Wall Street bosses have been warned that al Qaeda has targeted America’s banks and financial institutions for another 9/11.
Counter-terrorism agents fear some top banking executives may have been singled out for assassination attempts.
They have urged improved security amid fears that al Qaeda in Yemen may again try to send package bombs or potentially deadly biological or chemical materials through the post to bank chiefs.
What? They’re going to send bad things to Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon?
And why are we supposed to be scared of this?
Further:
Among the banks getting the security briefings were said to be Goldman Sachs, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Barclays, according to NBC.
Intelligence officials insist the threats are general and not aimed at any individual or bank.
It’s good to know Homeland Security is giving pep talks to the bankers, reassuring them that whatever happens we’ll bail them out and avenge whatever needs avenging.
The Daily Mail piece originated in the New York Daily News here.
One commenter succinctly explains al Qaeda’s (and, by extension, the US government counter-terror service’s) dilemma in the shaping of perceptions.
Essentially, the war on terror has lasted too long and had too many whoopie cushion alerts. For most people it’s a phony war. No one even expects this administration, or any other, to get Osama bin Laden.
On the other hand, many Americans saw their jobs and immediate futures go up in smoke in 2008 due to Wall Street.
So Wall Street being in the cross-hairs of anyone doesn’t roil the sympathetic fear juices like it should.
The comment:
Ooooh, no, don’t blow up Goldman Sachs! They care about all of us little people so much!
One of the larger issues, which the national security poobahs in this country have yet to visibly grapple with or discuss, are the potential consequences of economic inequality becoming so great that American business becomes even more suspect of operating only under rules of bad faith. In other words, that it will be thought deserving of anything it gets whatever the circumstances.
But this is what passes for journalism, particularly at the altie news blogs. Something sarcastic, meant for a cheap laugh, no interest in bringing light to a subject, even for a paragraph.
Then move along to the next something or someone else to be given a gratuitous kick down for the sake of shits and giggles.
The history of ricin arrests in the US during the war on terror years is worth telling for its illustration of the intersection of the ginned up fear of biological and chemical terrorism and how that has resulted in a process that regularly grinds up and spits out weak and confused people from the fringes of society. And that process is totally unique to America. We own it.
And if you were the survivalist he-man Kurt Saxon and had written the Poor Man’s James Bond — from which Levenderis’ ricin recipe ultimately derives — and your primary legacy was that your idiotic books had contributed to putting a noticeable amount of people in jail, what would you think of yourself?
That you were somehow stubbornly demonstrating the right to freedom of the press? And that this was a shining example to the kinds of people who actually credulously read the stuff?
“A federal grand jury in Cleveland indicted 54-year-old Jeff Boyd Levenderis of Tallmadge near Akron on Tuesday on one count of possessing a biological toxin and one count of making false statements,” reads the Dayton Daily News today.
There’s a book in this and other perplexing and common-sense defying stories unique to the American condition but connected to the war on terror.
The fourth issue of Inspire, al Qaeda’s glossy pdf magazine has arrived.
A couple excerpts show what I think.
From “Facing aerial bombardment in jihad“:
“Getting injured in jihad is probable and should be expected, whether large or small.”
“The explosions come in various sizes.”
“Don’t be overworked about getting injured in jihad though. Many brothers in jihad have experienced no pain with horrible injuries. I remember the brother who had his entire pinky finger blown off from a missile; it was a gruesome sight. Yet immediately after the injury he felt no pain and was enjoying a few jokes with his brothers! There are also times when the brothers around you will have awful injuries and you will be completely untouched. This is from Allah. Always hold good thoughts about Allah and be pleased with what he has ordained.”
There is a long, clumsily worded and frankly boring religious explanation on how stealing money from disbelievers is permitted, like “hunting and wood gathering.”
And there is an article on how to blow up a building:
“For a gas to burn in air it needs to reach a certain ratio in proportion to air.”
“The best gas would be the one that is available in large quantities and causes the greatest pressure and is odorless such as hydrogen. Propane is originally odorless but an odor was added after many accidents occurred because of the difficulty in detecting the gas.”
“Try to have the explosion appear as an accident.”
But if it were thought to be an accident how would you get credit as causing terrorism?
It announces a Ph.D dissertation from Kansas State grad student Dave Olds, entitled … wait for it … “Food Defense Management Practices in Private Country Clubs.” All 200 pages of it — here — published for the K-State Dept. of Hospitality Management and Dietetics.
The abstract, in part, reads:
“The purpose of this study was to survey country club professionals’ importance perceptions of food defense and the frequency with which preventive practices were implemented in their clubs to prevent bioterrorism.”
“Most club managers stated that they did not think their clubs were at risk of a bioterror attack,” it continues, an assertion which would seem beyond dispute.
The dissertation informs that as of 2008, “there were 6,000 private country clubs in North America.”
“These clubs represented extensive financial assets … Country clubs are exclusive and cater to the affluent, with initiation fees charged to new members as high as $250,000.”
Presumably, this means they ought to be able to afford bioterror defense.
Since turnover is obviously high in the servant class to the rich, country club owners find employee background checks cost prohibitive.
But “[because] country clubs are often exclusive and cater to the wealthy and influential members of society, they could be selected as potential targets for would-be terrorists,” it asserts.
Therefore, servant food service employee infiltration could be one gateway for an attack, it is reasoned.
But back to the press release which has this gem of a recommendation:
Move ice-makers to more secure locations where they can be monitored. “So many times these machines are kept out of the way, but ice is a heavily used product,” Olds said. One of the country clubs he visited kept the ice-maker on a dock outside the building.
The dissertation describes various documented terror attacks — none seemingly specifically aimed at the affluent, the influential, or ice-machines on country club boat docks.
Kansas State, it should also be noted, recently lost to Syracuse in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, 36-34.
The only case of country club terrorism DD could find.
As the year ends, I’d summarize the greatest threats to the nation as those of our own making.
al Qaeda hasn’t the manpower or resources to destroy the security of average Americans.
However, traditional American institutions have proven more than up to the task.
A striking illustration of fail over the last ten years is illustrated by my first choice — the now irrational size of the investment in homeland security, shown in the graphic.
Post 9/11 and upon the creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security the sudden reallocation of resources and growth in jobs and investment made sense.
As 2011 begins, however, the current state is shocking. The graph represents a now atrocious diversion of resources away from the middle class and into security aimed at protecting the country from external threats.
At the expense of everything else the government does domestically.
This expenditure does not aid innovation. It does not provide any path forward the country will need to combat its current problems. It does not fix infrastructure. It does not guarantee decent education. It does not make the national food supply safe from bad business and keep people from getting sick. It does not repair the middle class.
It just stands as a continuous investment in protection, walls, devices and restriction. Now entirely out of proportion to threats.
And the more that is invested in security the less there is to protect as the rest of the country withers.
In the last year we have also seen the emergence of the argument that more security, particularly cybersecurity, is needed to defend — most gallingly — Wall Street, bankers and big business.
But in news story after news story, everyone has seen that Wall Street is not good for main street.
The admonishments to defend it, by sending more money into the security apparatus at the expense of the middle class, is still more political dynamite.
The question that has to be asked is easy: Why do institutions now seen to be attacking the American way of life need more defending? And why should we pay for it?
The second threat, in no way lesser and to which the first is linked, is the fast growth of economic inequality.
Economic inequality and mass unemployment have given us very bad government, desperation and fear. These are, in turn, now proven fertilizer for even more destabilizing right wing extremism.
And it has left the country without the leadership needed to prevent slippage into permanent status of banana republic with the world’s most powerful military and security infrastructure.
Now there are regular cries for austerity, for even more cannibalization of government functions which protect the middle class. Famously, such calls seem to take no account of the actual conditions of austerity placed upon everything but homeland security in the last ten years.
Although most Americans still do not know his name, DeCoster is a living model of the Dickensian character now common in American business. In 2010, DeCoster was more threatening to Americans shopping in supermarkets nationwide than any jihadi terrorist a decade after 9/11.
DeCoster is a current standard-setter: A corporate boss successful at bringing about the biggest mass food poisoning incident in US history.
And this did not happen by accident.
Looking again at the above graph, one immediately notices the virtual total destruction of any government role in “consumer safety and health” and “industry specific regulation” relative to homeland security.
It is no coincidence that the Austin “Jack” DeCosters of the country have flourished. By conducting business the way they do, they exhibit a tacit understanding that the public can be menaced by unsanitary and disease-causing practices in pursuit of the bottom line because what exists of the regulatory process is ignorable.
It is a direct consequence of malfeasance in corporate agribusiness.
It is the consequence of decisions to run a business as cheaply as possible, to take steps knowing full well that such practice exposes one to substantial risk — in this instance the causation and distribution of disease — but that an adverse outcome can just be written off as overhead under the current state of regulation.
In 2007, it was Stewart Parnell of the Peanut Corporation of America.
While the Republican Party was unable to prevent passage of the Food Modernization Act during the lame duck session of Congress, the existence of the new legislation does not, in and of itself, guarantee change.
We will have to wait and see what becomes of the Jack DeCosters. What other corporate American time-bombs and landmines are waiting to explode?
And the last internal threat is again tied to the others.
The Republican Party is a threat to security. And not solely because of its descent into right-wing extremism or its desire to torpedo a nuclear arms reduction treaty because it despises the president.
As the party that denies science, one that will put people in committee chairmanships overseeing science and technology issues in the House who are basically opposed to science whenever it contradicts their political views, the GOP poses a threat to America’s future.
You can’t have a forward-looking and capable nation with people in power who truly believe global warming and evolution are hoaxes.
Christmas eve affords an opportunity to consider one of the prime movers of the new American economy: security.
Thanks to the underwear bomber, my pick for the most influential terrorist ever, Xmas is a time for terror alerts based on gossip. Today’s choice: insulated beverage containers, thermoses.
And, conveniently, Paul Krugman has been working through some statistics on the alleged explosion in government employment.
This is the latest and most popular GOP extremist myth; for example, it regularly features in Ted Nugent’s atrocious columns at the Washington Times.
The spurt in government hiring in the spring was the drafting of census enumerators nationwide. Once the collection part of the census was over all of these workers were let go.
But anyone paying attention knew why public employment had risen — and it had nothing to do with Big Government. It was, instead, the fact that the federal government had to hire a lot of temporary workers to carry out the 2010 Census — workers who have almost all left the payroll now that the Census is done.
Is it really possible that the authors of those articles and speeches about soaring public employment didn’t know what was going on? Well, I guess we should never assume malice when ignorance remains a possibility.
The only other bulge in government hiring over the past decade has been in homeland security.
In fact, homeland security has been recession proof. Border patrol is still hiring. And it is fairly simple to find regular job postings for DHS at jobs.gov.
The differences between the numbers of “regulatory workers” added for homeland security and “consumer safety and health” — shown here (click that link!) — is staggering.
The divide is an order of magnitude on the side of homeland security.
For anyone who has been paying attention over the past decade, consumer safety and health just haven’t been important. And it shows in the regular news of mass food poisonings.
However, there are always more layers of experts and analysts in homeland security to find enemies, overseas and domestically.
Paradoxically, the great bulge in hiring and work in security has not moved the country forward. Homeland security does not contribute to innovation. It does not provide new ideas. It is not energy efficient.
It does, of course, provide lots of money for basically not-very-productive gadgets and machines churned out by the private sector. These machines do not put money in your pocket. In fact, the opposite.
However, it does provide jobs and salaries. And the people spend that money, contributing to demand for goods and services in the national economy.
“Homeland Security accounts for over 80% of the increase in government regulatory-designated employees during the past 11 years,” stated the Rortybomb blog in November.
al Qaeda, by contrast, doesn’t have nearly the same manpower. And this is why the terrorist group’s much publicized strategy — US death by one thousand cuts — is shit.
They simply don’t have the manpower to implement it. Never will, either.
In this exclusive story, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports the latest terror attack to America involves the possible use of poisons – simultaneous attacks targeting hotels and restaurants at many locations over a single weekend.
A key Intelligence source has confirmed the threat as “credible.” Department of Homeland Security officials, along with members of the Department of Agriculture and the FDA, have briefed a small group of corporate security officers from the hotel and restaurant industries about it.
“We operate under the premise that individuals prepared to carry out terrorist acts are in this country,” said Dec. of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on Dec. 6, 2010.
The plot uncovered earlier this year is said to involve the use of two poisons – ricin and cyanide – slipped into salad bars and buffets.
Of particular concern: The plotters are believed to be tied to the same terror group that attempted to blow up cargo planes over the east coast in October, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
At the beginning of December, DD and others discussed DHS’s resurrection of the mubtakar of death, an al Qaeda contraption designed to generate cyanide gas.
Memos on it were in circulation again. And that post is here.
The news report conveys no information to indicate the plot was anything more than aspirational talk. Which it may have been. But most likely not, concerning al Qaeda’s history with such things.
There has always been a steady stream of jihadi documents circulating plans and recipes for poisoning.
Was CBS’s news ‘exclusive,’ then? Not really.
CBS also trots out a run-of-the-mill scientist to show how easy it would be to poison someone with cyanide.
And DD just happens to have covered attacks on food for sometime.
Which affords an oppotunity to look at this post — from three years ago — on a survey by a university in Singapore, on the history of food poisoning:
Happily, the monograph devotes no time to one of our favorite national security hobbies, predicting what would be easy for terrorists.
“In the United States, food borne illnesses resulting from food safety breakdowns are estimated to kill 5,000 and hospitalize 300,000 every year,” it reads near the end. “The World Health Organization estimates that food and waterborne diarrhoeal diseases … kill approximately 1.8 million people annually … This is in contrast to the 391 fatalities 4,355 injuries since 1950 from malicious food contamination …
“Certainly an historical absence of evidence does not preclude suppositions that terrorists may intentionally contaminate the food supply … What it does tell us is ‘that undertaking a major attack on the food chain is much more difficult than at first it may be believed.‘”
However, the largest historical number of food poisonings have been brought on by US agribusiness, all in the past three years.
These outbreaks of foodborne illness have all been perpetrated by people who ran their companies knowing their way of doing things was likely to be seriously hazardous but still willing to deal with regulation and control as just an annoying part part of doing business, with poisonings as part of the overhead.
A Baltimore man faces charges of attempted murder and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction after authorities say he tried to detonate what he thought was a bomb at a military recruitment center near Baltimore.
Court documents filed Wednesday say Antonio Martinez, also known as Muhammad Hussain, told an FBI source in October that he was seeking to attack and kill military personnel.
In conversations through his Facebook account, Martinez allegedly told the source that all he thinks about is jihad.
The documents say Martinez talked with the source about shooting people inside the center and burning the building. He was introduced to an FBI agent who along with the source provided him with a phony bomb in a van.
Fact: Washington, DC is loaded with “terrorism experts” read to go on television whenever the FBI nabs some alleged jihadi wanna-be and attest on the growing menace of homegrown Islamic terror.
In the case of the recent teenage case, Juan Zarate — an assistant secretary for “combating terrorism” in the Bush administration was the designated face for the job. While out of power, he’s warehoused as an “adviser” to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Meanwhile, as far as DD can tell there’s never been a single comparison of homegrown white guy terrorists next to the number of alleged homegrown al Qaeda terrorists. Except perhaps at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
From the Associated Press today:
Neighbors gasped when authorities showed them photos of the inside of the Southern California ranch-style home: Crates of grenades, mason jars of white, explosive powder and jugs of volatile chemicals that are normally the domain of suicide bombers.
Prosecutors say Serbian-born George Jakubec quietly packed the home with the largest amount of homemade explosives ever found in one location in the U.S. and was running a virtual bomb-making factory in his suburban neighborhood. How the alleged bank robber obtained the chemicals and what he planned to do with them remain mysteries.
Bomb experts pulled out about nine pounds of explosive material and detonated it, but they soon realized it was too dangerous to continue given the quantity of hazardous substances. A bomb-disposing robot was ruled out because of the obstacle of all the junk Jakubec hoarded.
That left only one option — burn the home down.
San Marcos Fire Chief Todd Newman acknowledges it is no small feat: Authorities have never dealt with destroying such a large quantity of dangerous material in the middle of a populated area, bordered by a busy eight-lane freeway.
Governor Schwarzenegger declared an emergency for the neighborhood, according to the news.
Bomb experts were flown in from all over the country.
[al Qaeda’s mubtakar of death] is resurrected/recycled from time to time (google for numerous links), requiring additional debunking …
And now, November 2010, the DHS in collaboration with ITACG has issued a Unclassified/For Official Use Only Roll Call Release warning about [it again] …
ph2dot1 includes a pic of the same old Dept. of Homeland Security prototype cyanide bomb made back in 2006, now recirculated with more pix, probably from the same sessions.
The DHS ‘mubtakar’ was an improvised weapon made up from a widely distributed al Qaeda drawing.
Despite much press and celebrity journalist blandishments that the mubtakar had been poised to deliver catastrophe into the New York subway, it never amounted to much. However, I bet it has shown up in a couple TV dramas based on the war on terror.
A DD source attested one had been attempted years ago in Afghanistan without effect.
Strapped-down chicken testing of ‘perfectly made’ improvised chemical weaponry never counts — except in bulletins of this nature.
An older picture of the DHS-made mubtakar duplicate is posted here at old DD blog.
Write-ups of the pushback on received wisdoms from the media and analysis of the original documents are here and here.
