Blog

35-Year-Old Domestic Terrorist Who Firebombed UC Berkeley and Oakland Federal Building Gets Nearly 20 Years in Prison — Admits He was Inspired by Hamas Attack

35‐year-old Casey Robert Goonan has been sentenced to 235 months — nearly 19.6 years — in federal prison for a string of firebombing attacks targeting UC Berkeley and the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland. The court formally designated him a “domestic terrorist.”

According to the plea agreement, Goonan admitted that in June 2024 he carried out a series of coordinated arsons and attempted firebombings.

On June 1, Goonan placed a bag containing six Molotov cocktails under the fuel tank of a marked University of California Police Department patrol car near the UC Berkeley campus, lit it, and fled. The vehicle caught fire.

On June 11, Goonan traveled to the Oakland federal building, carrying three Molotov cocktails, tried (by throwing rocks) to break windows so he could lob devices inside, but was thwarted by security. Instead, he placed the devices in a planter on the side of the building and lit them.

He also admitted to setting additional fires on the UC Berkeley campus on June 13 and June 16, 2024. In his own statements (as part of the plea), Goonan claimed the attacks were motivated by “despair over Gaza” and that he was inspired by the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. He went further, calling on others to carry out property attacks on Bay Area campuses in solidarity with Palestine.

In addition to roughly 235 months (nearly 20 years) behind bars, the court ordered 15 years of supervised release and $94,267.51 in restitution (plus a special assessment).

Keep reading

From Hunted as One of the Bloodiest Jihadists to UN Delegate: The Transformation of Muhammad Al-Jawlani and the Moral Decline of the International Organization

Muhammad Al-Jawlani, also known as Ahmed al-Sharaa, who in 2017 was designated by the United States as one of the most dangerous jihadists with a reward of up to $10 million for his capture, recently appeared seated at the United Nations General Assembly. This image has sparked outrage and debate.

The photograph, shared on social media, shows Al-Jawlani smiling and conversing with other delegates—a chilling contrast to his past as the leader of the Al-Nusrah Front, a Syrian affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

Al-Jawlani’s story begins in the shadows of the Syrian conflict. In 2013, the UN Security Council designated him a global terrorist for his role in financing, planning, and executing attacks alongside Al-Qaeda.

According to the U.S. State Department, under his leadership, Al-Nusrah carried out multiple suicide bombings in Damascus and other regions of Syria, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians.

His name was linked to sectarian violence that contradicted the aspirations for a democratic Syria, as noted in an official 2013 report.

Keep reading

Car Rolls into Lake After Massachusetts Karen Forgets to Put Car in Park When She Gets Out to Heckle ICE Agents Arresting Illegal

A woman in Upton, Massachusetts forgot to put her car in park when she got out to heckle ICE agents arresting an alleged illegal alien, according to a post by Fox News reporter Bill Melugin.

Melugin posted a photo and video of the woman and her car sent to him by an ICE source.

A voice on the video can heard calling the woman, “Lucy”, presumably a reference to the disaster-prone Lucy Ricardo in the classic 1950s TV series I Love Lucy:

“NEW: An anti-ICE protester in Massachusetts forgot to put her car in park while yelling at agents making an arrest of an illegal alien in Upton, MA, and her vehicle went into a lake and sunk, an ICE source tells me.”

Keep reading

$400 Inflation Refund Checks Now Being Mailed Out to 8.2 Million NY Households

The state of New York will be mailing “inflation refund checks” to 8.2 million households, the governor’s office announced Friday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said that up to $400 checks “will be mailed directly to eligible New Yorkers, with deliveries to continue throughout October and November” and that households do not need to apply, sign up, or take any other action to receive the checks.

According to Hochul’s office, joint tax filers with income up to $150,000 will receive a $400 payment, and joint tax filers with income between $150,001 and $300,000 will receive $300.

Single tax filers who have an income up to $75,000 will get $200, and single tax filers with incomes between $75,000 and $150,000 will get $150, the announcement said.

“Starting today, we’re sending inflation refund checks to over 8 million New Yorkers because it’s simple—this is your money and we’re putting it back in your pockets,” Hochul said in a statement about the checks.

But the check will only be sent if the person filed a New York state resident income tax return, or Form IT-201, reported income within qualifying thresholds, and was not claimed as a dependent for the tax year 2023, the New York Department of Taxation and Finance said.

Keep reading

Britain was wrong to let Jews settle in Palestine and is responsible for decades of ethnic violence including the Gaza war, Labour conference told

Britain should not have let Jews settle in Palestine and is responsible for decades of ethnic violence that followed in the Middle East, the Labour Party conference heard today. 

Dr Victor Kattan claimed that the current bloody conflict in Gaza was ‘made in Britain’ as he campaigned for the UK to apologise and make ‘reparations’ to Palestinian Arabs.

At a fringe event attended by left-wing Labour MPs and peers he said that the period of British rule between 1917 and 1948 before Israel was created had witnessed policies of ‘occupation, repression and partition’.

The Labour politicians, who include Jeremy Corbyn ally John McDonald, are supporting the campaign, ‘Britain owes Palestine’, which demands the UK take responsibility for ‘serial international law violations’ including alleged war crimes committed during what was known as the British Mandate.

It also criticises the UK for the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which set out support for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’.

Dr Kattan told the event in Liverpool that British control of the Middle East ‘violated the legal standards of the time’, with policies that included ‘large-scale demographic engineering, involving the mass immigration of Jewish persons to Palestine, a country which, when Britain occupied it in 1917, was more than 93 per cent Palestinian Arab’.

He added: ‘When the British government, British armed forces left Palestine, the Jewish population constituted 33 per cent of the total population, having grown from less than 5 per cent of the population when Britain had arrived.

‘Throughout those years Britain denied self-government to the Arab majority, suppressed opposition to Zionism violently and then abandoned the country in the summer of 1948 leaving Palestine in a state of chaos and anarchy.’

Keep reading

SHOCKER: Here’s a Detailed List of Over 40 Lies Made By Jim Comey in Private Memos Re: Trump

Notes from Former FBI Head James Comey related to his discussions with President Trump were finally released by the DOJ and FBI last night.

These damning notes follow the release of the DOJ’s IG report less than a week prior that provided evidence that former FBI Head Andrew McCabe lied multiple times, including under oath.  The McCabe report exposed President Obama’s FBI and DOJ as corrupt, dishonest, coordinated and conspiring.  Comey’s notes provide additional support of a very dishonest, conniving and corrupt FBI led by Comey, who set the tone.

L- stands for outright lies

PL – stands for probable lies

Less than a week since the DOJ IG’s report about fired former FBI Head Andrew McCabe, the DOJ and FBI finally released James Comey’s notes as requested by Congress. These notes show a very corrupt, manipulative, conniving and dishonest FBI Director.

Keep reading

Is Health Care a Human Right?

Is there a right to health care? Most libertarians and classical liberals would say “no,” and most progressives are shocked by that answer. For progressives, nothing could be more obvious than that everyone deserves access to health care regardless of their ability to pay. Distributing medical care based on wealth is for dystopian science fiction stories, where the underclass gets back-alley doctors and the ruling class gets sleek, modern hospitals. It doesn’t belong in a civilized society. (For more on this topic, see “Government Makes Healthcare Worse and More Expensive.”)

Thus progressives ask, how can libertarians be so heartless as to not believe in a right to health care?

In this essay, I will try to answer that question. While I might not convince you that there isn’t a right to health care, I hope to at least convey that, whatever a “right” to health care is, it is something fundamentally different from the sort of thing we usually call a “right”—so different, in fact, that we probably shouldn’t be using the same word.

I’ll be narrowly focused on that question. This essay is not about how the free market can solve health care, it’s not arguing that health care isn’t crucial to a flourishing life, and it doesn’t claim that America’s health care system is better than systems where people do have a “right” to health care. It’s only about whether it makes sense to call health care a “right.”

What We Mean When We Say, “Rights”

In October 2017, the National Health Service, Great Britain’s single-payer, socialized healthcare provider, announced that smokers and the obese would be banned from non-urgent surgery indefinitely. According to the Telegraph:

[T]he new rules, drawn up by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in Hertfordshire, say that obese patients “will not get non-urgent surgery until they reduce their weight”…unless the circumstances are exceptional.

The criteria also mean smokers will only be referred for operations if they have stopped smoking for at least eight weeks, with such patients breathalysed before referral.

The policy change understandably received significant criticism and brings to the fore the true meaning of “right” to health care. 

What is a right? Even though “rights talk” permeates our political conversations, most people have never tried to define a right. Sometimes the term is used as a synonym for “important”—thus we hear about a right to clean water, shelter, education, and healthcare, all of which are undoubtedly important.

Yet having a “right” to something means more than that. Saying something is a “right” describes a relationship between individuals. It makes us think about our obligations to each other and the government’s obligations to its citizens. Rather than focusing on what we have rights to, I’d like to focus on the relationships that a “right” creates and the distinction between positive and negative rights.

Rights describe a relationship between at least two people: a rightholder and a duty-holder. If someone has a right, others have a corollary duty. They’re inextricably linked; two sides of the same coin.

Think of a desert island with only Robinson Crusoe, before Friday arrives. Crusoe could tell the trees and the animals that he has a “right” to life, but would it mean anything? A tiger chasing him through the grass is immune to Crusoe’s right-claim. Tigers can’t be duty-holders, so the term “right” does not describe a relationship between Crusoe and the tiger. When Friday arrives, however, Crusoe’s claim that he has a right to life implies something about the relationship between him and Friday. If Crusoe has a right to life, then Friday has a duty not to murder him, and vice versa.

The nature of the corollary duty is what distinguishes positive rights from negative ones. For negative rights, the corollary duty is an omission—that is, duty-holders are required to refrain from doing something, e.g. don’t steal, don’t punch people, don’t kill. For a positive right, the corollary duty is a duty of action—that is, duty-holders are required to affirmatively act, e.g. provide food, provide health care, or provide resources for such things. Understanding this technical, but crucial, difference between positive and negative rights can help us identify four qualities that make them categorically different.

Keep reading

Telegram’s Durov claims French intelligence tried to blackmail him over Moldovan election

Writing on X on Sunday, Durov said the approach came about a year ago, while he was under judicial supervision in France following his arrest at a Paris airport. He claimed that intelligence services contacted him through an intermediary and asked Telegram to remove a number of Moldovan channels before a presidential vote.

According to St Petersburg native Durov, Telegram did delete some flagged channels that clearly violated its own policies. But he said the intermediary later relayed a more troubling message: French intelligence had offered to “say good things” to the judge in charge of his case in exchange for wider cooperation.

“This was unacceptable on several levels,” Durov wrote, adding that if the agency did contact the judge, it would amount to interference in the judicial process — and if it didn’t, it meant exploiting his legal jeopardy to influence political developments abroad.

Durov said that shortly afterward, Telegram received a second list of “problematic” Moldovan channels. Unlike the first batch, he insisted, nearly all of these accounts were legitimate and fully compliant with Telegram’s rules.

Keep reading

Des Moines Public Schools Placed Superintendent, an Illegal Alien Fugitive From Guyana, on PAID LEAVE — Board Chair Begs Public to “Cool Down the Rhetoric”: “Enough with the Name Calling… We are Talking About Human Being”

The scandal rocking Des Moines, Iowa, Public Schools has taken an even darker turn after revelations that Superintendent Dr. Ian Andre Roberts, an illegal alien fugitive from Guyana with a deportation order, was placed on paid leave following his dramatic arrest by ICE agents.

ICE agents on Friday arrested Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Ian Andre Roberts, an illegal alien fugitive from Guyana who had been living under a deportation order since May 2024.

According to Fox News reporter Bill Melugin, Roberts fled from ICE agents in his car once they identified themselves, speeding away before abandoning the vehicle and attempting to escape on foot. He was ultimately found hiding in shrubbery with the assistance of an Iowa State Police K9.

Inside his vehicle, agents recovered a loaded Glock 19 handgun, a fixed-blade hunting knife, and $3,000 in cash. Roberts reportedly has a prior weapons arrest dating back to 2020.

Despite this, Roberts was hired as Superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools in July 2023, after a national search process involving an outside firm.

He was granted a superintendent license by the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners in the same year, with an FBI criminal background check that somehow failed to flag his immigration issues.

Keep reading

Alleged Mormon Church Shooter Identified — 42 Yr-Old Military Vet — Reportedly Has “ANTI-Trump/Pence” Sign on Fence Attached to His Garage

This morning, only moments after the violent attack on churchgoers in Grand Blanc, MI, the Gateway Pundit reported about the incident.

At the time of the incident, very little was known about the gunman who opened fire at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on McCandlish Road.

Early reports claimed that 6-8 victims of the gunman had been taken to the hospital, although the exact toll was not confirmed. Later, it was discovered that one person was killed by the alleged shooter and an additional 8 individuals were taken to the hospital. The church caught fire during the incident, triggering a massive four-alarm emergency response.

At a recent press conference, Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye did not name the shooter, but did say that the suspect of the mass shooting inside the Mormon Church was a 40-year-old man from Burton, MI, a neighboring city just outside Grand Blanc, roughly 60 miles north of Detroit.

Now, it’s been confirmed that the alleged shooter, who was killed by law enforcement, is Thomas Jacob Sandford, a 40-year-old former U.S. Marine who fought in Iraq.

Law enforcement sources confirmed that investigators were stationed outside Sanford’s home on Atherton Road, which has been cordoned off as a crime scene. Property records list Sanford as the owner of both the residence and a 2008 GMC Sierra pickup truck, the same vehicle used to ram into the church during the attack.

The New York Post claims an old Facebook post by Sanford’s mother says the gunman — who died at the scene in a shootout with cops — served in Iraq from 2004-2008.

Law enforcement sources confirmed that Sanford, from nearby Burton, Michigan, is the shooting suspect. Sources told the Post that authorities also found several improvised explosive devices on church property, which a bomb squad was investigating.

The Gateway Pundit looked up the alleged shooter’s home address and found a Trump-Vance sign wedged behind a STOP sign on what appears to be his property, according to records. We verified his address on SmartBackgroundCheck.com and CheckMyVote.org, where we were able to view his voting record. It appears that the alleged shooter registered to vote in the 2018 midterms following Trump’s first presidential election victory in 2016.

Keep reading