Tag: the war of terror

Obama to Stump for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan — Having Once Put His Sister-in-Law on a Terror Watchlist!

Barack Obama is preparing to campaign for far-left Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Obama is scheduled to appear alongside El-Sayed in Detroit on October 24 as Democrats battle to retain the Michigan Senate seat against Republican Mike Rogers.

However, court records indicate El-Sayed’s sister-in-law previously sued the federal government over her alleged inclusion on a terrorism watchlist during Obama’s presidency.

Mariam Jukaku, the sister of El-Sayed’s wife, Sarah, participated in two federal lawsuits back in 2016 challenging her placement on the government’s Terrorist Screening Database.

The lawsuits were brought with assistance from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that supports those with ties to Islamism.

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What the UK Terror Law Really Protects

That thou mayest rightly obey power, her bounds know;
Those past, her nature and name is chang’d; to be
Then humble to her is idolatry.
~ John Donne, Satire III

Seven activists smashed their way into an engineering plant at Sandwich, Kent, before dawn on 17 June 2024. Instro Precision, the firm there, manufactures targeting gear for drones. It is a subsidiary of the better-known Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. The prosecution alleges that, once inside, the defendants threw stock to the floor, smashing computers with a crowbar – and puts the damage done inside the factory that morning at more than £1 million. Two days later, a British export licence (Instro Precision Ltd) to Israel was stopped. No one was injured in the raid.

The trial of those seven, plus two more (ten in total were originally charged), is now under way at the Old Bailey. The youngest of the nine is twenty-one, while the oldest is fifty-two, and they are: Nasser Akhtar, Elliot Wilson, Maximillian Dixon, Nirad Abrol, Seirol Davies, Xavi Davies, Eoin O’Meara, Hannah Davidson and Julija Brigadirova. The Crown has charged them with criminal damage, burglary and violent disorder, and the hearing will run for eight weeks. Prosecutors dropped aggravated burglary – the one charge based on intent to injure – before the case reached court. Indeed, over five years and hundreds of actions, Palestine Action has injured no one; MI5’s own Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre found that the group “does not advocate for violence against persons”.

In a report on this on October 1, The Grayzone discussed a secret meeting between the Crown Prosecution Service and senior UK counter-terrorism officers which took place just ten days following the Instro raid. Those heavily redacted documents showed the existence of a so-called “threat matrix” and how authorities are categorising political activity in the UK. For example, “high level aggravated activism” is defined as involving “unlawful behaviour that has… a significant negative impact on UK businesses”. Declassified UK separately reported that when the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre recommended Palestine Action’s proscription in March 2025, it turned its case on a mere three incidents, each said to have caused damage “in excess of £1m”, and actually presented that figure to ministers as evidence of “terrorism”. No mention of violence against a person there.

Instro Precision’s CEO is Dagan Yogev, and he served as a major in the 2006 Israeli assault on Lebanon, after which he held senior posts at Elbit’s headquarters before being appointed head of its Sandwich plant. Palestine Action raided Sandwich because it manufactures the targeting units fitted to drones used in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza as well as its illegal incursions into southern Lebanon.

Palestine Action’s offensive against Elbit has paid off since it closed an Elbit factory at Oldham for good in the years before any terror charge. The same campaign saw the firm retreat from its London headquarters. The state noticed this was biting in 2022, after some £280 million in Ministry of Defence contracts with Elbit had gone up in smoke, and domestic and European suppliers had begun to pull out. Come the Sandwich raid, Elbit was reeling – its factories closing and contracts lost to a movement that the courts had so far been unable to restrain.

The gravest part of all of this is that – as in the earlier Elbit trial – the British press cannot tell you the most sensitive bits, since a reporting restriction has been imposed on the trial, preventing the newspapers – and the jury deciding the case – from knowing that a conviction on any charge could lead to a terrorism sentence. The jurors decide on damage to property, and yet the matter that will determine the nine’s punishment is kept from them. So the UK media are covering the trial this week, but not one of them can report, under the restriction, what a conviction could mean for the defendants.

If section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 defines “serious (damage to property)” as terrorism – then on that one word hinges a world of nuance. Section 69 of the Sentencing Act 2020 is the mechanism that enables a judge to attach such a “terrorist connection”. So is a broken window just minor criminal damage and a matter for a magistrates’ court, or does it become a “serious” matter and possibly an act of terror to be tried at Crown Court? We have seen this playbook before, in the Filton case, in June of this year. The machinery ran all the way to sentence when a Woolwich jury convicted four Palestine Action activists of criminal damage for the raid on Elbit’s Bristol factory, and Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson then ruled under section 69 that the damage carried that “terrorist connection” – making legal history as the first occasion on which such a finding has been attached to the breaking of property.

Once that unprecedented, some would say authoritarian ruling stood, the sentences rose as high as eight years, with fifteen-year notification requirements imposed. The nine Instro defendants are currently facing that same finding, despite it having been declined in an earlier case by a judge who found the circumstances of a wrecked Barclays branch in Burnley “significant” but short of “serious”; though crucially the principle itself survived his decision.

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AG Todd Blanche Releases Explosive Report Exposing Merrick Garland’s Weaponization of Government Against School Parents and Efforts to Label Them ‘Domestic Terrorists’ and Arrest Them!

Attorney General Todd Blanche released an explosive report on Monday exposing former AG Merrick Garland’s weaponization against parents of school children.

The title itself should send a chill down your spine. This is something straight out of the Marxist handbook!

AG Todd Blanche wrote on X:

Todd Blanche:  Five years ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued an infamous memorandum at the urging of the National School Boards Association and White House officials, directing the FBI and United States Attorneys to consider looking for a federal hook to prosecute parents exercising their right to free speech.

Today, we are releasing the “Report to Expose the Weaponization of Government Against Parents in Schools” which details Weaponization of the Department against these parents — from attempting to get the National Security Division involved to ignoring repeated warnings from employees that leadership’s actions could be unconstitutional.

Along with the report, we’ve released hundreds of exhibits and emails that make official and verify what many Americans had guessed: the Garland DOJ worked hand in hand with WH officials and the National School Boards Association to chill free speech and parental rights while they threatened to prosecute parents and label them domestic terrorists. 

Here is a copy of the report, titled: The 2026 Report to Expose the Weaponization of Government Against Parents in Schools

The report is 273 pages long including 250 pages of exhibits and emails that confirm Attorney General Merrick Garland worked with the Biden White House to chill free speech and parents rights.

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Department of Energy employee arrested for allegedly trying to provide material support to Houthis

Federal authorities arrested a Department of Energy employee Thursday in Washington state for allegedly trying to provide material support to the foreign terrorist organization, the Houthis.

Ashton Hamed Ellaboudy has been charged with attempting to provide material support or resources to the Houthis after he allegedly purchased precursor chemicals for homemade explosive devices and provided guidance to an undercover FBI source.

Court records alleged Ellaboudy traveled to Oman in 2024, before crossing the border into Houthi-occupied Yemen. He allegedly told U.S. officials upon his return that he traveled to the Middle East on official government business, but Ellaboudy’s supervisor said he did not have authorized official government travel to that region. 

“A U.S. government employee traveled overseas and used his specialized expertise in an attempt to aid the Houthis, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization backed by Iran,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said. 

“Additionally, Ellaboudy acquired materials for the construction of explosive material and drones capable of delivering these explosives,” he continued. “These allegations are so deeply disturbing that they almost defy imagination.”

The Justice Department claimed that an investigation found Ellaboudy communicated with an FBI confidential human source who claimed to work for a Houthi “Colonel” to acquire communications equipment that would be sent to Yemen for use in a mobile communications center. 

Ellaboudy provided expert advice and assistance to the individual, based upon his background in electrical engineering, by helping them test and modify solar power generators and communication equipment.

He also provided guidance on how the power and communication systems integrated, provided schematics and diagrams for the proper setup of the systems and provided information on other equipment that could enhance the communication equipment of the Houthis.

Ellaboudy has not entered a plea yet and is expected to appear before a federal magistrate judge on Friday. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

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This Group Made Tech to Protect Users’ Privacy. Trump Labeled Them Terrorists.

When the government puts a target on your back, every corner of online organizing becomes a puzzle. How do you ensure that your emails are private, when Google will hand over the contents of your emails to prosecutors, sometimes without ever notifying you? How do you keep your comrades informed, when maintaining an email list poses a security risk? How do you share information online without compromising the security of your web visitors?

Until September 6, the Autistici/Inventati (A/I) Collective provided privacy-focused digital infrastructure that allowed aligned groups around the world to evade government surveillance. Under siege, groups from Hamas to the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair sought refuge from the prying eyes of three-letter agencies through the use of A/I Collective email addresses, websites, mailing lists, and blogs. The users of A/I Collective technology were no strangers to the United States counterterrorism apparatus, but on August 26, 2026, the Trump administration took the unusual escalatory step of listing the technology provider itself as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization.

Legal uncertainty and disruption ensued immediately after the designation. The sanctions framework maps far more cleanly onto groups directly engaged in violence than it does onto a group providing anti-surveillance technology. Under the post-9/11 executive order establishing the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list, fundraising for ISIS or holding joint press conferences with al-Qaeda is verboten. But could posting on blogs hosted by the A/I Collective trigger a $1 million fine and 20 years of imprisonment? Official communications provide little assistance; the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control FAQ unhelpfully states that the exchange of information may be either blocked or exempt.

In a press release, the State Department pointed to the A/I Collective’s vetting of users for “ideological affinity,” folding the targeting of the organization into the enforcement of Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which has initiated a crackdown on the global left. Civil society groups immediately noted the escalation into targeting not only those accused of violence, but their purported backers. “The designation of A/I Collective is significant because Treasury is applying counterterrorism sanctions not only to organizations it alleges engage directly in violence, but also to entities it characterizes as providing enabling infrastructure to designated or terrorist-linked groups…[G]roups and individuals that rely on the A/I Collective’s infrastructure may now need to assess whether continued use creates sanctions exposure,” wrote the Charity & Security Network, a coalition that has helped nonprofits navigate sanctions risk since 2009.

While users of A/I Collective services struggled to interpret the sanctions, the hammer came down immediately on the volunteer collective. Within 48 hours of the designation, the United States-based holder of the autistici.org domain shuttered the website, leaving A/I Collective to flee to an alternate domain. The Italian Banca Etica suspended the bank account the volunteer collective used to collect donations, citing sanctions risk. Backed into a corner, with no way to protect users and collect the donations needed to fund its €13,000 annual budget, the A/I Collective announced the shutdown of all of its services on September 6, 2026. In a statement, the A/I Collective wrote: “The possibility that our work may cause legal and financial consequences to those who are close to us — or even only have something to do with us — leaves us no choice.” On September 20, an estimated 10,000 NoBlogs sites went dark, stranding the radical activists who used the A/I Collective-hosted blogging platform to share everything from zines to direct-action tactical communiques.

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Biden’s Counterterrorism Director During Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal Running for NY House Seat

A national security expert is calling on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-endorsed Democrat congressional candidate Cait Conley to account for her record in the Biden administration when Iranian support for Hamas increased, terrorism intensified in the Middle East, and antisemitic incidents reached record levels in the United States.

Conley, the Democrat challenging Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in New York’s 17th Congressional District, served as the Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council (NSC) from April 2021 to March 2023. Conley states that it was her job to “counter Middle East terrorism, and non-state actor threats.” She was also responsible for countering the “domestic and global use of emerging technologies.”

Her tenure at the NSC also coincided with the Biden administration’s August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Fox News reported that the administration’s evacuation plan “has been faulted for failing to anticipate the swift collapse of Afghanistan’s government” and for “not ensuring adequate security precautions for U.S. service members and citizens against terror threats.”

The withdrawal culminated in a terrorist attack outside Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghans. Fox News also reported that Conley has not commented publicly on the withdrawal since launching her congressional campaign. That silence mirrors Biden’s own omission of the 13 fallen service members from his 2022 State of the Union address.

During Conley’s time at the NSC, Iranian financial support for Hamas increased.

Iran’s cash flows to Hamas spiked following the May 2021 conflict, which occurred during Conley’s tenure at the National Security Council. In early 2022, Hamas’s leader said Iran had provided the group with $70 million to develop missiles and defense systems, while Israeli sources said Iran increased its overall funding to Hamas from $100 million to $350 million per year in 2022.

Across the Middle East, there was also a “relatively steady increase in the number of incidents and fatalities” from October 2022 to October 2023, culminating with the October 7 attack which occurred shortly after Conley left her NSC post.

Antisemitic incidents in the United States also rose sharply while Conley was at the NSC.

The Anti-Defamation League recorded 3,697 antisemitic incidents in 2022, up 36 percent from 2,717 in 2021. At the time, it was the highest number recorded since the organization began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979.

The number continued to rise in 2023 when the ADL recorded 8,873 incidents, a 140 percent increase from 2022.

Iran unveiled its Shahed-136 drone in December 2021 while Conley was serving at the NSC, where her responsibilities included countering the domestic and global use of emerging technologies.

The drone has since become a “fixture of modern warfare” and is “central to Iran’s retaliation strategy against the U.S. and its regional allies” including Israel. Despite the use of Patriot defense missiles against the drones, “many” of the Shahed drones “have still managed to hit their targets.”

The threat continued into March 2026, when Iran announced that their Shahed-136 drones destroyed a U.S. E-3 AWACS surveillance aircraft and damaged multiple refueling tankers, amounting to over $1.3 million in losses.

CNN military analyst and former U.S. Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton called the loss of the surveillance aircraft a “serious blow to [U.S.] surveillance capabilities.” A Center for a New American Security report described the AWACS as the “‘quarterback’ of the battlefield” and an “indispensable asset for U.S. military operations.”

Conley is also backed by J Street, which said following a House vote that there is “broad agreement” among Democrats that the United States should take a “fundamentally different American approach” to its relationship with Israel. J Street has expressed support for members who voted for an amendment that would cut off U.S. aid to Israel.

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) and democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have endorsed Conley; both representatives had voted for the amendment to halt aid to Israel.

Conley has not said whether she would have joined Ryan and Ocasio-Cortez in voting for the measure.

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After 9/11, the ‘War on Terror’ Was a War of Terror

Three days after terrorists killed almost 3,000 people in the United States on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush stood behind a pulpit at the Washington National Cathedral and spoke to a nation in shock. “Our responsibility to history is already clear,” he proclaimed, “to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.” The vow was, of course, preposterous. Yet the “war on terror” that followed was scarcely more realistic.

“Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic,” retired US Army General William Odom told C-SPAN viewers in 2002. “It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism.” But the American military crusade became more about persisting than winning. The ultraviolent momentum became its own reason. The destructive search for enemies created more. As years went by and the “war on terror” label faded, US warfare was so normal in so many places that it no longer needed a name or much of a rationale.

But 25 years ago, the impulse to avenge the horrors of 9/11 was instant. Fear and rage blended into high octane for war machinery. Suddenly, overwhelming public emotions were fully in sync with the psychology of a military-industrial complex set for large-scale killing.

None of the 19 hijackers were Afghan, and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s ties were much tighter with Saudi Arabia, but his presence in Afghanistan put that country in the Pentagon’s gunsights. The question in US media was not about whether, but when, to attack. The answer came on October 7 when American missiles began to explode in Afghanistan. Hours later, a Gallup poll found that “90 percent of Americans approve of the United States taking such military action, while just 5 percent are opposed, and another 5 percent are unsure.”

The air war remained quite popular in the United States. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held daily live televised briefings that catapulted him to national adulation. A pattern set in, taking for granted that American warfare was beneficent in intent and benign in meaningful impact. People dying under American bombs and less directly didn’t count for much. “The targeting capabilities, and the care that goes into targeting, to see that the precise targets are struck, and that other targets are not struck, is as impressive as anything anyone could see,” Rumsfeld asserted. And he added, “The weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of.”

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How Romania Came To Host A Post-9/11 CIA Black Site & Got US Cash Bonanza

Ammar al-Baluchi remembers the cold most of all. Held nearly naked in a cell lit around the clock by fluorescent bulbs, he referred to his detention “as if I was living in a refrigerator”.

The nephew of self-declared 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Baluchi was one of six to a dozen men believed to be held and tortured in a secret CIA prison in Bucharest between 2003 and 2005. The treatment of detainees at the facility, formally known as “Detention Site Black”, is described in detail in Guantanamo court filings.

Solitary confinement under lights that never switched off, sleep deprivation that at times meant being forced to stand shackled for days, repeated dousing with icy water, and forced shaving and physical handling that interrogators euphemistically logged as “attention grasps” and “facial holds” were common practice.

A photo released by Baluchi’s lawyers to the press in 2024 shows him stripped naked and photographed. It is believed to be the first published image – of tens of thousands – of a “war on terror” detainee in a CIA black site.

“We know they were tortured horrifically,” Ben Keith, a British barrister representing Baluchi outside the US, told Middle East Eye. “It’s not always possible to say which bit of torture took place because they were tortured for days and weeks, but you don’t detain somebody in a black site with the purpose of just talking to them.”

A quarter-century after the 9/11 attacks, which triggered the so-called “war on terror” and devastating US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that directly killed at least 940,000 people, a US military judge has finally set a trial date for Baluchi: 5 June 2028.

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama ruled this month that the case against Mohammed, Baluchi, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi will begin on that date.

Schrama is the fifth military judge to preside over a case that has been trapped for more than a decade in disputes over evidence, national security secrecy and, above all, whether confessions obtained under torture before the men ever reached Guantanamo can be used at trial.

That question runs directly through a basement in Bucharest, where the accused are believed to have been detained and tortured.

In April 2025, a Guantanamo military judge ruled that statements Baluchi gave the FBI in 2007 were involuntary and inadmissible, tainted by what the court called torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment inflicted on him in CIA custody, including in Romania.

The judge found that Guantanamo’s “modestly changed confinement circumstances” had not been enough to remove the “lingering taint” of what happened before he arrived there.

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The Post 9/11 Era: 25 Years of Revisionist History and Imperial Terrorism

Around this time of year we are told to “Never Forget”. To never forget the tragedy of the over 2,977 people who lost their lives on that fateful Tuesday morning on September 11, 2001. And yet, for the astute observer, the slogan “Never Forget” rings hollow. For a quarter of a century the phrase has been used as a propaganda tool to promote constant war, excessive government overreach, and blatant racism.

We are told to never forget, while the commemoration of the attacks are used as convenient cover to purposefully obfuscate the historical record and induce a collective amnesia as to forget the most pivotal inconvenient truths.

Never forget the nearly 3000 people who died that day, but definitely make sure you forget that roughly three times that many people have died in the years since due to exposure to toxins after New York City officials deliberately lied to the public when they assured them that the air was safe to breathe.

Definitely make sure you forget the estimated 4.5 million people that have been senselessly murdered and another 38 million displaced as a result of the so called “War on Terror” (war of terror) waged in the years sense.

Pay no mind to the fact that for two and a half decades afterwards, the national security state ushered in under post 9/11 emergency powers has trampled on every civil liberty and constitutional protection we have.

Totally disregard the numerous whistleblowers that have come forward in the years since refuting the official story.

Certainly forget that over two decades of study conducted by hundreds of architects, engineers, and other reputable scientists has conclusively debunked the official narrative and determined that the World Trade Center collapsed as a result of controlled demolition.

Don’t bring up the fact that declassified internal documents prove that US officials were aware of, and covered up, the fact that several of the hijackers were aided by Saudi intelligence, or that released court documents show at least two of the hijackers were confirmed to be Saudi-managed CIA assets.

And no matter what you do, make sure to completely ignore the fact that operatives of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad were arrested shortly after the attacks and found to have had advanced knowledge of it taking place as evidenced by their admissions of being tasked with documenting the event.

In short, the real message behind the slogan is “Never Forget the tragedy, but only remember what we want you to. Always forget how and why it happened, and what occurred afterwards.”

The how, and the why, and the what came after can generally be summed up with one word. Imperialism. To truly understand 9/11 in its broader scope, how it came about, and its destructive ramifications thereafter, one has to understand the nature of US imperialism.

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US War on Terror in 76 Countries Cost $6.5 Trillion

A US study published earlier this week revealed that the United States’ war on terrorism has cost $6.5 trillion, reported The National magazine based on report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

The ongoing war on terror began in October 2001, a month after the September 11 attacks in the US.

US President Donald Trump revealed in one of his tweets that his country has spent 7 trillion dollars on the Middle East alone.

Estimates predict that US loans to fund the war will result in an 8 trillion dollar debt by 2025.

The number of countries involved in the war has reached 76 or 39 percent of the countries in the world. The tally also lists regions where US forces are deployed on the ground, such as Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. It also lists where American advisors are training local forces on counter-terrorism methods.

Experts said there are currently no real discussions in the United States on the cost of the war due to the nature of the conflict that lacks no stable fronts or boundaries.

A map presented by the study of the 76 countries linked to the war raised questions over the effectiveness of Washington’s approach on the conflict. They explained that the approach has turned many major cities into rubble and forced the displacement of millions of people, which has destabilized many host countries.

The map also showed the extent in which terrorist groups have spread across the world, turning the conflict against extremists into a worldwide phenomenon. The conflict stretches from as far as Southeast Asia, the Philippines, passes through the Middle East and reaches North Africa and Niger in the west of the continent.

The National said that the ongoing US war on Afghanistan is the longest in American history and it is predicted to go on even longer, especially under Trump’s administration. The current president had unveiled a national defense strategy two months ago in which he agreed to send more troops to Kabul and increase airstrikes against terrorist groups, including the Taliban.

The magazine said that the situation in Afghanistan indicates that the war will continue for a long time and it will extend beyond the country’s borders. A US Secretary of Defense report spoke of some 20 terrorist and radical groups operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The National traced back the beginnings of the war on terror. It said that the US initially launched the war by attacking Afghanistan in order to eliminate Taliban, which had great control over the country. The beginning of the war seemed promising and American forces were able to make advances in Kabul. The Taliban had incurred enough defeats that its fighters had asked US troops to allow them to lay down their arms and return to their homes.

This initial success led senior officials in the administration of then President George W. Bush to raise their expectations and ambitions. Bush and his Vice President Donald Rumsfeld then believed that there was a need to extend this success in countering terrorism to 60 other countries.

At the time, Washington saw the war on terror as being restricted to one country at a time. It then began preparing for extending this war, setting Iraq as its next target.

The war led to the toppling of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but the National said that the US had not only intended for his ouster, but it had also set its sights on the country’s oil wealth.

A British official, who was close to the Bush administration at the time, was quoted by the magazine as saying: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad, but real men want to go to Tehran.”

He implied that the US invasion of Iraq was not really aimed at combating terrorism, but its real target was Iraq’s oil and Washington should have shifted its attention to Iran, which had transformed into an extremist state after the 1978 Khomeini revolution.

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