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Pittsburgh a “Hub” for White Supremacy, FBI Analysts Say (Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Pittsburgh is a focal point for white supremacy and extremists, an FBI analyst said Thursday at a symposium on domestic terrorism.
“Our area has become a hub. It’s important to understand that it is here,” said John Pulcastro, a supervisory analyst at the Pittsburgh FBI.
In fact, he said the movement is as strong here as at any other place in the country he has studied in 20 years, including the Pacific Northwest, a hotbed for supremacists.

EU to Tighten Rules on Online Extremism after Latest Attacks (John Chalmers, Gabriela Baczynska, Reuters)
The EU plans to tighten its rules to combat online extremism, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting this week between ministers under pressure to beef up security following deadly attacks in France and Austria.
Suspected Islamist militants have killed eight people in less than a month in Paris, Nice and Vienna. The attacks refocused the bloc’s attention on the threat of extremism, which had slid from the top of the agenda in Europe following the 2017 defeat of Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

Rightwing Violence: White Supremacist Groups Found Behind Most of This Year’s Domestic Terror Attacks (Milwaukee Independent)
White supremacists and other rightwing extremists have been responsible for 67% of domestic terror attacks and plots so far this year, with at least half of that violence targeting protesters, according to a new analysis from a centrist thinktank.
The report found only a single deadly “far-left” attack in 2020, the shooting of Aaron Danielson, a rightwing activist, by a self-described “anti-fascist” during a protest in Portland this August. Experts on extremism said this was the first killing linked to an anti-fascist in the United States in 25 years.
Violent rightwing actors were responsible for 41 politically motivated attacks and plots this year, while “far-left” actors were responsible for 12, according to analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who have assembled a database of domestic terror attacks going back to 1994.

Manchester Arena Inquiry: ‘Concerns’ over Terror Risk Assessments (BBC)
The head of security at Manchester Arena on the night of a terror attack there had raised concerns four months earlier that risk assessments for the venue were not “extensive enough”, an inquiry heard.

Jihadist Networks Dig in on Social Media Across Central Asia (Kumar Bekbolotov, Robert Muggah, and Rafal Rohozinski, Foreign Policy)
Almost 500 extremist channels on Telegram, VKontakte, and other networks spread propaganda and vie for recruits. Most of them have ties to the Islamic State.

The United States Got the Pandemic Economic Response Right (Dimitri Valatsas, Foreign Policy)
It spent early and spent big—and is now poised to reap the rewards.

New U.K. Law Planned to Make All Businesses Assess Their Risk of Terrorist Attack (Duncan Gardham. Sky News)
Details of the new legislation emerged at the inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing, which killed 22 people in May 2017.

Bad News: Russia Has No Strategy to Stop an Alien Invasion: The U.S. Military Does Have a Plan (David Axe, National Interest)

·  “In an odd episode in 2013, a Russian space official admitted, unprovoked, that Moscow has no strategy for combating an invasion by galactic marauders. Luckily for Planet Earth, the United States does have a plan. And it counts on Russia and America fighting together. Sergei Berezhnoy, on the staff of the Titov Space Control Center near Moscow, said that Russian air-defense officers ‘have not been tasked with preparing for the contingency of an alien attack,’ according to Ria Novosti.”

·  “A team of scientists from America’s NASA Planetary Science Division disagreed. ‘While humanity has not yet observed any extraterrestrial intelligence, contact with ETI remains possible,’ Seth Baum, Jacob Haqq-Misra and Shawn Domagal-Goldman wrote in a 2011 paper. The scientists conceded that extraterrestrials could be friendly or ambivalent—but we can’t be sure.”

·  “As the world’s leading military powers, America and Russia would be the biggest targets … and the leaders in the eventual counterattack. Combined, the two countries could field huge air, land, sea and space forces numbering thousands of warplanes, millions of soldiers, hundreds of ships and most of the world’s spacecraft.”

·  “Assuming Earth survives and wins, human society could be turned upside down. Paul Springer, a history teacher at the U.S. Air Command and Staff College in Alabama, said former rivals could become close allies, even unified. ‘Keep in mind many of the greatest civilizations in human history formed to counter a common enemy,’ Springer pointed out.”