Israel Kills Hamas’s Chief Military Leader (+video)

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Israel has announced that an early morning strike targeted and killed Hamas’s senior military leader, Ahmed Jabari. Palestinian officials claim six people in total have been killed by the Israeli airstrikes.

The Israeli airstrikes were a response to rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip, which was targeting Israeli civilians. Hamas security officials claim two Hamas training facilities were among the targets of the Israeli airstrikes.

Rather than the single-action responses from the Israeli military prior to the 2012 US presidential elections, this morning’s actions indicate a new attitude on the part of Israeli leaders. Read more from this story HERE.

Filmmaker Declines to Sell Footage of ‘Firenado’ to Al Gore Because ‘Science Isn’t Settled’ (+video)

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(The Blaze) Filmmaker Chris Tangey was surprised when he was contacted by Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project as the organization hoped to use his footage of a fire tornado — or “firenado” — shot in the Australian Outback in September. Tangey explained to NT News that they would need to convince him such an event was caused by man-made global warming before selling them the rights to it.

TheBlaze brought you both the story of Tangey’s “firenado” footage and also his refusal to grant rights to the Climate Reality Project. Now we’ve talked with Tangey directly about his thoughts on the use of nature footage and the context of man-made global warming, as well as why he rebuffed Gore.

Tangey, owner of Alice Springs Film and Television, in an email interview with TheBlaze explained that the first time he was contacted by Gore’s team, they were seeking rights to the footage for five years to be used in PowerPoint presentations. The second time the Climate Reality Project crew reached out, which was last week, it was for a 24-hour webcast taking place this Nov. 14 through 15.

After this initial request, Tangey said he researched climate change for himself.

“I came to the conclusion there is climate change,” he wrote. “But I am yet to see definitive evidence on its severity; how much of it is human induced; how long it has been going for and how long it is likely to go for; how much is due to the solar cycle; how much is due to the all sorts of variables in oceans which cover 71 percent of the planet’s surface and for which there is no all-encompassing historical data, nor can there be, or how capable the planet is of self-correction (which seems to be the big surprise among scientists, although they seem to be constantly ‘surprised,’ yet can be so definitive on climate change…).”

See video below. Full footage begins at 3:15:

Read more from this story HERE.

Israel Under Siege

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Islamic militants fired more than 110 rockets and mortars into Israeli territory over the past four days in attacks that injured eight Israelis, according to a report issued by the Israeli Defense Forces Strategic Division.

The unprovoked attacks have been dispersed throughout the Jewish state’s southern territory and have forced more than a million civilians into bomb shelters. One soldier has been critically injured in the barrage.

The Israel Project says that 898 rockets have fallen on Israel thus far in 2012—over 200 more than hit Israel in the entirety of 2011.

The Obama administration has yet to issue a statement about the attacks. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro recently expressed sympathy via Twitter to those affected by the near-constant assault.

The most recent barrage comes on the heels of a three-month calm between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Read more from this story HERE.

Iran Launches Massive War Simulation

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Iran launched massive military “wargames” on Monday, involving thousands of troops, aircraft and surveillance equipment aimed at testing the country’s ability to repel an air attack against “hypothetical sensitive sites,” according to its state news agency.

The maneuvers seem to have been planned before Iranian jets reportedly fired on an unmanned U.S. drone earlier in November, and come on the heels of Austere Challenge 2012 in Israel, the largest ever missile defense exercise organized by Israel and the U.S. that began in October.

The Iranians call their surface-to-air system “Mersad,” or Ambush, says Gen. Farzad Esmaili, chief of the country’s air defense headquarters, according to Iranian state TV. It is modeled after the U.S. Hawk system, and reportedly can lock on to a flying object 50 miles away and hit it from 30 miles away.

“The Iranians are demonstrating to themselves and the world that their air defenses are at the highest state of readiness,” says Omar Lamrani, a military analyst with Stratfor.

“There’s a psychological propaganda aspect to that, but there’s also a real aspect to that,” he says. “These exercises also serve the crucial role of training their pilots and training their air defense forces.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Israel Fires First Shot at Syrian Military Since 1973 Yom Kippur War

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IDF ground forces fired a warning shot at the Syrian military on Sunday for the first time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

They shot the guided missile after a stray Syrian shell from civil strife in that country exploded on the Golan Heights for the second time in recent days.

The shell hit as Israel suffered a barrage of missiles from Gaza, putting the IDF in the position of monitoring enemy fire along both the northern and southern borders.

“In the midst of Syrian infighting, a mortar shell fired by the Syrian Army struck near an [IDF] outpost at Tel Azeka,” IDF spokesman Brig.- Gen. Yoav Mordechai said.

The shell failed to cause injuries or damage. It was one of a series that hit Israeli territory.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s America? Ripped Apart by Financial Crisis, Greek Society in Free-fall

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photo credit: endiaferonATHENS, Greece – A sign taped to a wall in an Athens hospital appealed for civility from patients. “The doctors on duty have been unpaid since May,” it read, “Please respect their work.”

Patients and their relatives glanced up briefly and moved on, hardened to such messages of gloom. In a country where about 1,000 people lose their jobs each day, legions more are still employed but haven’t seen a paycheck in months. What used to be an anomaly has become commonplace, and those who have jobs that pay on time consider themselves the exception to the rule.

To the casual observer, all might appear well in Athens. Traffic still hums by, restaurants and bars are open, people sip iced coffees at sunny sidewalk cafes. But scratch the surface and you find a society in free-fall, ripped apart by the most vicious financial crisis the country has seen in half a century.

It has been three years since Greece’s government informed its fellow members in the 17-country group that uses the euro that its deficit was far higher than originally reported. It was the fuse that sparked financial turmoil still weighing heavily on eurozone countries. Countless rounds of negotiations ensued as European countries and the International Monetary Fund struggled to determine how best to put a lid on the crisis and stop it spreading.

The result: Greece had to introduce stringent austerity measures in return for two international rescue loan packages worth a total of €240 billion ($313 billion), slashing salaries and pensions and hiking taxes.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Wins, U.S. Now Backing New U.N. Arms Treaty Talk

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“caveman chuck” cokerUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee’s call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade.

U.N. delegates and gun control activists have complained that talks collapsed in July largely because Obama feared attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, a charge Washington denies.

The month-long talks at U.N. headquarters broke off after the United States – along with Russia and other major arms producers – said it had problems with the draft treaty and asked for more time.

But the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee moved quickly after Obama’s win to approve a resolution calling for a new round of talks March 18-28. It passed with 157 votes in favor, none against and 18 abstentions.

The main reason the arms trade talks are taking place is that the United States – the world’s biggest arms trader accounting for more than 40 percent of global conventional arms transfers – reversed U.S. policy on the issue after Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support a treaty.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cyberattacks: Major Iranian Threat

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon has been the subject of much debate this election season, but the presidential candidates rarely discuss the most imminent danger Iran poses to the United States: cyberwarfare.

Iran is believed to be behind a slew of massive attacks in September that took down a string of U.S. banks’ websites. The country is also thought to have launched a devastating cyber time bomb on Saudi Oil company Aramco in August and to have coordinated a similar attack on Qatar’s RasGas, an Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500) subsidiary.

The bank attacks were 10 to 20 times bigger than a typical denial of service attack, and doubled the previous record for traffic maliciously directed at a particular site, according to CrowdStrike, a security firm that investigated the attacks. The Aramco attack, set to go off on an Islamic holy night, unleashed a virus that destroyed about 30,000 corporate computers — three-quarters of the company’s PCs.

It’s a show of muscle the United States and its allies are unaccustomed to seeing from Iran. Cyberespionage and online identity theft are common tactics of Russian mafiosos and Chinese hackers, but Iran is relatively new to this playing field. After a series of painful economic sanctions levied on the country by the United States and Europe, cybersecurity experts say they’re not surprised that Iran is fighting back.

“Iran is trying to demonstrate that it has a capability to disrupt life in the West,” said Roger Cressey, senior vice president at security consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton. “Its argument is: ‘Whatever you in the West may do to us, know that it will not be a pain-free operation.'”

Read more from this story HERE.

Al Qaeda Leader Zawahiri: Benghazi Attack Signifies American Weakness

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Following quickly on the heels of the U.S. presidential election, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri proclaimed that the terror attack against the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghaz indicates that American “awe is lost” in the region. In an audio message addressed to the Somali jihadist group, al-Shabaab, Zawahiri said American influence in the region is floundering due to weakness.

“They were defeated in Iraq and they are withdrawing from Afghanistan and their ambassador in Benghazi was killed and the flags of their embassies were lowered in Cairo and Sanaa (Yemen),” a translation the militant’s message reads in the Long War Journal.

“Their awe is lost and their might is gone and they don’t dare to carry out a new campaign like their past ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Al Qaeda is, of course, along with other militant groups, are still sweeping the Maghreb — in particular, Libya. On Tuesday turmoil reached a fever pitch in Benghazi after a car bomb exploded near a police station late in the day, a police officer told AFP. He added that two of his colleagues were injured in a subsequent gunfight with the primary suspect. The vehicle reportedly belonged to a law enforcement officer and it was believed to have been ignited by a hand grenade or fishing explosives.

Read more from this story HERE.

Kremlin Cheers Obama Election

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photo credit: OneManDifferenceMOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a congratulatory note to President Obama after his re-election Tuesday, his spokesman said. The Kremlin says it will make the text public after the Americans have received it.

Putin is also expected to call Obama personally “in the near future.”

“In general, the Kremlin took the news about Barack Obama’s victory in the elections very positively,” spokesman Dmitri Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency.

“We have the hope that positive initiatives in bilateral relations and in Russian-U.S. interaction on the international arena in the interests of international security and stability will be developed and improved,” he added.

It is perhaps not surprising that the Kremlin is pleased with the outcome of the election, especially since President Obama told then-President Dmitri Medvedev earlier this year that he would have more flexibility after the election to negotiate NATO plans to place components of a missile-defense shield in Eastern Europe.

Read more from this story HERE.