Tag: the war of terror

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN skip DOJ whistleblower revealing ‘threat tag’ targeting parents at school board meetings

The media have largely ignored the explosive allegation made by a DOJ whistleblower about the counterterrorism targeting of outraged parents that appears to undercut sworn testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

On Tuesday, a whistleblower revealed the FBI created a “threat tag” to aid in tracking alleged threats against school board officials, teachers, and staff as part of its implementation of a controversial memo issued by Garland last month.

An Oct. 20 internal email from the FBI’s criminal and counterterrorism divisions, released Tuesday by House Republicans, instructed agents to apply the threat tag “EDUOFFICIALS” to all investigations and assessments of threats directed specifically at education officials.

“The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level, and provide an opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective engagement with law enforcement partners at all levels,” the email stated.

The email also directs FBI agents to consider whether the criminal activity being investigated is in violation of federal law and what the potential “motivation” is behind it. 

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After 20 Years of Failure, Kill the TSA

On this day in 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created in a demonstration that the Keystone Kops are always prepared to exploit a crisis. In the ensuing two decades, the TSA has proven itself skilled at harassing travelers and freaking out over pocketknives and water bottles while steadfastly failing at its assigned task of making air transportation any safer. The TSA, in short, is an awful example of government in action.

“On the morning of September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people were killed in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” the TSA summarizes in its official history. “The attacks resulted in the creation of the Transportation Security Administration, designed to prevent similar attacks in the future.”

The TSA launched with the passage of the Aviation and Transportation and Security Act on November 19, 2001. The new law nationalized passenger screening, which previously had been the responsibility of airlines. It’s not clear why anybody saw a need for the TSA, since it’s unlikely that a federal agency would have been any more successful than private contractors at predicting terrorists’ unprecedented use of aircraft as kamikaze weapons. It’s especially unlikely that the federal agency we actually got would have successfully diverted itself from confiscating play-doh to thwarting homicidal fanatics.

“The TSA is failing to defend us against the threat of terrorism,” security expert and frequent TSA critic Bruce Schneier pointed out in 2015. “The only reason they’ve been able to get away with the scam for so long is that there isn’t much of a threat of terrorism to defend against.”

“Terrorists are much rarer than we think, and launching a terrorist plot is much more difficult than we think,” Schneier added. “I understand this conclusion is counterintuitive, and contrary to the fearmongering we hear every day from our political leaders. But it’s what the data shows.”

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US Coverup Of Syria Massacre Shows The Danger Of The Assange Precedent

The New York Times has published a very solid investigative report on a US military coverup of a 2019 massacre in Baghuz, Syria which killed scores of civilians. This would be the second investigative report on civilian-slaughtering US airstrikes by The New York Times in a matter of weeks, and if I were a more conspiracy-minded person I’d say the paper of record appears to have been infiltrated by journalists.

The report contains many significant revelations, including that the US military has been grossly undercounting the numbers of civilians killed in its airstrikes and lying about it to Congress, that special ops forces in Syria have been consistently ordering airstrikes which kill noncombatants with no accountability by exploiting loopholes to get around rules meant to protect civilians, that units which call in such airstrikes are allowed to do their own assessments grading whether the strikes were justified, that the US war machine attempted to obstruct scrutiny of the massacre “at nearly every step” of the way, and that the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations only investigates such incidents when there is “potential for high media attention, concern with outcry from local community/government, concern sensitive images may get out.”

“But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike,” The New York Times reports. “The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified.”

Journalist Aaron Maté has called the incident “one of the US military’s worst massacres and cover-up scandals since My Lai in Vietnam.”

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“Infuriating” Report Reveals “Breathtaking Cover-Up” of US Airstrike That Killed Syrian Civilians

Advocacy groups, human rights defenders, fellow reporters, and other readers of The New York Times were outraged Saturday after journalists Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt published their investigation into a deadly 2019 U.S. airstrike in Syria and all that followed.

“This NYT report on the cover-up of U.S. war crimes in Syria should make your blood boil,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, tweeted Sunday. “The U.S. wantonly kills civilians, covers it up, and then tells other countries how ‘democracy’ works. Infuriating.”

Evan Hill, a journalist on the Times‘ visual investigations team, said that “this is a long, complicated story, but it’s one that touches on nearly every problem with the global U.S. air war. At every attempt, the military tried to cover it up.”

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Sex, Lies, and the FBI

History’s dark sense of humor has now linked the fate of American Muslims, environmental activists, and MAGA protestors who allege the FBI is abusing them to gin up prosecutions. At the heart of the Supreme Court case Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga is the FBI’s effort to maintain a shroud of secrecy over questionable investigative techniques it uses to develop criminal cases. The FBI laughably claims national security would be put in jeopardy if a court forces the bureau to reveal its motives for targeting otherwise innocent Americans to entice criminal behavior. 

The truth—and everyone knows it—is that the FBI wants to avoid public outrage over its dirty tricks.

Fazaga reminds us that FBI abuses follow the winds of politics. As many Americans will recall, the FBI’s focus on American Muslims followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. When fresh cases failed to materialize, the FBI often sent confidential informants to radicalize potential terrorists into future arrestees. The plaintiffs in Fazaga sued the FBI after learning of an FBI informant named Craig Moneilh who allegedly infiltrated an Irvine, California mosque in an effort to radicalize Muslim men and create terrorism cases for the FBI. Among the FBI’s questionable tactics, Moneilh’s FBI handler authorized him to seduce and have sex with Muslim women to surreptitiously create audio recordings of pillow talk for use in the case. 

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DHS Warns of “Anti-Government Extremists” Terrorism Over Possible Upcoming COVID Lockdowns

The Biden administration is again warning of potential threats from terrorists foreign and domestic, saying they could be fueled by anything from the arrival of refugees from Afghanistan to possible new Covid-19 restrictions.

For the remainder of 2021 and into 2022, “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists and anti-government/anti-authority violent extremists will continue to pose a threat” to the US, said a bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday.

Foreign or domestic terrorists have historically targeted crowded venues and “at times caused mass causalities (sic),” the DHS pointed out, noting that the upcoming “dates of religious significance over the next few months” and the continued reopening from pandemic lockdowns “could provide increased targets of opportunity for violence.” However, they rushed to note there are “currently no credible or imminent threats tied to any dates or locations.”

However, if “new public health restrictions” are put in place in the event that a new Covid-19 variant emerges, that could also be potentially used as a “rationale” for violence against the government or public health officials by “anti-government extremists,” the DHS said.

Moreover, some “domestic violent extremists” (DVE) have “attempted to use the relocation of Afghan nationals” to the US to “exacerbate historical DVE grievances over immigration and the American Muslim community,” the bulletin argued.

The DHS also complained about “narratives online” that allegedly promote or advocate violence against “elected officials, political representatives, government facilities, law enforcement, religious communities or commercial facilities, and perceived ideological opponents.”

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Department of Homeland Security Working to “Identify, Respond to Spread of Conspiracy Theories,” Agency Claims

A Department of Homeland Security bulletin indicates the federal agency is concerned with the spread of “conspiracy theories” online.

A press release Wednesday acknowledged DHS is “engaging industry partners to help identify and respond to the spread of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and false narratives on social media and other online platforms, while protecting privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties.”

A corresponding National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletin noted the so-called conspiracy theories are being wielded by bad actors to inspire people to commit violent acts.

“Law enforcement officials have expressed concerns that the broad sharing of false narratives and conspiracy theories that endorse the use of violence will continue to gain traction, resulting in individuals or small groups embracing violent tactics to achieve their desired objectives,” the bulletin stated, at the same time noting there’s currently no specific imminent, credible threat.

“DHS is concerned that increased acts of violence, as well as targeted attacks against law enforcement, may strain local resources and challenge the ability of law enforcement to maintain the safety and security of local communities.”

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Biden crusade against ‘domestic extremism’ spurs thousands of FBI probes, fears of a police state

The FBI currently has 2,700 open investigations of domestic extremism, more than double the usual number of cases, according to counterterrorism officials, underscoring the Biden administration’s accelerated pursuit of what it calls “domestic violent extremists.”

The increase in domestic violent extremism described by the Biden administration is shocking, suggesting that the number of plots and racially-motivated killings attributed to white supremacists has also multiplied. So far, the administration has not presented those sorts of numbers.

The Department of Homeland Security recorded an average of 1,000 investigations into domestic terrorism plots and incidents per year from 2017 through 2019, including approximately 846 arrests of suspected domestic terrorists by the FBI and other agencies, according to a DHS report.

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DHS Begins Releasing Gas on NYC Citizens at 120 Locations in ‘Biological Attack Simulation’

On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security and the Metro Transit Authority began a drill in which government agents will release a gas at over 100 locations to simulate a biological attack on the city. Authorities say the gas is “non-toxic” but will be released in closed spaces underground in the city’s subways system as well as outdoors.

The event, which is being referred to as an “airflow and dispersion study,” runs from October 18 through the 29th. It will simulate the aerosol release of a biological agent in a densely populated urban environment.

The project includes the release of “low concentrations of safe particle and gas tracer materials” as part of two programs, the Urban Threat Dispersion (UTD) program and the Chemical and Bio-defense Testbed (CBT) program, according to the DHS.

“The study will track movement of non-toxic material and the results from these tests will be used to learn more about the relationship between airflow in street level and underground environments,” the MTA said.

While a full list of locations was not made available to residents, a DHS document lists Times Square, Grand Central, Penn Station, Union Square, and the World Trade Center transit hub as sites for tests, with testing both indoors and outdoors.

The DHS claims the particle gas tracers are non-toxic and pose no health risks. The non-toxic substances include salt, glycerol, maltodextrin (sweetener), a fluorescent brightener, non-coding DNA oligos, amorphous silica among others. Sounds real healthy.

Naturally, the idea of government agents spraying the public with “safe gas” has many folks worried. Since these plans have been available for over a week, many folks are worried that they may be used as cover for an actual biological weapons attack. After all, many of the world’s recent attacks have taken place simultaneously with drills or exercises of a similar nature.

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