As mentioned yesterday, the state of the debate on drone use is zero. There is no debate, none is allowed. While you don’t have to go three yards in the grass roots web media to hear one, all the very important people and the US government cannot be influenced by it.
Yet despite the testy exchanges and the theatrical protests [by Code Pink ladies who were ejected], it’s worth noting that not a single senator said he or she opposed targeted killings. It was perhaps a recognition that drones are here to stay—a permanent part of America’s hi-tech 21st-century arsenal. Indeed, instead of a dramatic moral showdown, the hearing showcased evidence that Congress and the Obama administration could be moving toward pragmatic compromises …
Consider the lethal targeting of Anwar al Awlaki, the American citizen and al Qaeda member who was killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. Awlaki was actually placed on the kill list before the Justice Department had finished its opinion, though Obama’s lawyers had already weighed in orally. As for due process, it was far more informal than anything Feinstein envisions. One example: before State Department legal adviser Harold Koh was willing to give his blessing to the deliberate killing of an American, even one who had joined an enemy force, he wanted to scrutinize the intelligence himself. So in March 2010, he holed up in a secure room in the State Department and pored over hundreds of pages of classified reports detailing Awlaki’s alleged involvement in terror plots. Koh had set his own standard to justify the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen: he felt that Awlaki would have to be shown to be “evil,??? with iron-clad intelligence to prove it. After absorbing the chilling intel, which included multiple bombing plots and elaborate plans to attack Americans with ricin and cyanide, Koh concluded that Awlaki was not just evil; he was “satanic.???
In one paragraph, the meretricious rationalization cited yesterday, the line of allegation always used to steamroll thoughtful discussion:
Technology has advanced so far, the little tribes of really poor people, even single individuals, can develop weapons of mass destruction.
In this case, the old boogieman, Anwar al-Alaki — now dead, elevated to “satanic power,” out in the desert wastes of Yemen, virtually dead broke and without any infrastructure, allegedly capable of making a ricin WMD.
Castor seeds, which are where one gets ricin, cannot make a weapon of mass destruction. Indeed, no one has ever made a WMD from ricin, or even made a convincing stab at one.
Yet these are the types of horrendous distortions, now used as received wisdom, for the virtual justification of pre-emptive attacks in the desperate and destitute places of the world.
AN internet geek from Burnley who was caught with an Al-Qaeda manual and the Anarchist’s Cookbook has been told he should spend less time online.
But Mr Justice Fulford, sitting at the Old Bailey, ruled that Niall Florence, 21, was not a terrorist but a ‘young and naive computer addict’.
Florence was auctioning off copies of the Anarchist’s Cookbook, the infamous 1971 guide to bomb-making, lock-picking and credit card fraud, on the e-Bay website.
And he sold 25 copies, at £1 each, before police swooped on his parents’ home in St Cuthbert’s Street in December 2011 …
Police also found an Al Qaeda jihadist training manual, during the raid, and instructions on how to make the poison ricin.
Florence was about eleven years old when the original suspects in the London ricin trial were arrested.
Florence received a suspended sentence on convictions for “collecting a record of information for terrorist purposes and one count of disseminating terrorist publications.”
The judge admitted he recognized Florence was not a terrorist and “posed no threat to the public.”
Soligenix stock was on the rise again Tuesday, a day after it gained more than 14 per cent when it said it will submit a proposal for a potential multi-million dollar contract to develop its radiation therapy, OrbeShield.
Its stock closed at 80 cents on Monday, and was lately up by more than 11 per cent, changing hands at around 89 cents as of 1:25pm ET.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) has called on the company to submit a full proposal for a potential multi-year, multi-million dollar contract to develop OrbeShield.
Ever since the beginning of the war on terror, Soligenix — once known as DOR Biopharma, has been kept alive solely by bioterror defense funding, most notably for a ricin vaccine. It has also been peddling its anti-radiation sickness nostrums, always called Orbesomethings, for the same period of time.
The company has never brought anything to market. In 2012 its stock fell into virtual worthlessness. Since then it has been kept alive by a value pumping maneuver (a reverse stock split that took 20 shares, then valued at a nickel a piece, and condensed them into one worth about eighty cents) and parasitic attachment to another biodefense funding stream.
Soligenix — from the archives. Keynsian job program digging holes and filling them back in. Or high button welfare workfare for a handful of lousy scientists? You decide.
Brought to you by the WhiteManistan Bureau of Tourism and Shopping.
You’ll never go broke pandering to the worst in America. Or, it never ceases to surprise how far one can get with so little up top. Half a million views, “recommended” by YouTube after play of the anthem I specifically wrote for them, “Suck on My Machine Gun.”
Reminding everyone that the “it” gift this past Xmas was an AR-15 and boxes of ammo.
The big news in the mainstream was Alex Jones on CNN during the Orange Bowl, the only mitigating factor being that the TV audience was primarily on football.
Jones, like Ted Nugent, is an IQ test that works on many levels. If you deal with him, you flunk. If you go on his show, the same.
CNN’s Piers Morgan hosted noted radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to discuss his petition to deport Morgan because of his views on gun control. Jones is a 9/11 truther who has a history of inflammatory and baseless remarks … Jones’ lengthy history of pushing absurd conspiracy theories should disqualify him from being mainstreamed on media outlets such as CNN.
“They are mass-producing ricin powder for trans-shipment into the United States,” says McAfee. “This is not a joke.”
“They are manufacturing it by the ton,” McAfee insists. A kilogram of it, dispensed over New York, will kill everyone, he tells Jones. “[They’re making] enough to kill every man, woman and child on the planet.”
“If there is a rye-a-sin attack, the government will take my guns and squeeze my wife’s breast,” Jones tell McAfee. “If this happens, you sir will be a key person.”
John McAfee, however, did not count on the greater news impact of Jones going off on CNN in primetime. The big time lunatic trumped the millionaire ex-antivirus king and pathological liar.
At McAfee Associates, this morning, more hair is being pulled out, more molars ground.
Lots of journalism on terrorism qualifies only as nuisance reporting. It’s purpose is to either titillate an audience, pitch the journalist’s faux bravura, or both. Nuisance journalism has no relationship with reality.
If groups have supporters overseas, then the internet allows communities all over the world with similar goals to unite and share knowledge – it enables, for example, far-Right White Power groups in the US to give online weapons training to their colleagues in the UK. It was this sort of online advice that led father and son extremists Ian and Nick Davidson (aka “The Aryan Strike Force???) to manufacture the poison gas Ricin in their kitchen.
Taking their lead from US groups, and working from Terror manuals produced in the USA, the Davidsons managed to not simply manufacture the gas, but also they were able to home make explosives, recruit a network of almost 350 like-minded people and plan attacks on Blacks, Muslims, Asians and Jews. They funded their activities by selling Nazi-themed mouse mats and key rings.
Ricin is not a poison gas. And the “recipes” on it, as simplistic as they are on the Internet, do not even state that.
“Thus, the internet has made terror much easier,” concludes the Telegraph piece by Wllard Foxton, “an investigative journalist & television producer [who] writes on skulduggery wherever he finds it, especially in the world of technology.”
Foxton gets the name wrong of the Brit neo-Nazi in this case — it was the father/son team of Ian and Nicky Davison.
A thorough reporting job, by a UK newspaper, is here, in the rather cleverly entitled, “Keyboard warriors, or threat to the republic?”
What the two produced was an unrefined mixture of ricin and liquid in a jar. The case revealed it had been made in 2006 and stored in a jam jar for four years.
“It is thought the ricin had been produced in 2006 and had remained undisturbed in Davison’s kitchen ever since,” reads the newspaper report. “Although it was fairly crude and had not undergone the purification necessary to turn it into an effective weapon …”
In the kitchen.
Castor powder mess, including ricin, in a jar. Does it look like an easily made poison gas to you?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports two of the members of the gang will likely go to trial. Two have already accepted pleas on conspiring to acquire weapons and silencers.
Lawyers representing Ray Adams, 55, and Samuel Crump, 68, gave no indication at Tuesday’s federal court hearing whether they would seek a plea deal weeks after the two other men charged in the plot pleaded guilty to weapons charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Adams and Crump are charged with conspiring and attempting to make a biological toxin called ricin.
Adams’ attorney Barry Lombardo said “no, no, no” when asked if his client is pursuing a plea deal. Crump’s lawyer Dan Summer declined to comment …
A ricin conviction sends them to jail for a long time.
The Georgia Ricin Beans Gang was too incompetent to make ricin. And any notional plan to push castor powder out of a car speeding along the highway was laughable. In no way would it have worked.
However, the paradox is a tough one. No one ever walks in the US on a ricin charge, no matter how incapable or foolish they are.
No American defense lawyers have ever been able to argue such a case and win before a jury. While it has been done one time in England, it would be an eye-opening first here.
Crump had memorized the recipe for the poison, prosecutors said, and Adams had the know-how to make it as a former government lab technician. The men were arrested just days after authorities say they discovered evidence they were trying to extract ricin from castor beans at Adams’ north Georgia home.
The attorneys for the two men, though, have said the government’s charges are overblown.
“The government doesn’t have a strong case. Surely there was talk about ricin, but it was ridiculous,” Summer said at an earlier court hearing. “It was like an old man in the stages of senility talking out of the side of his mouth.”
Yes, it certainly was ridiculous. However, thanks to the war on terror, such a fact will likely be disregarded.
Five miles from the nearest paved road, on a compound surrounded by barbed wire in a desolate area of Osceola County, investigators say, Marcus Faella was preparing his troops for war.
Race war.
Faella — who sees himself and his compatriots as “protectors of the white race” — was convinced it was “inevitable” and planned to kill Jews, immigrants and minorities, according to a recently filed affidavit. As they trained in firearm and hand-to-hand combat, members of the white-supremacist group American Front discussed acts of violence and disruption with targets including Orlando’s City Hall, authorities allege.
They also discussed manufacturing ricin …
Another suspect, Richard “Swamp Nazi” Stockdale of St. Cloud, had been painting the house with Brooks but left before officers arrived. Stockdale, 23, has a red-white-blue Confederate flag tattooed around his neck. Anyone who sees him is asked to call Crimeline …
Stockdale was sentenced to more than a year in prison on battery charges in October 2008. Investigators said he attacked a Hispanic high-school student at a party, beating the teen repeatedly while chanting “white power.”
You really have to click the link to see all the mug shots, not only entertaining on an abstract level, but which also decisively answer the question: “Do you think white people with hideous tatts on their faces know how to ‘manufacture’ ricin?”
Now, if they’d just been a little less ragingly anti-social and had a good agent, they might have been able to sell themselves to a minor cable network as a reality show.
The US military, through a West Point terrorism training school, released documents seized during the Osama bin Laden raid, a year ago this week. Readers know that despite the formidable achievement, for which the President deserves a great deal of credit, there has been no bin Laden dividend. The 99 percent has seen no benefit from his killing. The war, if anything, has accelerated with more drone assassinations and special operations work.
The original No-Prize was invented by Stan Lee of Marvel Comics. It was a way to say ‘atta-boy,’ a symbolic air prize totally without worth. And that’s the bin Laden doc release by the US government.
At the time of the raid the media, fed by government minders, dutifully reported that a “trove” of materials had been seized in the bin Laden compound.
Physically, perhaps it was true. However, the released of 17 declassified documents today, constituting over 170 pages of translated-into-English letters is a dud.
They are not particularly interesting. For example, in document “SOCOM-2012-0000004T” there is much trivial discussion on which media outlets in the US should get al Qaeda’s propaganda messages for the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Fox News is written off.
“[CNN] seems to be in cooperation with the government more than the others (with the exception of Fox News),” the letter reads, penned by American-turned al Qaeda man Adam Gadahn to bin Laden. The Arabic version of CNN, he writes, is somewhat better.
In the end Gadahn makes the recommendation that every news channel receive a copy of Ayman Zawahiri’s 9/11 anniversary speech.
“Except for Fox News, let her die in her anger.” It is inadvertently funny.
Gadahn also recommends a few journalists by name — all them of seemingly cocked up in some interesting way.
There is “Brian Russ” — he means ABC’s Brian Ross. And “Simon Hirsh,” presumably Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh.
I leave only a picture for readers to determine why this is hilarious.
Were bin Laden and Adam Gadahn fans of re-runs of My Mother the Car? It is hard to know.
The other observation to be made is that being the preferred journalists of al Qaeda is like getting a recommendation from a colony of flesh-eating bacteria.
The remote possibility exists that some of the material has been doctored by the US government for the express purpose of humiliation.
Readers can zip out to Cryptome here, to see for themselves. But it’s mostly rancid old mutton, passed off as veal for a day or two in the mainstream media.
It shows again how short al Qaeda was on talent. It just adds to the picture that over a decade of war history had passed bin Laden and his terror men by.
Last year the picture was of bin Laden, alone in his compound, writing letters to his minions, missives ignored. Much like Hitler in the Fuhrer bunker near the end, moving formations that no longer existed on a room’s map table, no one daring to point out the obvious.
There are big differences, of course. In the grand scheme of history, Hitler still makes bin Laden look like a piker.
In sharp contrast, many Americans still know some of the famous names of US generals from WWII. Movies were made about them.
Nobody down ladder knows the names of the men who killed bin Laden. They may know the name of the dog on the mission — Cairo — because it was convenient publicity.
Americans can’t name the commanding generals in any of the theaters of war where there is action against al Qaeda or the Taliban. And they will never be able to do so because no one cares.
Glorious memorable movies will not be made. The war will go on, somewhere, always.
This is the way the military machine has made things. If there are any men or women of stature among them aghast at the length of the conflict and how millions upon millions of their countrymen have been economically disenfranchised and cast into ruin on the home front while they have continued to meaninglessly fight on, we will never hear it.
The nation’s top military officer told Harvard’s Kennedy School Thursday that despite the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the exit of longtime dictators from the world stage, and no mortal enemy in the form of a nation-state the United States is more vulnerable.
Army General Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told students at a forum on the Cambridge campus that even though the world appears to enjoy greater stability and interdependence, threats looming beneath the surface — from cyber warfare to the proliferation of long-range missiles — actually place American security at greater risk.
“The truth is, I believe I am chairman at a time that seems less dangerous but is actually more dangerous,??? Dempsey said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. “That’s the essence of what I like to call the security paradox.???
Dempsey, who took on the role as top military adviser to President Obama last fall, has been criticized for asserting that the international scene poses greater harm than at any time in his lifetime – even the Cold War when the destruction of much of humanity loomed as a possible consequence of the nuclear standoff between superpowers.
A week from now no readers will remember this man’s name, only that yet another bit of exaggerated insane trash was passed off as wisdom from an expert.
We do not need or train good military leaders. They are only needed to ensure the machine continues to grind.
Why this blog exists
A scholarly report issued by the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State entitled Carnage Interrupted: An Analysis of Fifteen Terrorist Plots Against Public Surface Transportation cites yours truly in the footnotes.
This is because I did primary research on the infamous London ricin plot.
The report, written by Brian Michaal Jenkins, a counter-terror expert and former Green Beret covers it, although under the label — Heathrow Express Ricin Plot.
“The trial of the defendants did not establish any link to al Qaeda or Zarqawi,” writes Jenkins. “Since all but one of the nine held for trial were acquitted, we can only speculate that at least some of them may have thought as part of the global jihadist enterprise.”
Or maybe not. For the text Jenkins eschews the political dimension of the case — which was its primary reason for being in the news in the first place.
The castor beans seized in no way could have been made into a WMD, or even a weapon that would have killed many. Jenkins grasps this.
In a reaction to a Scotland Yard officer’s claim that it “was going to be our 9/11,” Jenkins writes:
“This was a gross exaggeration of what was a terrorist fantasy, or at most, an amateurish scheme. The Heathrow Express plotters possessed no ricin and their planned method of disbursal was dubious.”
Jenkins still comes up a bit short on what ricin actually is, however. He writes that it might pose some hazard if smeared on handrails or doorhandles.
He knows ricin is not a contact poison and cannot be absorbed through the skin. But if there were open cuts on the hand?
No. If such were the case it would have been impossible to work in castor mills, work in castor plant fields, or handle castor mash — which was often packaged as fertilizer and used in mostly futile attempts to kill insect pests. Fatalities would have resulted.
In castor powder, which is all anyone has ever produced from castor seeds outside of fully-equipped biochemistry labs where people know what they’re doing, there is simply not enough ricin to make that a realistic hazard.
Eating it, however, is another matter. And there are times when people have tried to poison one another in domestic criminal cases with it.
The Heathrow Express/London ricin plot was a huge deal, politically. The Bush administration conspicuously used it to push for war in Iraq, making the claim that the UK poison ring — actually, Kamel Bourgass — was connected to al Qaeda in Iraq. It was in a slide used to present evidence that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was in league with al Qaeda.
Indeed, the UK prosecution’s initial strategy was try and tie the poison recipes of Kamel Bourgass to materials seized from al Qaeda hideouts in Kandahar and Kabul. They failed in this because that’s not where the poison recipes seized in the London ricin trial were from.
Nevertheless, the Carnage Averted monograph is a worthy read on a collection of failed terrorist plots.
A piece from a small Georgia newspaper shows the plight of one of the old white cranks swept up in the FBI’s domestic terror case.
For the past ten years the FBI has had an extensive network of criminal informants. In Tim Weiner’s history of the FBI, Enemies, it is revealed the agency’s counter-terror operation employed a communications program, an illegal one, called Stellar Wind.
Stellar Wind essentially monitored all communications in the US and it is reasonable to assume the FBI continues to do so. And when such a program detects the chat of some cranky old white guy going on about the desecration of the Constitution by the US government, and the need for it to be violently stopped, on some crap website for the like-minded, it enlists a local informant to massage the targets.
“Because of this “Tink??? (a confidential informant used by the federal government in building the case against Roberts and the three other defendants), I don’t know his name, but he’s the one that should be in jail. He made threats all along – he made actual threats against Dan at Shoney’s in Lavonia.???
Calling the charges against her husband a “set up??? by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Margaret Roberts said the two confidential informants initiated and orchestrated the actions that led to the foursome’s arrest, and were financed and enabled by the FBI.
“As far as Dan, he did not pay any money for any sort of silencer or anything, the money came from the FBI,??? Margaret said.
“Joe Sims, the informant, had the money. Every bit of this was set up and paid for by the FBI. It’s just been unbelievable to me,??? she said.
Saying that the only time her husband has been in trouble with the law was when he borrowed his brother’s car without insurance, Margaret Roberts added that she had supported Roberts’ decision to plead guilty instead of sitting and waiting two or more years for a trial date.
“I insisted that Dan do it (accept the plea agreement); he may be dead in two years sitting there waiting on a trial for something he never even should have been in jail for,??? she said.
“If you’re guilty of this stuff it’s bad enough, but when you’re set up, and set up by the government, this has all just been a nightmare, an absolute nightmare,??? she said.
Motivated by the need to save face and not look bad in the public eye, the FBI and federal government pursued charges against four old men who posed no threat, Margaret added.
“I think they (the FBI) got started on this stuff, believing in Joe Sims and his lies, and then they don’t want to look bad,??? she said. “If the FBI had not furnished the money and all of this, none of this would have ever happened.???
Roberts’ involvement in militia activities was limited to first aid, and other survivalist training, Margaret said …”
“About the ricin, that’s the most outlandish thing I’ve ever heard in my life,??? she added. “Dan knew nothing about that,??? Margaret said, insisting that it was Sims who approached defendant Crump regarding ricin production, not Roberts.
The government is beginning to ‘waive a white flag,’ according to Margaret, who said she and Roberts’ attorney are now expecting the terrorism enhancement charges to be dropped.
“Who in the world would have thought the FBI would do us up like this,??? she said.
Weiner’s Enemies concedes the dragnet constructed for the war on terror netted a lot of patsies and fit-ups, in the book’s case — Muslims.
However, it has often been a similar case for many busted on domestic terror charges. The charges exceed the actual nature of the threat.
