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Mass shooting
The United States had 78 mass shootings during that 30-year period. The highest number of mass shootings experienced outside the United States was in Germany – where seven shootings occurred. In the other twenty-four industrialized countries taken together, 41 mass shootings took place. In other words, the United States had nearly double the number of mass shootings than all other twenty-four industrialized countries combined in the same 30-year period.
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Terrorism
Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, a 29-year American citizen whose parents are from Afghanistan, entered a night club in Orlando, Florida, at about 2:00 a.m., armed with an AR-15 assault-rifle and a hand gun, and opened fire. He killed 50 people and injured 53 – the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States – before being killed by police officers who stormed the club. Until the shooting early Sunday, the most lethal mass shooting in the United States was the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage, in which 32 people were killed and 30 injured.
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Cyber terrorism
Robert Hannigan, the director of GCHQ, the British equivalent of the U.S. NSA, has warned that terrorists and rogue states are gaining the technical capability to bring a major city to a standstill with the click of a button. He said that the risk to cities like London would significantly increase as more physical objects – cars, household appliances — are connected online in what is called the Internet of Things.
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Terrorism
Ten large fan zones in the center of ten French cities, set up to allow more fans to watch the Euro 2016 soccer games on giant outdoor screens, are the focus of security concerns. The tournament, which starts in France on Friday, is expected to draw more than ten million spectators from all over the world. “It as if we have created ten open-air Bataclans and invited the jihadists to do their worst,” one French security source said, referring to the Paris concert hall where ninety people were killed by jihadists on 13 November.
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Terrorism
In the wake of two car bombings which killed seventeen people, Turkey announced it was temporarily suspending the sale of fertilizers containing nitrate. The terrorists in the two bombings used fertilizers to make the explosives – as did Timothy McVeigh twenty years ago.
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Terrorism
Four people were killed and six injured yesterday in an attack by two armed terrorists near a shopping mall in the center of Tel Aviv. Of the six injured, one is in critical condition and four are in serious condition. The Sharona Mall is located within walking distance of the Kyria compound, the location of Israel’s Ministry of Defense and headquarters of the Israel Defense Force (IDF). The Israel government announced that 83,000 permits to West Bank residents to visit their relatives in Israel during the month of Ramadan have been suspended, and that permissions to residents of the Gaza Strip to pray in Al Aqsa have been revoked.
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Drones
With the start of the UEFA Euro 2016 soccer tournament kicking off on10 June, expecting to draw a large international crowd at ten different stadiums in cities across France, security measures have been carefully considered by the organizers in light of a turbulent past couple of years in Europe and abroad. The growing popularity of the use of drones has necessitated consideration of counter-UAV technologies to thwart a terrorist attack using this method.
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Terrorism
Three people were killed and six injured in an attack by two armed terrorists near a shopping mall in the center of Tel Aviv. Of the six injured, one is in critical condition and four are in serious condition. The Sharona Mall is located within walking distance of the Kyria compound, the location of Israel’s Ministry of Defense and headquarters of the Israel Defense Force (IDF).
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Global conflict
The just-published 2016 Global Peace Index shows that the world would be growing more peaceful if it were not for the growing violence of Middle East conflicts. More than 100,000 people were killed in conflicts in 2014, up from almost 20,000 in 2008. Syria, with about 67,000 such deaths in 2014, accounted for most of that increase. The economic cost of violence in 2015 was $13.6 trillion, or 13.3 percent of global GDP — which is about 11 times the size of global foreign direct investment.
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Terrorism app
Euro 2016 soccer tournament begins on Friday, and as part of the massive security operation undertaken to secure the ten millions spectators who will be watching the games from 10 June to 10 July, the French government has created a smartphone app designed to send warnings directly to people’s phones in the event of a bombing, shooting, or other disaster.
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Syria
British MPs say that the Ministry of Defense’s refusal to comment on ground operations by Special Forces in Syria means it is not possible to hold an informed debate about U.K. role in Syria. The Times reported that elite U.K. soldiers had crossed into southern Syria to support opposition forces fighting ISIS militants close to the border with Jordan.
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9/11 search-and-rescue
The last surviving search and rescue dog who worked at Ground Zero following the 9/11 terrorist attacks died on Monday. Bretagne, a 16-year-old golden retriever, was put down at Fairfield Animal Hospital in Cypress, Texas. As Bretagne slowly walked into the hospital, she was saluted by representatives of state agencies who came to pay their respects.
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Terror tunnels
Hamas fighters can travel underground throughout the entirety of the Gaza Strip using the terror group’s tunnel network, according to a Hamas operative who was captured last month after he crossed illegally into Israel from Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza have recently expressed fears that Hamas tunnels built in or near civilian areas are putting non-combatants at risk of being hurt by Israeli strikes.
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Hate crime & terrorism
New research from START examines the link between hate crime (bias-motivated crime) and terrorism at the county level, focusing on far-right extremism in the United States and pulling data from the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) and the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Among other things, the research has found that counties experiencing increases in one type of bias-motivated or extremist violence are likely to see significant increases in other types of extremist activity.
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Terrorism
In a landmark federal court case in Minnesota, three young Somali American men who planned to join ISIS in Syria, have been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder overseas. Each could face life in prison after they were convicted of the most serious charges. In all, the federal government has indicted ten Somali American men in relation to the conspiracy, which was uncovered by a sprawling FBI counterterrorism investigation.
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Terrorism
The Euro 2016, the European soccer championship tournament, opens this coming Friday amid growing security concerns. The Ukrainian security agency, the SBU, announced over the weekend that it had arrested a Frenchman who had in his possession a massive arsenal of weapons he had purchased in the Ukraine. The French media report that he was apparently not planning to target any Euro 2016 events. Rather, his idea was to attack other targets, exploiting the fact that thousands of security personnel would be diverted from their usual routines.
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ISIS
For excavators – archaeologists, but also looters like the Islamic State, or ISIS – the opportunity for discovery in modern Iraq and Syria is dazzling. Everyone seems to agree that ISIS is digging up and selling archaeological artifacts to make money. But no one seems to agree on how much money it’s actually making from its illegal antiquities trade: amounts have ranged from $4 million to $7 billion. Patchy data and methodological challenges do not fully explain why $7 billion fell to $4 million in public discussions about the ISIS antiquities trade. While market mystique and over-the-top plot lines are fine for Hollywood films and adventure novels, it’s no way to understand terrorist finance, and without that understanding we are unlikely to arrive at genuine and lasting solutions.
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Terrorism-sponsoring states
Last Thursday the Department of State released the 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism. The report is provided to Congress each year and covers developments in countries in which acts of terrorism occurred, countries which are state sponsors of terrorism, and countries determined by the Secretary to be of particular national security interest.
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Changing security landscape
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Russia, China, and Iran have successfully exploited or stretched U.S. thresholds for war in order to further their strategic goals and undermine U.S. interests. The United States will have to address the problems of foreign intervention and threats short of war if it is to prevent further erosion of its global influence by its competitors, RAND researchers say.
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ISIS
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Thursday said that ISIS fighters have used the northern Syrian city of Manbij as a base to plan attacks against the West. U.S. Special Forces have joined Kurdish fighters in surrounding the militants’ stronghold. Manbij has earned the name “Little London” because of the many Britons who have made it their homes after joining ISIS.
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The long view
Patriots’ Day: How Far-Right Groups Hijack History and Patriotic Symbols to Advance Their Cause, According to an Expert on Extremism
Extremist groups have attempted to change the meaning of freedom and liberty embedded in Patriots’ Day — a commemoration of the battles of Lexington and Concord – to serve their far-right rhetoric, recruitment, and radicalization. Understanding how patriotic symbols can be exploited offers important insights into how historical narratives may be manipulated, potentially leading to harmful consequences in American society.
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”
“Tulsi Gabbard as US Intelligence Chief Would Undermine Efforts Against the Spread of Chemical and Biological Weapons”: Expert
The Senate, along party lines, last week confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National intelligence. One expert on biological and chemical weapons says that Gabbard’s “longstanding history of parroting Russian propaganda talking points, unfounded claims about Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and conspiracy theories all in efforts to undermine the quality of the community she now leads” make her confirmation a “national security malpractice.”