George Miller

🇵🇱 Who is the Krakow gunman? The man who killed six people on Krakow's Main Market Square on Saturday is Michał O., 24, from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski in southern Poland. Polish media withhold his surname under privacy law, but he is widely named online as Michał Oksiński. Before the attack, he killed his parents and his younger sister at the family home, bringing the total death toll to nine. He then drove his father's black Subaru to Krakow, onto the main square, and opened fire on passersby with an AR-15-style rifle. Fifteen people were wounded, including two police officers. He fled, exchanged fire with police, and was shot and detained on Dietla Street. He survived thanks to body armor and remains in critical condition. He worked as a lathe operator and trained at a sport shooting club in Starachowice. He held a permit for two guns, while his father legally owned 11. Neither had a criminal record. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said one theory is that he used his father's weapons, and police found many more guns and ammunition in the car. Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz denied he ever served in the Polish army. Far-right? Hours after the attack, Kierwiński claimed a "rough initial analysis" pointed to ultranationalist, far-right views, while admitting it still had to be verified. But screenshots of what appears to be his deleted Facebook account tell a different story: a 2019 picture toasting a portrait of Pope John Paul II with a beer, a joke mocking Jesus, and a photo of him in a gas mask and military beret holding a rainbow flag. Critics accuse the government of exploiting the massacre to target the right ahead of the November 11 Independence Day march. Krakow's mayor Łukasz Gibała called him simply a madman. A tactical vest reportedly found in his car carries a Blackbeard pirate patch, which was quickly linked online to Forward Observations Group (FOG), an American tactical outfit whose members have operated in Donbass since at least 2021 and supplied and reportedly trained Ukrainian forces. FOG uses its own variant of the Blackbeard flag as its logo. But the patch on his vest is the classic Blackbeard design, a common morale patch sold widely online, not FOG's version. So far, the picture that emerges is that of a typical US school shooter.

🇵🇱 We've seen a lot of comments about the patch on the Krakow shooter's vest, and most of them miss the mark. The design is the flag of Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, the 18th-century pirate. A horned skeleton holding an hourglass, aiming a spear at a bleeding heart. It's been a popular morale patch among soldiers, police and airsoft players for years, and you can buy one online for the price of a coffee. Forward Observations Group, the American tactical outfit active in Ukraine, uses a modified version of it as their logo. But it's easy to tell apart: FOG's figure has a goat's head and holds an MP7 submachine gun instead of an hourglass, and the bleeding heart is replaced with a red letter "F." The patch on the shooter's vest is the original pirate flag, not FOG's. That doesn't mean we know what drove him. It just means this particular clue doesn't lead to FOG or Ukraine.

🇮🇱 Israeli President Isaac Herzog has officially given Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party and former IDF chief of staff, the mandate to form a new government, passing over Benjamin Netanyahu. After the October 27 election left neither side with a majority, 67 Knesset members recommended Eisenkot for prime minister, including the Arab-led parties, while only 46 backed Netanyahu. Eisenkot has ruled out governing with the Arab-led parties, which leaves him well short of 61 seats. He's now courting the ultra-Orthodox parties and even Likud, calling for a "national emergency government." Netanyahu, meanwhile, is pushing a "national unity government" of his own, on the condition that it includes all his former coalition allies, among them Smotrich's Religious Zionism. Eisenkot has 28 days to form a coalition, with a possible 14-day extension. If he fails, Netanyahu could get his turn. Until a new government wins a confidence vote, Netanyahu remains prime minister. Don't expect a change in policy toward Gaza, Lebanon or Iran. Eisenkot is the general who formulated the Dahiya doctrine in 2008, the strategy of deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure in areas seen as hostile.