RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/19/chicago-college-student-arrested-trying-support-isis-terrorists/4243954002/

CHICAGO — A 20-year-old U.S. college student was arrested Monday for allegedly writing computer code to help the Islamic State spread propaganda online, according to the FBI.

Thomas Osadzinski, a student at DePaul University who lives in the city’s northside neighborhood of Buena Park, was charged in a federal criminal complaint with one count of attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization — a charge punishable by up to 20 years.

Osadzinski appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole in Chicago Tuesday and was ordered held without bond.

According to the complaint, Osadzinski designed a process that uses a computer script to make ISIS propaganda easier to access and disseminate on a social media platform, bypassing preventive code which routinely removes ISIS content due to the violent nature of the materials.

The complaint, however, did not identify the social media platform, saying only that it was a mobile and desktop messaging application.

Osadzinski earlier this year shared his script — and instructions for how to use it — with individuals whom he believed to be ISIS supporters and members of pro-ISIS media organizations, the complaint says. Those individuals were actually covert FBI employees and a person working with them.

Printing an ISIS poster in the DePaul library

Osadzinski was born in Park Ridge, Illinois. Agents began tracking him in June of 2018, when Osadzinski posted in a pro-ISIS chatroom, according to the complaint. Osadzinski, unsolicited, began reaching out to pro-ISIS media platforms and offering to help translate videos from Arabic to English.

“I know English well. If you need help tell me…” he wrote to an agent in Arabic on the social media platform.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/ten-years-after-115-lloyd-billingsley/

On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, Major Nidal Hasan, a self-proclaimed “soldier of Allah,” gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including Pvt. Francheska Velez, who was pregnant. Yelling the familiar “Allahu akbar,” Hasan chased down the wounded and shot them in the back. The major would have killed many more if police officer Kim Munley had not fired on the shooter. For the more than 30 the Muslim major wounded, the troubles were only beginning.

The 11/5 Fort Hood massacre was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

For the president of the United States formerly known as Barry Soetoro, it was only “workplace violence,” not even “gun violence.” That prevented the survivors from getting the medals and medical treatment they deserved. For his part, Major Hasan never should have been in a position to attack them.

As Robert Spencer notes, Maj. Hasan told colleagues infidels should have their throats cut, heads chopped off, and boiling oil poured down their throat. He told students Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution and suicide bombings were justified. Hasan’s jihadist tilt was well known but his Army superiors “kept promoting him” even as the FBI tracked his terrorist contacts.

As a 2012 congressional hearing revealed, Hasan openly communicated with Muslim cleric and terrorist mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki. In one email, Hasan told al-Awlaki, “Please keep me in your Rolodex in case you find me useful, and please feel free to call me collect.” Even so, under FBI boss Robert Mueller “the case was dropped until November 5, when the media began circulating reports of the massacre” and at that time the FBI agents “knew exactly who the perpetrator was.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/schumer-complains-about-isis-terrorists-michael-cutler/

President Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria was borne of his desire to keep his campaign promises of not continuing to spill American blood by having American troops serve as the “police force for the world.”

It should come as no surprise that Senator Chuck Schumer was among the most vociferous opponents of the President’s decision.  Virtually any statement or decision that President Trump might make immediately becomes the subject of a Chuck Schumer tirade.

On October 17, 2019 the Washington Times reported, Chuck Schumer’s bid to rebuke Trump over Syria fails in Senate. That news report began with this excerpt that show how there is no easy or clear path as to how to deal with this international diplomatic and military quagmire that preceded Trump’s election:

Senators fought Thursday over how to try to patch up the mess in Syria, but it quickly became clear that beyond being frustrated with President Trump, there’s little unity on what, exactly, the U.S. should do.

Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, tried to force a symbolic rebuke of Mr. Trump, saying it would send a signal that might make the president reverse his decisions and send U.S. troops back in, but that was blocked by Sen. Rand Paul.

The Kentucky Republican said not only has Congress never authorized going to war in Syria, but sending troops back would mean putting them in between Turkey and the Kurds, both U.S. allies but who are now battling each other.

On October 13, 2019 MSN (MicroSoft News) republished a news report posted by the local NYC radio station, CBS News Radio 880, that announced, Schumer: Trump’s Syria Troop Withdrawal Threatens Security Of NYC.

Here is an excerpt from that report:

Schumer says New Yorkers know the impact of terrorism more than anyone else.

HTTPS://GIZMODO.COM/U-S-MILITARY-WILL-STOP-USING-FLOPPY-DISCS-TO-OPERATE-I-18391

The systems used to control the United States arsenal of nuclear weapons rely on outdated computers. But the Department of Defense is updating at least one part of the archaic technology—the floppy disk storage systems.

A 60 Minutes segment in 2014 presented a tour of a nuclear control center, revealing to the public that the computers that would take a nuclear launch order from the President rely on 8-inch disks invented nearly half a century ago.

Defense tech news site C4isrnet reports that the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS)—the communication infrastructure that transmits emergency action messages for nuclear command centers—is ditching the floppy disks. Lieutenant Colonel Jason Rossi, 595th Strategic Communications Squadron commander, told C4isrnet the SACCS is upgrading to a “highly-secure solid state digital storage solution.”

U.S Strategic Communications did not immediately respond to a Gizmodo request for comment on the report.

As C4isrnet points out, the Government Accountability Office wrote in 2016 that the SACCS operates on an IBM Series/1 computer from the 1970s, and the Pentagon planned “to update its data storage solutions, port expansion processors, portable terminals, and desktop terminals by the end of fiscal year 2017.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/new-national-security-adviser-robert-obrien-makes-promising-progress/

The Trump administration’s national security policy has, on the whole and especially at a strategic level, been quite good, and now Robert O’Brien, the new national security adviser, is implementing a promising reorganization of the NSC staff.

In its first two and a half years, the administration has:

Made great power competition, and especially the competition with China, the top priority of American foreign policy. The process of shifting attention to Asia began in the Obama administration, but President Trump catalyzed it in the National Security Strategy, which was completed within a year after he took office;
Energized the various agencies of the Executive Branch to inventory, adapt, and vigorously use the tools at their command to prosecute the administration’s policy towards China and build a national security architecture structured for that purpose. In particular Trump has recognized and realized the potential of American economic power to put adversaries off balance and on the defensive.
Refocused our Middle East policy on the greatest threat — Iran — and reassembled the formal and informal partnerships with Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the Gulf States that for forty years had been the foundation of American policy in the Middle East.
Succeeded in lifting the defense sequester and injecting more money into the defense budget. That hasn’t accomplished as much, in practical terms, as the White House claims, but it’s a step in the right direction.

I also like the administration’s top national security personnel going forward. Mike Pompeo has been a consistent force and effective messenger for good policy and Gina Haspel is a top professional at the CIA, where professionalism is essential. It took too long for the Administration to settle on Mark Esper as Defense Secretary to replace Jim Mattis, but it was an outstanding choice that will continue to pay dividends as the DOD realigns its priorities to deal with China.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/

Take a look at the photo above.  I managed to overcome my usual ineptitude with technology the other day to snap that picture as I was walking into a barbershop in the Californian city of Coronado.  Actually, although Coronado is classified as its own city (of barely 25,000) it is in reality part of San Diego. Across a large curving bridge that was opened by Ronald Reagan back in the late 1960s sits the home of US naval aviation, the huge airbase of Coronado, on a peninsula that forms the magnificent San Diego harbor.

This harbor is the home of the third- or fourth-biggest US naval base in the world (depending on how and what you count), the biggest being in Norfolk, Virginia.  And even though this peninsula – which is so long you can’t help thinking it’s an island – is dominated by the naval airbase, by a separate Navy Seals base, and by other parts of the US Navy, there is also a chunk of the peninsula that constitutes the civilian town of Coronado.  Given how many people either live in, commute to or work for the US Navy, you won’t be surprised to hear that it is the safest city in the United States.  Any police officers who want only to investigate bicycle thefts should immediately put in their applications to the Coronado Police Department. There are basically no parking fines handed out because the metres in Coronado charge 25 cents per hour – yes, a quarter is all it takes to park for an hour – so you’d have to be brain dead not to pay up.

My wife and I stumbled on Coronado purely by chance back in 2013 when we were here for an earlier sabbatical of mine.  Purely by luck we ended up renting a house on the beach in this amazing place, and we loved it.  So when the offer came to return to the University of San Diego School of Law – the most conservative law school in the US, let me note, which means maybe one-third of the law professors would be right of centre, and why I can find a spot here – both my wife and I knew we’d be renting again in Coronado.  It is magnificent, and quite a contrast to London, where we spent the first half year of my sabbatical.

Don’t get me wrong.  For both us, London is our favourite city on earth.  But Coronado is right up there.  Furthermore, if you ever find yourself in San Diego let me strongly recommend that the first touristy thing you must do is to take the two-hour boat tour of the harbour.  You’ll see a stunning array of top-of-the-line US Navy vessels – destroyers, battleships, weird looking stealth ships, helicopter carriers, two or three of the big Nimitz class aircraft carriers, and at the far outlet end of the harbour the docking zone for  nuclear submarines.  San Diego is home to the killer attack subs, but once in a while you will see the “big banger” missile-launching Tridents come in for a visit.  They are magnificent.