• Terrorism studies and the struggle for primary data

    If research can only be as good as the data on which it is based, then the study of terrorism has been in serious trouble for decades. From the 1980s to the present-day, many of the field’s most influential scholars have lamented that a majority of articles rely on literature-review based methodologies and do not present any new, first-hand insights. As a result, much of what we know about terrorists and terrorism has been derived from media sources – sometimes brilliant accounts that provide fascinating insights, but often short newspaper pieces of questionable accuracy and limited level of detail.

  • Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bower had links to British far right

    Robert Bowers, 46, who killed eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pennsylvania on 27 October, was in touch with neo-Nazis in Britain who share the same brand of conspiracy theories that Jews control the world and that Jewish financier George Soros is funding immigration to the United States and Europe. British security sources, who shared the information with the Times, note that this apparent collaboration comes against the backdrop of heightened concerns in Britain about the level of right-wing extremist activity as MI5 takes on an increasing role in countering the threat.

  • Anti-Semitic preacher Farrakhan goes to Iran, leads “Death to America” chants

    Hate preacher Louis Farrakhan, on a solidarity trip to Iran ahead of the re-imposition of United States sanctions on the clerical regime, led chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” The Nation of Islam leader spoke at the University of Tehran law school, where he praised women’s rights in Iran and the Islamic laws mandating that they cover themselves. Leaders of the Women’s March, including Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory, support Farrakhan and have appeared at Nation of Islam events, which promote hatred of Jews.

  • Facebook blocks 115 accounts after alert from U.S. authorities

    Facebook says it has blocked 115 user accounts after U.S. authorities alerted the social network to suspicious activity that may be linked to a foreign country. The company’s move, announced in a blog post late on 5 November, came hours after U.S. law enforcement agencies warned that, as U.S. voters go to the polls on 6 November, they should be wary of attempts by Russia, Iran, and other countries to spread fake news on social media.

  • Russia influence operations taking aim at U.S. military

    With the U.S. midterm elections taking place Tuesday, there are growing fears that Russia’s efforts to undermine U.S. democracy extend far beyond the polls on 6 November or the presidential election in 2020. Defense and security officials worry that as part of Moscow’s plan to sow division and discord, it is trying to conquer the U.S. military — not with bullets or missiles but with tweets and memes. The tactic is an outgrowth of Russia’s overarching strategy to find seams within U.S. society where distrust or anger exist and widen those divisions with targeted messaging.

  • Quiet so far, but not all clear

    Homeland Security and intelligence community officials continue to say that the we are not seeing the same level of online foreign election interference in the run-up to the midterms as we experienced in 2016, cybersecurity experts warn the United States is not necessarily in the clear.

  • Countering Russian election hacks

    According to a Center for Public Integrity report, the “U.S. military hackers have been given the go-ahead to gain access to Russian cyber systems as part of potential retaliation for any meddling in America’s elections.” Eric Jensen writes in Just Security that this signals a significant change to the U.S. cyber policy and is a clear indication that cyber actions have now entered the mainstream of national security tools. “For years, the “newness” of cyber capabilities have caused the level of authorization to remain at very high levels and subject to extensive interagency dialogue before even simple cyber tasks could be taken. These procedural requirements undoubtedly had the practical effect of limiting the number of cyber activities undertaken. By allowing DoD and other government agencies to function more autonomously within pre-approved guidelines reflects a normalization of cyber capabilities that has been too long in coming.”

  • Can birthright citizenship be taken away?

    University of Illinois labor and employment relations professor Michael LeRoy is an expert on immigration and employment law. In a recent interview, LeRoy discusses the implications of President Trump’s bid to potentially end birthright citizenship in the U.S.“After the Civil War, Northern lawmakers had a basic choice: Do we enact laws to end slavery, or do we go beyond and enact laws to achieve America’s ideal that “all men are created equal”? They said yes to both propositions, and part of this idea included birthright citizenship,” LeRoy says.

  • Scotland Yard on Labour Party anti-Semitism: “There may have been a crime committed”

    Scotland Yard has opened a criminal investigation into allegations of anti-Semitic hate crime in the Labour Party. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said it “appears there may have been a crime committed.” The police said in a statement that special officers had spent two months assessing a leaked Labour Party dossier detailing 45 cases of alleged anti-Semitism and are now working with the Crown Prosecution Service on the investigation. The dossier contains over 80 pages of anti-Semitic statements of Labour Party members, including Holocaust denial.

  • Pittsburgh trauma surgeon: “Stop the Bleed” training saved lives after shooting, but stopping the need must be next

    I am a trauma surgeon who cared for many of the critically wounded victims of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. As we raced to find the source of blood loss in one of the most severely injured patients, one of my trauma surgeon partners, a U.S. Army veteran of multiple tours, joined me in the operating room to assist. His first comment upon seeing the injuries that we were managing struck me. He said he last saw such destruction from military weaponry when he was serving in Afghanistan.

  • Israeli leader says he has warned EU nations of Iranian plots on European soil

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling Iran the “most potent force of militant Islam,” says he has warned Europe of possible Iranian attacks on its soil. Netanyahu did not provide details, but cases involving alleged Iranian plots to attack Iranian opposition groups or figures in both France and Denmark have emerged in recent months.

  • White House MIA on midterm elections security

    The United States is less than a week away from the 2018 midterms, but the Trump administration has not put together a substantive, coordinated effort to fight disinformation or possible election interference. Law enforcement, homeland security, and intelligence officials held one 90-minute meeting at the Justice Department late last month and left without any answers. No one from the White House attended. In the absence of White House leadership or an overarching strategy, some agencies have taken individual actions. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has stepped forward and convened her own meetings with agency leaders on election security issues.

  • Ideologically motivated far-right extremists have killed close to 500 people since 1990 – and 10 percent were targeted based on religion

    The mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh exemplifies an increasingly deadly form of domestic terrorism committed by far-right extremists: the targeting of institutions and individuals due to their religious affiliation. Unfortunately, it’s not new for far-right extremists to vilify non-white, non-Anglo-Saxon and non-Protestant religions. Judaism has endured most of their ideological rage and conspiratorial paranoia. For more than a century, extreme far-right ideologues have peddled anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy theories. Their dogma claims, falsely, that globalist Jews have infiltrated the government and other U.S. institutions, and that Jews and non-whites pose an existential threat to the white race.

  • Extremist violence through the mail

    Federal and state law enforcement agencies acted quickly and decisively to apprehend the Florida man who mailed letter bombs to prominent Democrats, to supporters of liberal causes, and to CNN. There is a long history of extremists and terrorists using the mail system to deliver bombs to targets, though it has not been a common tactic.  Others have placed bombs in mailboxes or put bombs in packages designed to look as if they had been delivered by mail or delivery service.

  • Britain’s Jews hold vigils amid rising anxiety about Anti-Semitism

    A poll last year found that almost a third of Britain’s 290,000 Jews have considered leaving during the past two years due to growing anti-Semitism. More than a third admitted that out of fear, they conceal any public signs indicating they are Jewish. While much of the media focus following the Pittsburgh massacre has been on the threat to Jews from white supremacists, for British and European Jews, hostility and the threat of persecution and prejudice is more complex. They say the threat to Jewish life comes from multiple sources, and not only from the nativist far-right, but also from the radical left whose anti-Zionism spills, they argue, into anti-Semitism and whose opposition to globalization and disdain of bankers can echo the memes of diehard opponents on the right. Manifestations of Judeophobic sentiments in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party are another source of worry.