Far-Right 'Terrorgram' Chatrooms Are Fueling a Wave of Power Grid Attacks (bloomberg.com) 396
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: People in a quiet neighborhood in Carthage, a town in Moore County, North Carolina, heard a series of six loud pops a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2022. A resident named Michael Campbell said he ducked at the sound. Another witness told police they thought they were hearing fireworks. The noise turned out to be someone shooting a rifle at a power substation next door to Campbell's home. The substation, operated by the utility Duke Energy Corp., consists of equipment that converts electricity into different voltages as it's transported to the area and then steered into individual houses. The shots hit the radiator of an electrical transformer, a sensitive piece of technology whose importance would likely be understood only by utility company employees. It began dumping a "vast amount" of oil, according to police reports. A subsequent investigation has pointed to a local right-wing group, one of a wave of attacks or planned attacks on power infrastructure.
By 8:10 the lights in Carthage went out. Minutes later, a security alarm went off at a Duke Energy substation 10 miles away, this one protected from view by large pine trees. When company personnel responded, they found that someone had shot its transformer radiator, too. Police found shell casings on the ground at the site and noticed someone had slashed the tires on nearby service trucks. The substations were designed to support each other, with one capable of maintaining service if the other went down. Knocking out both facilities prevented the company from rerouting power. Police described the two incidents as a coordinated attack. About 45,000 families and businesses remained dark for four days. This was a burden for area grocery stores and local emergency services. One woman, 87-year-old Karin Zoanelli, died in the hours after the shooting when the blackout caused her oxygen machine to stop operating. The North Carolina Medical Examiner's office classified the death as a homicide.
The attack on Duke's facilities in Moore County remains unsolved, but law enforcement officials and other experts suspect it's part of a rising trend of far-right extremists targeting power infrastructure in an attempt to sow chaos. The most ambitious of these saboteurs hope to usher in societal collapse, paving the way for the violent overthrow of the US government, according to researchers who monitor far-right communities. Damaging the power grid has long been a fixation of right-wing extremists, who have plotted such attacks for many years. They've been getting a boost recently from online venues such as "Terrorgram," a loose network of channels on the social media platform Telegram where users across the globe advocate violent white supremacism. In part, people use Terrorgram to egg one another on -- a viral meme shows a stick figure throwing a Molotov cocktail at electrical equipment. People on the forum have also seized on recent anti-immigration riots in the UK, inciting people there to clash with police. In June 2022, months before the Moore County shootings, users on the forum began offering more practical support in the form of a 261-page document titled "Hard Reset," which includes specific directions on how to use automatic weapons, explosives and mylar balloons to disrupt electricity. One of the document's suggestions is to shoot high-powered firearms at substation transformers.
By 8:10 the lights in Carthage went out. Minutes later, a security alarm went off at a Duke Energy substation 10 miles away, this one protected from view by large pine trees. When company personnel responded, they found that someone had shot its transformer radiator, too. Police found shell casings on the ground at the site and noticed someone had slashed the tires on nearby service trucks. The substations were designed to support each other, with one capable of maintaining service if the other went down. Knocking out both facilities prevented the company from rerouting power. Police described the two incidents as a coordinated attack. About 45,000 families and businesses remained dark for four days. This was a burden for area grocery stores and local emergency services. One woman, 87-year-old Karin Zoanelli, died in the hours after the shooting when the blackout caused her oxygen machine to stop operating. The North Carolina Medical Examiner's office classified the death as a homicide.
The attack on Duke's facilities in Moore County remains unsolved, but law enforcement officials and other experts suspect it's part of a rising trend of far-right extremists targeting power infrastructure in an attempt to sow chaos. The most ambitious of these saboteurs hope to usher in societal collapse, paving the way for the violent overthrow of the US government, according to researchers who monitor far-right communities. Damaging the power grid has long been a fixation of right-wing extremists, who have plotted such attacks for many years. They've been getting a boost recently from online venues such as "Terrorgram," a loose network of channels on the social media platform Telegram where users across the globe advocate violent white supremacism. In part, people use Terrorgram to egg one another on -- a viral meme shows a stick figure throwing a Molotov cocktail at electrical equipment. People on the forum have also seized on recent anti-immigration riots in the UK, inciting people there to clash with police. In June 2022, months before the Moore County shootings, users on the forum began offering more practical support in the form of a 261-page document titled "Hard Reset," which includes specific directions on how to use automatic weapons, explosives and mylar balloons to disrupt electricity. One of the document's suggestions is to shoot high-powered firearms at substation transformers.
Oh look (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely stupid morons doing absolutely stupid shit. Just find them and erase their gene pools from the planet. Nothing of any value is lost.
Re:Oh look (Score:5, Informative)
Trouble is, they keep breeding. And by breeding I mean that they don't know where the babies come from or how to prevent it. This is the plot of Idiocracy.
My employer makes some pole top devices, and a customer in the deep south told us to remove the blinking LED or else it would be shot within a few weeks after installation. I would like to believe this is just a silly story with outdated stereotypes, but I swear that's what they said.
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Do you know how annoying those blinking LEDs are? What kind of entitlement permits you to bother people and animals in such a mindless, unthinking fashion?
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Seeing as they go on poles that are very tall like telephone poles, or maybe even other, taller types, I could surmise a number of reasons why they would install a blinking LED. Depending on the height, it might for aerial safety, as we put blinking lights on pretty much anything that tall. It could also be a status LED depending on what the device is or does. Either way, it's not a real bother to animals and all retards with a gun love to manufacture a fake problem.
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That won't help, there is an infinite supply. That's how this form of terrorism works, it's stochastic. They set up these Telegram channels that anyone can join, in the knowledge that some small number of the people reading their content will put it into practice.
Al Qaeda used to o the same thing in a less efficient way, going to all the trouble of having terror cells and layers of recruiters, designed to insulate the people at the top. Now there is no need for all that, they just do it publicly with a Tele
Re:Oh look (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh look (Score:5, Insightful)
It is just more trash reporting on Telegram the company in a bid to get the public to agree it's a problem for society.
Oh yeah, it's just about not liking Telegram. It's not at all about the fact that 45000 people were out of power for several days due to a co-ordinated right wing domestic terror plot. Good to see you took home all the important messages from TFS.
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Re:Oh look (Score:4, Insightful)
What if the unintended consequences of denying free speech to everyone result in much worse outcomes than if you found better ways than censorship to fight the crimes that bother you so much?
Better way [Re:Oh look] (Score:3)
What if the unintended consequences of denying free speech to everyone result in much worse outcomes than if you found better ways than censorship to fight the crimes that bother you so much?
The original thinking was that in the absence of any barriers to speech, useful ideas and true information would drive out drivel and misinformation.
What we've discovered is that it's more like Gresham's law; the sewer flood of lies and misinformation overwhelms the system. And much of that is targetted misinformation: yes, there are enemies out there who want to destroy free society.
It's a conundrum. But you think you've solved it? What is your proposal for that "better way"?
Re:Oh look (Score:5, Interesting)
Who says it wasn't done by Hamas sympathizers they let into the country by the thousands without any vetting?
Basic logic says that. Not only because they don't let anyone into the country without vetting, but because we're talking about bumfuck-nowhere North Carolina a place infamously known for being a hotspot for *checks notes* immigrants and hamas sympahtizers.
It certainly can't be related to the manifestos of several far right groups such as the Boogaloo bois who specifically mention a campaign of terrorism targetting power stations in America. No sirrreee it must be the *dun dun dun* BROWN PEOPLE!
Re:Oh look (Score:4, Informative)
How come Washington State recently had a substation attack that was initially called right-wing extremism, but when the perps were actually caught, it was revealed they were simply trying to burglarize a nearby business?
Are you jumping to conclusions in your zeal to support censorship to protect yourself from a made-up fear?
"According to the criminal complaint, the reason for the attacks on December 25, which occurred over a 12-hour period and hundreds of miles apart, was to burglarize a nearby business while the power was out for nearly 15,000 customers in the area."
https://www.kptv.com/2023/01/0... [kptv.com]
Re:Oh look (Score:5, Informative)
How come other attacks were by right wing extremists? https://apnews.com/article/jus... [apnews.com]
I can post events unrelated to what you posted too!
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How come Washington State recently had a substation attack that was initially called right-wing extremism, but when the perps were actually caught, it was revealed they were simply trying to burglarize a nearby business?
How the fuck does that rule out right-wing extremists? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Oh look (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Oh look (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Oh look (Score:5, Informative)
University students overwhelmingly support Gaza and Hamad right now.
That was so stupid, your brain revolted and refused to type that for you.
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Considering there are NO suspects (at least from what I got from the synopsis)...
There were suspects. Read the article: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/in... [bnnbloomberg.ca]
how can the writer of the article assume which political bent they are a part of....?
Partly because they discuss it on chat rooms, but mostly because they've caught perpetrators in multiple similar cases (e.g., https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com] (or here [justice.gov]).
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Dickless idiots (Score:2, Flamebait)
What are these dickless idiots expecting to happen? It gets dark and society collapses? Is this the retard's version of Helter Skelter? At least Charles Manson was smart enough to know he was a fucking loser...
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>What are these dickless idiots expecting to happen? It gets dark and society collapses?
I imagine that's one of the popular fantasies - they get to be bigger fish by shrinking the pond. Emasculated losers overcompensating with guns.
Re:Dickless idiots (Score:5, Informative)
It's called the Boogaloo [wikipedia.org].
Re:Dickless idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a very old story. Charles Manson murdered people in the hopes of triggering an inevitable race riot. Be deluded, or insane, or just in a very sheltered bubble, and then believe that the world is a giant power keg just waiting for a spark if only someone would act... Boogaloo is just the latest iteration in insane clown behavior.
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But shooting up transformers, capacitor banks, or sub stations is not really news. It's been going on for at least a decade, maybe earlier as well though not reported on. The difference is that it's ramping up a bit. The numbers are small enough that even when doubling the numbers it's still a minor problem.
What keeps it from being a disaster is 1) utilities are taking a lot more care now, with more surveillance, 2) 9/11 has make law enforcement much more aware of infrastructure, and 3) the shooters are
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These are the same people who put Biden "I did this" stickers on gas pumps.
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These are the same people who put Biden "I did this" stickers on gas pumps.
Nah, the people doing that just thought they were being funny. Truth is though, by spending my money on stickers they're essentially throwing away, they're the ones getting owned by a dumb joke.
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only one person can keep a secret
That's not the case at all. Project Northwoods, a false flag attack on American civilians and US assets to create a justification to invade Cuba, was approved by all of the Joint Chiefs before being stopped by an appalled President Kennedy. To get to that stage of planning would have required dozens if not scores of people to be involved, and yet it was only discovered in the late '90s entirely by accident.
Wave of attacks? (Score:4, Insightful)
Somebody shoots up a power station in 2022, and that amounts to a wave of attacks in 2024? What kind of bullshit reporting is this? Also paywalled, please post an alternate source if possible.
Re:Wave of attacks? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is like the ultimate clickbait for the audience. Insert far-right into any article on ./ and you get a million comments and clicks.
Also, it's Bloomberg so it's most likely AI slop that wasn't even proofread by anyone and written with a laughable made up name like MythicalFirstname One-Two-OrEvenThreeSurnames.
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This is like the ultimate clickbait for the audience. Insert far-right into any article on ./ and you get a million comments and clicks.
Far right groups like the Boogaloo bois literally have targeting substations in their manifesto for causing chaos and standing up to the government. And I used the word groups in plural because several far right groups to this.
It stops being clickbait when it's true.
Also, it's Bloomberg
It's not just Bloomberg though. It just happens to be Bloomberg on Slashdot. These incidents and related ones have been reported on and linked to far right movements for the past several years. Time even ran a full editorial piece on them (with
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I don't see the group you mentioned anywhere. Politics aren't even mentioned in the first article that was used as an example.
They're literally just making things up. Just like you seem to be doing.
Re: Wave of attacks? (Score:3)
written with a laughable made up name like MythicalFirstname One-Two-OrEvenThreeSurnames.
. Do you mean J.D. Vance as an example? Aka James Donald Bowman aka James David Hamel who bearing Take graduation changed his name to J.D. Vance and then changed it later so periods be removed so he's just "JD Vance."
Re:Wave of attacks? (Score:5, Informative)
I found an mirrored copy in less time than it took you to write your post. https://archive.ph/PwzqA [archive.ph]
Attacks on power facilities have spiked recently. Power companies reported 185 physical attacks or threats on grid infrastructure in 2023, more than double the number from 2021, according to the North American Reliability Corp. (NERC), an industry group that monitors risks for utilities. Extremists have planned to knock out power at substations near scheduled Black Lives Matter protests, according to court records. Others planned to hit hydroelectric stations and other critical infrastructure. Since 2022, police have charged suspects in connection with plots to attack energy facilities in Idaho, Maryland and Ohio.
Re: Wave of attacks? (Score:2)
Crazy how supportive of industrial sabotage you guys get when there's striking workers involved.
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Because if the former, then fuck you, but if the latter, then ya, fuck those people.
You have an obvious human right to free agency to strike.
However, damaging/threatening replacement workers/etc is a criminal act, and should absolutely be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
As far as I know, this is the belief of most liberals.
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Masturbatory fantasies about beating people up is not normal. The daily dose of Fox News fear is rotting your brain.
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I found an mirrored copy in less time than it took you to write your post. https://archive.ph/PwzqA [archive.ph]
Attacks on power facilities have spiked recently. Power companies reported 185 physical attacks or threats on grid infrastructure in 2023, more than double the number from 2021, according to the North American Reliability Corp. (NERC), an industry group that monitors risks for utilities. Extremists have planned to knock out power at substations near scheduled Black Lives Matter protests, according to court records. Others planned to hit hydroelectric stations and other critical infrastructure. Since 2022, police have charged suspects in connection with plots to attack energy facilities in Idaho, Maryland and Ohio.
This was apparently such an “urgent” concern that we’re just now reporting on it? Again? Slow news day, or bosses just extra pissy about feeding the clickbait machine? Can’t imagine how fun it is to be a “reporter” these days when working for certain “news” organizations in an election year.
BLM? Seriously? Instead of reporting on all those “planned to”, maybes, and almosts now years old, how about we hear about the actual outages after the fac
Re:Wave of attacks? (Score:4, Insightful)
and here's an article from 10 years ago talking about how we've been handwringing about grid security, including specifically substation shootings, for 30 years before that!
And yet this is all old news. Policymakers, security experts and the utility industry have known about the grid security issue for the last 30 years.
Amory Lovins, chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute, wrote in his 1982 book Brittle Power that “a few people could probably black out most of the country.” The book surprised people when it came out — citing frequent instances of grid terrorism throughout the 1970s, such as transformer shootings and substation bombings — but the same debate over grid security continues today.
(https://www.utilitydive.com/news/could-terrorists-really-black-out-the-power-grid/241192/ )
Not that it's not a real problem; and it sucks that people do it, but "Terrorgram"? rly ?
Re:Wave of attacks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shooting up substations by itself is not the issue. As the summary notes, they had redundancy, and the location of one was partially hidden.
Whoever did those attacks knew what they were doing. They targeted two substations that were vulnerable if both were taken out at the same time. They knew where to shoot to damage them in a way that both broke them and made them difficult to repair. They slashed the tyres of the utility vehicles to further slow down the emergency response.
They got that information from somewhere. If it was just a one-off, okay, they might have educated themselves, or got deep into some dark web terrorist group. But actually all they needed to do was join a public Telegram channel, promoted by a network of other Telegram channels designed to send people down that rabbit hole. Telegram knew all about it too, and did little to stop it.
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I'm not a member of law enforcement, it's not my job to moderate Telegram or respond to threats being posted there.
Telegram also makes it difficult to investigate, because requests for details of members of channels spreading terrorist content are largely ignored. Their servers are in the Middle East for a reason.
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As for the capitalism crap, I'm sure there's some people down in Texas who might think differently after multiple bad weather events led to failed private power grids, people dying, and rate hikes that only s
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Not that it's not a real problem; and it sucks that people do it, but "Terrorgram"? rly ?
Yeah, really. The article isn't about the fact that this is new / unique / never occurred. It's about the fact that these incidents are rapidly rising and that social media platforms (in this case specifically telegram, thanks to their lack of moderation - unlike WhatsApp - and simple means of generating groups) are fueling this.
That shouldn't be triggering a "rly" response from you. It should be triggering a "no shit Shirlock" response.
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It's the standard propaganda. We now need to demonize telegram. You can see propaganda shills and spooks going hard on this story everywhere in wake of Durov's grab.
The reason for low quality seems to be the speed with which the thing developed. They didn't have their usual time to prepare and polish propaganda lines, so it looks like they got the main talking points from chatGPT.
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Somebody shoots up a power station in 2022, and that amounts to a wave of attacks in 2024?
Errr no. There's more to reporting than reading a Slashdot summary. The article talks about a steady rise of such attacks, the one in 2022 just happened to be the first one of real significance.
Domestic terrorism (Score:2, Informative)
Put a needle in their arm just like any other.
"likely be understood only" (Score:2)
Far Right or Left? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Far Right or Left? (Score:4, Funny)
Far-left environmental nuts tie themselves to things or hammer nails into them.
If it were left-wing-nuts, we'd be finding their crispy remains.
--
On a serious note: Good point about not being able to tell the difference. From a distance, the wing-nuts all start to look alike.
Re:Far Right or Left? (Score:5, Insightful)
That, and they're also unlikely to use guns. Far left people tend to be pacifistic activists which is why they tie themselves to stuff.
The left has basically never been associated with guns, shooting killing or other things. You could say things like gun control and such, but blatant gun usage to shoot things up?
I mean, we associate groups like the NRA with the right, everytime the Democrats take power, there's a boom un gun sales as they're always just about to pass gun control legislation, and so on.
Re:Far Right or Left? (Score:5, Interesting)
My personal favorite nugget of history is the Black Panthers exercising their second amendment rights. This scared white people so badly that Ronald Reagan and the NRA made that shit illegal in a hurry.
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Do you mean like this guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Oh wait, a left wing extremist is instantly relabeled anarchist when using violence for left wing causes. Maybe right wing extremists are also just anarchists?
There's a significant difference.
When a left-leaning individual does something shitty, the rest of the left-leaning populace reacts by saying "damn, that's shitty, we're nothing to do with that, they should get prosecuted."
When a right-leaning individual does something shitty, the rest of the right-leaning populace reacts by saying "they were... um... reacting to um... immigrants... or... um... oppressive liberal agendas... or... um... exercising their constitutional right to own and use personal thermon
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Definitely not well thought put. While a power disaster will definitely create anarchy, it must happen in major population area. Not Appalachia. Most people in Appalachia dont mind being off grid for a brief period. A better example is post hurricane areas of population. New Orleans after Katrina, or Miami after Andrew. You take a coordinated attack on 25 power substations in LA with some IEDs and the population would eat itself in just a few days. What I see here is some low-brow “hey watch me do th
Re: Far Right or Left? (Score:4, Informative)
Not "because Tesla is a polluter" (how d'you pull that out of your rear?) but because they're chopping down 500.000 trees to expand their factory.
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Maybe you should read the article before posting shit so dumb. https://archive.ph/PwzqA [archive.ph]
Ever play Asteroids? (Score:3)
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You eat an endless supply of pills and listen to repetitive music while trying to escape the ghosts of your past?
Sounds about right.
Cuz we've caught a few of them (Score:3, Interesting)
Also because it's the Russians encouraging people to do this and they are explicitly targeting right wing extremists. There really aren't any left-wing extremists left in America. There's a very tiny number of border called tankies that are mostly just a cult run to enrich a single asshole. But we've been crushing the left wing so hard for so long in America we don't even have the kind of radicals that would get up to that sort of mischief. The last
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It's like that old joke about how you never see Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana together at the same time.
The old joke was about Superman and Clark Kent. The Disney Channel singer who would eventually go on to ride wrecking balls came later.
Though, you probably are right about the Russians. They're the only ones who really have anything to gain by getting Americans to destroy their own infrastructure.
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How do we know it is not far left extremists trying to save the planet by trying to stop us from using electrical power because they think that will help save the planet?
Environmentalists saving the planet by *checks notes* causing uncontrolled oil to spill on the ground...
When you get this extreme you can't really differentiate between left or right
Sure you can it's simple. When it's left it's "OMG THEY LET IN THE TERRORISTS" and when it's right it's "oh we can't differentiate, there are good people on both sides, also it must be the environmentalists".
Re: Far Right or Left? (Score:3)
What a weird comment to make. Far right terrorism is a concrete menace in US society, it follows a playbook that includes this kind of attack, the US far right has already showed many times that it is willing to resort to illegal violence to get its way. You may have heard of the KKK or of Jan. 6. Far left terrorism in the US is, until now, not nearly on the same level of threat (if any). The US has a domestic enemy, it's the far right, identifying your enemies is important if you want to make sure they do
Re: Far Right or Left? (Score:4, Insightful)
Err...you do know that most of the KKK type folks in the day were Democrats, don't you?
Take a gander at Robert Byrd [wikipedia.org]....for instance.
You do know, that it was the Republicans that freed the slaves...eh? Heard of Lincoln?
Republicans of Lincoln's day were progressives. Do you really think that conservatives of the day would have passed the Reconstruction Amendments?
You also need to research Dixiecrats. The parties changed back then, mainly due to the racist members leaving the Democrats due to Truman enacting integration.
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> You may have heard of the KKK or of Jan. 6.
There is nothing "far right" about the KKK. KKK is democrat. None of the J6 protesters killed anybody, rather the unarmed J6 protesters were killed by police. At least 25 people were killed during BLM riots.
Far left has proved, many times, it is willing to resort to illegal violence to get its way. There are numerous examples.
Bullshit. The KKK is racist, not political. In either case, I bet you would find that the vast majority of them today identify as GOP, as the GOP doesn't seem to have a problem with racism.
They are doing it wrong (Score:4, Funny)
If you want to really disrupt the electrical grid, just bribe or blackmail the sun to shoot out a few super-flares in the direction of earth. [wikipedia.org]
Note for normal people: Shh, don't tell the power-killing kooks that the sun can't be bribed or blackmailed. Let's keep 'em distracted.
If you really want to disrupt the grid... (Score:5, Funny)
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No, you're doing it totally wrong. See, what you have to do to collapse the grid is lots of EVs. It's gonna take an absolute buttload of them, so we're going to have to get everyone on board with this whole electric car thing. It also will have to be done quickly, before the grid can be upgraded to handle the increased load.
I suggest convincing Elon Musk to give every American a free Tesla.
Telegram = Satan (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the deal with all of the anti-telegram propaganda?
Telegram != Satan (Score:2)
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What is the deal with all of the anti-telegram propaganda?
Because it was now used against Western establishments.
It was all fine and dandy when Telegram was used to coordinate riots and color revolutions elsewhere in the world.
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It's not new, you are just learning about it for the first time because the head of Telegram got arrested.
It's been well known that Telegram has been a haven for terrorism, child abuse, illegal goods trading, and more, for a long time now. That's not unique to Telegram, but what is unique is that their efforts to act on reports of such content have been almost non-existent. They also don't help law enforcement track down users when they ask, which you may argue is a good thing but legally they are obliged t
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It's not propaganda when it's true. It just so happens that there were two stories involving them at the same time. Telegram has been widely used for this sort of stuff for ages and for a simple reason: WhatsApp flags messages - even encrypted ones - on device pre-encryption and sends them to moderation teams. And idiots are too dumb to use Signal.
Telegram is just the shitshow du jour. It was Facebook a few years ago but Facebook has gotten a bit better at banning people while Telegram doesn't give an iota
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What is the deal with all of the anti-telegram propaganda?
Probably because a good portion of the response to Durov's arrest has been "WTF, France?", and rightfully so.
So, they're firing up the spin machines to paint it as something other than an app that people use because stock messaging on Android is a dumpster fire, and stock messaging between iOS devices and Android is a nuclear dumpster fire.
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Og oppressed (Score:2)
Mild annoyance (Score:2)
False Flag (Score:4, Interesting)
“far-right extremists” (Score:2)
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Re:“far-right extremists” (Score:4, Informative)
Find the explanation from the article below
( Had to find a mirror https://governorswindenergycoa... [governorsw...lition.org] )
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Search warrants indicate that it took detectives only a few days to identify suspects associated with a right-wing group called the Moore County Citizens for Freedom. Members of the group, which was involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, complained online about a local drag show scheduled to start around the same time of the attack. Witnesses reported that it had developed a plan to disrupt substations in the area. (The drag show went on, with performers singing Beyoncé songs in the dark.)
FBI agents interviewed one man who said he understood the Moore County Citizens for Freedom had developed a plan to attack the power grid, though he told police he’d thought the plan had been called off.
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How do they know it's âoefar-right extremistsâ. Why would âoefar-right extremistsâ attack the infrastructure since they would be most in favor patriotism the state.
Reich wingers are largely anti-government. Anything that involves them paying taxes is bad, unless it's military in which case support the troops, and don't defund the police because MUH THIN BLUE LINE! And they especially want the EPA to go away, because they don't understand pollution in the slightest, because they have been systematically dumbed down [theintercept.com] so that they will continue to vote against their own existence.
Flashback 20 years (Score:5, Insightful)
"Muslims did some terrorism, so we need to tap all the ISPs"
Bloomberg Audience= Far Right (Score:2)
If its Bloomberg, its far right. If its Fox its the evil left. It all depends on who your audience is and what will attract their attention. Either way, it will be accompanied by hyperbolic exaggerations
The example in the story is from two years ago. Un-surprisingly in the last two years there seem to be no stories of massive power outages all over the country caused by people shooting at power stations. It doesn't even seem to have caught on as an internet meme.
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Seriously, I don't know why Bloomberg (and the supposed extremism experts) focus so much on people shooting at power substations in NC two years ago as a reason
Re: (Score:3)
who is running this psy-op? (Score:2)
who is running this psy-op?
Betting this isn't a loose collection of idiots globally doing really stupid stuff on their own. There's a hand guiding it from the shadows or feeding either money, intel or facilitating access... just enough to make it actually dangerous/enough to catch headlines/distract/shift focus/cause damage. In this case, doubt 2 hillbilies knew that they would need to strike and neutralize two substations and ran a coordinated attack on a hunch.
Hope I'm wrong, but doesn't take much for a
Re: (Score:2)
A useful answer (Score:3)
Seems an ex-electrical worker has been giving them tips. While it may be possible to upgrade the security of such buildings, because they are unmanned for most of the year, there is plenty of time for terrorists to force their way through fences and walls. With the rise of the internet, the useful answer is high-quality surveillance cameras and an intrusion alarm system. It doesn't prevent the single-point of failure, but it is possible to make unsolved attacks rare, even with highly mobile terrorists.
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"All waiting for their signal"
Sure... from the FBI.
The US trained up plenty of terrorists, but they called it the "Free Syrian Army"
Re:US Gaze Averted on Extreme Right Terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what you consider to be a "hate group". I don't think it is illegal to be a "hate group" in the United States, so law enforcement and politicians (whether left or right) are ALWAYS going to let them "go free". After all, one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist.
To be more specific and less snarky, remember the Westboro Baptist Church? Those people were a hate group if I ever saw one! By anyone's definition, I think it is fair to call them that. No one liked them or wanted them around, but neither law enforcement, politicians, legislators, or the U.S. justice system had any authority to interfere with them and their (very cruel and hateful public demonstrations of) freedom of expression. So... I'm kind of scared when you say, "THIS MUST END" because there's nothing illegal going on.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Gosh I wonder what he's up to these days.
Mostly he's still cashing in on the fame he earned from willfully putting himself into a bad situation when he was 17. On one hand I kind of get that they didn't want a teenager's dumb mistake to ruin the rest of his life, but escaping the consequences hasn't really made him a better person either.
There's that old saying that some people's purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others. I'd have honestly preferred Rittenhouse had been sentenced to jail to send a strong message that property isn't wort
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I have this great idea for a new TV show. The premise is simple. Just toss a liberal celebrity into the ring with a couple of Marines, and spend about an hour filming him getting the living shit beat out of him. Wouldn't it be great, every night you can turn on your TV and watch some loathsome parasite like Gavin Newsom or Chuck Schumer getting a Front Street Face Lift? If that's not a hit, I don't know what is!
I know people say "Don't feed the troll" but I'm really wondering how old this copypasta is. I encountered it on multiple Slashdot comments over the years - sometimes on submissions that have nothing to do with politics. I guess that's better than people spamming ASCII art swastika but still, some people really have the motivation to often post this dumb and ragebait-ish comment.
Re:"The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:4, Informative)
The marines are not "part of the navy". They are their own military branch.
Sigh...
The Marine Corps has been part of the U.S. Department of the Navy since 30 June 1834 with its sister service, the United States Navy.
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps#
Re: (Score:3)
Really? Someone should alert the Department of the Navy!
I've worked for both US Marines and US Navy doing research. Those who are in the Marines and the Navy understand quite well that they are just different parts of the same service.
What I am surprised about is the number of self claimed patriotic Americans who do not know that, and boldly claim otherwise.
This old soldier seconds your voice. (Score:3)
Re:Doesn't pass the sniff test (Score:4, Informative)
You are a liar.
From the abstract of a research paper on political violence: "In this research we address these gaps by comparing the use of political violence by left-wing, right-wing, and Islamist extremists in the United States and worldwide using two unique datasets that cover real-world examples of politically motivated, violent behaviors. Across both datasets, we find that radical acts perpetrated by individuals associated with left-wing causes are less likely to be violent. In the United States, we find no difference between the level of violence perpetrated by right-wing and Islamist extremists."
https://www.start.umd.edu/publication/comparison-political-violence-left-wing-right-wing-and-islamist-extremists-united [umd.edu]
Also: "The leader of a conservative think tank on Thursday misrepresented partisan differences in political violence in the United States, wrongly suggesting that people associated with left-wing causes commit more violence than those on the right."
https://apnews.com/article/political-violence-trump-biden-pelosi-assassination-c4423ed88df6f4b3557aa11e798f855d [apnews.com]
And the loon right isn't leading the slaughter sweepstakes just by a little: "In contrast, much of today's political violence is aimed at people -- and most of the deadly outbursts tracked by Reuters have come from the right. Of the 14 fatal political attacks since the Capitol riot in which the perpetrator or suspect had a clear partisan leaning, 13 were right-wing assailants. One was on the left."
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-politics-violence/ [reuters.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Follow the money. How much federal $$$ do they get for saying it's the far right?
Is this an op like the Whitmer kidnapping and J6 pipe bombs?
Why don't you follow the money and tell us where it leads? As Far as the Whitmer kidnapping plot, it looks like most of the people are currently doing jail time over it.