Archive for the 'Terrorism' Category

CTC:

In addition to this, over the last few years, we have seen—certainly across the English-speaking and Western world—an increase in seriousness and coherence of extreme right-wing groups. It used to look like the extreme right was made up of political movements, and when they conducted violent acts, it was often a lone actor. What we are seeing now is groups of likeminded individuals coming together and talking in a type of language and approach that is used by violent Islamists, using words such as “embracing martyrdom.” In part, this is a response to the broader political context. The far-right parties and movements now have an increasingly coherent narrative, and stronger links to a shared philosophy. Books which espouse this extreme right-wing philosophy are readily available on Amazon, where they have multiple five-star reviews, very few negative reviews, and through algorithms lead the reader to other similarly extreme material. We have not yet worked out, as we did previously with violent Islamist material, what is and is not acceptable on the extreme right-wing side of the ideological equation. The New Zealand attack demonstrated this very clearly when he titled his manifesto “The Great Replacement,” drawing on a French right-wing philosophical tract of the same name.

This apparently passes for scholarship at the center.  We’ve discussed this before, how the nexus connecting the shooters in New Zealand, El Paso and Dayton is: Eco-terrorism, a desire for universally guaranteed income, belief in gun control philosophy, and general anti-religious zealotry.  The shooters were much closer to Antifa than any right wing cause, as pointed out just today (fortunately for readers, you hear it here first).

She passes on the false narrative that these were right wing extremists.  But the important thing isn’t that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  I expect that.  The important thing is that the CTC at West Point has their eyes on “right wing extremism” in America.

Whatever that is.

Washington Examiner:

Parts of the United States would be starved of electricity, water, food, internet service and transportation for a year or longer by the smallest electromagnetic pulse attack on the electric grid, according to a newly declassified report from a federal commission.

The so-called EMP Commission report said that the threat is real, jeopardizes “modern civilization,” and would set back living conditions to those last seen in the 1800s.

And as a result of the chaos, millions would likely die, according to the report titled “Assessing the Threat from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP),” from the recently re-established Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.

“A long-term outage owing to EMP could disable most critical supply chains, leaving the U.S. population living in conditions similar to centuries past, prior to the advent of electric power,” said the July 2017 report provided Secrets.

“In the 1800s, the U.S. population was less than 60 million, and those people had many skills and assets necessary for survival without today’s infrastructure. An extended blackout today could result in the death of a large fraction of the American people through the effects of societal collapse, disease, and starvation. While national planning and preparation for such events could help mitigate the damage, few such actions are currently underway or even being contemplated,” added the executive summary.

[ … ]

In “Life Without Electricity,” he said the results would be:

• Social Order: Looting requires dusk to dawn curfew. People become refugees as they flee powerless homes. Work force becomes differently employed at scavenging for basics, including water, food, and shelter.

• Communications: No TV, radio, or phone service.

• Transportation: Gas pumps inoperable. Failure of signal lights and street lights impedes traffic, stops traffic after dark. No mass transit metro service. Airlines stopped.

• Water and Food: No running water. Stoves and refrigerators inoperable. People melt snow, boil water, and cook over open fires. Local food supplies exhausted. Most stores close due to blackout.

• Energy: Oil and natural gas flows stop.

• Emergency Medical: Hospitals operate in dark. Patients on dialysis and other life support threatened. Medications administered and babies born by flashlight.

• Death and Injury: Casualties from exposure, carbon dioxide poisoning and house fires increase.

I didn’t need the list, nor am I persuaded I need to spend any time studying the report.  I’ve pointed this out before, and it was only after I began to point out the weakness of the main step-up / step-down transformers at power plants that the FedGov or corporations began to focus on thinking about those key aspects of our critical infrastructure.

So let’s paint the picture.  Power goes out.  It won’t return for a very long time.  There is no power to run pumps to get gasoline out of tanks and into automobiles.  There is no fuel delivery truck to bring the gasoline to market because pumps don’t work, and drivers are all at home taking care of their families.

Hospitals have no power except for urgent and critical care, and what little they can get comes from diesel generators (which will stop running when the fuel runs out).  Traffic lights don’t work.  Emergency responders don’t respond.  EBT cards don’t work because food stores are empty, and there is no cash register to run the cards.  We’ve seen how that goes before in Atlanta.

Pumps to bring water to urban and suburban centers don’t run.  Every family is about 72 hours (three days) away from impending starvation.  Looters hit the streets, violence becomes a way of life.

This doesn’t just happen with an EMP event, whether solar or weaponized.  It happens on a smaller scale with terrorist attacks on the electrical grid.  I’ve discussed this at length, so you know this and have been warned, just as I know (and have failed completely to prepare for).

Prior:

A Terrorist Attack That America Cannot Absorb

Surviving the Apocalypse

Electrical Grid Attack

The Electrical Grid Is Still Vulnerable

See also CBS Chicago, Electrical Grid Vulnerable To Attacks, Natural Disasters

The Hill:

The retiring head of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) warned ahead of his exit Friday about extremists’ ability to acquire lethal weapons in the U.S.

In a final briefing with reporters ahead of his departure, NCTC Director Nicholas Rasmussen voiced concern about the ability to protect from mass casualty attacks.

“We find ourselves in a more dangerous situation because our population of violent extremists has no difficulty gaining access to weapons that are quite lethal,” Rasmussen said, according to The Washington Post. “I wish that weren’t so.”

Rasmussen, who served as the NCTC’s director for three years, said he had no solutions to offer domestic law enforcement agencies working to prevent mass-casualty attacks, but said a link between the availability of guns and the potential for violence is a calculation for counterterrorism analysts.

“More weapons, more readily available, increases the lethality of those that would pick them up and use them,” he said.

Rasmussen said the U.S. should be focused on stemming the spread of violent ideologies, adding that anti-Muslim rhetoric has complicated that effort, according to the Post.

His “warnings” are all bullshit.  First of all, the Obama holdovers aren’t worried about Islam.  They don’t want white, middle class Americans to have them.  His warnings are a misdirect from his real fear.

Second, I feel about this kind of “warning” the same way I feel about it when I read that suicide is highest among white rural Americans.  They blame it on guns rather than drive to the root of the problem.

Finally, you learn all you need to know about the goobers Obama hired to captain the sinking ship of his administration when he tells you that “anti-Muslim rhetoric” has complicated the effort to stem the spread of violent ideologies.

As if violent Islam is a function of Western invective against it.  I believe he has his cause and effect mixed up, yes?

Weekly Standard:

Peter Doocy: “President Obama yesterday jumped to say that this mass shooting means it’s time for commonsense gun laws. Does the President really think that common sense gun laws would deter terrorists now that he has admitted that these two may have been terrorists?”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest: “Yes. The president believes that passing common sense gun laws that makes it harder for people with bad intentions to get guns, makes the country safer.”

Peter Doocy: “But so the president thinks that when there are potentially two terrorists sitting around planning a mass murder they may call it off because President Obama has put in place common sense gun laws?”

Earnest: “Well Peter, we’re still learning of the precise motives of the individuals who carried out this heinous act of violence yesterday. One thing we do know, is the four fire arms they were wielding we’re legally purchased under the laws in place now.

So what’s a terrorist to do if he cannot legally purchase guns?  There goes the whole plan, out the window.  Defenestrate the project and go somewhere else … that’s the only solution.

No, a terrorist wouldn’t think of illegally obtaining weapons.  And no, this dialogue isn’t fabricated.  It really happened.  Such is the life of the progressives, where every day is upside down day, where good means bad, up means down, and light means dark.

Boston Globe:

The term “Daesh” is strategically a better choice because it is still accurate in that it spells out the acronym of the group’s full Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. Yet, at the same time, “Daesh” can also be understood as a play on words — and an insult. Depending on how it is conjugated in Arabic, it can mean anything from “to trample down and crush” to “a bigot who imposes his view on others.” Already, the group has reportedly threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone who uses the term.

Why do they care so much? The same reason the United States should. Language matters.

With some 30,000 to 50,000 fighters, Daesh is a relatively small group, and propaganda is central to its growth strategy. Whether hijacking popular Twitter hashtags or using little known distribution channels to post videos to YouTube, their leadership knows that the war of words online is just as key to increasing its power and influence as the actual gruesome acts they commit on the ground.

By using the militants’ preferred names, the US government implicitly gives them legitimacy.

My oldest son Josh has always used that name for them, and while I was never committed to anything, now that I know they hate it, I’ll always use it and dare them to do anything about it.

See also New York Daily News.

Here is the French government meeting after the recent terror attacks in Paris, where at current rendering almost 160 souls have perished.

Look at the bastards, with their fresh water, iPhones and iPads, looking all shocked at the carnage their open borders policy has created.

As one might expect, Obama has sped up the process of relocating Syrians to the U.S., and has declared that we have ISIS contained.

Obama may as well wear big shoes and a rubber nose, and beclown himself before the world.  He does so on a regular basis.  But the problem is that he is at the moment a clown with power, doing the bidding of Valerie Jarrett and a gaggle of globalist, international power brokers.

Those power brokers apparently want to see the dissolution and the disintegration of civilization, perhaps being bored with things as they are.  I was recently watching news reports where French men went to the scene(s) of the shooting to beg for the lives of their wives.  Why exactly their wives were there and they weren’t is a mystery that must require understanding the French in order to sort out.

Don’t be them.  Understand that there is a real threat inside the U.S., whether from ATF or EPA or police or [fill in the blank] SWAT teams, or MS13, or Islamists.  Their goal is all the same – to enslave and ultimately to kill you and your loved ones.  There will be no mercy, there will be no way out, no matter how much you beg.

Guns, ammunition, and practice, family, clan and tribe.  Do it.  Prepare now.  Time is short.  Your loved ones are counting on you.

UPDATE:

John Jay has thoughts here and here.

UPDATE #2:

WRSA has coverage here.  Mark Steyn’s comments are always worth reading.

“So I say again: What’s the happy ending here? Because if M Hollande isn’t prepared to end mass Muslim immigration to France and Europe, then his “pitiless war” isn’t serious. And, if they’re still willing to tolerate Mutti Merkel’s mad plan to reverse Germany’s demographic death spiral through fast-track Islamization, then Europeans aren’t serious. In the end, the decadence of Merkel, Hollande, Cameron and the rest of the fin de civilisation western leadership will cost you your world and everything you love.

So screw the candlelight vigil.”

UPDATE #3:

FBI has nearly 1000 active ISIS probes ongoing.

Coming soon to a church, school, mall, place of work, or neighborhood near you:

The Texas DPS Director Steven McCraw expressed concern over the possible infiltration of ISIS through the border during a visit to Laredo this week. The comment came during the annual Texas Border Coalition meeting when a member of the audience asked the director if any suspected ISIS members had ever been apprehended on the Texas/Mexico border.

McCraw said: “Individuals that come across the Texas/Mexican border from a countries with a known terrorism presence and the answer to that is yes. We have individuals that we’ve needed to debrief in Pashto/Dari. Not a lot of Pashto and Dari speakers around. But you can’t think about the last attack; you have to think of the next attack and where our vulnerabilities are. So, we’re concerned about that.”

From the heart of the pre-historic world in the Hindu-Kush, where the only functioning machines were sold to them for drug or gem money because they don’t know how to build them, to the Texas border.  That’s quite a trip, yes?

Why?  Why do you suppose someone would do that?

Via SWJ, Georgetown University has published a report entitled Lone Wolf Terrorism.  In it you’ll find this rich bit of analysis.

… a University of Maryland study found that, while radical Islamic terrorism in the United States has increased since the attacks on September 11, 2001, there has also been a continued, if not greater, increase in individual radicalization from the far right.  Overall, homegrown radical Islamic terrorism poses no greater threat to the public than other forms of domestic radicalization, but by unfairly focusing on the Muslim community, the USG risks inciting further divisions.

You learn one thing, and you can suspect another.  As for what you can suspect (with a fairly high chance of being right) is that if you are a gun owner or believe in the constitution, you fall into that category they call the “far right.”

What you know with certainty is that the idiots at the “think tanks” still have no clue as to the dangers posed by Islam and Sharia law.  Thus they are an irrelevant feature to the national security apparatus, shouting nonsense with no one listening, sound and fury signifying nothing.  But we knew that before, didn’t we?

David Codrea:

The head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command admitted Thursday China can shut down the U.S. power grid, Fox News and the Associated Press reported. Admiral Michael Rogers made “the grim forecast” before the House Intelligence Committee, confirming what has been “widely known” but never officially owned up to, the report noted.

“Rogers said he believed China along with ‘one or two’ other countries had the capability to successfully launch a cyber-attack that could shut down the electric grid in parts of the United States,” the report noted.

David goes on to note the extent to which normal life would be affected by such an exigency, and then poses the following dilemma for anti-gun activists.

With that as backdrop, and understanding that the potential for such horror unfolding in the homeland has been formally taken out of the realm of dystopian fiction and now reflects real world concerns of those responsible for overseeing the nation’s first line of defense, activists who demand “common sense gun safety laws” will face a moral choice should officials’ worst fears come to pass.

David is right.  But it’s even worse than that.  I am not bragging – well, perhaps I am – but before the government told you about the vulnerability of the electrical grid to attacks, before the FERC told you, before the DHS mentioned it, I told you about it based on things I know first hand.

My attack was physical in nature, while this report focuses on cyber-attacks.  The short term affect is the same, but the long term affect is far worse in my scenario.  In my scenario the very structures, components and equipment used to deliver power (step up transformers) that are needed to manufacture the replacement step up transformers are unavailable due to the attack, so the industrial power isn’t available to make the transformers.  And without the attack on large transformers, there is no need for the manufacture of new ones.  It’s the perfect horns of a dilemma to the terrorist.

None of the formal reports I have read go much further in developing this threat matrix, except to show that there are just over half a dozen large substations that, if taken out, would leave the vast majority of America blacked out.  In this scenario, food, gasoline, the financial system, trade and traffic, traffic lights, power for hospitals, and delivery of necessary medications, would cease or be completely unavailable.

Now who doesn’t want a gun of some sort for self defense?

Read David’s entire article.

Prior:

A Terrorist Attack That America Cannot Absorb

Surviving the Apocalypse

Electrical Grid Attack

The Electrical Grid Is Still Vulnerable

See also CBS Chicago, Electrical Grid Vulnerable To Attacks, Natural Disasters

In July 2012 the Small Wars Journal published Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A Vision of the Future.  It was a touchstone marking their descent into weird collectivism and illegal military operations by the armed forces of the U.S.

The specific scenario was stupid beyond belief, where “extremist militia” takes over the government of Darlington, South Carolina.  My son and I got a good laugh out of that one.  The only insurrection against the local government of Darlington might occur as a result of losing the one remaining NASCAR cup race, but as an aficionado of South Carolina, I can vouch that federal troops won’t be the savior of Darlington.  They might be the target, but the local Sheriff is just as likely to side with the militia.

But laugh as we might, this is serious business, and marks a dark moment in the history of our military.  They are now willing to say out loud what wouldn’t have even been thought a hundred years ago.

Small Wars Journal continues its theme with Political Violence Prevention: Profiling Domestic Terrorists.  The paradigm the author seeks to build is right up front.

… the process of becoming a violent extremist is a series of steps that leave footprints we should be able to track”. A national standard from which to identify individuals who have left these footprints and are on the path to becoming violent would be invaluable to law enforcement, especially at the local level. Without a set standard each local law enforcement agency interprets who may or may not be a threat and what is worth reporting or investigating differently as they have different experiences and expectations about domestic terrorists and terrorism. Domestic terrorists can be identified prior to committing any terrorist attacks through a profiling systems based upon identifying factors that influence committing acts of terrorism.

The entire effort is worthy of funding and support, according to the author.

The area in which profiling could be useful is in identifying Lone Wolf terrorist attacks as they are executed nearly twice as often as other attacks. This is under the assumption that Love Wolf attacks are more successful because the clues that alert the general public and law enforcement are less apparent or non-existent. It would also involve an intelligence agency to track the individual over an extended period of time. An agency that is not concerned with arresting or detaining would be free from the pressures of cased based intelligence enabling them instead to pursue preemptive intelligence where the profiling may be useful (Chalk & Rosenau 2004).

In order to prevent domestic terrorist attacks resources should be allocated into improving existing efforts that have proven to be effective as well as into the development and implication of concepts that improve weak areas of domestic terrorist threat detection such as a profiling system.

Make no mistake about it.  If you believe that the second amendment exists to keep government tyranny in check, you make the grade.  The “thinkers” are figuring out ways to watch you and profile you before you become “violent.”