Tag: Terrorism

Sick to Death of Ammosexuals

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Some gun fondler decided that it would be a good idea to send a bomb threat to Sandy Hook Elementary School on the 6th anniversary of the shooting.

Note that this is NOT related to the spate of threats attempting to extort Bitcoin that have been flying around for the past week or so.

In my younger days, I would have said that whoever did this deserved to get spinal cancer, but I am older and wiser now, so I wish some form of Fatal insomnia on them.  (It’s a lot worse. you literally die of lack of sleep over about a year and a half.)

If the cops find out who did this, the prosecutors need to make an example of this motherf%$#er.

An Important Phrase to Know: Stochastic Terrorism

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For those of you who have never heard the termStochastic Terrorism , (See also the Wiki) it refers to terrorism that is, “Statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”

What this means is that invocations toward terrorism in the media that are calculated to create “lone wolf” actors who will then engage in terrorism to further the aims of the speaker.

When you look at people like Glenn Beck (Tides Foundation), Alex Jones (Everyone), Anwar al-Awlaki (The secular west), and Bill O’Reilly (George Tiller).

O’Reilly publicly called Tiller a, “Baby Killer,” and then piously eschewed any responsibility when the doctor was assassinated.

I am far less concerned about Anwar al-Awlaki than I am the rest of them, because the right wing deliberately uses this technique to silence voices from the left.

Liberal talk radio still has yet to recover from the assassination of Alan Berg in 1984.

They do this because it works, and no one will stop them.

Too Lame Don’t Read (TLDR)

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The New York Times has an interminable essay on why law enforcement has consistently missed right wing violent terrorism.

They meticulously tiptoe around what is the most obvious answer, that a large proportion of their members actively support right wing racists.

There are 4-5 stories in this report where somehow or other the authorities “mysteriously” screwed up and allowed these folks to walk away after engaging in acts that would ordinarily end up with a 10-20 year sentence.

This happens because they actively support the actions and goals of right wing terrorists, whether as the cop on the beat, or as a prosecutor who offers administrative inefficiency as an alibi.

If these folks were black or brown, they would be in jail or they would be pushing up daisies.

When people of color do something even remotely close to this this, they bomb their house and allow the entire block to burn down, and when a white man murders a church full of black people, they bring him Burger King to eat.

Does anyone else see a pattern?

Tweet of the Day

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Many liberals today get so angry when you point out that our bad economy is a major contributor to the rise of the far right. But here’s a 2009 report from Obama’s Department of Homeland Security making that exact point. pic.twitter.com/ykqgSoLX5e

— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) October 28, 2018

Silly rabbit, don’t you know, it’s the Russians, or maybe, it was the fault of those damn Eskimos!

Blaming Trump for This One

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Trump has made bigotry fashionable in large segments of society, and he has demonized immigrants and refugees, and now we have a mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh:

Eleven people are dead and six more are wounded — including four police officers — after a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood Saturday morning.

 The shooter, who officials said had an assault-style rifle and three handguns, is in custody, Pittsburgh police report. Officials have confirmed he is Robert Bowers, 46, of Baldwin Borough. He is in Allegheny General Hospital in fair condition with multiple gunshot wounds, officials said.

………

Gunfire erupted shortly before 10 a.m. as a baby-naming ceremony was getting underway, officials confirmed.

………

The Anti-Defamation League said it believed it was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the U.S. history.

There was an initial confrontation in which two officers were injured, Mr. Hissrich said. Two more who are members of SWAT were injured in a later confrontation, Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott Schubert said at the news conference. Officials said they believe the suspect was acting alone.

It appears that his actions were a juxtaposition of antisemitism and anti-immigrant bias, making hime the very modern model of the modern Trump Republican:

Someone posting under the name Robert Bowers on the social media site Gab.com, wrote on or around Oct. 10: “Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us? We appreciate the list of friends you have provided,” and included a link to the website for HIAS National Refugee Shabbat, formerly the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society.

HIAS was founded in 1881 to help Jews fleeing Eastern Europe. In the 2000s, it expanded its work to include non-Jewish refugees, including those fleeing Afghanistan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Hungary, Iran, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Tunisia and Vietnam.

HIAS led events held last weekend and billed online as “a moment for congregations, organizations, and individuals around the country to create a Shabbat experience dedicated to refugees.” Jewish Family and Community Services is listed on the HIAS website as a partner of the organization. The website indicates that JFCS and three Pittsburgh congregations were participating in the group’s awareness campaign last weekend: Beth Shalom, Dor Hadash and Makom HaLev.

Robert Bowers on Gab.com indicated a week ago that he “noticed a change in people saying ‘illegals’ that now say ‘invaders’ I like this.” He also called one other poster on Gab.com a “deceptive little oven dodger” in response to a post debunking a rumor that trucks marked with the Star of David were bringing Central American migrants to the U.S.

This is a direct result of Donald Trump and his rhetoric.

The right wing has been weaponizing bigots and the mentally ill to intimidate the rest of us since at least the Reagan administration.

We’ve seen it with mass shootings, the assassination of Alan Berg, violence against abortion clinics, etc.

There is an entire domestic terrorist infrastructure that the right wing has built, and it needs to be taken down.

Florida Man………

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Hell of a way to reinforce a meme:

Before he was arrested for mailing more than a dozen pipe bombs to prominent critics of President Donald Trump — some of which included pictures of the intended targets with a red “X” over their faces — Cesar Sayoc lived a scattered and bizarre life in South Florida.

He was an avid bodybuilder who trained in mixed martial arts and a former exotic dancer and strip club manager who held a string of odd jobs, among them a Papa John’s pizza deliveryman and a DJ. He bought a house in Fort Lauderdale, which was foreclosed on in 2009, lived with his parents in an Aventura condo, and most recently slept in a white van papered with pro-Trump and right-wing stickers.

Along the way, Sayoc racked up a long rap sheet for everything from grand theft and battery to making a bomb threat against Florida Power & Light. He was also accused of domestic violence by a woman who appears to have been his grandmother.

But of all of his diverse interests, 56-year-old Sayoc’s fervent support for Trump appears to have been his greatest passion in recent years. Sayoc’s social media accounts were filled with photos of him wearing a red Make American Great Again baseball cap, videos of a Trump rally he attended in 2016 and pro-Trump news stories. He also shared racist memes and spouted conspiracy theories.

Steroid addled and reactionary is no way to go through life, son.

Round Up the Usual Suspects

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Somewhere around half a dozen bombs sent to various Democratic Party, progressive, and news media.
This is in addition to the bomb placed in George Soros’ mailbox yesterday:

Pipe bombs were sent to several prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, setting off an intense investigation on Wednesday into whether figures vilified by the right were being targeted.

From Washington to New York to Florida, where a congresswoman who is the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee has her office, the authorities intercepted a wave of crudely built devices that were contained in manila envelopes.

In the center of Manhattan, the Time Warner Center, an elegant office and shopping complex, was evacuated because of a pipe bomb sent to CNN, which has its New York offices there. It was addressed to John O. Brennan, a critic of President Trump who served as Mr. Obama’s C.I.A. director.

………

The F.B.I. said the devices were similar to one found Monday at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and liberal donor, in a New York City suburb.

Gee, now there is a surprise.

It appears that whoever did this was targeting, “East Coast Liberal Elites,” which does indicate who the likely suspects might be:

I will note, as Matt Tiabbi has, that this is early in the story, and the speculation by the talking heads on the cable news is more likely wrong than right.

My money is still on it being some right-wing nut job.

You Know, Rightwing Bombers Targeting Jews Sounds Awfully Familiar

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Looks like some right-winger put a bomb in George Soros’ mailbox:

Federal authorities believe that an explosive device found Monday in a mailbox at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has been a focus of right-wing critics and conspiracy theorists, was left there by someone and was not delivered by the Postal Service, several law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Soros’s home is in a suburb of New York City. The device was constructed from a length of pipe about six inches long filled with explosive powder, and it was “proactively detonated” by bomb squad technicians, according to one of the officials, all of whom were briefed on the investigation.

The motive of the would-be bomber or bombers remained unclear, one of the officials said, adding that there had not yet been any claim of responsibility.

Mr. Soros, who made his fortune in finance and is now a full-time philanthropist and political activist, is often a subject of the ire of right-wing groups. In recent days, some have falsely speculated that he funded a caravan of migrants moving north in Mexico.

Mr. Soros was not home when the device was discovered by a caretaker, another one of the officials said. It was rigged with a detonator, and it could have maimed or possibly killed someone had it exploded near them.

A senior law enforcement official described the pipe bomb as “smaller than what we typically see.”

The investigation is being conducted by the New York offices of the F.B.I. and the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, according to several of the officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

I’m thinking that these members of the “Party of God” (in Arabic, “Hezbollah”) need to be addressed sooner, rather than later.

Tweets that Make You Go Hmmmmm

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Very strange… Iran fired missiles at ISIS in Syria. Killed several ISIS leaders – almost killed Al-Baghdadi. US complained (!!) saying Iran was reckless, cuz the strike was within 3 miles of US troops.

But why was ISIS leader Baghdadi feeling so safe so close to US troops????

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) October 5, 2018

You know, the fact that we are effectively allied with ISIS might be a small indicator that our policies in Syria are not in the national interest.

H/t naked capitalism.

This is Beginning to Sound Like Whitey Bulger Writ Small

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Remember that horrific limousine accident in upstate New York?

Remember how the limo was falling apart, and the driver lacked proper licenses?

Well, we may now have an idea as to why this particular company was given a pass by regulators, its owner was a big time FBI informant.

In fact, this guy was commonly referred to as a “Superinformant“, and seemed to spend a lot of his time, as is the FBI’s wont, finding swarthy people who had very little intention of doing anything, and turning them into terrorism defendants.

The FBI does have a history of becoming excessively involved with the shady business dealings of its informants, the Boston office was almost a partner of James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger Jr.’s during his blood-soaked run through Beantown’s criminal underworld:

The aging limousine that crashed Saturday in Schoharie County, killing 20, was operated by a company with a record of failed inspections — and an owner who was a controversial FBI informant.

 The 2001 Ford Excursion was operated by Prestige Limousine, a small company that shares an address with a run-down motel in the Saratoga County town of Wilton, just north of tony Saratoga Springs.

 The company is owned by Shahed Hussain, whose backstory includes numerous stints as an undercover informant for the FBI.

 Authorites said Hussain, 62, is in his native Pakistan at present. Other company officials have pledged to cooperate with the investigation.

 Asked whether Hussain is under criminal investigation, State Police Major Robert Patnaude said anyone found to be criminally culpable will be “held accountable.”

 ……

 Albany-area lawyer Dana Salazar, who represented Shahed Hussain in a civil action against Saratoga County that revolved around the Saratoga Road motel property, verified on Monday that her client had indeed been the celebrated informant.

 Hussain emigrated from Pakistan in the early 1990’s, fleeing a murder charge that he later said was trumped up, according to news reports. He worked as a translator for the New York state Department of Motor Vehicles but was caught helping people cheat on DMV exams in return for money.

 He later was accused of making fraudulent statements in a personal bankruptcy case as well.

 Hussain pleaded guilty to a felony in relation to the DMV scam but avoided prison and deportation by becoming an informant, working in New York’s Muslim communities to find people that had radical tendencies.

 ……

 “And, perhaps perversely, it’s hard not to come away without some degree of admiration for Mr. Hussain, seen and heard only in the grainy videos shot in his car and living room,” reviewer Mike Hale. “He puts on a superior performance over a long period of time and lies with breathtaking ease and quickness. If there were Oscars for informants, he’d be on the red carpet every year.”

In the article, you have his hotel being shut down by authorities, multiple problems with his limo service, but he was always allowed to continue operating.

It’s not exactly the same as Winter Hill Gang boss Bulger and Stephen Joseph “The Rifleman” Flemmi using their status as informants to get FBI protection and take out rivals, but it certainly seems to rhyme.

The Jihad Against Plastic Bags (Literally)

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Al Shabab, the Islamist terrorist group, has banned plastic bags:

Over the years, the Shabab, a terrorist group in East Africa that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, have banned music, cinemas, satellite dishes and humanitarian organizations.

This week, they added a new item to the prohibited list: plastic bags.

Residents of areas controlled by the terrorist group, which operates out of Somalia, will no longer be able to use plastic bags, out of respect for the environment.

The announcement — by a group better known for suicide attacks that have killed and maimed thousands — prompted a flurry of mocking memes on the internet, some calling the Shabab the first eco-friendly terrorist organization.

The statement banning the use of plastic bags was published on Somalimemo.net, a pro-Shabab website that is believed to be run by the terrorist group’s media office. The website aired an audio recording from Mohammed Abu Abdullah, the Shabab’s governor in the Jubaland region, who said that plastic bags “pose a serious threat to the well-being of humans and animals alike,” a statement that was repeated in a Twitter message posted on a Shabab-associated account.

This real.

This is the New York Times, not the Onion.

Truth be told though, the difference is increasingly hard to discern.

Another Novichuk Attack near Porton Down

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It appears that this time, a random British couple was exposed, and a woman has died:

A woman who was exposed to the nerve agent novichok in Amesbury, Wiltshire, has died in hospital.

The Metropolitan police have launched a murder investigation after Dawn Sturgess, 44, from Durrington, died on Sunday after handling an item contaminated with the nerve agent on 30 June.

Her partner Charlie Rowley, 45, who was also taken ill after being exposed to the nerve agent, remains in a critical condition in hospital.

The investigation into the poisonings is being led by detectives from the Counter Terrorism Policing Network, and about 100 detectives are working alongside officers from Wiltshire police.

Investigators are still trying to determine how the couple were exposed to the nerve agent after emergency services were called to a residential address in Amesbury eight days ago after Sturgess collapsed.

………

Counter-terrorism officers are still investigating the attempted murders of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, who were poisoned in March.

………

Prior to the news of the death, home secretary Sajid Javid had said there were no plans to impose fresh sanctions on Russia following the latest nerve agent poisoning.

During a visit to Salisbury on Sunday to meet residents caught up in the nerve agent poisoning, he said: “We don’t want to jump to conclusions. Clearly, what we have already determined, what our expert scientists have determined, is that the nerve agent in this incident is the exact same nerve agent as was used back in March.

“We know back in March that it was the Russians. We know it was a barbaric, inhuman act by the Russian state. Again, for this particular incident, we need to learn more and let the police do their work.”

You don’t want people to, “Jump to conclusions,” because the obvious conclusion is that thea, “Barbaric, inhuman act by the Russian state,” is anything but that.

Now, it’s beginning to sound like someone more like the 2001 anthrax attacks, which were likely the action of someone from inside the US bioweapons establishment.

If Javid has not locked down the Porton Down chemical weapons facility, he is dangerously incompetent.

Not a Surprise

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What a surprise.

America’s international butt-boy, the UK, was hip deep in the US torture program:

British intelligence agencies were involved in the torture and kidnap of terrorism suspects after 9/11, according to two reports by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee.

The reports published on Thursday amount to one of the most damning indictments of UK intelligence, revealing links to torture and rendition were much more widespread than previously reported.

While there was no evidence of officers directly carrying out physical mistreatment of detainees, the reports say the overseas agency MI6 and the domestic service MI5 were involved in hundreds of torture cases and scores of rendition cases.

The committee says the agencies were aware “at an early point” of the mistreatment of detainees by the US and others. There were two cases in which UK personnel were “party to mistreatment administered by others”. One has been investigated by the Metropolitan police but the other is still to be fully investigated. 

……

The report dealing with the treatment of detainees details a litany of cases of concern, saying: “We have found 13 incidents where UK personnel witnessed at first hand a detainee being mistreated by others, 25 where UK personnel were told by detainees that they had been mistreated by others and 128 incidents recorded where agency officers were told by foreign liaison services about instances of mistreatment. In some cases, these were correctly investigated but this was not consistent.”
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It said in 232 cases UK personnel continued to supply questions or intelligence to other services despite knowledge or suspicion of mistreatment, as well as “198 cases where UK personnel received intelligence from liaison services which had been obtained from detainees who knew they had been mistreated – or with no indication as to how the detainee had been treated but where we consider they should have suspected mistreatment”.

It would be nice if Jack Straw ends up in the dock over this.

It would be nicer if Tony Blair did.

Justice Served

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Noor Salman has been acquitted of all charges of involvement in the Pulse Night Club shootings:

The acquittal by a federal jury of Noor Salman, the widow of the man who gunned down dozens of people at the Pulse nightclub two years ago, handed federal prosecutors on Friday the rarest of defeats: a loss in a terrorism case.

The outcome was even more striking because the not-guilty verdict came from jurors in Orlando, Fla., where Omar Mateen’s rampage left 49 people dead and 53 others injured, the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

Jurors unanimously rejected government charges that Ms. Salman had helped her husband plan his violent assault in the name of the Islamic State — a narrative countered by her family’s claims that she was kept in the dark about her husband’s secrets and was home sleeping when the attack occurred.

To blame for the government’s defeat, said defense lawyers and legal experts who closely followed the trial, was a flimsy circumstantial case that ultimately was unable to persuade jurors during the eight days of trial.

Testimony from an F.B.I. agent revealed that prosecutors knew early on, but did not reveal, that one of their crucial initial pieces of evidence — that Ms. Salman had admitted driving by the nightclub with her husband in the days before the attack — most likely did not happen.

It’s more than that, they had phone records conclusively show that she was not there at the time.

Prosecutors also faltered when they argued that Ms. Salman had created an alibi for her husband the night of the shooting, telling Mr. Mateen’s mother that he was out to dinner with a friend identified only as Nemo. But that line was Mr. Mateen’s own lie to his wife, defense lawyers argued. They put Nemo on the stand, over prosecutors’ objections, to testify that he knew Mr. Mateen had used him in the past as a cover story to cheat on his wife.

Of course the prosecutors did not want this information to come out in court, the truth gets in the way of a conviction.

“The more we learned, the better Noor Salman looked,” Charles D. Swift, one of her lawyers, told reporters after the verdict was announced.

The jury of seven women and five men deliberated a little more than 12 hours before acquitting Ms. Salman on charges of aiding and abetting the commission of a terrorist act and of obstructing justice. She had been accused of giving misleading statements to law enforcement officers who interviewed her after the massacre.

12 hours deliberation before a not-guilty verdict, particularly in a case involving terrorism, and the prosecutors and the FBI knew it.

They lied to the jurors, and the jurors knew it, so they acquitted.

Never talk to law enforcement without a lawyer present ……… ever.

John Bolton Is Actually Worse Than I Had Previously Known

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It turns out that in a dispute over WMD inspections before the Iraq war, he threatened the children of a UN official:

Who better to advise the bully-in-chief, Donald Trump, on when to make war and kill people than another bully? It’s difficult, after all, to avoid the label — that of a bully — when thinking of John Bolton, the former Bush administration official-turned-Fox News pundit who Trump recently picked as his national security adviser.

“John Bolton is a bully,” José Bustani, the retired Brazilian diplomat and former head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told me when I reached him by phone in Paris earlier this month.

………

In 2001, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had penned a letter to Bustani, thanking him for his “very impressive” work. By March 2002, however, Bolton — then serving as under secretary of state for Arms Control and International Security Affairs — arrived in person at the OPCW headquarters in the Hague to issue a warning to the organization’s chief. And, according to Bustani, Bolton didn’t mince words. “Cheney wants you out,” Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. “We can’t accept your management style.”

Bolton continued, according to Bustani’s recollections: “You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you.”

There was a pause.

“We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.”

(emphasis mine)

Great shades of Elvis.

Their evil and stupidity outstrips my fertile imagination.

Things that Make you go HMMM………

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Here’s another thought though:

The Treasury Department is part of the IC. Yet it never has to come testify to talk about the World Wide Threats that things like tax havens create. Why is that?

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) February 12, 2018

(IC=Intelligence Community)

“The fight against global terror is sacrosanct, but the ability of the rich to dodge taxes in offshore accounts is more sacrosanct,” he said paraphrasing Animal Farm.

Have I Mentioned that the Middle East is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$?

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First, we have an al Qaeda linked group shooting down a Russian jet with a US missile:

Syria’s former al-Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility Saturday for the downing of a Russian warplane in northern Syria, apparently using a surface-to-air missile to target the aircraft.

 The pilot was killed after he ejected and exchanged gunfire with militants on the ground, the Russian Defense Ministry and a monitoring group said.

 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a powerful rebel alliance that publicly split from al-Qaeda last year, said it had used a shoulder-fired weapon to down the Su-25 fighter jet as it flew low over the opposition-held town of Saraqeb.

………

It also raises questions about the source of the apparent “man-portable air-defense system,” or MANPADS, a shoulder-fired weapon for which Syria’s rebels have repeatedly pleaded from their international backers. The United States has been strongly opposed, fearing that antiaircraft weapons could fall into the hands of the country’s extremist groups.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said any allegation that the United States has provided MANPAD missiles in Syria was untrue, and she denied that U.S. equipment was used in shooting down the Russian plane.

Considering the fact that the CIA has been supporting groups that the US military has been attacking, so take that with a grain of salt.

The rather more shocking news today though is that Israel has been conducting airstrikes in the Sinai with the affirmative assent of the Egyptian government:

The jihadists in Egypt’s Northern Sinai had killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, briefly seized a major town and begun setting up armed checkpoints to claim territory. In late 2015, they brought down a Russian passenger jet.

 Egypt appeared unable to stop them, so Israel, alarmed at the threat just over the border, took action.

For more than two years, unmarked Israeli drones, helicopters and jets have carried out a covert air campaign, conducting more than 100 airstrikes inside Egypt, frequently more than once a week — and all with the approval of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

 The remarkable cooperation marks a new stage in the evolution of their singularly fraught relationship. Once enemies in three wars, then antagonists in an uneasy peace, Egypt and Israel are now secret allies in a covert war against a common foe.

The Israeli airstrikes are not that unusual, but the fact that there has been official (though not public)n approval, and not just grudging acknowledgement, of the Egyptian government.

The obvious conclusion here is that the Egyptian Government (particularly el-Sisi) is desperate, which indicates that the government is far less secure than it would like to proclaim.

Terrorists Are Not Daleks

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A real estate developer in New York is, as part of his development deal, building an elevator to the allow the disabled to access the Subway from that stop, neighbors are objecting because they are afraid that terrorist will use the elevator to attack them.

Seriously? Terrorists are going to attack via the subway? And they cannot climb stairs?

To some, the prospect of adding new subway elevators not far from the World Trade Center is a godsend, a desperately needed portal for the disabled to a subway system that is among the least accessible in the nation.

To a group of neighbors who live beside the proposed site, the elevators seem like something else entirely: a hazard a terrorist could turn into shrapnel.

On one side of a growing skirmish on Broad Street in Lower Manhattan are disabled riders, advocates and a real estate developer building the elevators in exchange for being granted permission by the city to add more square footage to the mixed-use building the developer is erecting at 45 Broad Street.

On the other are tenants of nearby buildings like 15 Broad Street, a high-rise designed by the architect Philippe Starck. It is a pocket of the city that has long been under intense security because of its proximity to prime potential targets like the New York Stock Exchange, and critics say the elevators could pose a threat in an area where police and bomb-sniffing dogs routinely check vehicles driving through.

“The idea that people can then ride in on the subway with a bomb or whatever and come straight up in an elevator is awful to me,” said Claudia Ward, who lives in 15 Broad Street and was among a group of neighbors who denounced the plan at a recent meeting of the local community board. “It’s too easy for someone to slip through. And I just don’t want my family and my neighbors to be the collateral on that.”

This, “Is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Terrorists climb stairs, you bloody moron wankers.

Someone on the inside Is Sabotaging These Prosecutions

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It appears that I conflated a 4 month old news story with what happened today.

No acquittal today, the charges against the Malheur terrorists was dismissed because of gross prosecutorial misconduct:

A federal judge in Las Vegas dismissed charges against Cliven Bundy and his sons, Ammon and Ryan, on Monday.

Judge Gloria M. Navarro of Federal District Court, in a ruling from the bench, said that the government’s missteps in withholding evidence against the three Bundy family members and a supporter, Ryan W. Payne, were so grave that the indictment against them would be dismissed.

The decision could be appealed by prosecutors. But they would only be able to bring charges again if they won the appeal and the ruling was reversed — and they then got a new indictment from a new grand jury.

Judge Navarro declared a mistrial last month in the case, stemming from an armed standoff at the Bundy ranch in 2014 that had arisen over land-grazing fees. She said then that prosecutors had erred in failing to turn over important evidence to the defense, including video taken surreptitiously within the ranch during the standoff, and evidence that F.B.I. agents were involved in the incident.

My original thesis stands, “Either the prosecutors are too stupid to cut their own meat, or someone on the inside was sabotaging the prosecution.”

Original article after the break.


Seriously, I’m not sure how they could have could have screwed up their prosecution of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers:

A federal jury on Thursday found Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan Bundy and five co-defendants not guilty of conspiring to prevent federal employees from doing their jobs through intimidation, threat or force during the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

The Bundy brothers and occupiers Jeff Banta and David Fry also were found not guilty of having guns in a federal facility. Kenneth Medenbach was found not guilty of stealing government property, and a hung jury was declared on Ryan Bundy’s charge of theft of FBI surveillance cameras.

Either the prosecutors are too stupid to cut their own meat, or someone on the inside was sabotaging the prosecution.

My money is on the latter.