Volgograd explosion

[Magda Hassan]

Explosion at Volgograd station. Should be coming through the news soon but I'm off to sleep.

[Magda Hassan]

Another explosion this time a bus in the same city. Don't think they are supporting gay rights.

(CNN) -- Another deadly blast has struck the southern Russian city of Volgograd, killing at least 10 people and further highlighting Russia's security challenges as it readies to host the Winter Olympics in less than six weeks.
An explosion hit a trolleybus during the morning rush hour Monday, taking place the day after a blast at Volgograd's main train station killed 17 people and wounded at least 35 others.
Like Sunday's attack, the blast Monday was a terrorist act, Vladmir Markin, a spokesman for the country's federal investigation agency, told the state-run news agency RIA Novosti.
No one claimed responsibility for the explosions. But they come several months after the leader of a Chechen separatist group pledged violence to disrupt the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
The approaching Olympics
More deadly bombings in Russia

Report: Female bomber behind blast
Video footage from the scene Monday showed the twisted shell of the blue trolleybus, with debris spread around it. The impact of the blast blew out the roof of the bus, as well as windows of several nearby houses.
Based on the footage, the blast appeared to have occurred in the back half of the bus. It was most likely caused by an explosive left inside the vehicle, Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee told RIA Novosti.
The deadly explosions come ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which is situated less than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) southwest of Volgograd. The Games will take place between February 7 and 24.
Once called Stalingrad, Volgograd is a major rail hub in the region, and each day thousands of passengers pass through the station, many on their way to Moscow.
In October, a bomber blew up a passenger bus in Volgograd, killing six people and wounding more than 30 others. Russian media reported that a female Islamist suicide bomber from the Russian region of Dagestan was responsible for that attack.
Russia's security challenge
Russian President Vladimir Putin has maintained that the Sochi games will be safe and security will be tight.
Visitors to Sochi and the surrounding area are subjected to rigorous security checks, and vehicle license plates are monitored.
But the deadly blasts in Volgograd highlight the challenge Russian authorities face in policing the rest of the country amid ongoing unrest in the North Caucasus. That region includes Chechnya, where Russia fought two wars against separatist movements, and Dagestan.
Volgograd is a hub for people traveling to Sochi from Moscow and other parts of central Russia. It also has key transportation links with the North Caucasus.
Umarov's threat
In July, Doku Umarov, the leader of the Chechen group Caucasus Emirate, released a video statement in which he vowed to unleash "maximum force" to disrupt the games at Sochi.
The U.S. State Department considers the Caucasus Emirate a foreign terrorist group and has authorized a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the location of Umarov.
The State Department said Umarov organized a suicide bombing outside the Chechen Interior Ministry in May 2009.
His group also claimed responsibility for last year's bombing of Domodedovo Airport in Moscow that killed 36 people, the 2010 bombings of the Moscow subway that killed 40 and the 2009 bombing of the high-speed Nevsky Express train in which 28 people died.

[Danny Jarman]

Right before the Sochi olympics.

Bandar Bush and Obama & terror co sending a message to Putin - payback for supporting Assad?

Many people (Sibel, Pepe) saw something like this coming

[Peter Lemkin]

There could be internal and external agents involved in this...but the net effect WILL be to damage the Olympic games....certainly the reason for the location and timing. Some country's teams have already started to voice nervousness about their safety......... Putin will kill many or blow up something soon - to look tough...even if who/what he kills/blows up isn't related to the two events, thus far. There are likely to be more such events. These will be troop-lined Olympic Games!

[Magda Hassan]

It's long been time to finish with the corporate Olympic games but not this way. Bring on the Hunger Games.

[Magda Hassan]

Some country's teams have already started to voice nervousness about their safety.........

Our foreign minister is talking about not allowing the Australian team to go. I expect there are others not wishing to go as well. Interior troops are being sent to the area by Putin. Wonder what the next move will be?

[Magda Hassan]

The Russian-Saudi Showdown at Sochi

December 31, 2013

Exclusive: Last summer, Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar reportedly offered Russian President Putin a deal: if Russia abandons Syria, Saudi Arabia would protect the Sochi Olympics from Islamic terrorists. Putin is said to have angrily rebuffed the offer. Now, with two terrorist attacks, it's Putin's move, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Monday's terrorist bombings only 400 miles away from the site of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, have a geopolitical back story involving implied threats from Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan to Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer when Bandar was pressing Putin to withdraw his backing for the Syrian government.
According to a diplomatic leak detailing the Bandar-Putin meeting in Moscow on July 31, Bandar suggested that Putin's agreement to abandon the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad would lead Saudi Arabia to restrain its Chechen terrorist clients who have been attacking Russia targets for years. Putin reportedly grew furious, interpreting Bandar's offer as a warning that the Sochi games would be threatened by terrorism if Putin didn't comply.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief, meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At the time, I was even told that Putin warned Saudi Arabia of potentially severe consequences suggesting military retaliation if Bandar's implied warning was followed up by actual terrorist attacks like the ones in Volvograd on Monday, killing more than 30 people.
Of course, it is always hard to trace specific terrorist acts back to their origins and many terrorist cells operate with much autonomy. But Putin has staked much of his prestige on a successful Olympics in Sochi, and he also would risk losing face if it were perceived that Bandar had executed a terrorist plan to disrupt the Winter Olympics and that Putin was powerless to stop it.
According to the leaked diplomatic account of last summer's meeting, Bandar sought Russia's cooperation on several Mideast concerns, including Syria, and told Putin, "I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us."
Putin reportedly responded, "We know that you have supported the Chechen terrorist groups for a decade. And that support, which you have frankly talked about just now, is completely incompatible with the common objectives of fighting global terrorism that you mentioned. We are interested in developing friendly relations according to clear and strong principles."
Besides safety for the Sochi Olympics, Bandar raised the potential of Saudi cooperation with Russia on oil and other investment matters, saying, "Let us examine how to put together a unified Russian-Saudi strategy on the subject of oil. The aim is to agree on the price of oil and production quantities that keep the price stable in global oil markets," according to the diplomatic account.
I was told by a source close to the Russian government that this mix of overt inducements and implied threats infuriated Putin who barely kept his anger in check through the end of the meeting with Bandar. Putin viewed Bandar's offer to protect the Sochi Olympics as something akin to a Mafia don shaking down a shopkeeper for protection money by saying, "nice little business you got here, I'd hate to see anything happen to it."
Putin then redoubled his support for the Syrian government in response to Bandar's blend of bribes and warnings. The source said Russia also issued its own thinly veiled threats against the Saudis. The Saudis may have substantial "soft power" with their oil and money but Russia has its own formidable "hard power," including a huge military, the source said.
Bandar and Terrorism
Over the years, Bandar has often treated the issue of "terrorism" as a situational ethic, an ambivalence well-honed since the days when Saudi Arabia and the Reagan administration teamed up to pour billions of dollars into the Afghan mujahedeen and their Arab jihadist allies fighting Soviet troops in the 1980s.
The anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan brought to prominence Saudi national Osama bin Laden and the terrorists who later consolidated themselves under the global brand, al-Qaeda. In the 1980s, these roving jihadists were hailed as brave defenders of Islam and even "freedom fighters," but in the 1990s they began targeting the United States with terrorist attacks, leading up to 9/11 in 2001.
At the time of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, Bandar was the Saudi ambassador to the United States and was so close to the Bush family that he was nicknamed "Bandar Bush." Bandar was also very close to the bin Laden family. After the attacks, Bandar even acknowledged having met Osama bin Laden in the context of bin Laden thanking Bandar for his help financing the Afghan jihad project.
"I was not impressed, to be honest with you," Bandar told CNN's Larry King about bin Laden. "I thought he was simple and very quiet guy."
However, immediately after 9/11, Bandar undermined the FBI's opportunity to learn more about the connections between Osama bin Laden's relatives and the perpetrators of 9/11 when Bandar arranged for members of the bin Laden family to flee the United States on some of the first planes allowed back into the air after only cursory interviews with FBI investigators. The only segment of the 9/11 Commission's report to be blacked out was the part dealing with alleged Saudi financing for al-Qaeda.
Now, as chief of Saudi intelligence, Bandar appears to be back in the game of coercive geopolitics, arranging weapons for some of the most brutal Syrian rebels and Arab mercenaries operating inside Syria, while offering carrots-and-sticks to foreign leaders who are seen are malleable toward Saudi regional interests. The technique may have failed with Putin but had greater success in lining up the French behind Saudi opposition to a negotiated agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.
As a repressive monarchy that preaches the ultra-conservative Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam, Saudi Arabia is bitterly opposed to the democratic reforms of the Arab Spring and the growing influence of Shiite Islam, which now stretches from Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Hezbollah enclaves of Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia backed the military coup in Egypt that ousted the elected Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi. The Saudis also have stepped up assistance to Sunni-dominated rebels in Syria seeking to overthrow the Assad dynasty that is based in the Alawite religion, a branch of Shiite Islam.
The commonality of interests between Saudi Arabia and Israel has given rise to a de facto alliance between the Saudi monarchy and the Jewish government of Israel. Though historically enemies, Israel and Saudi Arabia are now on the same page in backing Egypt's military regime, in viewing Iran as their principal adversary, and in wanting a rebel victory in Syria.
The shifting sands of Middle East interests also have pushed the United States and Russia closer together, with the former Cold War rivals sharing an interest in tamping down disorder across the region. President Putin and President Barack Obama cooperated in reaching a tentative nuclear deal with Iran and in convincing Syria's Assad to surrender his chemical weapons. Putin and Obama are pressing for Syrian peace talks, too.
Now, however, a new complication has been introduced: Islamist terrorist attacks aimed at undermining the Sochi Olympics. If Putin concludes that the Saudis are behind these bombings that the attacks are the equivalent of a Mafia don having a store torched after the owner rebuffed an offer of "protection" then the issue of Russian retaliation could suddenly be on the table.
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/31/the...-at-sochi/

[David Guyatt]

Slowly, but surely, the whole official edifice of 911 is fragmenting into pieces. Good.

It strikes me as being a preposterous proposition that Bandar and Saudi can threaten Putin, or other major states for that matter, on their own behalf. They must, surely, be acting as a beard for the US, safe in the knowledge that they are protected by same.

This seems to me to be true for their deep involvement in 911 as well as their war against Syria and Iran.

If I were Saudi, I'd now be biting my nails, wondering how Putin will respond, because I feel certain he will do so in the not too distant future. And his wrath will be harsh.

[Peter Lemkin]

Slowly, but surely, the whole official edifice of 911 is fragmenting into pieces. Good.

It strikes me as being a preposterous proposition that Bandar and Saudi can threaten Putin, or other major states for that matter, on their own behalf. They must, surely, be acting as a beard for the US, safe in the knowledge that they are protected by same.

This seems to me to be true for their deep involvement in 911 as well as their war against Syria and Iran.

If I were Saudi, I'd now be biting my nails, wondering how Putin will respond, because I feel certain he will do so in the not too distant future. And his wrath will be harsh.

While the real source of the threat may be coming from elsewhere, I think he may just as likely hit Chechnya or some such local scapegoat to look tough......the international brand of 'chess' is played by taking pieces off the board, adding new pieces, throwing acid in your opponents faces, as well as other dirty tricks - even punching out the audience or those totally uninvolved.