The Gates of Hell

Full story at: israelinsider

The Israeli media dutifully reported the official account that exactly at that most opportune moment for an assassination, with the band’s music covering the sound of the shot, a veteran soldier in an elite Border Guard unit, of Druse extraction, decided to kill himself. He was reportedly on a roof in line of site from the departure ceremony, 100 yards away and equipped with a rifle with a 400 yard range. Not only did he shoot himself, he fell off the roof. Not an easy feat!

From the Daily Telegraph, we learn that the border policeman shot himself in the head with his rifle, also an unnatural task. He was said to have killed himself in front of his “guarding partner,” and two female soldiers, who — the media informed Israelis — fainted and had to be taken to the hospital.

Ynetnews reports that Shin Bet security service officials found the border policeman lying on the ground below, with his “guarding partner” huddled over the body.

The assembled media was whisked away and, remarkably, the subsequent reports were either subdued or suppressed altogether. The midnight news summary of government owned television Channel One did not even report the incident.

There were no subsequent reports from his guarding partner, nor the female soldiers.

One discordant note from the official story came from the family of the Druze soldier who reportedly committed suicide on the job, without a note.

According to Haaretz, “officials soon ruled out the option that he accidentally shot himself before the fall, or that his gun misfired upon impact with the ground, and concluded that he apparently committed suicide using his M-16 rifle, causing him to fall off the building. An autopsy of the body confirmed their conclusion.” The standard issue IDF .223 caliber M-16, while hardly a sniper rifle is definitely capable of hitting targets at a 100 yard range, especially if the shooter is a well-trained veteran.

The victim’s guarding partner was found by the Shin Bet, huddled over the body. He gave testimony to the police.

Border Police officials said the man, a member of the Druze community, had served as a border policeman for eight years since he was discharged from mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces. The dead officer was identified as Raid Asaad Ghanan, 32, of the Druze village of Beit Jan.

The Druze, a mysterious sect that was an offshot of Islam, are Israeli citizens generally opposed the Palestinians. Within the IDF, they are known as well-disciplined and loyal soldiers. Many serve in the border guard, like Ghanan, who had completed eight years of service.

As reported by ynetnews, His relatives furiously refused to believe that he had committed suicide: “We scornfully reject the claims that our son took his own life,” a family member said. “He was a kindhearted and happy person. He had a family and there was no reason for him to do such a horrible thing.”

Full story at: Times Online

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.

riaclu.org

Claiming that the program raises “enormous privacy and safety concerns,” the RI ACLU has called on Middletown school officials to halt a planned pilot program in which elementary school children will be tagged with electronic chips to monitor their whereabouts. The program, using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, will track the movements of Aquidneck Elementary School students who take school district buses by placing RFID chips on the children’s backpacks.

The only rationale offered for this significant intrusion is to allow school officials to know whether students boarded the right bus. But in a letter to school officials, the ACLU said it hoped that “this is a goal that school district procedures already address without the need to tag and track students like cattle. The use of RFID labels on the children is a solution in search of a problem.”

The letter added that this incursion on students’ privacy “could also have the effect of actually making the children less, rather than more, safe. That is because any information stored on an RFID chip that identifies a particular child, whether it be by name, address or school ID number, can potentially be read from a distance by inexpensive readers that can be easily purchased on the Internet. If school officials can find schoolchildren, others might also be able to find them and target them for improper purposes.” The letter notes that RFID technology was originally developed to track products and cattle, and that many independent researchers who specialize in RFID technology have raised privacy and security concerns about using this technology for tagging humans.

The ACLU also protested that requiring students to wear RFID labels “treats them as objects, not children,” like the cattle, sheep and shipment pallets in warehouses for which the technology was designed. Further, “encouraging the placement of RFIDs on young children, even in this limited and questionable context, can only have the unintended effect of acclimating them to being monitored by the government in other contexts and wherever they go, as if it were perfectly normal and appropriate. It is not, nor is it a notion that a school district should be encouraging, however unintentionally.”

The ACLU argued that the school district had failed to give sufficient weight to these concerns in adopting the policy with little debate. When a similar, but even less intrusive, program was introduced a few years ago in a California school system – requiring students to wear RFID badges while they were actually in school – an outcry from parents led to its quick abandonment. The ACLU concluded its letter to the school officials by urging them “to respect the privacy and civil liberties of Middletown’s elementary school students and reconsider this decision before the program is implemented on these children.”

prweb.com

Covenant Security International, LLC (Covenant Security), a leading security, training, assessment and risk management company, announced the addition of Mr. Roger Minner as Senior Associate to its Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) division. Roger is responsible for providing exceptional consultancy services within the new division serving private industry clients in meeting regulatory security and CFATS requirements enhancing our nation’s critical infrastructure and key resources security.

“CIP’s initial focus is assisting the regulated community as a partner who can provide full-scope, turn-key solutions to meet the CFATS requirements of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and continue to enhance our nation’s Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources security,” said Angela Williams-Tasky, CPP, Managing Director, Critical Infrastructure Protection division. “Roger Minner has critical and intimate experience in the regulatory compliance field and is another exceptional addition to our team of recognized experts.”

Prior to joining Covenant Security International, Roger Minner served as a Senior Inspector with the Inspections & Enforcement Branch, Infrastructure Security Compliance Division, DHS. Roger received over 425 hours of Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) related training and was instrumental in standing up the Intelligence Unit within the regulatory regime. During his tenure with DHS’ Federal Protective Service, Roger’s responsibilities included physical security assessments and implementation, dignitary protection, law enforcement, and hazardous materials technician planning and response to numerous large, multi-tenant federal facilities. Roger Minner served as a federal Law Enforcement Officer for the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense as well as a Pennsylvania Police Officer.

Roger Minner has a BS degree in Criminal Justice and is a graduate of the prestigious Hartford School of Business. He holds a Series 6 Insurance License, as well as professional Commercial, Life, Health, and Personal Insurance licenses. Roger is a distinguished veteran having served as a Security Forces Specialist with the U.S. Air Force.

The mystery deepens.

Via: Telegraph

The policeman who shot himself as French president Nicolas Sarkozy left
Tel Aviv airport on Tuesday has been named as Raeed Ghanem, a
32-year-old member of Israel’s Druze minority.

But while police sources said they were confident he committed suicide, there was no explanation of why he might have taken his life.
…

Members of his family in the village of Beit Jan in northern Israel said he had been married for eight years with two children and owned his own house.

“We scornfully reject the claims that our son took his own life,” a family member said.

“He was a kindhearted and happy person.

“He had a family and there was no reason for him to do such a horrible thing.”

His brother, Nayef, said he did not believe in the suicide theory.

“He had no reason to take his own life,” he said.

…

His father Assad said his son was in good spirits when he left home to join his unit on Tuesday.

“He had a family, a house, friends and plans for the future, he had no reason to commit suicide,” he said.
…

Burn marks were found on one of Ghanem’s hands and traces of explosives on the other, which is consistent with him having held the muzzle of the gun next to his head and pulled the trigger with his other hand.
…

The Druze are a sect loosely connected with Islam who made their homes in the mountains of the Holy Land. Today they are found in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Unlike Israeli Arabs, they are a minority which is allowed by Israel to take full part in the country’s security apparatus, including the army and police force.