Gaddafi Dead?

(Reuters) - Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi died of wounds suffered on Thursday as fighters battling to complete an eight-month-old uprising against his rule overran his hometown Sirte, Libya's interim rulers said.

His killing, which came swiftly after his capture near Sirte, is the most dramatic single development in the Arab Spring revolts that have unseated rulers in Egypt and Tunisia and threatened the grip on power of the leaders of Syria and Yemen.

"He (Gaddafi) was also hit in his head," National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters. "There was a lot of firing against his group and he died."

Mlegta told Reuters earlier that Gaddafi, who was in his late 60s, was captured and wounded in both legs at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked. He said he had been taken away by an ambulance.

There was no independent confirmation of his remarks.

An anti-Gaddafi fighter said Gaddafi had been found hiding in a hole in the ground and had said "Don't shoot, don't shoot" to the men who grabbed him.

His capture followed within minutes of the fall of Sirte, a development that extinguished the last significant resistance by forces loyal to the deposed leader.

The capture of Sirte and the death of Gaddafi means Libya's ruling NTC should now begin the task of forging a new democratic system which it had said it would get under way after the city, built as a showpiece for Gaddafi's rule, had fallen.

Gaddafi, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of ordering the killing of civilians, was toppled by rebel forces on August 23 after 42 years of one-man rule over the oil-producing North African state.

NTC fighters hoisted the red, black and green national flag above a large utilities building in the center of a newly-captured Sirte neighborhood and celebratory gunfire broke out among their ecstatic and relieved comrades.

Hundreds of NTC troops had surrounded the Mediterranean coastal town for weeks in a chaotic struggle that killed and wounded scores of the besieging forces and an unknown number of defenders.

NTC fighters said there were a large number of corpses inside the last redoubts of the Gaddafi troops. It was not immediately possible to verify that information.

(Writing by Jon Hemming and William Maclean; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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NY judge: Al-Qaida owes $9.3 billion for 9/11 harm

Federal Magistrate Judge Frank Maas in a ruling Friday sent the recommendation to a district judge presiding over a lawsuit brought by several insurance companies.

The companies in 2003 sued various defendants, seeking damages for the 2001 terror attacks, which demolished the World Trade Center's twin towers. Al-Qaida never responded to the lawsuit and was found in default in 2006. Maas determined the actual damages and then tripled them as allowed by law.

At this time, the companies were only seeking an assessment of damages against al-Qaida. The organization founded by Osama bin Laden is blamed for orchestrating the terror attacks.

Iran Plans Attack on US Soil

The United States said Tuesday it had disrupted an Iranian-backed plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, D.C. the Justice Department said Tuesday.
The stunning accusations came in a Justice Department criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday afternoon at a press conference featuring Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller and a team of Justice Department prosecutors. The key suspect charged in the plot, a naturalized Iranian-American citizen identified as Manssor Arbabsiar, was arrested late last month at JFK Airport; a second accused conspirator named in the complaint, an alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force official identified as Gohlam Shakuri, remains at large and is believed to be in Iran. The five-count criminal complaint also refers to other unnamed conspirators in the plot and suggested they also were members of the Qods force in Iran.
In a related action, the Treasury Department on Tuesday designated Arbabsiar and four alleged Iranian Qods force members, including Shakuri, Qasem Soleimani, Hamed Abdollahi, and Arbabsiar's cousin Abdul Reza Shahlai, as being connected to the alleged assassination plot.
The alleged assassination plot targeting Saudi envoy Adel Al-Jubeir--unraveled by federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI--was "conceived, sponsored and was directed from Iran" Holder said in a statement Tuesday. "The U.S. is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions."
President Obama "was first briefed on this issue in June and directed his Administration to provide all necessary support to the investigation," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told journalists by email Tuesday. "The disruption of his plot is a significant achievement by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the President is enormously grateful for their exceptional work."
Federal officials said the disrupt plot sought to assassinate Saudi envoy to the U.S. Adel Al-Jubeir -- possibly by being one of his favorite Washington restaurants. It also discussed "subsequent bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C.," ABC News reported on the complaint.
The case, called Operation Red Coalition, "began in May when an Iranian-American from Corpus Christi, Texas,"--Arbabsiar--"approached a DEA informant seeking the help of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador," the ABC News report on the unsealed complaint said.
But the man Arbabsiar approached who he thought to be a member of a brutal Mexican drug cartel turned out to be a confidential source for the Drug Enforcement Agency.
From May through September, Arbabsiar traveled to Mexico twice to meet with the DEA source to arrange the assassination. Arbabsiar is also accused in the complaint of having transferred $100,000 to the recruited-assassin's bank account--the down-payment on what he said would be $1.5 million paid in total after the assassination. They money was transferred from Arbabsiar's Qods-force contacts in Iran, the complaint alleges.
After he was arrested on September 29th at JFK Airport flying back from an attempted meeting with the hit man in Mexico, Arbabsiar allegedly told federal authorities that he had been recruited to organize the assassination by members of Iran's Qods Force, including his cousin, last spring. He also said that Qods force members had financed the plot.
"According to the complaint, Arbabsiar also admitted to agents that, in connection with this plot, he was recruited, funded, and directed by men he understood to be senior officials in Iran's Qods Force," the FBI press release said.
"Arbabsiar allegedly told agents that his cousin,"--identified by the Treasury Department as Abdul Reza Shahlai''""s a senior IRGC-[Qods Force] official and deputy to [Shakuri], who he had long understood to be a senior member of the Qods Force, had approached him in the early spring of 2011 about recruiting narco-traffickers to kidnap the Ambassador," the FBI document states.
"Arbabsiar told agents that he then met with the [confidential source] CS-1 in Mexico and discussed assassinating the Ambassador," the FBI document said. "According to the complaint, Arbabsiar said that, afterwards, he met several times in Iran with Shakuri and another senior Qods Force official, where he explained that the plan was to blow up a restaurant in the United States frequented by the Ambassador and that numerous bystanders could be killed, according to the complaint. The plan was allegedly approved by these officials"
The United States has previously accused the Qods Force of sponsoring militant attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iran on Tuesday denied the American accusations.
Middle East experts noted that alleged plot emerges in the context of heightened tensions and competition for regional influence between predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and predominantly Shiite Iran in the midst of the tumultuous Arab awakening uprisings.
"This alleged terror plot takes place at a time when tensions in the Middle East have reached a boiling point," Trita Parsi, with the National Iranian American Council said in a statement Tuesday. "If today's allegations are true, this means that regional rivalries may have spilled over onto U.S. shores."
The Saudi King sent a private letter to President Obama in September hand-delivered by Saudi ambassador al-Jubeir, who has been frequently absent from Washington much of that month. U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon traveled to meet with the Saudi King in Riyadh earlier this month.

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We Will Never Forget

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is upon us. Is it more significant than the 9 that preceded? No, it is however, a decade, a standard of measure that represents a significant period of time in our history, not only the United States’ but every nation’s. The world has changed drastically over the past decade. Democratic nations have become aware of many of those who intend to harm them. We have all answered the call. United States soldiers have eliminated, amongst many others, the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks, OBL (we refrain from using his name as he does not deserve such recognition).

We cannot do enough to remember the 2,977 innocent people who died that day. Some were undoubtedly sitting at their desks or standing around the water cooler as usual. Some were flying to visit friends or flying to a distant business meeting. Some were rushing into the battered buildings to save others. The bravery of all these people cannot be matched, they were thrust into horrifying situations which cost their lives and we can never repay them for bearing that burden. These people will never be forgotten, they and their loved ones will remain in our prayers as the years continue to pass.

The tragic events thrust our great nation and its allies into a war, one which began long before the majority of Americans realized. This war resulted in the loss of 1,644 American soldiers and nearly 1,000 from our allies(the numbers will continue to rise). The men and women who died fighting against Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces did so as volunteers. They are volunteers willing to risk their lives not only to avenge the cowardly attacks on September 11th, but to prevent such attacks from happening again. We are forever in their debt as they have fought and died to keep our country safe.

We also pray for the thousands wounded in the attacks and in the consequent War on Terror. Some have been injured so badly they will never fully recover. Their strength and bravery to continue the fight is truly admired by us all.

As always, we remember our Special Forces brothers who gave all.
God Bless

-De Oppresso Liber

New York Gun Control

U.S. Court Rejects Challenge to State's Concealed Gun Law

New Yorkers do not have a constitutional right to carry a concealed handgun in public, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

In a case brought by four New Yorkers challenging the denial of "concealed carry" gun permits by four state judges, Southern District Judge Cathy Seibel said she found persuasive the reasoning of the Illinois' Court of Appeals in People v. Marin, 795 N.E.2d 958 (2003), that the overriding purpose of gun statutes should be to prevent innocent people from being victimized by gun violence.

As such, Judge Seibel ruled, that granting licenses to carry concealed firearms is a matter of discretion to be decided by state authorities and is not a right.

The plaintiffs contended that the defendants—Westchester County Judges Susan Cacace and Jeffrey A. Cohen, Westchester Acting Supreme Court Justice Robert K. Holdman and Bronx Supreme Court Justice Albert Lorenzo—arbitrarily denied them licenses to carry concealed handguns even though they did not fall under the categories proscribed by §400.00(2)(f) of New York Penal Law, such as felony offenders, people with a history of mental illnesses and minors.

The judges, who were represented by the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, argued that the "proper cause" provision of the state law served as a valid basis of the denial of gun permits and did not violate the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms.

Quoting Marin, Judge Seibel said, "The underlying activity of possessing or transporting an accessible and loaded weapon is itself dangerous and undesirable, regardless of the intent of the bearer since it may lead to the endangerment of public safety." Marin also held that transporting a loaded weapon on a public street "creates a volatile situation vulnerable to spontaneous lethal aggression in the event of road rage or any other disagreement or dispute."

"For all these reasons, I hold that the state has an important government interest in promoting public safety and preventing crime," Judge Seibel said in Kachalsky. v. Cacace, 10-cv-05413.

The judge found §400.00(2)(f), which provides for the carrying of a concealed handgun, requires that applicants show an "actual and articulable" need to possess their weapons "rather than merely speculative, potential, or even specious" grounds for self-defense.

"As crafted, the statute seeks to limit the use of handguns to self-defensive purposes…rather than for some other use that has not been recognized as falling within the protections of the Second Amendment," Judge Seibel wrote. "This purpose is furthered by the statute's directive that full-carry permits 'shall be' issued where there exists proper cause, rather than directing merely that permits 'may' be issued in such instances."

In the main, the concealed handgun permit statute appears to apply to those who legitimately need protection from harm, such as shopkeepers and merchants, bankers and even judges, "who may be the targets of criminal defendants or disgruntled litigants," the judge said. But the Legislature has left it up to those who grant licenses to carry concealed handguns to decide on a case-by-case basis, a process that sometimes entails the denial of permits for various reasons, Judge Seibel noted.

"Section 400.00(2)(f) may not be perfect, but it need not be to pass constitutional muster," she wrote. "Section 400.00(2)(f)'s limitations promote the government's strong interest in public safety and crime prevention, and are substantially related to it."

Judge Seibel's ruling "is a victory for New York state law, the United States Constitution, and families across New York who are rightfully concerned about the scourge of gun violence that all too often plagues our communities," Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement yesterday.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg similarly praised Judge Seibel for her ruling.

"Common-sense restrictions like the one the court upheld today do nothing to infringe on the rights of law-abiding Americans, but are essential to fighting gun crime on our streets," he said in a statement.

Mr. Bloomberg said the law is essential to both protect police officers and New Yorkers, "which can be done while respecting the Second Amendment."

Assistant Attorney General Monica Anne Connell represented the four judges.

Vincent Gelardi of Gelardi & Randazzo of Rye Brook was among the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, which included the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun-owners' rights group based in Alexandria, Va.

This article was written by Joel Stashenko for the New York Law Journal. Visit them here.

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Surviving Hurricane Irene

Another disaster struck Long Island, Hurricane Irene destroyed thousands of homes and vehicles. Again, Geico jumped into action to help their customers as quickly as possible. Geico is fully equiped to handle claims adjustments as fast as victims of the storm can bring them in.

Helping Geico in their effort to offer superior customer service yet again, Dominion Group is on site for the duration of the claims. The stakes are higher this time as customers have suffered substantial loses and losing their ability to drive is just icing on the cake at this point. Dominion Security Operatives are posted throughout the Geico claims event to ensure a safe environment for customers and employees.

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Dominion Security Offers Assistance to Verizon Communications

Dominion Security Guards are known for their diligence and attention to detail but the following shows their desire to go the extra mile to the benefit of their clients and their clients’ affiliates.
While protecting a client’s structure, one of Dominion’s rising stars on the security front observed something that just didn’t seem right to him. A vehicle pulled into the parking lot and parked next to another vehicle but was facing the wrong direction. A man in a red Verizon t-shirt was observed shuffling from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat inside his parked vehicle. Armed with the knowledge of the Verizon Strike and the possibility of sabotage, this particular Guard took notice. The guard approached the oddly parked vehicle but as he did the man decided to drive off. Luckily Dominion Security Guards are trained to not only observe and react but also to retain detailed information.
As it turned out, this Verizon employee, while taking part in the Strike against the company, followed one of Verizon’s executives and vandalized his vehicle, which was parked near the site Dominion was protecting. Due solely to Dominion’s ability to identify the threat and relay the make, model, and license plate number to the police, this man will be arrested.
To learn more about using Dominion Group to protect your assets before they too can be destroyed, contact Dominion for a free quote at 516-554-9823 or visit on the web http://dominionsecure.com.