Tuesday, April 11, 2023
The “most lethal threat” faced by the United States isn’t China or Russia. It’s racist groups
A Leftist fantasy. They are just taking a few blowhards seriously. The attacks on electricity substations are much more likely to be by Greenies
The US intelligence community’s recently released 2023 Annual Threat Assessment is blunt in its warning: Nazis and other racist groups are now the “most lethal threat” faced by the United States.
That’s ahead of the aggressive expansionism displayed by China’s Chairman Xi Jinping. And the invasion of Ukraine under President Vladimir Putin.
And these groups “believe that recruiting military members will help them organise cells for attacks against minorities or institutions that oppose their ideology,” the report warns.
United States think tanks are also increasingly worried.
A new Brookings Institution survey found 16 per cent of Americans agree with the statement: “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
But law enforcement statistics reveal an increasing number of extremists are already choosing to do so.
In 2022 there were 26 “actual physical attacks” on power facilities across the United States. That’s up from eight in 2021.
And that’s just one sign the recruitment drive among US military and police forces is bearing deadly fruit.
Ready recruits
“Extremist groups have long urged members to join the military to get training in weapons, tactics and leadership,” a special report into the emerging crisis by military.com states. “The most common route to extremism may be post-service, when veterans … struggle to make peace with their time in the military and try to forge a new life as a civilian.”
Active recruiters include militias and outlaw gangs such as Patriot Front, Atomwaffen, Oath Keepers and the Boogaloo movement.
Such groups already “ape the military and actively recruit members and veterans because they see them as an asset to whatever cause they are pursuing”.
One such cause is detailed by a manifesto circulating on the Russian social media service Telegram. Called the Hard Reset, the document details military-based tactics to take down public infrastructure.
It’s finding a fertile audience beyond just US military and police enforcement agencies.
The Brookings Institution survey found that one in 10 Americans identify as adherents to “Christian nationalism”. A further 19 per cent say they support many of the movement’s goals.
“There is an underlying ideology of racism among the Christian nationalist movement that connects them to white nationalist groups who rely on old and new tropes to promote white supremacy,” the survey finds.
This is expressed through conspiracy movements, including replacement theory – a belief that non-European immigrants are “invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”
Unholy War
“The main thing that keeps the anti-White system going is the power grid,” a neo-Nazi manifesto declares. “This is something that is easier than you think. Peppered all over the country are power distribution substations... Sitting ducks, worthy prey.”
Analysts say the only thing uniting the diverse dogmas of US neo-Nazi, White Supremacist and Christian Nationalist movements is a belief in “accelerationism”.
“With the power off, when the lights don’t come back on... all hell will break lose, making conditions desirable for our race to once again take back what is ours,” the Nazi doctrine document reads.
What comes next, including how it will reconcile competing extremist beliefs, is not addressed.
The apocalyptic propaganda calls for supporters to select targets “that do the most damage to the system and spark revolution and chaos. So long as the power turns on, the status quo, the downward decline of our race, and the increase in non-whites in our lands will carry on unhindered.”
But signs are “true believers” have already made a start.
On December 3 last year, two electricity grid transformers in Moore County, North Caroline, came under sniper fire. The resulting outage left 40,000 residents without power for several days, even as temperatures fell below zero.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper stated the obvious: “If someone with a firearm can do this much damage and get power out to tens of thousands of people, then obviously we need to look at the different layers of infrastructure and hardening and make better decisions here.”
But College of Strategic Intelligence analyst Scott Englund warns the US isn’t in an ideal place for active government intervention. “In the United States, local, state, and federal governments have a long history of directly engaging in, and later tolerating, domestic terror against people of colour or other marginalised groups. Given that history of state terror, attempts to address inequality may be met with mistrust in these communities, no matter how well-intentioned.”
Upskilling extremism
FBI domestic terrorism statistics recorded 1981 domestic terror attacks in 2013. In 2021, that number grew to 9049.
Such figures prompted the US intelligence community’s official warning. Despite its political unpopularity.
Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, challenged the finding at a Capitol Hill briefing. “Are you serious? You seriously think that racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists are the most lethal threat that Americans face?”
The Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, replied: “Yes, sir, in terms of the number of people killed or wounded as a consequence”.
Part of that reason is the drive by extremist organisations to become more military and professional.
Extreme right-wing militia The Oath Keepers came to international attention after a combat-uniformed cadre led the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Its leader has since been convicted of sedition.
Its membership primarily consists of people who describe themselves as military or police veterans. But a leaked database of the 38,000-strong body details some of its members’ skills.
These include battle tank operators and one who claims to have worked with nuclear warheads.
According to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, this is just part of a disturbing trend of political partisanship within the US military.
“The nonpartisan ethic of the armed forces is at greater risk today than it has been in our lifetimes, and maintaining it is essential for the survival of American democracy,” three of its senior analysts write.
“Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 warning that a “house divided against itself cannot stand” remains as relevant today as it was on the eve of the Civil War. If American society becomes so polarised that large numbers of citizens are prepared to take up arms against each other, the United States’ experiment in self-government could ultimately fail.”
But the strength of every recruit’s vow to defend the US Constitution still holds currency, they add.
“Indeed, the 2020 presidential election served as an extreme test case. The US military not only withstood the pressure and did its job; it emerged stronger and even more committed to maintaining its unique nonpartisan role. If it were subjected to a similar test today or during the 2024 election cycle, we are confident it would pass again.”
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Networks Obsess Over 'Far Right,' Oblivious to 'Far Left'
Television broadcast networks tend to slap a “far-right” label onto anything even remotely conservative, often referring to Republican members of Congress, fringe conspiracy theorists, and outright domestic terrorists with identical terminology for all three. Yet these same networks refuse even to acknowledge the existence of a “far-left,” — and in fact, since the 2022 midterms, they have not applied that label to any group or individual even a single time.
An MRC study found that between November 9, 2022 (the day after the 2022 midterm elections) and March 21, broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC used such labels as “far-right,” “extreme right,” and “ultraconservative,” a total of 101 times on their flagship morning and evening shows, as well as their Sunday political talk shows. During that same period, analysts found only one instance in which a journalist used an equivalent “far-left” label.
That single case occurred during the January 22 edition of NBC’s Meet The Press, in which moderator Chuck Todd attempted to frame the overturned Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision as a “middle ground” compromise in the abortion debate:
When you look at the public’s opinion about Roe, and in some ways Roe has become more popular since it was overturned, is that the middle ground, the public — you know, maybe nobody loved it on the far left and far right, but was that actually the right middle ground for the American public?
Across all three broadcast networks, the totality of airtime the fringe left received since November was limited to that single vague reference.
Meanwhile, “far-right” and similar labels were applied to a very wide array of individuals. Republican members of Congress were by far the most heavily labeled group (38 times), followed by general references such as “the far right,” or “extreme rightwing Twitter users,” (19 times).
There were 12 instances of labeling for the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 11 cases for the Oathkeepers, 10 cases for the radical German group that attempted a coup in late 2022, and five for the supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. All others were labeled only once or twice.
This 101-to-1 disparity tracks with the broadcast networks’ well-established habit of obfuscating or outright ignoring extremism from the left.
For example, the pro-abortion radical who attempted to murder Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family received a tiny fraction — less than 10 percent — of the coverage that Paul Pelosi’s attacker received during the first five days following each incident. The attempt on Justice Kavanaugh’s life also received several orders of magnitude less coverage than the January 6 hearings did during an equivalent time frame.
Back in 2018, ABC and NBC ignored attacks by a left-wing mob on the home of Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson. That same year, NBC covered up an assault on their own camera crew by a pack of antifa members.
And earlier this month, ABC and CBS downplayed a case of violent arson against a police and firefighter training center in Atlanta, Georgia. ABC dismissed the attack as mere “foolishness,” while CBS referred to the arsonists as “demonstrators.”
There is no arguing that far-right extremists exist in the U.S. and abroad. Rather, what’s at issue here is the media’s inability to acknowledge extremism on the left. It seems that whenever they do bother to report on the misdeeds of far-left actors, they meticulously avoid ideological labels
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Cancelled: Catholic intellectual group banned for transgender views
A Catholic intellectual group has been banned from holding its annual forum at a university hall over concerns about its views on transgender issues.
The Hobart-based Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies has for the past seven years held its annual “colloquium” at the University of Tasmania’s Jane Franklin Hall of residence.
It was booked again for the eighth such event, to be held in July this year, but the Hall has since withdrawn the booking out of concern about an advertisement for the event titled “Wokery and How to Deal With It”.
The advert included the claim that “elites” were undermining “objective truth” by teaching in schools that “girls can be boys, that boys can be girls, and that grown-ups should be punished for denying it”.
Jane Franklin Hall principal Joanna Rosewell confirmed and defended the cancellation, understood to follow a complaint about the ad.
“We have asked the Christopher Dawson Centre to find an alternative venue for its annual colloquium, usually held here, as the ideas expressed in the advertisement do not align with our values,” Ms Rosewell told The Australian. “We work with a diverse number of students including those from the transgender community. Our first goal at Jane is and must be supporting the wellbeing of our students.”
Christopher Dawson Centre director David Daintree, a former principal of the Hall for 18 years, said he was “shocked” and “disappointed” by the decision, which he labelled “repression”.
He conceded the ad may have offended some transgender people, but argued transgender people did not need the silencing of views that conflicted with their own.
“If you state something you believe that other people do not believe, you are in danger of offending them,” Dr Daintree said. “I believe in objective truth and one side is wrong when you talk about transitioning to another sex.
“I don’t feel I should apologise for expressing an opinion and that’s all we are doing in this call for papers (for the colloquium). If we had received papers that violently disagreed with that proposition then we would have included them if appropriate.”
Dr Daintree said the centre was set up and funded by the Hobart Catholic Archdiocese but was independently run. “Our brief is to justify and to make better known the Christian intellectual tradition,” he said.
“We’re not in the business of evangelising. We are in the business of saying, it’s a reasonable thing to be a Christian and that plenty of intelligent and thoughtful people have been and that faith and science are not incompatible.”
He was yet to find an alternative venue willing to host the event, which he believed could attract demonstrators. Transgender issues were not intended to be the “central core” of the colloquium. “That was just an instance I gave in the call for papers about the perception of truth but this is shaping up to be a very controversial one,” he said.
The University of Tasmania declined to comment on the cancellation, insisting the Hall was “independent of the university”.
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Seven myths that will shake up what you think about cooking with salt
Standard Australian table salt IS sea-salt and naturally has iodides in it
Salt has been essential to cooking - and the human existence - for thousands of years. Our bodies can’t function without it. Our food is often tastier with it.
Because salt is relatively inexpensive and universal, it’s easy to take this kitchen staple for granted. Your eyes may glaze over those instructions to season to taste, or you may decide to leave it out of a recipe where it doesn’t seem important.
That would be an oversight, because salt is actually important in more ways than you may realise. Sure, it’s crucial for flavour. But salt plays key roles in ensuring your food has the right texture and even colour, among other things.
And yet its very ubiquity is part of what concerns many home cooks attentive to their health. We know that consuming too much sodium, an element in salt, increases the chances of high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease. For many of us, though, there’s an achievable middle ground between using no salt and pouring it into our food with reckless abandon.
Part of getting there is understanding what salt does and does not do in cooking. Unfortunately, plenty of myths and misconceptions about this staple are often repeated as conventional wisdom. So, as I’ve done with persistent baking myths, I’m tackling some of the biggest ones to sort salt fact from fiction, from both food and health perspectives.
1. Salt only makes food taste salty
Not only is salt one of the five tastes, it also impacts others. Salt reduces bitterness. It enhances aromas, which play a big role in our perception of flavour aside from just taste. It can also add texture.
Salt performs other functions that don’t have to do with flavour. When added to boiling water, it keeps pasta from sticking to itself by “reducing the gelatinlike layer that forms on the surface of pasta as it cooks,” Nik Sharma writes in “The Flavor Equation.” For blanching vegetables, “Properly seasoned cooking water encourages food to retain its nutrients,” Samin Nosrat says in “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.”
What else can salt do? It can ward off rubbery scrambled eggs by buffering the proteins from bonding too tightly and squeezing out water. In brining, whether wet or dry, salt helps meat retain moisture; in the case of a dry-brined turkey or chicken, it can contribute to crisp, golden skin.
Salt has long been valued as a preservative and an important element in fermented foods. It’s also key in baking bread and sweets; see below.
2. Different types of salt are interchangeable
Does a recipe call for one type of salt but you want to use another? Before you substitute, think, because the size of salt grains can vary. A teaspoon of one type might not be the same as a teaspoon of another.
Fine sea salt and table salt boast a similar texture of small grains, so they are about equivalent in volume. They are also very close in terms of the amount of sodium. That makes them largely interchangeable. Kosher salt has larger grains, but even that varies depending on what brand you’re using.
3. Adding salt to home-cooked food is a major source of dietary sodium.
Keep in mind that by cooking at home you are already well on your way to managing or even reducing your salt intake, because you can control how much you use. Salt in homemade food is less of an issue than prepared and processed food, where it may show up in large quantities or in unexpected items. More than 70 percent of sodium in American diets comes from restaurant and packaged food, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - in other words, “not the salt shaker.”
4. Salt isn’t important in baking
It’s easy to assume that the contribution of salt to baking is limited to salty flavour. Nosrat makes a compelling point: “The foundational ingredients of sweets are some of the blandest in the kitchen. Just as you’d never leave flour, butter, eggs, or cream unseasoned in a savory dish, so should you never leave them unseasoned in a dessert.”
Salt can bring other flavours into focus, such as the chocolate in brownies or the corn in cornbread, Lauren Chattman says in “The Baking Answer Book.” It is even more effective at counteracting bitterness than sugar, Shirley Corriher says in “BakeWise,” citing research conducted by Gary Beauchamp at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, which studies taste and smell.
Salt also lowers the point at which starches absorb water, swell and set, which is crucial in baking, Harold McGee says in “On Food and Cooking.” With a few exceptions, salt is essential for properly risen and flavoured bread, Chattman explains. Dough without salt will rise too fast on the counter and collapse in the oven.
Salt slows down yeast activity, which has another welcome outcome: browning, a key to colour and flavour. Yeast thrives on sugar in dough (it’s generated by the breakdown of the flour even if the recipe has no added sugar), and if left unchecked, there would be no sugar left to brown in baking, according to King Arthur Baking.
5. Salt makes water boil faster (or slower)
The timing of when you add salt to water will not alter how quickly it boils. Adding salt to water actually raises the boiling point, McGee says, because it competes with the water molecules for the absorption of energy.
Don’t be fooled by the sudden appearance of bubbles when salt is added to simmering water, J. Kenji López-Alt says in “The Food Lab.” That is not a sign of boiling, but rather a result of having a new spot for steam bubbles to form on. It can happen any place there’s an irregularity in the water, including scratches in the pot.
6. Using salt without iodine is bad for your health
Iodine is a trace element, or micronutrient, important for regulating thyroid function, says Michele Smallidge, a registered dietitian and director of the exercise science program at the University of New Haven. Without it, people can develop a goiter, or an enlarged thyroid gland. To address iodine deficiencies that were common in areas away from the coasts (iodine is found in soil and water near the ocean), manufacturers started iodising table salt in the 1920s.
Some home cooks are therefore concerned when recipes call for sea or kosher salts, which are generally not iodised. While long-term studies are underway to determine whether and why there may be an uptick in iodine deficiency on a global scale, Smallidge advises home cooks not to panic about which salt they use, though she notes that pregnant individuals and people with other specific health needs may require more special attention. You only need about 150 micrograms a day, and if you consume fish, dairy and even seaweed, you’re probably set. Iodine also shows up in some fortified foods.
“Testing of the general population indicates that most Americans consume sufficient levels of iodine through their diets,” the Mayo Clinic says. If you like using sea salt for other reasons but want the benefits of iodised table salt, you can use a blend of the two, Smallidge says. Or use the information above to substitute iodised table salt as desired.
7. Fancy salt will make your food taste better
If you have some pink Himalayan or other specialty salt hanging around, you may assume it will elevate whatever you add it to. Not quite.
When used to season food before cooking or stirred into a batter or dough, the unique textures and flavours of your fancy, more expensive salt will probably be lost. Save the nice stuff for when it can shine as a finishing salt, sprinkled on top of a completed dish. Even as a garnish on a slice of bread and butter, you’ll appreciate it better.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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