CLG Updates: Israel Ready to Expand Offensive

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government

19 Nov 2012

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Israel ready to 'significantly expand' Gaza offensive --Britain warns Israel that Gaza invasion would cost the country international support. 19 Nov 2012 The Israeli army is ready to "significantly expand" its operation in Gaza, the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday as Hamas launched fresh rocket attacks on Tel Aviv. Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said "The soldiers are ready for any activity that could take place". Netanyahu issued the warning as Israel's "Iron Dome" system intercepted two rockets aimed at Tel Aviv. Hamas militants admitted responsibility for the latest rocket attack on Israel's commercial capital. Israel's Foreign Ministry told FRANCE24 that a ground offensive into Gaza was likely if the rocket attacks continued.

Israeli war on Gaza enters sixth day 19 Nov 2012 The besieged Gaza Strip is being hit by Israeli airstrikes for the sixth consecutive day, with attacks currently underway on the coastal enclave. Three Palestinians, including a child, were killed in the latest airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Monday, raising the death toll from the Israeli aggression since Wednesday to 85.

Rocket fire on south resumes; 16 killed in Gaza 19 Nov 2012 Following a calm night in south Israel, at least 11 rockets landed in the Eshkol and Sha'ar Hanegev regional councils early Monday. There were no reports of injury or damage. The IDF continued to strike Gaza militancy hubs. At approximately 6:30 am Monday air raid sirens sounded in the Hof Ashkelon, Sha'ar Hanegev and Eshkol regional councils. Rocket barrages followed, exploding in open areas. The authorities are looking into the possibility that one of the projectiles was fired from Sinai. The IDF has bombed some 80 Gaza targets overnight, including rocket launching sites, tunnels and training camps.

Israel Bombs Government and Media Sites in Wider Attack 19 Nov 2012 Israel pressed its assault on the Gaza Strip early Sunday, deploying warplanes and naval vessels to pummel the coastal enclave as Israeli forces widened the onslaught from mostly military targets to media offices and centers of government infrastructure including the four-story headquarters of the Hamas prime minister. The crash of explosions pierced the Gaza City quiet several times throughout the early morning, with one attack injuring several journalists at a communications building, witnesses said. Palestinian news agencies reported that two children were killed in a predawn strike on Sunday in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

Israeli air raid levels police building in Gaza City 19 Nov 2012 An Israeli airstrike has leveled a Hamas police building in Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip as Tel Aviv attacks on the Palestinian coastal enclave continue. The Abbas police headquarters, the second biggest police facility in Gaza City, was razed to the ground in the attack which occurred in the early hours of Monday after 2:00 a.m. (0000 GMT), AFP reported. The shockwaves from the powerful explosion shattered glass in neighboring houses and reportedly injured several people. It also jolted buildings through the Rimal neighborhood of the city.

M-75 missiles fired toward Tel Aviv: Hamas 18 Nov 2012 Palestinian sources say Qassam Brigades, the military wing Hamas, has fired M-75 missiles toward Tel Aviv. The Palestinian resistance fighters continue firing retaliatory missiles toward Israel amid ongoing airstrikes by the Tel Aviv government. Israel's Channel 2 said four locations in Tel Aviv were recently targeted by missiles fired from Gaza.

Gaza hospitals stretched, need supplies to treat wounded: WHO 17 Nov 2012 Gaza hospitals are overwhelmed with casualties from Israel's bombings and face critical shortages of drugs and medical supplies, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday. The U.N. health agency appealed for *10 million from donors to meet the need for drugs and supplies over the next three months. Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes.

3,200 children from southern Israel taken to north for 'day of fun' 18 Nov 2012 The Jewish Agency for Israel is taking 3,200 Israeli children who live within 15 kilometers radius of the Gaza Strip in the south for a "day of fun" in northern Israel.

Anonymous attacks Israeli government websites 19 Nov 2012 Hacker collective Anonymous appear to have joined forces with Palestinian combatants and has attacked several Israeli government sites in what it terms Operation Israel. A press release posted on the Anonymous-affiliated Anonpaste website deplores what the hacking group says is "the barbaric, brutal and despicable treatment of Palestinian people in the so-called Occupied Territories by the Israeli Defence Force". The hackers threaten Israel that it must not shut down the Internet or it "will know the full and unbridled wrath of Anonymous." [Israel should know the 'full and unbridled wrath of Anonymous' -- whether they shut down the Internet or not.]

Hackers launch assault on Israeli government websites 18 Nov 2012 More than 44 million hacking attempts have been made on Israeli government websites since Wednesday when Israel began its Gaza offensive, according to Israeli officials. Finance minister Yuval Steinitz said just one hacking attempt was successful on a site he did not want to name [lol], but added that it was up and running after 10 minutes of downtime. Attempts on defence-related sites were the most numerous, according to his ministry, while 10m attempts were said to have been made on the site of Israel's president, 7m on the foreign ministry and 3m on the site of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

U.S. denies visas to Iran officials for U.N. meeting: report 17 Nov 2012 The United States has denied visas to Iranian officials hoping to attend a U.N. meeting in New York, Iran's state news agency reported on Saturday. The Iranian judiciary's Human Rights Headquarters said in a statement that the United States denied visas to members of an Iranian delegation that planned to travel to a meeting of the United Nations' Third Committee, which focuses on social issues and human rights, state news agency IRNA said. "The U.S. government, by not issuing visas to the members of the delegation, wants to ruin the possibility of the presence of the delegation, and prevent its members from conducting their mission of interacting and cooperating with the United Nations," said the statement, according to IRNA.

U.S. drops case against KBR over Iraq private security costs 15 Nov 2012 The United States has dropped its case against the engineering and military contractor KBR Inc over the costs of KBR's private armed security in Iraq. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, in an order posted on Thursday, granted the Justice Department's petition from Wednesday to have its lawsuit dismissed without prejudice, a move that would leave it free to possibly refile the case at a later date. The Justice Department had launched the lawsuit against the Houston-based company in April 2010 for alleged False Claims Act violations for impermissible security costs in billings to the U.S. Army from 2003 to 2006.

NORAD plans flights in US, Canada to practice identification and intercept procedures 15 Nov 2012 Officials with the Colorado-based North American Aerospace Defence Command are holding exercise flights in the United States and Canada. Flights to practice intercept and identification procedures are scheduled Thursday off the coast of Seattle and British Columbia's Vancouver Island. Flights for the same exercises also scheduled to take place between Anchorage, Alaska, and the Kobuk Valley in Alaska, and between Aberdeen, S.D., and Minneapolis.

Homeland Security office OKs efforts to monitor threats via social media --DHS first began experimenting with possibility of social media monitoring in 2010 with pilot programs that targeted public reactions to the earthquake in Haiti, the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill 15 Nov 2012 A little-known privacy office in the Department of Homeland Security has given its stamp of approval to an ongoing initiative aimed at monitoring social media sites for emerging threats. Congress created the department's privacy office in 2003 to review major initiatives and databases and make certain those initiatives respected the rights of Americans, while also enabling homeland security officials to better collect and share information about possible terrorism and criminal suspects. The privacy office has since conducted compliance reviews every six months, with the most recent assessment published last week.

Man with strange watch arrested at Calif. airport, charged with having bomb-making materials 16 Nov 2012 A Southern California man was arrested at Oakland International Airport after security officers found him wearing an unusual watch they said could be used to make a timing device for a bomb, authorities said Friday. Geoffrey McGann, 49, of Rancho Palos Verdes was taken into custody Thursday night after he tried to pass through airport security with an ornate watch that had switches, wires and fuses, according to Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff's Department. A bomb squad arrived within five minutes and determined there were no explosive materials in the watch, Nelson said. The checkpoint was closed while officers secured the area.

TSA Vendor Denies Faking Test of Body-Imaging Software 15 Nov 2012 OSI Systems Inc.'s Rapiscan unit, one of two suppliers of body-scanning machines in U.S. airports, may have falsified tests of software intended to stop the machines from recording graphic images of travelers, a U.S. lawmaker said. The company "may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test," Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Transportation Security Subcommittee, said in a letter to Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole Nov. 13. Rapiscan, in a statement today, said it couldn't have manipulated testing because those processes were controlled by the government.

Maker of Airport Body Scanners Suspected of Falsifying Software Tests 15 Nov 2012 A company that supplies controversial passenger-screening machines for U.S. airports is under suspicion for possibly manipulating tests on privacy software designed to prevent the machines from producing graphic body images. The Transportation Security Administration sent a letter Nov. 9 to the parent company of Rapiscan, the maker of backscatter machines, requesting information about the testing of the software to determine if there was malfeasance.

Lizards startle U.S. Secret Service 15 Nov 2012 Thai officials reassured the U.S. Secret Service that lizards found on the Government House grounds were not the dangerous komodo dragons, but water lizards. The U.S. team mistook the relatively benign water monitors for the carnivorous komodo dragons as the team conducted security inspections of the Government House Thursday ahead of President Obama's visit that begins Sunday, the Bangkok Post reported. Meanwhile, a U.S. explosives team reported five locations Obama will visit during his two-day visit to Thailand have been scanned.

Heads up! FDA Panel Gives Nod to Bird Flu Vaccine 16 Nov 2012 An FDA advisory panel has voted in favor of a vaccine against with the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu that would be stockpiled and used in case of [the next US-engendered] pandemic. By twin votes of 14-0, the panel agreed that the immunogenicity and the safety of the vaccine, made in Quebec by GlaxoSmithKline, were enough to meet licensing standards under accelerated approval regulations. Those rules, set in 2007, allow rapid approval of a vaccine on the basis of markers that are likely to predict clinical benefit. The Q-Pan H5N1 vaccine, developed under contract with the Department of Health and Human Services, consists of a monovalent, inactivated, split A/H5N1 influenza virus antigen and Glaxo's AS03 adjuvant.

Despicable dolphin attackers at large in Gulf Coast 18 Nov 2012 A full scale hunt is on for those responsible for mutilating and killing dolphins along the northern Gulf Coast. A string of attacks spanning several months have occurred near Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The dolphins have been stabbed, mutilated (one was found with its jaw missing, another with its tail cut off) and even shot with a 9 mm firearm. Killing dolphins is a federal offense and this spate of attacks has prompted an alert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to area environmental and law enforcement agencies. Dolphins in the area are still recovering from the stress and death of the BP oil spill.

Hunt is on for dolphin killers in northern Gulf --Mutilated, shot mammals have washed ashore along Gulf Coast 16 Nov 2012 Somebody is maiming and killing dolphins. On Friday, a team from the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport found a dolphin on Ship Island with its lower jaw missing... IMMS investigated the first dolphin shooting earlier this year and incidents have increased in the past few months. In Alabama, someone stabbed and killed a dolphin with a screwdriver, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration press release. In September, a dolphin was found on Elmer's Island, La., with a bullet in its lung. Others have been mutilated with knife-like lesions.

N*geria Exxon spill spreads for miles along coast 18 Nov 2012 An oil spill at an ExxonMobil facility offshore from the N*ger Delta has spread at least 20 miles from its source, coating waters used by fishermen in a film of sludge. A Reuters reporter visiting several parts of Akwa Ibom state saw a rainbow-tinted oil slick stretching for 20 miles from a pipeline that Exxon had shut down because of a leak a week ago. Exxon said last Sunday it had shut a pipeline off the coast of Akwa Ibom state after an oil leak whose cause was unknown.

John McCain's Benghazi Committee Plan Would Give Senator New Relevance 16 Nov 2012 Just four years ago, John McCain was the leader of the GOP. Today, he's the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, a perch from which the former fighter pilot is deeply engaged in the national conversation over war, terrorism and intelligence gathering. But in January, the Arizona senator will lose his top-ranking committee seat due to term limits. The only ranking Republican spot available to him next session will be on the Indian Affairs Committee. Unless, that is, the Senate creates a brand-new select committee. On Wednesday, McCain, flanked by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), proposed just that: a select committee with extensive authority to investigate the Benghazi, Libya, attack and the U.S. government's response.

Obama begins bipartisan talks on spending cuts 17 Nov 2012 The Obama administration and Democratic and Republican congressional leaders held their first meeting Friday to discuss a package of budget cuts and tax increases to be adopted before the end of the year, in the name of averting the so-called "fiscal cliff"...Held only nine days after a national election that returned Obama to the White House and maintained Democratic control of the Senate and Republican control of the House of Representatives, the meeting was a demonstration of the essential unity of the two capitalist parties when it comes to defending the interests of Wall Street at the expense of the working class.

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