Gunmen attacked a luxury hotel in Bamako, Mali on Friday, taking 170 guests and hotel staff hostage, according the company that runs the hotel.Some background, courtesy Agence-France Presse...
In a statement issued on its website, the Rezidor Hotel Group, which operates the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, said it “is aware of the hostage-taking that is ongoing at the property today, 20th November 2015. … Our safety and security teams and our corporate team are in constant contact with the local authorities in order to offer any support possible to re-instate safety and security at the hotel.”
Thirty of the hostages are hotel staff, the group said. The other 140 are guests. The statement said that “two persons” have locked in the 170 hostages.
Citing a security source, Reuters put the number of gunmen at 10.
The shooting at the Radisson follows a nearly 24-hour siege and hostage-taking at another hotel in August in the central Malian town of Sevare in which five UN workers were killed, along with four soldiers and four attackers.It's important to recall that, not long ago, David Petraeus and other neocons were urging an American alliance with Al Qaeda, because the program of regime change in Syria trumps all other concerns.
Five people, including a French citizen and a Belgian, were also killed in an attack at a restaurant in Bamako in March in the first such incident in the capital.
Islamist groups have continued to wage attacks in Mali despite a June peace deal between former Tuareg rebels in the north of the country and rival pro-government armed groups.
Northern Mali fell in March-April 2012 to Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups long concentrated in the area before being ousted by an ongoing French-led military operation launched in January 2013.
Despite the peace deal, large swathes of Mali remain beyond the control of government and foreign forces.
According to the Telegraph, hostages are being freed if they can prove their ability to recite verses from the Koran. Apparently, Chinese nationals are among the hostages. I wonder how Beijing will react...?
Is a chemical attack coming soon? This is cute...
The Islamic State group is aggressively pursuing development of chemical weapons, setting up a branch dedicated to research and experiments with the help of scientists from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the region, according to Iraqi and U.S. intelligence officials.You gotta love these stories which quote unnamed spooks. Actually, ISIS has had access to chemical weapons for a while. Here's a story from The Guardian, published in July of 2014.
And here is Sy Hersh's all-important account...
On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort’.Okay, that's a reference to Nusra/Al Qaeda, not ISIS. But everyone know that ISIS and Nusra have worked together and should now be considered "as one" operationally. I've already devoted many, many posts to exposing the fact that the anti-Assad rebels were the ones who used sarin in two Damascus suburbs in 2013.
Several recently-published stories have warned of an imminent chemical attack from ISIS. Most of these stories have appeared on right-wing sites, such as Brietbart, but some have not. See, for example, here.
I suspect that we are being readied for something.
11 comments:
The military-industrial-media state likes to precondition the population for future terrorist attacks so that it appears that our security services are effectively collecting intelligence as it relates to our ostensible enemies, when in reality they're only indicating exactly what their actual plans are.
"Chatter" as it relates to terrorist plans is the equivalent of a trailer before a movie; just enough to let the audience understand the gist of what they're going to experience but lacking the crucial details.
Does that mean you expect a false flag?
Informative article in the Atlantic by William McCants, on the religious beliefs promoted by Daesh(Isis) and their significance. Note in particular the view that Shi'ites deserve death because they are apostates.
The Sharon doctrine lies in the past.
McCants pushes the message that negotiation with Daesh is impossible. I doubt that's how they see it at Langley or for that matter at the Quai d'Orsay. After all, Daesh are selling oil for money - and not just for money, but for US dollars.
But a key fact to grasp here is the apocalypticism.
Another is the role of Youtube and Twitter in Daesh's projection of its power and in its recruiting. Don't tell me the CIA or NSA couldn't stop that in the next hour if they got the go-ahead. And I don't want to hear any legal shit about what constitutes a "publisher" either. This is war, and in war you don't do the other side's propaganda for it.
McCants discusses, but doesn't advocate, a US invasion of Syria and a US strategy of giving Daesh the last battle, at Dabiq, that they desire.
He points out that
"the risks of escalation are enormous. The biggest proponent of an American invasion is the Islamic State itself."
Well yeah. And here we have the motive for attacks such as the one in Paris.
I wouldn't advocate anyone going long on the Dow Jones. I really wouldn't.
"The rise of ISIS, after all, happened only because our previous occupation created space for Zarqawi and his followers. Who knows the consequences of another botched job?"
Clue: it begins with an "a" and ends in "lypse".
At the end, McCants ends up backing a policy of talking up a non-Daeshist version of Salafism, one that backs handchopping, crucifixion and a caliphate, but some time in the future.
And at that point, his commitment to understanding politics and religion at the same time goes out of the window. The word he misses out is "Saudi". Non-Daeshist Salafism may not have a caliphate, but it already has a headchopping and handchopping state - on the peninsula - one that is extending its reach.
The Bataclan theatre where the biggest massacre just took place in Paris was owned by a Jewish guy for decades, who used it to stage events in support of the Israeli army and "Jewish charities". He sold it in September.
He denies that the venue was chosen because of anything to do with Jews or Israel.
But that's not the question.
The question is whether he is a sayan who ever put his building at the disposal of Mossad.
b, that's getting into potentially very ugly territory. I fail to see how the previous ownership of that building has any bearing on this episode. You're reaching.
The al-Qaeda incursion into Mali was another result of the Libyan regime-change operation undertaken by NATO and applauded across the board by the political and media establishment of NATO countries. Clear-thinking is in demand and so utterly absent where it matters.
I'm speculating.
Previous ownership? Facts: the guy owned it for decades and was well in with the Zionists, using the building for propaganda and fund-raising. He inherited it from his father. Then he sold it two months ago but he still considers himself to have a close relationship with it.
Two months ago, he sold it!
It's not exactly unlikely that he was a sayan, who would have put the building at Mossad's disposal at very short notice.
Say they wanted it for something that would take a few weeks of preparation and required that he sell it.
How did the Daesh combatants enter the building carrying their AK47s and grenades?
If he was a sayan, what I'm suggesting becomes very credible.
And it's more than likely he was.
One more comment: the French cops who stormed the Bataclan may have completely fucked up.
One told Le Monde that "he shot (a Daesh combatant) in the chest and then his suicide belt went off, but he still does not know if it was the bullet that caused it".
That doesn't sound to me at all like an adequately trained guy or a properly managed operation, if the aim was - as it should be - to save lives.
Except...were there any suicide vests at the Bataclan, or is that a lie? One witness says they didn't have any. (Source.)
Will France be pressing ahead with its call for UN soldiers to police part of Jerusalem?
The venue where the concert was held was sold on Sept 11 after 40 years of ownership. Such timing.
If someone tries to ignore prior ownership, I smell a rat.
Post a Comment