Who dunnit in Dubai?

For exciting up to date news about things exciting  readers cannot beat Stratfor Global Intelligence reviews.   Go to Stratfor Global Intelligence for the complete  article by Fred Burton and Ben West reporting on the killing of  Hamas principal, al-Mabhouh in Dubai some weeks ago. 

“At approximately 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 19, after al-Mabhouh returned to his hotel room from a meeting, the assassination team moved in. It was important to carry out the killing at a time and in a manner that would give the team the maximum window of opportunity. They suspected that al-Mabhouh was in for the night, which meant that nobody would miss him until early the following afternoon, giving the team ample time to flee the country. The team carried out the assassination smoothly, with video surveillance showing only two operatives casually talking outside the elevator (a cover for monitoring the hall for possible distractions) — in other words, nothing out of the ordinary. The assassination team members also exhibited no unusual behavior when they departed the scene. Demeanor is extremely important, and the ability of the team to act calmly and naturally and not catch the attention of security guards monitoring CCTV ensured that the act remained a secret until hotel cleaning staff found the body more than 17 hours after the entire team had departed Dubai. The assassination team also killed al-Mabhouh in a way that apparently confounded medical examiners trying to determine the cause of death, delaying the announcement of a criminal case for nine days. This delay gave the operational team ample time to cover its tracks, possibly by using third- and fourth-country border crossings, additional false identities and safe-houses, making it much harder for Dubai authorities to track team members to their ultimate destinations. This confusion appears to have been created by the use of a muscle relaxant called succinylcholine (also known as Suxamethonium), which, if used in large enough quantities, can cause the heart to stop, making it appear that the victim died of cardiac arrest. The drug also has a very short half-life, meaning that traces would degenerate and virtually disappear shortly after injection, making it ideal for covert operations such as this one.

 The team was not able to pull off the operation with complete anonymity — it is virtually impossible to operate in a modern environment without leaving some kind of electronic trace. The Dubai police were able to use video surveillance from the airport, hotels and a nearby shopping center to trace back the movements of the operatives and establish their identities according to the passports that they used. These later proved to be fraudulent passports from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and France — but they were extremely well-made fraudulent passports that were discovered later, only after video surveillance prompted closer scrutiny; customs officials were unable to detect this when the operatives were arriving or departing. Moreover, the credit cards used by several members of the operation team were linked to a company called Payoneer. The company’s CEO is a former member of Israel Defense Forces special operations, and Payoneer has financial backing from a company based in Israel.

 Dubai police have announced that they retrieved DNA evidence from at least one of the members on the assassination team and fingerprints from several others, giving authorities pieces of evidence that are unalterable, unlike a passport. However, DNA evidence is only helpful when it can be compared against an exemplar. If Dubai police are unable to find a match to the DNA sample or a fingerprint, then these clues will offer little immediate help.

 The passports also provide little immediate help in terms of tracking down the suspects. The discovery that fraudulent British, Irish, German and French passports were used has created a diplomatic problem for Israel (Mossad is understandably at the top of the list of suspects), which raises the profile of the operation considerably. This is certainly not what a clandestine operation is supposed to do. Although the operatives will probably never be found and handed over to UAE authorities, the fact that so many details of the assassination have been made public jeopardizes the anonymity that is supposed to surround this kind of operation.” 

 Don’t miss the many exciting paragraphs telling this mystery story.  Go to Stratfor Global Intelligence.

Obama Stripping NASA of NASA!

Obama is stripping NASA of NASA!  Another area in which America is becoming second rate under the scalpel of the president.  Another lobotomy is being performed. America the ordinary.

 The following article was sent in by a Prager fan.  It was  written by Walter Cunningham in the “Houston Chronicle”.  Walter Cunningham piloted the first manned Apollo mission in 1968.

“Except in wartime, there has never been another government program that produced as much technological innovation as the U.S. space program, and there likely never will be. No other program has so successfully infused the economy, rallied the nation, inspired youngsters toward academic achievement or established the U.S. as the world leader in technology.

In spite of this, on Feb. 1, President Barack Obama announced the cancellation of the Constellation program of exploration, leaving NASA, for the first time in history, without a specific mission. It is as if President Gerald Ford had canceled the space shuttle program in 1975, just as the last Apollo mission was being flown. The shuttle orbiter development was well under way at the time, but that did not save us from a six-year gap before the next American was launched into space.

Today there is no realistic successor for human spaceflight waiting in the wings.

The biggest consequence of that first gap was the best and brightest of the NASA engineers and scientists leaving to seek more challenging jobs. It took years to rebuild the professional team that would eventually launch 134 shuttle missions and construct the most amazing engineering project in history — the International Space Station.

The space shuttle program not only maintained our preeminence in space, it raised our technical expertise and further increased our prestige among the developed nations of the world — precisely the same reasons the Chinese are now working toward landing a man on the moon.

Congress is our last hope of putting a stop to the dismantling of a once great agency. Members of Congress are concerned about job losses and the economic impact, but in the long run they are not nearly as costly as the loss of an inspirational vision for the next generation of space scientists, engineers and explorers. You have only to look at Lewis and Clark, our westward expansion and Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the moon to know exploration is in our blood. We should be proud of it. Americans need a frontier.

While NASA and some others are trying to put the best positive spin on the budget proposal, the negative fallout is building. Personnel requirements for the agency’s new direction will do little to mitigate the tremendous losses from this foolish cancellation without a replacement in hand. The real loss, as in the 1970s, will be those trained and experienced engineers who are already leaving for more inspiring pursuits.

Spokesmen are trying to rationalize the debilitating cuts in the agency’s programs. They claim the “$6 billion increase over the next five years demonstrates President Obama’s strong commitment to space exploration.” That is just over 1 percent a year, and $2.5 billion of it is committed to the shutdown of Constellation, the same amount proposed for research on how global warming is affecting the Earth.

The $19 billion for 2011 is less than 0.5 percent of the proposed federal budget, one-ninth of what it was at its peak in the 1960s. The $300 million increase eliminates the program of human space exploration and sentences the agency to the same starvation diet it has existed on for the past several decades. NASA needs a $3 billion increase to continue operating a viable human space program

NASA spin is touting “new technology development programs to expand the capabilities of future explorers”— in-orbit fuel depots, rendezvous and docking, closed-loop life support systems, heavy-lift research and development of new engines, propellants, materials and combustion processes. These may sound new to someone unfamiliar with what NASA has been doing for 50 years, but (with one exception) they are pursuits for which NASA already has an unmatched reputation. Each of these would have played an essential role in the now canceled Constellation program. Without the focus of a specific mission, the raison d’être for these technologies is now “to advance the field of space science.”

In the place of the canceled Ares and Orion hardware, we now have increased support for education, increased spending on the discredited global warming hypocrisy and subsidies to several new commercial rocket companies. And, oh yes, don’t forget a new outreach program to Muslim countries without established space programs.

In canceling Constellation with nothing to take its place, the president is saying the U.S. should not have its own human space program and is directing funds to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS. If NASA wants to participate in human spaceflight, it will have to be through contractors.”