans in Atlanta got a taste of this latest government intrusion into their lives when Homeland Security last Tuesday ran what it called a “counterterrorism operation” not prompted by any specific threat. They set up one of their ZBV vans on I-20 and snarled traffic for hours while all trailer trucks stopped and scanned by Homeland Security personnel.
Drivers should expect delays on I-20 eastbound around Six Flags this weekend as an emergency project continues to replace failing bridge joints. ...
Tuesday morning traffic was backed-up for miles on the eastbound side. Failing joints created a hole in the bridge over Six Flags Parkway. The debris lead to a four-car accident.
The hole was temporarily patched, the but the problem was not solved.
This weekend an emergency project will continue to replace those bad bridge joints. The $5.1 million project will close two right lanes on the eastbound side at Six Flags. No major delays are expected, although drivers should give themselves a few extra minutes. ...
The lane closures are scheduled to last from 9 p.m. Friday until 5 a.m. Monday.
The late James Oliver Rigney, Jr. aka Robert Jordan
Zach Baron, in Believer magazine, commemorates the impending publication of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series’s penultimate, and second posthumous, installment, Towers of Midnight with an appreciative essay.
Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, in my own view, is the only fantasy series that could sensibly be described as a worthy successor to Tolkien’s LOTR. Jordan produced an epic tale, astonishingly entertaining and rewarding and filled with persuasive invention, aptly grounded in traditional myth and story, that became simultaneously also a colossal literary train wreck which somehow spun completely out of control, while remaining compelling reading.
Readers who followed along were happy but thoroughly frustrated by the author’s refusal to wind up plot line arcs that had readers perched on the edge of their chairs within the succeeding volume arriving after an interval of years. Jordan’s readers suffered terribly from Epic interruptus.
Blood, salvation, eternal life in posterity. Though he couldn’t have known it at the time, Jordan had written his own mortal predicament into the Wheel of Time. The series’s most poignant paradoxes—the taxing wear of responsibility on those who influence the weaving of the world, death as precondition for redemption—seeped into Jordan’s real life at its end, as he belatedly faced a mockingly close approximation of the same ambivalently grim fate as the characters he wrote about. ...
[I]t’s Rand’s path that Jordan ultimately walked. Both men labored to succeed in spite of bearing an affliction that would presumably kill them; both faced an uphill battle to the finish—Rand, to unite the Wheel of Time’s various nations and peoples against the forces of evil, and Jordan, in his last eighteen months, to get Rand’s story on paper before it was too late.
Most heartbreakingly, Jordan slowed the pace of his novels down to a crawl toward the end, as if keeping his imaginary world alive might keep him alive, too.
Weaving the ever more complex strands of plot and characters was a task that increasingly defeated the Wheel of Time’s author. Simultaneously, his fictional proxy’s early triumphs (pulling an Excalibur-like sword from a fortress called the Stone, killing about one bad guy per book) shaded, in time, toward the ambivalent, the incomplete, and the downright disastrous. As the series wore on, the pace of the installments became sluggish as Jordan’s attention divided. His main characters, Rand foremost among them, began disappearing from the books in which they were ostensibly the heroes.
This moment—roughly, books seven through ten (A Crown of Swords, The Path of Daggers, Winter’s Heart, and Crossroads of Twilight), plus the prequel—is arguably one of the most bizarrely boring stretches in any kind of contemporary fiction. Rand dallies with a lover, and deals with various tepid rebellions, humdrum political complications, and distant foreign incursions. Mat, a lothario and gambler who at this point has emerged as the books’ most entertaining character, gets stranded in a city and hangs out there. Perrin, whose wife is captured by an unfriendly army in the eighth book, spends the next 1,600 pages or so trying to get her back. Together, the four books are a study in inertia, and they prompted many to suggest that Jordan was intentionally drawing out the series for cash or, worse, that he had absolutely no idea how to end what he’d begun.
But though it is absolutely true that these two-thousand-plus pages could’ve been compressed by an editor less kind than his own wife into a single book, it would be wrong to suggest Jordan dilated out of avarice, or lack of preparation. The problem was that Jordan’s strengths as a writer were also his weaknesses. He abhorred instrumental characters, the stock pawns of the genre, there to be set up and knocked down to move the plot along. And he hated being obvious, choosing instead to subtly foreshadow plot developments whole books in advance (then ridiculing readers who couldn’t quite put the pieces together). Most of all, Jordan loved his own creations, good and evil alike, and wrote circles around them, developing their respective psychologies and romantic entanglements at what became a laughably immersive, infinitesimal pace. The rest of the world, he seemed to be saying, would just have to wait.
with an appreciative essay.
