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An inadvertent boost to Bannon by Ruthie Blum

Posted By on February 8th, 2017

In yet another attempt to discredit U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, The Washington Post inadvertently did just the opposite.‎

In a piece on Friday, national reporter Matea Gold revealed that she had obtained a draft ‎of a movie proposal written in 2007 by Bannon — at the time a Hollywood filmmaker — ‎aimed at warning viewers about radical Muslims turning the U.S. into the “Islamic States ‎of America.” ‎

According to Gold, the envisioned three-part documentary, titled “Destroying the Great ‎Satan: The Rise of Islamic Fascism in America,” was to open with a scene showing ‎the flag on the U.S. Capitol building emblazoned with a crescent and star, while chants of ‎‎”Allahu akbar” emanate from inside. Quoting from the film’s ‎outline, she said its purpose was to caution not only against jihadists, but against the “enablers among us.”‎

Gold said Bannon wrote that these unwitting Americans, with the “best intentions,” ‎were the media, the Jewish community and government agencies engaged in appeasing ‎Islamism and paving “the road to this unique hell on earth.”‎

She made sure to remind readers that the author is the ‎same Bannon who helped Trump forge his executive order restricting entry into the U.S. ‎of citizens of certain Muslim-majority countries. This unsubtle juxtaposition was supposed ‎to give credence to the claim, widely circulated prior to and since Trump’s election, that ‎Bannon is both an anti-Semite and an Islamophobe. ‎

But the stab at a double whammy fell flat on its face. If anything, Gold’s account was ‎cause for optimism about Bannon’s role in the administration that is taking shape in ‎Washington. ‎

Indeed, anybody outside Israel who grasped 10 years ago that radical Islamism was a ‎force not only to be reckoned with but guarded against in the West is a person who has ‎been paying attention. Despite the national trauma caused by the attacks on the World ‎Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, Americans quickly covered themselves in ostrich ‎feathers and put their heads in the proverbial sand, hoping that the war against al-Qaida that was ‎being fought far from their homestead would remain something they might catch a ‎glimpse of on the nightly news, but not feel, smell and taste. ‎

Unlike Israelis — virtually all of whom are soldiers even when in civilian clothes — citizens ‎of the United States are blessed with a choice about the extent of their involvement in ‎matters of national security and defense. As a result, many can and do go through life ‎without ever encountering men and women in uniform, let alone marching alongside them. ‎

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Time to Take Action on the UN is Now : Anne Bayefsky

Posted By on February 8th, 2017

U.S. contributions to the UN for 2015 = $9,917,000,000

Ask: Why is the U.S. still on the UN Human Rights Council?
Ask: Why has Congress not adopted a single bill stopping any funding to the UN since Security Council 2334?

In 2017, individual members of Congress and President Trump have called for a reassessment of U.S. funding to the United Nations in order to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are utilized in ways that are consistent with American values and interests.

Additionally, in the aftermath of the UN Security Council’s adoption on December 23, 2016 of resolution 2334, which declared Israel’s presence in the historic Jewish homeland and its holy sites a “flagrant violation of international law,” members of Congress have introduced a series of bills that seek to hold the UN to account for its discriminatory treatment of the Jewish state.

Members of civil society have also launched a series of initiatives challenging the current relationship of the United States with the UN and promoting a democratic multilateral alternative.

2017 Stocktaking. So far? All Talk

The last full accounting from U.S. government sources of funding provided to the United Nations is many years out-of-date. Conducted in 2010, it states that the United States contributed $7,691,822,000 annually to the United Nations in the form of assessed, voluntary and in-kind contributions.

According to United Nations sources, U.S. contributions to the UN for 2015 totaled $9,917,000,000. (UN Chief Executives Board for Coordination, Geneva) This figure has been further broken down into three (renamed) categories as follows:

Assessed contributions $3,757,000,000
Voluntary contributions specified $5,521,000,000 (this includes donations in-kind)
Voluntary contributions not specified $639,000,000.

(This UN website documents 2014 contributions and puts the total U.S. contributions for 2014 at $10,067,000,000.)

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

US EPA Scientist Fired For Trying To Tell The Truth About Climate Engineering And Fluoridated Water by Dane Wigington

Posted By on February 8th, 2017

GeoengineeringWatch.org

The public has been trained and conditioned to believe that federal agencies like the EPA exist to watch over them and warn them of any potential dangers. This notion could not be further from the truth. Though there are honest and caring people within these agencies (like the scientist who has drafted the statement below), the institutions as a whole exist to hide threats from the population, not to disclose them. The majority of the public continues to convince themselves that if there was really anything they should be concerned about, someone, somewhere, in some federal public protection agency would tell them. The statement below should be a sobering wake-up call for us all. It is yet another confirmation of all that has been stated above. From global geoengineering, to Fukushima, to toxic fluoridated water and lethal vaccinations, the public health and the health of our biosphere is being decimated. Where are the official warnings from official agencies? The truth continues to be hidden by the government agencies that are tasked with hiding it.

Michael Davis is now a former EPA scientist who is working with GeoengineeringWatch.org in an effort to get the truth out, his full resume is at the bottom of this article. Michael was recently terminated from the EPA for daring to tell the truth about two extremely dire public dangers, the highly toxic fallout from climate engineering, and the willful contamination of the public water supply with industrial waste. I had the pleasure and honor of working with Michael for over a year, he has participated in conference calls directly with the Geoengineering Watch legal team (Legal Alliance to Stop Geoengineering, LASG). Upon being terminated from the EPA, I asked Mr. Davis if he would draft a statement for GeoengineeringWatch.org, that statement is below.

A Statement For GeoenigneeringWatch.org From Scientist Michael Davis

My name is Michael Davis, I was employed as an Environmental Engineer for nearly 16 years in the National Pollution Discharge Elimination Systems (NPDES) Programs Branch of the Water Division in Region 5, Chicago of the USEPA. I was terminated as a public servant performing a public service for raising the issues of anthropogenic deposition of aluminum due to atmospheric geoengineering.

In addition, I brought up the industrial hazardous waste byproduct of fluoride known as HFSA (being sold primarily by the phosphate fertilizer and aluminum industries) to drinking water utilities for disposal into the nation’s drinking water systems. This does not include pollutants that are discharged from wastewater reclamation facilities into receiving waters.

The issue regarding anthropogenic deposition of aluminum due to atmospheric geoengineering came up in May 2013 when a colleague in the NPDES Programs Branch sent a general email to everyone regarding “NPDES and Climate Change”. I sent a six (6) bullet point one – sentence response to my colleague. Nearly six (6) weeks later my supervisor (at the time) set up a conference call to inform me that I would be receiving a Letter of Reprimand for making false, malicious and unfounded statements against colleagues, supervisors, management and elected public servants. Furthermore, my then supervisor claimed that my statements damaged the integrity and reputation of the agency.

In April, 2014, my last supervisor assigned me to the Beloit, Wisconsin wastewater reclamation facility DRAFT permit review. I asked the permit writer why fluoride (a poison) was be disposed of in Beloit’s drinking water supply? She could not provide an explanation. Approximately two (2) weeks later my supervisor placed a “gag order” on me barring me from having any communication written or verbal with anyone unless he approved ahead of time and was present on all conference calls. It was claimed by my supervisor (and management) that the “gag order” would remain in place to prevent me from making statements that would further damage the integrity and reputation of the agency.

Furthermore, my supervisor kept giving me assignments like Beloit, Wisconsin where fluoride, along with other pollutants knowing that I would describe the adverse human, animal health effects along with adverse environmental effects of them in my DRAFT Permit review reports. The adverse human, animal and environmental effects were completely ignored by my supervisor. This was even more profound when it came to the issue of fluoride as HFSA being deposited into the drinking water system. This is in violation of (1) EPA’s Policy on Scientific Integrity, (2) The Precautionary Principle, (3) 5 U.S.C. §2302(b)(8) and (4) Informed Consent. My supervisor informed me that the EPA does not regulate fluoride in the drinking water systems under either the Clean Water Act (CWA) or the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). However, FDA under Health and Human Services (HHS) regulated fluoride in the drinking water systems.

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Gorsuch in the Mainstream He was upheld at the Supreme Court in seven of eight cases.

Posted By on February 8th, 2017

One political trope of modern judicial politics is to declare a conservative nominee “out of the mainstream.” The line is never applied to progressive nominees because to the media the mainstream is by definition progressive. Expect to hear more of this about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, albeit without evidence to back it up.

According to an analysis by Jeff Harris at Kirkland & Ellis, Judge Gorsuch has written some 800 opinions since joining the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006. Only 1.75% (14 opinions) drew dissents from his colleagues. That makes 98% of his opinions unanimous even on a circuit where seven of the 12 active judges were appointed by Democratic Presidents and five by Republicans. Add the senior judges, who hear fewer cases, and the circuit has 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats.

Judge Gorsuch is known on the Tenth Circuit as a strong writer and consensus builder, and the pattern extends to his participation in opinions by other judges. Judge Gorsuch has heard roughly 2,700 cases and dissented in only 35—1.3%.

Not many of his cases have ended up at the Supreme Court, but when they have his analysis has been routinely upheld by the Justices. Of at least eight cases considered by Mr. Gorsuch that were appealed to the Supreme Court, the Justices upheld his result in seven. In four of those the decisions were unanimous.

Among those was a government speech case on whether a town had to accept a Utah church monument in a public park next to an existing monument of the Ten Commandments (Pleasant Grove City, Utah et al. v. Summum). Judge Gorsuch voted to reconsider the court’s ruling against the town and the Supreme Court agreed. In another, Judge Gorsuch joined a ruling that Oklahoma prevent Texas from taking water from Oklahoma. The Supreme Court agreed. (Tarrant Regional Water District, Petitioner v. Rudolf John Herrmann).

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Real Democratic Party Why not a single Senate Democrat voted for Betsy DeVos.

Posted By on February 8th, 2017

The Senate made history Tuesday when Mike Pence became the first Vice President to cast the deciding vote for a cabinet nominee.

The nominee is now Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The vote came after an all-night Senate debate in a futile effort by Democrats to turn the third Republican vote they needed to scuttle the nomination on claims that the long-time education reformer isn’t qualified. Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins had already caved, so Mr. Pence had to cast the 51st vote to confirm Mrs. DeVos.

She can now get on with her work, but this episode shouldn’t pass without noting what it says about the modern Democratic Party. Why would the entire party apparatus devote weeks of phone calls, emails and advocacy to defeating an education secretary? This isn’t Treasury or Defense. It’s not even a federal department that controls all that much education money, most of which is spent by states and local school districts. Why is Betsy DeVos the one nominee Democrats go all out to defeat?

The answer is the cold-blooded reality of union power and money. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are, along with environmentalists, the most powerful forces in today’s Democratic Party. They elect Democrats, who provide them more jobs and money, which they spend to elect more Democrats, and so on. To keep this political machine going, they need to maintain their monopoly control over public education.

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MY SAY: THE COGNOCENTI VS. THE KNOW IT ALLS

Posted By on February 7th, 2017

Cognoscenti – is used by pretentious people, moi included, to describe those who are particularly well informed about a subject- usually in the arts- but also in sports, cuisine, wines etc.

The “know it alls” by contrast are a group of people who ostracize, libel, boycott, protest and demonstrate against all those who do not agree with the political left and every cult du jour such as global warming, reproductive rights (???) unlimited and unvetted immigration, Islamophobia, and now transgender phobia, and of course the Israeli “occupation. “They are unfettered by any knowledge of history. They know as little about the Korean War and its aftermath as they do about the Peloponnesian Wars. While their rhetoric is about their custodial rights to their “body” they know nothing about biology or anatomy. Their knowledge of the “Cold War” is equal to their knowledge of the Ice Age. And they bandy words like “fascist” and “dictator” without a clue about their definitions. Their ignorance would fill volumes and their human made hot air would really warm the planet.

They are the collective antithesis to the cognoscenti…. they are the” ignoranti “- a word I just coined to describe the smug and opinionated fools who preen and pose as “activists.”

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Make Haste — Deliberately If Trump shows that his actions are a reaction to past extremes, his changes will win public support. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on February 7th, 2017

The emperor Augustus who oversaw the transition from the nonstop civil war of a collapsing republic to the Principate — with all the good and bad that such a transition entailed — was fond of quoting the Greek aphorism “Make haste slowly” (σπεῦδε βραδέως / Latin: festina lente).

That seeming paradox of advocating both speed and caution was actually no contradiction at all. The adage instead reminded leaders that swift change can proceed only with careful forethought and deliberation, the same way that a swift crab scurries boldly across the beach but does so well protected in his shell.

The classical message is that to effect change, the agent must first anticipate from where and why furious opposition will arise — and then how best to preempt it and turn it against the opponent. Key to the strategy of change is to remind citizens that the present action is a corrective of past extremism, a move to the center not to the opposite pole, and must be understood as reluctantly reactive, not gratuitously revolutionary. Such forethought is not a sign of timidity or backtracking, but rather the catalyst necessary to make change even more rapid and effective.

Take Trump’s immigration stay. In large part, it was an extension of prior temporary policies enacted by both Presidents Bush and Obama. It was also a proper correction of Trump’s own unwise and ill-fated campaign pledge to temporarily ban Muslims rather than take a pause to vet all immigrants from war-torn nations in the Middle East.

Who would oppose such a temporary halt?

Obviously Democrats, on the principle that the issue might gain political traction so that they could tar Trump as an uncouth racist and xenophobe, and in general as reckless, incompetent, and confused. Obviously, the Left in general sees almost any restriction on immigration as antithetical to its larger project of a borderless society run by elites such as themselves. Obviously Republican establishmentarians fear any media meme suggesting that they are complicit in an illiberal enterprise.

Perhaps the Trump plan was, first, to ensure that radical Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers do not enter the U.S., as they so often enter Europe; second, to send a message to the international community that entry into the country is a privilege not an entitlement; and, third, symbolically to reassert the powers of assimilation, integration, and intermarriage as we slow and refine legal immigration. (The U.S. currently has about 40 million foreign-born residents, or a near record 14 percent of the population; one in four Californians was not born in the United States.) If this was the Trump-administration strategy, then it might have preempted criticism in the following manner with a supplementary communiqué:

1) We wish to extend and enhance prior presidential temporary directives that slowed and monitored unchecked immigration and visitation into the United States from war-ravaged regions in Middle East, by providing a brief breathing space of 90–120 days to ensure we can catch up and properly vet newcomers. In the past, the Obama administration has astutely identified “countries of concern” that might pose problems in visa applications. We wish to refine and calibrate such precedents to ensure the safety of the American people as the displaced-persons crisis in the Middle East expands. We wish to avoid indiscreetly and recklessly admitting persons into our country about whom we have no accurate background information.

2) This act is necessary because we plan to continue prior administrations’ policies of admitting refugees, but we cannot fairly and judiciously screen an anticipated 50,000 entrants this year without allotting proper time and consideration that was often lacking under former policies.

3) This temporary hold on admittances shall not affect those who were previously vetted through the issuance of green cards or those foreign nationals who — as translators, guides, and intelligence operatives — in time of war bravely and at risk to themselves helped the United States military at war.

4) Although the number of current travelers inconvenienced by the issuance of this order will be small, we will do all in our power to clarify implementation of the policy and to expedite problems affecting those in transit at the time of this executive order’s issuance.

Had the administration announced something like the above before or as the edict was issued, and followed up on its provisions, it would have preempted most criticisms and rendered them shrill from the get-go.

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A Supreme Court Deadlock on Trump’s Travel Ban? Not So Fast Justice Kennedy may have other ideas. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on February 7th, 2017

As our Monday editorial details, there is every reason to believe that the eventual ruling of the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court will control the outcome of litigation over President Trump’s temporary travel ban on both aliens from seven countries and refugees. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit is considering the Justice Department’s appeal of a temporary restraining order issued by Seattle federal district judge James Robart, which suspends the ban. The panel has announced that it will hear oral argument on Tuesday.

The Ninth Circuit’s determination is likely to be dispositive because there are currently only eight justices on the Supreme Court, a situation that will obtain until the vacancy created by Justice Scalia’s death is filled. It is assumed that the four left-wing justices on the Court (Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) would vote to uphold Judge Robart’s lawless restraining order. I believe that is an entirely reasonable assumption because, as I’ve been arguing for years now, the Supreme Court operates more like an unelected super-legislature than a judicial tribunal. Like Robart, the politically “progressive” justices make decisions based on the desired policy result, not the law.

This proclivity has led to an assumption, oft repeated in the commentariat, that the Supreme Court would deadlock 4–4 on the case, meaning that the decision of the lower court, the Ninth Circuit in this instance, would stand. I suspect that, for conservatives and other defenders of the executive order, that might be overly optimistic. Notwithstanding that the law is clearly on Trump’s side, there is a very good chance that the swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, would vote with the left-wing bloc – meaning that the administration could lose 5–3 in the High Court.

As anyone who was measuring the Atlanta Falcons for Super Bowl rings late in the third quarter will tell you, the prognostication game is an uncertain business. Still, you may get my drift if you think about the legal theory supporting Trump’s order, and then consider Kennedy’s majority opinion in favor of constitutional habeas corpus rights for alien enemy combatants in the controversial 2008 case of Boumediene v. Bush.

The main principle underlying Trump’s executive order is that the political branches of the federal government have plenary authority over border security, particularly as it pertains to aliens who could pose a threat. There is little or no legitimate role for the courts. The Supreme Court has long recognized that “it is undoubtedly within the power of the Federal Government to exclude aliens from the country,” and that even American citizens and their belongings may be searched without judicial warrants due to the sovereign imperative of “national self-protection.” (I’m quoting the Court’s 1973 decision in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, which cites many of the Court’s relevant precedents.)

To summarize: Since (a) aliens have no enforceable judicial right to enter the U.S.; (b) the president has constitutional authority to act against potential foreign threats to national security; and (c) Congress, which has indisputable power to prescribe the requirements for alien entry into the country, has delegated to the president sweeping power to deny the entry of aliens whose presence – in the president’s judgment – would be detrimental to the U.S., that should be the end of the matter. The matter is outside judicial responsibility and there is therefore nothing for the courts legitimately to review.

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Time to Abandon the ‘Terrorist Recruitment’ Delusion What really motivates jihadists. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on February 7th, 2017

Trump’s executive order slowing down the admission of people from seven Muslim majority nations drew the expected hysterical and hypocritical criticism from the Democrats. But Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham piled on as well. It’s no secret that neither pol likes Donald Trump, and both are no doubt still angry that Trump crashed their Party. But some of their criticism recycled preposterous received wisdom we’ve been hearing for decades.

“We fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism,” the Senators said in a joint statement, explaining that Trump’s executive order “may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.” This is the tired “infidels made us do it” rationalization apologists for Islamic terrorism have been peddling––and jihadists exploiting–– since 9/11. The Senators’ version is as facile as asserting that Guantanamo, Sykes-Picot, cartoons of Mohammed, an obscure pastor burning a Koran, or Israeli settlements are responsible for “recruiting” jihadists.

This notion that Muslims become jihadist terrorists because of Western slights to their self-esteem is an absurd psychological argument alien to minds formed by Islam and its doctrines, and by cultures and histories very different from our own. Thus it commits the mortal sin of foreign policy and diplomacy: assuming that our adversaries and enemies think exactly as we do, and share the same beliefs about human motivation.

Since we attribute most behavior to material and environmental causes, we slight or dismiss religion and spiritual beliefs as a motivating force in people’s behavior. Or we reduce faith to an epiphenomenon of some deeper material cause such as poverty or a lack of political freedom, and so reduce religion to Marx’s “opiate” or Freud’s “illusion.” Even sillier, we treat other peoples as though they are over-sensitive children prone to “acting out” when their self-esteem is not nourished. So, like grade-school teachers, we should take every opportunity to tell Muslims how wonderful their faith is, how much we respect and honor it, and how diligent we will be in making sure that nobody dares link Islam and its traditional doctrines to “extremist” terror perpetrated by a small minority of “hijackers” and “distorters” of the “religion of peace.”

Obama, of course, was most fanatic about adhering to this fantasy. He began his presidency by going to Cairo and addressing a crowd, including Muslim Brotherhood honchos, about the glories of Islam and the West’s bad behavior toward the faithful. He scrupulously avoided using “Islamist” in speaking of terrorist acts, and he ordered our national security institutions not to mention “jihad” at all in its communications. The result? During his two terms there were three times more jihadist plots and attacks than during George Bush’s presidency. Al Qaeda, ISIS, and a plethora of other jihadist outfits now have a wider geographic base and scope of operations, and are perpetrating or inspiring attacks in Europe and the U.S. The world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, is now a global power punching far above its weight, and shaping the Middle East according to its interests as it continues to develop nuclear weaponry.

Such “outreach” and flattery have been no more useful than they were for the Brits in the 20’s and 30’s, when the politicians, pundits, and intellectuals championing appeasement of Germany blamed the Big Four for the “Carthaginian peace” of the Versailles Treaty, which supposedly accounted for Germany’s truculence and aggression. Then and now, such efforts communicated only weakness and fear that emboldened the aggressor and led to massive slaughter.

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Not ‘Lone Wolves’ After All: How ISIS Guides World’s Terror Plots From Afar By Rukmini Callimachi

Posted By on February 7th, 2017

HYDERABAD, India — When the Islamic State identified a promising young recruit willing to carry out an attack in one of India’s major tech hubs, the group made sure to arrange everything down to the bullets he needed to kill victims. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/world/asia/isis-messaging-app-terror-plot.html?_r=0

For 17 months, terrorist operatives guided the recruit, a young engineer named Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, through every step of what they planned to be the Islamic State’s first strike on Indian soil.

Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, left, and his younger brother Ilyas, whom he recruited to participate in the Hyderabad plot.

They vetted each new member of the cell as Mr. Yazdani recruited helpers. They taught him how to pledge allegiance to the terrorist group and securely send the statement.

And from Syria, investigators believe, the group’s virtual plotters organized for the delivery of weapons as well as the precursor chemicals used to make explosives, directing the Indian men to hidden pickup spots.
Continue reading the main story

Until just moments before the arrest of the Indian cell, here last June, the Islamic State’s cyberplanners kept in near-constant touch with the men, according to the interrogation records of three of the eight suspects obtained by The New York Times.

As officials around the world have faced a confusing barrage of attacks dedicated to the Islamic State, cases like Mr. Yazdani’s offer troubling examples of what counterterrorism experts are calling enabled or remote-controlled attacks: violence conceived and guided by operatives in areas controlled by the Islamic State whose only connection to the would-be attacker is the internet.

In the most basic enabled attacks, Islamic State handlers acted as confidants and coaches, coaxing recruits to embrace violence. In the Hyderabad plot, among the most involved found so far, the terrorist group reached deep into a country with strict gun laws to arrange for pistols and ammunition to be left in a bag swinging from the branches of a tree.

For the most part, the operatives who are conceiving and guiding such attacks are doing so from behind a wall of anonymity. When the Hyderabad plotters were arrested last summer, they could not so much as confirm the nationalities of their interlocutors in the Islamic State, let alone describe what they looked like. Because the recruits are instructed to use encrypted messaging applications, the guiding role played by the terrorist group often remains obscured.

As a result, remotely guided plots in Europe, Asia and the United States in recent years, including the attack on a community center in Garland, Tex., were initially labeled the work of “lone wolves,” with no operational ties to the Islamic State, and only later was direct communication with the group discovered.
ISIS Attacks, Outside of Its Self-proclaimed Caliphate

In at least 10 executed attacks, officials have found that the assailant was in direct communication with planners from the Islamic State.

Sized by number of deaths

Injuries only
JulyOct.2015AprilJulyOct.2016AprilJulyOct.2017DirectedParisBeirutSousseBrusselsTunisEnabledInspiredOrlandoIstanbulSan Bernardino
The Islamic State has declared its caliphate to include parts of Syria, Iraq and about a dozen other countries where it has affiliates.

While the trail of many of these plots led back to planners living in Syria, the very nature of the group’s method of remote plotting means there is little dependence on its maintaining a safe haven there or in Iraq. And visa restrictions and airport security mean little to attackers who strike where they live and no longer have to travel abroad for training.