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CNN
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The US military’s top commander in Europe compiled a list of weapons systems the US possesses that could help Ukraine in its fight against Russia that the Biden administration has not yet provided, including air-to-surface missiles and a secure communications network used by NATO.
In an annex attached to a classified report about the Biden administration’s Ukraine strategy that was delivered to Congress early last month, Gen. Chris Cavoli outlined a list of US capabilities that could help the Ukrainian military fight more effectively, according to people familiar with the report.
The list included the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, a type of air-launched cruise missile, and a communications system known as the Link 16 — a data sharing network used by the US and NATO that is supposed to enable more seamless communication between battle systems and is particularly useful for air and missile defense command and control. Ukraine has asked for both systems repeatedly, another source familiar with their requests said.
Cavoli’s list does not address why the US hasn’t provided systems that he assesses would be of value. But US officials have previously expressed concerns about sensitive US technology falling into Russian hands, which one source said is likely the holdup with the Link 16 system. The air-to-surface missiles, which are fired from fighter jets, might not be useful to the Ukrainians unless they achieve some level of air superiority, the source added.
Nearly three years into the war, the Ukrainians are still pleading with the US to provide more advanced weaponry and lift restrictions on how long-range missile systems provided by the US can be used. And with the US presidential election less than one month away, the future of the US’ support for Ukraine is uncertain, even as the US says it is working to make sure Ukraine has what it needs to last them through at least the end of 2025.
The Ukrainian government continues to lobby hard. When President Volodymyr Zelensky met with President Joe Biden at the White House late last month, he came armed with a detailed list—not of weapons, but of targets inside Russia that he wants to hit with US-provided long-range missiles, known as ATACMS, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
The list is a key part of Zelensky’s “victory plan” for winning the war. Biden, who has to date prohibited the Ukrainians from deploying the missile systems for deep strikes into Russia, was not entirely dismissive of the request, the sources said. But he was ultimately non-committal.
The leaders agreed to keep discussing the issue. But Biden won’t be meeting with Zelensky again in the near future after he canceled a trip to Germany for a gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group this week, and it remains unlikely that the US will change its policy on long-range missiles, officials told CNN.
Broadly, US officials say they are giving Ukraine everything that the US military assesses Kyiv needs at this moment to support its fight. Officials also argue that that the US’ limited supply of long-range ATACMS systems are better used against targets in Crimea. The Ukrainians have already conducted several successful strikes deep inside Russia using their own long-range drones that have damaged Russia’s defense industrial base, US officials note — drones that in fact have a far longer range than the ATACMs.
US officials have also said that Russia has moved some of its most valuable targets outside of the ATACMS’ 180-mile range, anyway. The Ukrainians have argued, though, that there are plenty of Russian assets within range, including military bases and production and logistics facilities, that would make for strategic targets.
As a way to “Trump-proof” US security aid, should former President Donald Trump win in November, the US and its allies have been working on ways to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs through the end of 2025. NATO has established its own mechanism for facilitating aid and military training, which was launched in July. The Pentagon is also getting closer to offering contracts to private American companies to travel to the country and help with the equipment sustainment and logistics there, officials said, a key part of making sure Ukraine’s weapons and equipment don’t break down at key moments.
Broadly, though, the US is hoping that 2025 marks a turning point for Russia’s ability to sustain its own war effort.
Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of fighters in close to three years of fighting. To make any substantial gains on the battlefield, officials have long believed President Vladimir Putin will need to order another politically risky troop mobilization. And both US officials and independent analysts say that although the Kremlin has successfully shielded its economy from some of the bite of western sanctions in the near-term, there are some signs that its economy may begin to show strain by the end of next year.
Putin “always thinks Americans have attention deficit disorder,” CIA Director Bill Burns said during a national security conference in Sea Island, Georgia, on Monday. “This is one of those cases where we have to demonstrate the strength of our support for Ukraine, because there’s a lot riding on this.”
Still, critics say that the administration’s plan for victory in Ukraine remains fuzzy. According to one source who read the report, the classified strategy delivered to Congress defined victory only in vague terms of Ukrainian sovereignty and self-determination. In another classified annex, it suggested categorized that might be used to judge success, such as reclaimed territory, but provided no benchmarks.
For now, the picture on the battlefield remains fluid. Russia has made grinding gains in the country’s east, which officials see as Putin’s priority. Ukraine earlier in the year seized a huge swath of territory inside Russia that it continues to hold, for now, a move that some officials believe may stretch Kyiv too thin across the front lines in the east.
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from The Guardian. |
In the late afternoon on 7 October, an Israeli software engineer in his mid-30s found himself driving down a deserted road parallel to the perimeter fence that separated Gaza from Israel. He had been fighting for hours with an AK-47 taken from a dead Hamas militant. Now he and three friends were headed to the town of Ohad to search for relatives who had gone missing.
“Only when we set off south did we understand how big this was. It was like an apocalypse,” the engineer, who did not want to be named, said last week. “There were hundreds of bodies of civilians inside their cars or on the road, hundreds of dead terrorists with their pickup trucks or motorbikes. There were dead police, army vehicles on fire. We were alone.”
He was among scores, possibly hundreds, of Israelis who headed independently to the combat zone around Gaza on the morning of the raid launched by Hamas on 7 October last year. Many were lauded as heroes by their compatriots, but that they were needed at all underlined the deep failures of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that, a year on, remain part of the traumatic legacy of the attack for millions of Israelis.
The continuing recriminations are part of a bitter broader argument over who to blame for the biggest security failure in Israel since the foundation of the country in 1948. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has avoided accepting responsibility, though several senior military and intelligence officials have resigned or admitted their errors.
In all, about 1,200 were killed in the raid launched by Hamas. Most of the dead were civilians, many murdered in their homes or at a music festival. Victims included children and elderly people. A UN inquiry found reasonable grounds to believe that attackers committed sexual violence at several locations, including rape and gang-rape. Hamas militants, and other extremists from Gaza who followed them, also seized about 250 hostages, of which approximately 100 remain in the territory.
Since the attack, Israel media has picked over what went wrong. A picture has emerged of top commanders caught between their growing concern after warnings of a possible mass attack into southern Israel from Gaza, and the prevailing belief among senior officers and the top political leadership that Hamas had been deterred by repeated bouts of conflict. Many officials were convinced that huge sums of direct aid sent into Gaza from Qatar and other economic incentives such as permits for Palestinian labourers to work in Israel had also convinced Hamas, which had been in power since 2007, to forgo violence in at least the short term. At a counter-terrorism conference months before the attack, David Barnea, head of the Mossad, Israeli’s main foreign intelligence service, did not mention Hamas in a speech about potential threats to the country.
“We were complacent and lazy and suffered a sort of groupthink and we are going to pay a huge price for that,” one military intelligence officer, a specialist in Gaza, told the Guardian shortly after the 7 October attack.
A second big problem was the faith placed in the supposedly impregnable billion-dollar fence built around the territory.
Reservist officers who had served several tours around Gaza were shocked by a new attitude among IDF officers in the year before the attacks.
“There were vehicles that simply didn’t run, equipment that didn’t work, patrols that didn’t happen because there was no threat. When we asked how we were meant to fight back if there was a big attack, they told us … it just wouldn’t happen,” a reservist combat medic said last month.
“We were told that the first line of defence is Hamas, because they’ve got too much to lose now by an attack and will themselves restrain their own people, and anyway then there’s the fence, which no one can get through. I actually argued with my senior officers over this but it went nowhere.”
Just days before the attack, a series of mistakes were made. Concerned local military commanders ordered assessments, which reported intense training by elite Hamas fighters, but failed to act. When dozens, possibly hundreds, of Israeli sim cards suddenly were connected to Israeli networks in the early hours of 7 October, Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, sent only a small team to the border. At a hastily convened meeting at about 3.30am on 7 October, senior IDF officers remained unsure if the unusual Hamas activity in Gaza was a training exercise or preparation for an attack.
But though public anger at intelligence services has been great, some of the most bitter reproaches have been levelled at the IDF itself for failing to mobilise faster to defend communities. Though some regular military units, the police and other services did deploy in the first hours of the 7 October attack, it was often small groups of reservists who had grabbed uniforms or weapons at home who joined the battle, sometimes playing decisive roles.
Nimrod Palmach, a reservist major and the chief executive of an Israeli NGO, defied orders to join his special forces unit in Jerusalem and drove south after hearing that “thousands of terrorists” were in the kibbutz of Nir Oz, where 46 of about 400 residents were killed by militants going from house to house and 72 were abducted, according to the UN.
“I just took a handgun and went as far as I could. I realised that every moment, people were being killed. I left a video testament on my phone for my kids so it could be found if I was killed myself,” he said.
Armed with an assault rifle taken from a dead Hamas militant, Palmach took body armour from a dead soldier and fought for hours alongside other reservists and small groups of regular soldiers around the kibbutz of Be’eri, where, according to the UN report, 105 residents of the kibbutz were killed by the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allied group, as well as armed civilians from Gaza.
“At the beginning it was just us and special forces who were coming from their homes but as the day went by more and more sporadic [regular IDF] forces arrived. By late afternoon, the full IDF came, in full gear, combat battalions. A lot of good fighters were waiting for directions and orders which never came,” Palmach said.
One reason for the slow response was that the IDF’s forces around Gaza were fighting for their lives through the critical first hours of the Hamas attack when most casualties were inflicted. Defenders were not at full strength because of the holiday weekend – the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah – and only a few hundred soldiers were scattered in small detachments around the perimeter fence. Many were killed or abducted when their positions were overrun; others fought desperately for hours to avoid the same fate. A heavy assault on the main local headquarters at Re’im, just a kilometre from the Nova festival, was nearly successful, which in part explains the apparent paralysis of local commanders and their superiors. Critical surveillance and communications gear was knocked out in the attack.
“There was no central command so we didn’t know what to do and where to go … There was no connection between the units,” said a special forces soldier who was one of the first to reach the combat zone. “We were too few, and [when] we tried to get into the kibbutzim we were attacked by hundreds of Hamas men – we pulled back to wait for bigger forces.”
Several of those interviewed by the Guardian remembered how the situation began to stabilise late on 7 October, though fighting continued for more than 48 hours as remaining militants were found and killed. Some stayed on to help, others drove back to the homes they had left just 10 or 12 hours before. As the initial shock wore off, they tried to understand the day’s events.
“We always trained to attack, to be aggressive … but it was the opposite,” said the special forces soldier. “I still [see] … the dead kids, burned bodies, the girls at the festival.”
As for the engineer, he has yet to make sense of what went wrong on 7 October 2023.
“I actually just really don’t know what happened,” he told the Guardian. “I keep thinking about it. But I don’t know.”
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from NPR Topics: Politics. |
Vice President Harris hands out food to people at the Henry Brigham Community Center in Augusta, Ga., on Oct. 2, during a tour of hurricane damage in the area.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP
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Brendan Smialowski/AFP
With only a month left until Election Day, Vice President Harris is navigating a pair of external challenges in the month of October that pose risk to her campaign.
At home, there’s the recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Helene — including in the vital swing states of North Carolina and Georgia. And abroad, there’s the real risk of escalating conflict in the Middle East.
The twin crises present a unique challenge for the Biden administration and, by extension, Harris — who is a key part of that team. So her campaign and the White House are pulling out the stops to try to show voters they’re on top of things, even as Harris pushes ahead on the campaign trail.
For Harris, there’s the fear that these “October surprises” go sideways and she gets some blame. In a race this close, every vote matters.
But these kinds of high-profile crises also present an opportunity to demonstrate leadership, said Democratic political strategist Ian Russell.
“What she has to do, and what she is doing, is showing up and showing that she’s engaged, showing that she’s capable of stepping up to the challenges that the country and the world face and I think she’s doing that very well,” Russell said.
How Harris has been responding to these October surprises
Harris took a break from the campaign on Wednesday to visit a Georgia neighborhood ravaged by Hurricane Helene where more than half of residents don’t have power and many don’t have running water.
“The president and I have been paying close attention from the beginning to what we need to do to make sure the federal resources hit the ground as quickly as possible,” Harris said. “That includes what was necessary to make sure that we provided direct federal assistance. And that work has been happening.”
President Biden also surveyed Asheville, N.C., where some of the most severe storm damage occurred, as he and Harris try to reassure voters in the critical state that their administration is up to the task. Harris’ campaign has said she plans to tour storm damage in North Carolina soon, too.
Her opponent, former President Donald Trump, is slated to be it the state on Friday for a town hall.
Another crisis was averted: the economic fallout from a strike
Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association picket outside of an entrance to the Dundalk Marine Terminal in the Port of Baltimore on Oct. 3.
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The International Longshoremen’s Association decision to go on strike on Tuesday had been another challenge for Harris, threatening to upend the economy heading into the election.
But on Thursday, the union dockworkers and port operators reached a tentative agreement on wages and agreed to extend their contract to Jan. 15. Harris and Biden had sided firmly with the union, and on Thursday Biden said both sides had acted “patriotically” to reopen the ports to ensure supplies were available for hurricane rebuilding efforts.
Trump sees opportunity in these crises
The Trump campaign is on the lookout for anything they can use against Harris in the closely contested race — including the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, Trump told his supporters that he was the person to take on Iran after it attacked Israel. “We have a nonexistent president and a nonexistent vice president, who should be in charge, but nobody knows what’s going on,” Trump said.
Harris made sure to get out in front of cameras this week to reaffirm her support for Israel. “As I have said, I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist militias,” she said.
Vice President Harris speaks after Iran launched around 200 missiles on Israel at the Josephine Butler Parks Center in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 1. In her remarks, Harris pledged “unwavering” commitment to Israel’s security.
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“And let us be clear: Iran is not only a threat to Israel; Iran is also a threat to American personnel in the region, American interests, and innocent civilians across the region who suffer at the hands of Iran-based and -backed terrorist proxies.”
How the White House, Harris and her campaign are able to navigate these “October surprises” is critical in a race this close, with only a month left.
“There’s always going to be something that could go wrong at home or abroad,” Russell said. “And our leaders need to be able to step up and deliver while also being politicians.”
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from News | Mail Online. |
An invasion of dangerous three-foot rat-like creatures with orange teeth is wreaking havoc across California, threatening the safety of residents and the state’s economy.
Nearly 1,000 nutria – one of the largest rodent species – had already been hunted down in the Bay Area this year.
But the creatures have now made way into Contra Costa County’s California Delta – which is one the state’s most crucial water sources and ecological sites, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Also known as Coypu, the animals, which weigh around 20 pounds, pose a threat to humans, livestock and pets, and cause widespread destruction across wetlands.
They are known to carry tapeworms and are hosts for potentially deadly diseases such as tuberculosis and septicemia. They are also carriers for blood and liver flukes that can lead to infection through exposure to contaminated water, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Nutria, also known as coypu, are an invasive rodent species that can weigh up to 20 pounds and reach two and a half feet long
Nutria have now made their way into Contra Costa County’s California Delta, one of the states most crucial water source and ecological sites. Pictured: Danville’s Blackhawk Plaza
Nutria look similar to beavers, with the distinction of highly arched backs and ‘long, thin, round, sparsely haired tails rather than wide, flat tails like that of a beaver,’ according to the CFWD.
The rodents are usually found near permanent water sources and have large bright orange teeth as well as a white muzzle and whiskers.
Since the first nutria, a pregnant female, was discovered on a private wetland in March of 2017 in California, 5,042 of the species have been killed in the state.
Officials are urging locals to ‘immediately’ report and photograph any sightings or potential signs of their presence to their state wildlife department.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Peter Tira told SFGate: ‘We cannot have nutria reproducing in the delta. The threat to California’s economy is too great.’
The spread is particularly alarming due to the animal’s prolific reproductive rate – with females giving birth to as many as 27 offspring per year.
They also breed all year round, producing two to three litters each with two to nine young per litter.
On top of this there is no natural predator keeping its population in check.
In some states, including California, the rodents are listed on the prohibited species list, which outlaws their importation, possession, exchange, purchase, sale and transportation.
It is legal to shoot the animal outside of city limits or wildlife control officers can kill them using humane euthanasia.
Tides push salt water into the Delta from the Pacific, and freshwater travels into the Delta from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and then through the leveed channels into San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean
The California Delta channels water through the state for agricultural uses and human consumption
The highly destructive species is known to cause significant losses in crops and weaken levees due to their burrowing.
Their effect on ecosystems also poses a threat to rare and endangered species and plants that rely on the marshland.
Each nutria is able to consume up to 25 percent of its body weight per day. But Krysten Kellum of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said they ‘waste and destroy up to ten times as much’, according to SFGate.
The CFWD added: ‘Nutria do not construct dens, they burrow, frequently causing water-retention or flood control levees to breach, weakening structural foundations, and eroding banks,’ reported the San Francisco Chronicle.
The California Delta, where the nutria are now starting to inhabit, helps to channel water to cities and farms across the state, making it easier for rodents to spread into yet more regions.
Tides push salt water into the Delta from the Pacific, and freshwater travels into the Delta from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and then through the leveed channels into San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.
United States Geological Survey said that, when necessary, water from the Sacramento River is diverted and pumped through leveed canals toward California Aqueduct and the Delta-Mendota Canal.
This water ends up being consumed by humans and used for agricultural purposes throughout Central and Southern California.
Since the aquatic invasion of the rodents, the California Department of Water Resources issued a dire – and equally hilarious – warning about the nutria.
Pitting the creature as a ‘two-faced creature’ straight out of a horror movie, the DWS created a movie-like poster that said that although the animal was ‘so cute,’ the rodent was a ‘monster’.
‘Behind that cure exterior lies a monster. Beware of the dark side of the nutria. They may look harmless, but they are invasive rodents that have the ability to destroy wetlands and damage levees,’ the DWS wrote.
The State of California is asking all residents to report and photograph any sightings or signs of Nutria
Each Nutria is able to consume up to 25 percent of its body weight per day, Kellum of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said
The rodents are usually found near permanent water sources and have large bright orange teeth to set them apart from beavers, as well as a white muzzle and white whiskers
Their high rates of increasing population are due to their year-round breeding, producing two to three litters each with two to nine young per litter, as well as the lack of a natural predator
Nutria are also causing problems beyond California, with reports of issues in Oregon.
In fact, feral populations have now become established in 17 states, including Louisiana, Washington, Oregon and California.
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from Worldcrunch. |
–Analysis–
TEL AVIV — Anyone who wants to understand the Mossad should know about the very first operation conducted by a Jewish secret service. It happened quite a while ago and its coordinator was as prominent as it was unusual: God the Father.
This is what it says in the Holy Scripture, Numbers, Chapter 13: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Send men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites, and choose one from each tribe who is a prince.'” Moses followed the order from above, chose a nobleman from each of the twelve Israelite tribes and gave them the following instructions: “Go up the mountain and see the land, and the people, whether they are strong or weak, few or many, whether they live in tents or in fortresses… Look also at the condition of the ground, whether it is fat or lean.”
The twelve spies did an excellent job and after forty days they brought back insight that was both promising and threatening. “The land flows with milk and honey. But the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified.” Attack or retreat? The scouts could not agree on what should follow from these findings.
Today’s intelligence experts are critical of the biblical spying operation. “Nothing against old Moses,” Yaakov Caroz, the former deputy head of the Mossad, told me. “But we see three serious errors in his approach. Firstly, Moses should not have chosen the men exclusively from one social class, from the social elite — he should have ignored the boss’s orders. And secondly, he should not have chosen one representative from each tribe. It would have been much better to simply select the most capable men. Social or party-political proportionality is deadly in our business.”
And mistake number three, perhaps the worst in the opinion of the Mossad professional: “Instead of creating an impartial committee to check the news and coolly weigh it up, Moses left the evaluation to the men he had sent out. And that naturally led to a dispute between those who thought it was impossible to conquer the country and those who were in favor of an attack.”
The skeptics did not prevail at that time, otherwise history would look different: the children of Israel would never have entered the land of Canaan — and the Jewish people might have perished.
A biblical mission
The modern state of Israel owes its existence largely to underground fighters and spies.
During their mandate in the 1940s, the British prevented large numbers of Jews from entering Palestine. In order to illegally smuggle in the Jews escaping Nazi atrocities and to force the British to withdraw, secret combat troops obtained information in every possible way, even resorting to violence and terror. The importance of the weapons and reconnaissance work secretly acquired by Mossad precursors was demonstrated immediately after the proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, and was the only way to repel the subsequent attack by the Arab states.
A secret service that watches over an entire people, a protective shield in a sea of enemies, an effective protection against the risk of a second Holocaust: that is what makes the Mossad so unique. And that also explains its deep roots in the Jewish people. The American CIA, the British MI5 and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) are at best accepted as a necessary evil. The “scoundrels” are viewed with skepticism in their home countries, while the Israeli secret service can rely on widespread sympathy.
In 1951, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, founded his spy force: the military intelligence service Aman procures information for the armed forces; the Shin Bet is responsible for counterterrorism at home; the Mossad (“Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks”) takes over operations abroad. The centrality of the Mossad’s task is also shown by the fact that its chief reports directly to the prime minister.
Incredible successes
The successes were sensational even in the first few years.
In 1956, Mossad agents were the first to intercept the secret speech of Soviet Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev, in which he denounced Stalin’s crimes. And they managed to find the Nazi murderer Adolf Eichmann, who had fled to Argentina: they drugged him in Buenos Aires and abducted him to Israel in 1960 — that’s how the Mossad myth was born.
The father of these secret service triumphs was Isser Harel, the first head of the “Institute”. Years after he left the service, we met in his modest house in Tel Aviv, where he told me: “Eichmann was more than a technical problem, it was a psychological one. We needed this man, the organizer of the extermination of the Jews, alive, before a Jewish court. We owed that to all his victims and to the Jewish people.”
The Mossad helped build the Israeli atomic bomb by secretly procuring uranium. It succeeded in persuading an Iraqi pilot to flee to Israel with his Russian MiG-21. In a worldwide commando operation following the Munich Olympic attack in 1972, it pursued and killed the twelve perpetrators. But an innocent Moroccan waiter also fell victim to God’s Vengeance after a mix-up. And again and again, the Mossad got involved in dirty arms deals, acting as a secret foreign ministry with the world’s dictators.
Embarassing errors
The 1990s were a time of Mossad decline. Spectacular successes failed to materialize, and mishaps piled up. Two are particularly memorable: in 1997, Israeli agents attacked the political leader of the terrorist organization Hamas in the Jordanian capital Amman with a lethal injection. Khalid Mashal fell into a coma, but survived. The Mossad men were arrested. In order to get them released, the Israeli government had no choice but to enter into an embarrassing agreement: not only did it have to provide an effective antidote for Mashal, but it also had to release Hamas terrorists imprisoned in Israel.
And then, in 1998, Mossad agents made an amateurish attempt to tap a telephone in Bern: the neighbors noticed the noise and notified the cantonal police. To be caught red-handed by the rather staid Swiss was an embarrassing low point.
But if you follow the findings of intelligence expert Ronen Bergman, the problems were running much deeper. “At a time when digital technology was becoming increasingly important, the Mossad was lagging behind,” he writes in his book The Shadow War. “And in the competition for qualified young talent, high-tech companies were often more successful.”
Recruiting the geeks
But, once again, the Mossad showed its ability to renew itself. In the new millennium, the bosses decided to change course in a radical fashion. While the foreign intelligence service had long been so secret that not even its existence was officially confirmed or the names of its leaders disclosed, it now set up an Internet portal and organized an advertising campaign (“The Mossad opens up — only for a few. Maybe for you”).
The message was clear: we are looking for the brightest minds in the country.
In a later version, the institute even placed a complicated numbers quiz in the press, which over 25,000 interested people tried to solve. The message was clear: we are looking for the brightest minds in the country. And in return we offer prestige, good pay and an exciting life — national pride included.
A surprising number of highly gifted people answered their call. They were allowed to experiment with high-tech materials; some probably hoped that they could later use this knowledge to make a profit for their own companies and start-ups in the Silicon Wadi industrial park. The work of the cyber prodigies led Mossad to surprising successes behind the enemy line. The Arab world was no longer the main target of the foreign intelligence service — but Iran, whose rulers repeatedly threaten to destroy the Israeli state and are building the components for an atomic bomb.
In 2010, the Mossad managed to deal a serious blow to the highly advanced Iranian nuclear program. Together with the CIA, the Israelis were able to develop a highly effective computer virus called Stuxnet and smuggle it into the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Thousands of uranium centrifuges were destroyed in what they called Operation Olympic Games.
Worldcrunch 🗞 Extra!
Know more • In Israel’s current conflicts, the Mossad headquarters near Tel Aviv have been a prime target of the Jewish State’s enemies. Al-Jazeera reported that Hezbollah fired a Qader 1 ballistic missile toward Mossad’s central command building on September 25, in retaliation for Israeli bombings and the killing of high-profile Hezbollah members, including leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the explosion of pagers and wireless devices.
Then on October 1, Hezbollah announced it had again targeted Mossad headquarters, along with Israel’s Glilot military base, with salvos of Fadi-4 rockets.
Later that same day, Iran announced that Mossad HQ was among the targets of its barrage of some 180 missiles fired at Israel.
The IDF said that its Iron Dome defense system as well as on intervention by the U.S. and Jordan was able to intercept most of the missiles and prevent major damage. — Hagar Farouk (read more about the Worldcrunch method here)
You know it was us
In parallel to the high-tech war against industrial plants, killer squads remain active and murder Iranian nuclear scientists on the streets of Tehran. All of these actions can only delay the nuclear weapons program, not stop it. But they instill fear in the enemy, they say: “Mossad can hit anywhere and at any time, on your doorstep, in heavy traffic, at night or in broad daylight. And we don’t even have to comment on these acts: you know it was us”.
Recent evidence of spectacular attacks on Iranian soil, like something out of a science fiction movie: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the father of Tehran’s nuclear program, was killed in 2020 by a robot equipped with artificial intelligence placed on a street, whose shooting function was triggered by a satellite-controlled mechanism. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, a state guest in Iran, was assassinated this summer with a bomb that had been planted weeks earlier in the state guest house he frequently used. The device was detonated by remote control.
In September 2024, Lebanon has been at the center of a spectacular high-tech murder campaign: in the meticulously prepared Operation Trojan Horse, Israel’s secret service smuggled pagers and walkie-talkies loaded with dynamite into the country, which cost the lives or eyesight of thousands of Hezbollah fighters, as well as many civilians.
The fact that Hamas terrorists were able to carry out a terrible massacre in Israel on Oct. 7 last year, leaving over 1,100 dead, and that all protective mechanisms on the Israeli side were so scandalously neglected, is something most people do not blame on the Mossad, but on the government and the military intelligence service; the head of Aman has already resigned. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to delay the formation of an investigative committee for as long as possible, probably because he knows that the findings would be the end of his political career.
No moral boundaries
Perhaps the Mossad has never been more powerful than it is today: its budget is in the billions, its number of employees has risen to over 7,000, almost as many as Germany’s BND, and a third of the CIA — no other country in the world has a foreign intelligence service that is nearly as large and powerful in relation to its population.
The Mossad can only be as good and as effective as the cohesion of the nation.
No legal or moral limits are imposed on the organization. The right to self-defense in the name of the nation is interpreted very broadly by the Mossad chief in consultation with the prime minister, including assassinations and brutal cyberattacks, just as the Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, stand up and kill him first.”
A secret service plays God. But the Mossad can only be as good and as effective as the cohesion of the nation. Israeli society has drifted apart dramatically in recent years, and voters have moved far to the right. The current cabinet includes right-wing radicals and ultra-religious settlers who reject any reconciliation with Palestinians. One might assume that the secret service chiefs also belong to this camp and act as particularly aggressive warmongers. But the opposite is the case: Mossad chiefs are said to have refused on several occasions, for example, to prepare a bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities proposed by the prime minister — in their eyes too risky militarily and too provocative politically.
The former heads of the domestic intelligence service are even tougher and more radical in their criticism of Israeli policy. Six of them came together a few years ago to make a joint film (The Gatekeepers). They see themselves as patriots and yet draw a bitter conclusion: that all Israeli governments since 1967 — with the exception of Yitzhak Rabin’s — have pursued a policy that has exacerbated the conflict with the Palestinians.
The conclusion drawn by the intelligence officers: without an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and a two-state settlement, there can be no peace in the Middle East: “We may win every battle, but we will lose the big war.”
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story . |
A top Russian official has admitted for the first time that Islamic State was behind a brutal attack on a concert hall in Moscow this year, having blamed Ukraine in its immediate aftermath.
Men with machineguns killed 145 people and wounded hundreds more in a rampage at Crocus City Hall, which was packed with concertgoers on a Friday night in March, before setting the building on fire.
Eleven Tajik citizens and a Kyrgyzstan-born Russian have been arrested in connection with the massacre including four gunmen.
The terrorists set the auditorium on fire, causing the roof to collapse
RUSSIAN EMERGENCY MINISTRY PRESS SERVICE/AP
An Isis offshoot in Afghanistan known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or Isis-K, claimed responsibility for the deadliest terrorist act in Russia in two decades.
On Friday, Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s domestic intelligence agency FSB, became the first senior Russian official to admit that the attack was masterminded by Isis’s Afghan branch and not by the Ukrainian intelligence services, as had been previously suggested by President Putin.
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“We know for certain that the men who recruited the attackers are members of Islamic State- Khorasan who have been deliberately targeting the Tajik diaspora in Russia via the internet from Afghanistan,” Bortnikov told a meeting of intelligence chiefs of former Soviet nations in Moscow.
The marginalised Tajik community in Russia, who typically do menial, underpaid work, have faced more violence and discrimination since the gunmen were identified as Tajik migrant workers.
President Putin insisted that Russia “cannot possibly be targeted by terrorist attacks of Islamic fundamentalists”
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• Putin offers to drop criminal charges if suspects fight in Ukraine
Bortnikov also warned that migrant workers from central Asia were prone to radicalisation “both by terrorist recruiters and foreign intelligence agencies”.
However, he made no mention of any potential Ukrainian role in the attack that the Kremlin had been speculating about. In the aftermath of the shooting Bortnikov insisted on “Ukrainian involvement” as he claimed “Islamists alone could not have plotted such an attack”.
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Putin never confirmed the overwhelming evidence of Isis’s role, insisting that Russia “cannot possibly be targeted by terrorist attacks of Islamic fundamentalists” because it was friendly to Muslim nations “on the international arena”.
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from [Untitled]. |
Sean “Diddy” Combs wanted Justin Bieber to keep what took place during their hangouts under wraps, according to a resurfaced “Jimmy Kimmel Live” clip.
The disgraced music mogul appeared with the “Baby” singer on the late night talk show in 2011 when the latter was just 16. They discussed their close-knit bond with host Jimmy Kimmel at the time.
“What’s going on with you guys? Are you working together?” Kimmel asked in the clip, which is making the rounds online in light of Combs’ serious legal issues.
The former Bad Boy Records exec responded, “No … We’ve become friends in a strange way” before elaborating, “To a lot of us, he’s like a little brother … He’s not afraid to call and ask for advice.”
The “Bad Boy for Life” rapper explained that the music industry is “a strong family” and many people, including himself, want to have their “arms around” Bieber to “protect him” because he’s a “nice person.”
Combs continued to gush about the “Somebody to Love” singer, “Besides his talent, he’s one of the greatest kids that you could ever know.”
Bieber thanked the “Tell Me” rapper for his remarks as the audience clapped during the segment, and Kimmel, 56, pointed out that perhaps Combs could buy the young singer a car as he did with his son.
“He got me a Lamborghini — I just haven’t gotten it yet,” the “Never Say Never” chimed in, prompting Combs to look off to the side in annoyance.
“He had the Lamborghini for a day or two and he had access to the house,” the “Last Night” rapper then said, seemingly referencing when the two spent 48 hours together, per a YouTube video Bieber posted.
“He knows better than to be talking about the things that he does with big brother Puff on national television,” Combs added. “Everything ain’t for everybody.”
When Combs and Bieber spent those two days together back in 2009, the “Coming Home” rapper told the “Beauty and the Beat” singer that they were “gonna go full buck full crazy.”
“Where we hanging out and what we doing, we can’t really disclose, but it’s definitely a 15-year-old’s dream,” Combs added in the YouTube video.
Amid the former Sean John CEO’s sex crimes scandal, another clip of Combs with Bieber resurfaced online, which shows the latter appearing very uncomfortable at some of the former’s remarks.
Combs said in that second video, “Selling out arenas and everything? Starting to act different, huh? You haven’t been calling me and hanging out the way we used to hang out.”
Bieber is then seen awkwardly pulling out his phone and replying, “You tried to get in contact with me throughout all my [partners] and what not — but you never got my number, so want my number?”
A rep for the “Peaches” singer recently said, however, that while Bieber, now 30, is “aware of Diddy’s arrest and all the allegations,” he “just wants to focus on being a great dad and husband.”
Combs has been charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation of a prostitute. He faces a minimum of 15 years and a maximum life sentence.
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At a recent press conference, the “I Need a Girl” rapper was accused of sexually assaulting 120 people, including 25 minors. One of the alleged victims was only 9 years old at the time of the crime.
Attorney Tony Buzbee, who hosted the presser, warned that “many powerful people” are set to be exposed in connection to Diddy’s alleged misdeeds, claiming the names will “shock” the public.
Combs is currently awaiting his trial behind bars. No court date has been set yet.
As for Justin, he tied the knot with Hailey Bieber in September 2018 and the two welcomed their first child in August 2024.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-330-0226.