So That Thumbprint Thing on Your Phone Is Useless Now Researchers found a cheap, easy way to copy your fingerprints a few months after millions of Americans had theirs stolen by hackers. Last year, when the Office of Personnel Management notified 22 million people that their personal information was compromised in a massive data breach, one…
Modern Crime: Yakuza vs Yakuza in a Sea of Blood
The schism in the Yamaguchi-gumi is generating one violent incident after another, but authorities believe the worst is yet to come. Beware the Ides of March. TOKYO — Molotov cocktails, beatings, shootings—the tempo of Yakuza on Yakuza violence is picking up in Japan, and there’s every reason to believe it’s just a little taste of…
STRATFOR Founder Warns: “Be Ready for War”
Interstate warfare is a thankfully unusual occurrence in the present day. State-assisted nonstate groups frequently fight governments, a scenario currently unfolding in Syria, Eastern Ukraine, and a host of other places. But you’d have to go back to the US-led invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003, or the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict of the late 1990s for an example…
World War Two Non-Fiction Book Review: The Winter Fortress by Neil Bascomb
As both a student of World War Two and of the SOE and OSS, this book marks one of the high points of the SOE’s plan to “Set Europe Ablaze”. There was no other operation as important as this one in stopping Hiters War Machine from getting The Atomic Bomb in the early years of…
The Bad-Ass Files: The Jew Who Refused to Die
This is the kind of attitude you are going to have to have folks if you want to survive in this crazy, upside down world we are living in…some POS Terrorist stabs you in the neck…you pull the knife out and kill him with it!! My Hats off to you Sir! I Hope you recover…
Three Minutes to Midnight: Closer to Nuclear Conflict Than We Think
While at Stanford last month, we had a long conversation with former Secretary of Defense William Perry about the nuclear dangers facing the world. We were struck by his provocative and frightening outlook: that the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War. North Korea’s recent bluster only…
Espionage Files: ‘Spy-Plane’ Crashes in Iraq
When Talal Abdulqadir woke up on March 5, he probably didn’t expect his farm in northern Iraq would end up crawling with American troops guarding a crashed aircraft. In an instant, the green field outside the town of Kawrgosk put on full display some of the more shadowy elements of Washington’s fight against Islamic State….
Military Weapons From the Past: French MAC-47/1 Sub-Machine Gun
The Pistolet Mitrailleur des Manufactures d’Armes de Châtellerault Modele 47/1 was one of a number of French compact submachine gun designs that various arsenals and private companies developed during the late 1940s. It was a product of the government arsenal Manufactures d’Armes de Châtellerault, an institution best known for its FM M24/29 light machine gun. The Pistolet Mitrailleur…
Cartel Corner #64: Retraction of Previous Cartel Corner #62 Story
It appears the basis for this article was false. I want to apologize and print a full retraction of Cartel Corner #62. -SF The Guardian Duped by Fake El Chapo’s Daughter, Says Drug Lord’s Wife The wife of billionaire Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman claims that the recent interview The Guardian conducted with one…
ISIS Corner: The Islamic State’s Tunisia Strategy
Bottom Line Up Front: • Armed militants are suspected to have crossed into Tunisia from Libya on March 7, carrying out attacks on Tunisian security forces in the border town of Ben Gardane • The assault comes less than a week after five militants crossed the border from Libya and were killed in a shootout with Tunisian…