Does Trump Want Terrorists to Carry Out an Attack on U.S. Soil?

Donald Trump’s White House is blocking top US intelligence agencies from warning law enforcement across the country about rising threats to the homeland tied to his war with Iran, the Daily Mail can reveal.
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The five-page bulletin blocked by the White House provides specific details on how Iranian proxies may carry out attacks across the country. One section explains how local law enforcement can respond to this type of violence.
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Homeland Security broke protocol and gave the White House a heads-up about the nationwide bulletin hours before it was set to be released.

Top Trump officials ordered it placed on ‘hold’. The White House did not deny blocking the terror bulletin in a statement to the Daily Mail.

It does seem that for over twenty years, DHS has been releasing these bulletins through their own internal procedure. But now some zampolit in DHS decides that they'd better run it by someone in the White House, presumably Shadow President Miller, who then chooses to sit on it.

Why not get that information out to the nation's cops? Their excuse is some blather about making sure the informatin is "vetted" (by whom, the Malignant Dwarf playing FBI director or Bootlicking Bondi) or "up to date" (nothing makes intel more timely that sitting on it), but the only reason that makes sense is the one that is truly evil:

They want us to be hit. They want their retroactive excuse for this war.

And so, if we are hit, when the conspiracy theorists start saying that the Trump Administration knew that it was coming and did nothing to stop it, know this: They may have a point.

It could be even darker. Maybe Trump and Miller are trying to make it easier for the Iranians to carry out an attack here so they can have an excuse to fuck with the mid-term elections, if not outright cancel them.

Keep your powder dry.

Amateur Hour at DHS

When Thomas Fugate graduated from college last year with a degree in politics, he celebrated in a social media post about the exciting opportunities that lay beyond campus life in Texas. “Onward and upward!” he wrote, with an emoji of a rocket shooting into space.

His career blastoff came quickly. A year after graduation, the 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.

One thing is clear: With appointing tyros such as this, the Administration is giving a green light to far-right domestic terrorists.

We are so going to get attacked because of this evisceration of experts bullshit, not to mention putting a kid in charge who isn't qualified to do more than deliver newspapers on his Schwinn.

Trump has brought back affirmative action for unqualified white men.

Stochastic Assassination

Publicly removing people's security details, such as Gen. Milley, Dr. Fauchi, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton is nothing less than asking somebody to go kill them because they annoy the Criminal-in-Chief.

The Great Orange Felon learned his lesson well from hanging around with mobsters and Roy Cohn: Be ambiguous and never get your hands dirty.

National Shit-Yer-Pants Day

When I think of the aftermath of 9/11/2001, I think of all that we willingly threw away. We threw away our right to morally object to another nation's war of aggression when the Bush Administration invaded Iraq. We threw away many of our civil liberties with the abysmally-named "USA Patriot Act". That piece of excreable lesiglation, among many other things, authorized "sneak-and-peek" searches, where the cops could legally sneak into your home and look for things that might justify a formal search. Over 99% of the "sneak-and-peek" searches had nothing to do with terrorism.

We had the FBI doing what they do best: Ginning up terroism cases based solely on egging on someone with a loud mouth and few brain cells. The FBI concentrated on locking up Achmed the Blowhard while refusing to look into the neo-Nazis and their ilk who were actually killing people. But to be fair, the FBI and the DHS (a Soviet-style security apparatus if there ever was one) were hampered in looking into far-Right terrorism because the GOP, even pre-Trump, recognized them as being part of their base.

We commemmorate a day when the intelligence agencies failed without acknowledging that they had all the tools and information that they needed before the attacks without giving them more power to further harass us. We commemmorate a day which happened after then then-sitting president was more interested in getting back to his golf game than being briefed on the therat that was posed. We commemmorate a day which was used as an excuse to launch a war of aggression that destabilized a region and which we are still dealing with. We commemorate a day which resulted using torture to prove a crime.

We criticize other nations for overreacting to a terrorist attack without ever having done a single thing to hold those who overreacted here to account for their actions. History may not judge the Bush Admininstration for having a discussion in the White House about using torture, but it's clear that we won't.

As I see it, there is little today that is worth commemmorating. Mourning would be more appropriate.

Our Best Frenemy

More allegations have surfaced that Saudi intelligence did surveillance work for al Qaeda in advance of the 9/11 attacks.

It's no secret that what is commonly called "Islamic terrorism: is really "Saudi terrorism", as it is the Saudis who have funded a number of those groups and who have promulgated an intolerant and hostile strain of Islam.

Scratch a Pro-Palestinian Demonstrator, Find an Antisemite

Monday’s protest started in Union Square, where footage posted to social media showed a small group of demonstrators holding up a flag saying, “Long live October 7th.”

Protesters then flooded into the subway and rode down to Wall St., where they staged a larger action outside the Nova Exhibition, a memorial created to honor the victims of Hamas’ attack, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds hostage.

At the Wall St. protest, footage showed a protester waving a flag with Hamas’ logo on it and another with the emblem of Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S., while someone else was seen holding a sign saying Zionists are “not human.”

Terrorist sypathizers gotta sympathize, I gather. And they are just that. Most of them are mask-wearing cowards. Just like the ones in Gaza, who make war while hiding behind civilians.

They will inadvertently accomplish one MAGA priority by outlawing wearing masks.

On another note, the UN Security Council endorsed President Biden's cease-fire plan. Hamas hasn't accepted it.

It should be pretty clear by now to even the most casual observer that Hamas's strategy is to continue to hide behind the civilians in Gaza and dare the Israelis to keep killing Gazans. Hamas believes that if the civilian death toll continues to mount, that eventually the other nations of the world will put enough pressure on Israel (aided and abetted by Hamas's useful idiots in the West) to unilaterally call a halt. And then Hamas can claim victory.

Well, maybe that'll work. But in the meantime, the Israelis will do their best to ensure that if that is a Hamas victory, it'll be a Pyrrhic one.

This Is What They Get

At least 274 Palestinians, including dozens of children, were killed, and hundreds more were wounded, in the Israeli raid that rescued four hostages held by Hamas, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Sunday. The Israeli military said its forces came under heavy fire and responded during the complex daytime operation in central Gaza.

This is what happens when a terrorist group decides to hide its hostages among its own population and use their own people as human shields.

Anyone who thinks that we wouldn't have done the same thing needs to rethink that. If we could have gotten our Iranian hostages back by flattening half of Tehran in the process, that would have been a "go".

Putin Learned a Lesson From George Bush

That is: You can blame a country not involved in a terrorist attack and use that to justify a war.

Appearing on TV on Saturday, hours after the attack that killed 137 people and wounded over 100, [Putin] sought to make it serve his political goals by alleging a link between the gunmen and Ukraine, saying the assailants planned to flee there. He made no mention of the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility, or of Kyiv’s denial of involvement.

In Russia, the media will parrot Putin's claims because they are an arm of the Russian state. In America, the media parrotted Bush's claim because of a lack of moral fibre, to use a British term.

Start the Countdown Clock on Bibi

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.
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Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.

But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”

The article is "gifted", so feel free to click on the link and read it.

I don't know how the leadership survives when there is clear evidence that the plan was known, there was evidence that Hamas was rehearsing the plan and those in authority did absolutely nothing. I don't believe, at this juncture, that the Israeli failure to stop or prepare for the attack was deliberate, because of the old maxim "never ascribe to cupidity that which can be blamed on stupidity.

Unlike 9-11, this was not a "failure to connect the dots". The Israeli analysts had connected the dots; this was a failure of leadership to see the picture conecting the dots portrayed. Not only were over a thousand Israelis murdered by a well-planned terrorist attack, over ten thousand Palestinians were killed in the war that followed. It's not very probable that if Israel had disrupted or broken the intial attack, that would have been justification/provocation to turn Gaza City into a wasteland.

At the very minimum, those involved should never get a decent night's sleep.

White Privilege Applies to Terrorists, Too

People convicted of crimes related to domestic extremism face far shorter prison terms than those convicted in international terrorism cases, even when the crimes are similar, a new report on the outcomes of hundreds of federal criminal cases has found.

The first-of-its-kind analysis, completed by terrorism researchers at the University of Maryland, was provided exclusively to The Associated Press. It comes after federal officials and researchers have repeatedly identified domestic violent extremists such as white supremacists and anti-government groups as the most significant terror threat to the U.S. And it follows scrutiny of the outcomes of Jan. 6 cases, including for some Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who received sentences years lower than what was called for by prosecutors and sentencing guidelines.
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Researchers at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, and its Center for Health and Homeland Security examined federal criminal cases between 2014 and 2019 that were brought against people radicalized in the U.S. who were pursuing political, social, economic or religious goals.
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START’s analysis found wide disparities in prison terms for similar conduct, which were most pronounced in certain kinds of cases. The largest was in cases where defendants plotted violent attacks that ultimately failed or were foiled, where international defendants received an average prison sentence of 11.2 years, compared with 1.6 years for domestic defendants.

For violent cases that led to injuries, domestic defendants received on average 8.6 years, versus 34.6 for international defendants. The disparity was smaller, but still significant, in violent fatal attacks with domestic cases at about 28.8 years and international cases at about 39.2 years.

None of this is surprising for anyone who has even a basic knowledge of the criminal justice system in this country. The charges are different, the judges' setencing rationales are different. Those accused of domestic terrorism are treated differently and more leniently at every step of the process.

It's white privilege in action, pure and simple.

Tab Clearing

In rational times, those who think that some boss is innocent might have a few qualms when the boss's underlings plead guilty and turn state's evidence. But these aren't normal times. The TOFF's supporters have guzzled the Kool-Aid and they will be with him until the day he dies. Then they'll shift their allegance to one of his dissolute sons.

The Associated Press looked at the video evidence of the strike on the hospital in Gaza and concluded that the rocket that hit the hospital was fired by the Palestinians. That won't make a bit of difference to those who blame Israel for it. The only use for that factual finding is that, when someone repeats the lie, you'll know which side they are on.

Pro-Palestinian activists are feeling a backlash. Most of them don't acknowledge that when they moved from being pro-Palestinian to cheering on mass murder, they crossed a line. The mass killing of civilians wasn't a by-product of Hamas's plans, it was a main goal. If you want to stand up and publically support deliberate and planned mass-murder of civilians, then you have no legitimate cause to complain if there are people who don't want to be associated with you.

Of course, Fox News had to drag their Anti-Tranny crusade into this, as if any of that bullshit is relevant. Fox News is nothing but evil. Everyone who is associated with Fox News probably would have worked for Der Stürmer without a qualm.

I watched the first two episodes of the second season of Bosch: Legacy. The source of this tale isn't from the books, as far as I can remember. No, it basically proves that plaigarism is alive and well in Hollywood. The same plot was in an earlier season of The Rookie (Young female cop gets drugged, abducted and buried alive in the California desert with a video feed from inside her coffin for all the world to see.) Maybe the rest of the season will go back to mining the two dozen or so books about Harry Bosch.

Newspapers want to be paid by OpenAI for their stuff that OpenAI has used to train its eventually-humanity-killing AI. And they should. If you take somone else's stuff in order to make moeny, you should pay them. (This is why I never cooperate with opinion surveys.)

Tell Me This About Hamas, the Beheaders of Babies

What sort of person beheads babies?

What sort of person believes that killing babies is acceptable?

Who believes that sort of brutality will pay off?

(Assuming that the reports are true.)

Twenty-Two Years On

We took a sucker punch from terrorists that were, I believe, funded by a country that is, at best, a frenemy. We threw away a lot of our freedoms. We became a nation that operated torture chambers. But I've said all this before.

About the only cheery thing I can say is that at least most retailers aren't running "9/11 Sales". That'll probably happen sometime in the next century. ("We're burning down our prices!")

A MAGA Terrorist At Work

A business owner in California was shot and killed after a dispute over a LGBTQ+ Pride flag displayed outside her store, authorities said.

Officials from the San Bernardino county sheriff’s office said Laura Ann Carleton, 66, was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting on Friday night.

Officials said that during an initial altercation at Carleton’s clothing store, a male suspect “made several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag that stood outside the store before shooting Carleton”. He then fled the scene.

Deputies were able to locate the suspect, who was armed, and he was shot dead after a confrontation with the officers. By Sunday, the man had not been identified.

This is on those politicians, like the TOFF and Wrong DeSantis, who have made anti-gay bigotry a central part of their "platform". They are engaging in stochastic terrorism and I believe that they know what they are doing.

More Evidence that Russia is a Terrorist State

At least seven people have been killed in a Russian missile attack on residential buildings in the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk, officials say.

Two missiles hit the town - the second as rescuers were searching for victims of the first.
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According to other Ukrainian officials, the second missile struck 40 minutes after the first, killing and wounding rescuers as they searched for survivors in the ruins of what Mr Zelensky described as an "ordinary residential building".

A second attack to kill first responders is a known tactic of terrorists such as Al Qaeda and the IRA. And, of course, the Russians.

Russia is a Terrorist State. That is Beyond Any Reasonable Dispute.

Russia has been attacking Ukranian grain and food supplies, concentrating on both the storage facilities and ship-loading facilities in Odesa.

Those who support Russia might as well take the next step and support ISIS. For both are terrorist entities.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria's president has adopted a pro-rapist/blame the victim stance in the war. He believes that Ukraine is at fault for resisting Russia's aggression. Fuck him, too. I gather that that slavic turdlet has forgotten that Bulgaria didn't join NATO in 2004 for the social events, alone.

Boom?

About 60,000 pounds of a chemical used as both a fertilizer and an explosive is missing after likely disappearing during a rail trip from Wyoming to California last month, according to federal records.

A rail car carrying ammonium nitrate left a plant operated by explosives manufacturer Dyno Nobel in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12, according to an incident report filed May 10 by a representative of the company with the National Response Center.

Thirty tons of the stuff. Half-a-ton of urean nitrate fertizer (similar stuff) was used to try and bring down the Word Trade Center in 1993. McVeigh used about 2.4 tons of ammonium nitrate to blow up the OKC Federal Building in 1995.

One can only hope that some inattentive worker didn't lock a valve shut on the hopper car and it all dribbled out along the tracks. Otherwise, we may be in for some interesting times.

Dragging Along the Germans

The German government will not object if Poland decides to send Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine, Germany’s top diplomat said Sunday, indicating movement on supplying weapons that Kyiv has described as essential to its ability to fend off an intensified Russian offensive.
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Germany’s tentativeness has drawn criticism, particularly from Poland and the Baltic states, countries on NATO’s eastern flank that feel especially threatened by Russia’s renewed aggression.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that if the fellow NATO and European Unio member did not consent to transferring Leopard tanks to Ukraine, his country was prepared to build a “smaller coalition” of countries that would send theirs anyway.

The Poles dragged the Germans to yes by telling them that, whether or not the Germans liked it, Poland would give their tanks to Ukraine. The Germans may be content to being near the trailing edge, but they didn't want to be seen as being wholly recalcitrant (or being, effectively, Russian tools).

The Russians are displaying an astonishing level of hypocrisy:

Earlier Sunday, the speaker of the lower house of Russia’s parliament, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, said governments that give more powerful weapons to Ukraine risked causing a “global tragedy that would destroy their countries.”

“Supplies of offensive weapons to the Kyiv regime would lead to a global catastrophe,” Volodin said. “If Washington and NATO supply weapons that would be used for striking peaceful cities and making attempts to seize our territory as they threaten to do, it would trigger a retaliation with more powerful weapons.”

The Russians have been pounding peaceful Ukrainian cities since the beginning of the war. They have been indiscriminately bombing hotels, schools, apartment buildings and hospitals. I guess that they are worried that the Golden Rule of Warfare may apply: Do Unto Others as They Did Unto You. Beyond that, nobody has seriously proposed invading and occupying Russian territory. That would be an exceedingly stupid move.

Meanwhile, there seems to have been a pause in Russia's campaign of aerial terrorism. Maybe they have come to realize that video and photos going around the world of Ukrainian resuce workers trying to save people from the wreckage of an apartment building leveled by a Russian missile isn't advancing Russian interests.

Substations

There are a shitload of them in the US (55,000 or more), but there is an eight-year-old story that holds that destroying nine of them would take out the American grid and that a hundred are labelled as "critical".

I'm not sure how one can secure substations. One would have to ballistially protect every transformer from rifle fire, keep people from forcing the gates and keep them from damaging the phone/data lines into the substations. As for armed guards, well, having guys stand around for years on end with nothing ever happening is a tall order to fill.

A could of decades ago, I frequently drove by a large substation. It occurred to me that a couple of guys with armor-piercing ammunition could wreak havoc. It's an idea that wasn't completely original to me; in Red Storm Rising, after the Soviets invaded Iceland, F-111s blow up the substations in Reykjavik to put the Russians in the dark.

Anyhoo, one of the officials in North Carolina expressed a hope that, if they catch the goobers who shot up those substations, that they get put in a cell with no power. My thought was the exact opposite: They should beplaced in a cell with a lot of power. Especially in their chair.

Is There an Iota of Surprise About This; DHS Inaction Ed.

As bloody, hate-fueled attacks rose in 2019, Homeland Security officials pledged to step up their response to domestic terrorism, funding in-depth research that would help them understand the scale of the problem.

“Accurate nationwide statistics will better position DHS to protect communities from these threats,” the department said in a strategy report.

More than two years later, that data collection has not begun, and $10 million languishes unused because of internal disputes over privacy protocols, according to researchers and an official of the Department of Homeland Security.

The research that DHS has got its liver in a quiver often involves the use of open-sources... things that anyone can legally compile. But that's upset their cowardly lawyers because clipping news articles is...bad?

Let's be clear about this, shall we? DHS is never, ever going to do anything about domestic terrorism because those acts are largely carried out by people who are a) white, b) Christian, and c) male. In other words, people who tend to vote Republican. The tell is that if those carrying out the acts uttered the words "allahu akbar", DHS would be all over them like stink on a skunk.

Republicans have, for many years, foamed at their mouths whenever there was a proposal to do anything about domestic terrorism and done their level best to block any such efforts. They are complicit. So, unless either some plotter has the good sense to drop a dime to the FBI, the DHS has been reduced to hand-wringing after a white supremacist kills a bunch of people. They'll go to the scene, mutter verbiage about "thoughts and prayers", agree that "something should be done", but they'll do what they have always done:

Not a fucking thing.