Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Not Alone | Planetary Doom Delayed | Next Cyberattack is Already Underway, and more

In the meandering November 2018 Facebook post, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — known for supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory, making anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim comments, and falsely suggesting that school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Parkland, Florida, were staged — theorized that a space-based solar generator, used in a clean-energy experiment with the goal of replacing coal and oil, could have beamed the sun’s energy back to Earth and started the fire.
Greene’s post speculated that former Gov. Jerry Brown, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Rothschild Inc. — an investment firm that has long been the target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories accusing Jewish people of controlling global affairs — were involved. It also falsely claims that the blaze followed the path of California’s planned high-speed rail line.

U.S. Airstrike Kills Top ISIS Leader in Iraq (Jane Arraf and Falih Hassan, New York Times)
The joint operation with Iraqi forces was aimed at stemming the group’s resurgence, and illustrates Iraq’s continued reliance on the U.S. military.

Pipe Bombs Believed to Have Been Placed Night Before Attack on U.S. Capitol (Dustin Jones, NPR)
The FBI believes the pipe bombs placed outside of the Democratic and Republican party headquarters in Washington, D.C., were staged on Jan. 5, the night before the attempted insurrection at the Capitol.
On Jan. 6, U.S. Capitol Police responded to multiple reports of what appeared to be two separate pipe bombs at approximately 1 p.m. Both devices were disabled and turned over to the FBI, an USCP release said. A $50,000 reward was initially offered by the FBI for information about the incident. The reward has since doubled to $100,000 and new information has been released about the suspect.

Muslim Boy, 4, Referred to U.K. Anti-Extremism Program over Video Game Comment (Arab News)
The British government’s anti-extremism program Prevent is under fire after it was revealed that a Muslim boy aged 4 was flagged by his after-school club for talking about the video game “Fortnite.” U.K. newspaper The Observer newspaper reported on Sunday that the boy was referred to the program in September 2019 after saying his father had “guns and bombs in his shed.” Following the child’s referral to Prevent, it was quickly established that he was with his father the night before he made his comments.  His cousin was playing the video game “Fortnite,” which has more than 350 million registered players and involves characters collecting guns and bombs. After making the comment, he told a worker at the care club about his cousin playing the game.  His mother, in the first anonymous interview of a parent of a child aged 6 or under referred to Prevent, said: “The office sent me all the information, including the transcript of that conversation. It’s quite clear he mentioned Fortnite.” She added: “He’s just a little boy with an imagination. The teachers should know in this setting that (children) have imagination. They know exactly what kids are like, and what young boys are like. I do think that if it was a white boy, they wouldn’t have actually gone to that extreme of referring him to the Prevent scheme.

Neo-Nazis Cause Outrage in Australia (Phil Mercer, VOA)
Campaigners are calling for a white supremacist group that allegedly burned a cross in the Australian state of Victoria to be prescribed as a terrorist organization. Campers have described seeing a group of 30 masked men displaying swastikas and chanting racist slogans. Images online show a group of bare-chested men wearing balaclavas standing next to a burning cross. The pictures are believed to have been taken during the Australia Day public holiday earlier this month. The men are thought to belong to the National Socialist Network, a small white supremacist neo-Nazi organization with members in most major Australian cities. They were allegedly performing Nazi salutes and shouting offensive slogans in the Grampians National Park, 250 kilometers northwest of Melbourne. “They were chanting ‘Ku Klux Klan’ over and over,” said local resident Luke Baker. “So, that went for quite a while and then it was repeated and then ‘White power’ and then there was sort of these Heil Hitlers.” Experts say that such provocative behavior could be an attempt to generate media attention to attract new members and spread messages of bigotry. Victorian state Premier Daniel Andrews has warned that “evil” and “wicked” anti-Semitism was on the rise in Australia and overseas.

Inevitable Planetary Doom Has Been Exaggerated (Emma Marris, The Atlantic)
Ultimately, 2031 could be pretty good.

The Key to Combating Conspiracy Theories about Coronavirus Vaccines (Cameron Givens, Washington Post)
We need to understand why some Americans are so susceptible to fearmongering

The Next Cyberattack is Already Underway (Jill Lepore, New Yorker)
Amid a global gold rush for digital weapons, the infrastructure of our daily lives has never been more vulnerable.

The Risk of Nuclear Cataclysm Is Increasing (Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg)
The U.S. and Russia have kept their last remaining nuclear treaty from lapsing, but an arms race in tactical nukes makes it hard to celebrate.