Showing posts with label US. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Leak: Rubio’s WMD Scandal Is “Far-Left Terrorism”

 Leak: Rubio’s WMD Scandal Is “Far-Left Terrorism”

U.S. targets "anti-tech," "pro-Iranian" & "antisemitic networks" with new three-letter designation.

Ken Klippenstein July 15th 2026

Little Marco sits atop his throne

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Tomorrow, Marco Rubio will open a summit unveiling a new designation branding his political opponents as terrorists, documents leaked to me reveal.

The unveil will happen on the opening day of the 60-nation summit — which I reported on here — titled, “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.” 

That this summit is happening at a time when the Iran war is literally exploding, and while so much else in the world seems to be on fire, is a baffling way for the Secretary of State (and National Security Advisor!) to spend his precious time.

Welcome to the War on FLT, short for “Far-Left Terrorism,” a new acronym appearing in State Department documents about the summit and which I obtained. 

A three-letter acronym for an imagined threat that could be radioactive to a politician’s presidential ambitions. Sound familiar? It’s this generation’s WMD. And it’s going to haunt him.

Rubio, who fancies himself a deep thinker and is already being anointed as the experienced middle-of-the-road alternative to JD Vance, is revealing his true stripes: Trump flunkey, oblivious, and lost in the sauce of the bureaucracy’s ideological hotbox.

Far-left is hard enough to define (who decides what’s “far”?) but to add terrorism takes it to another level of crazy. Not that Rubio cares. The summit will introduce a new visa policy under which State targets “far-left terrorist and other aligned groups” not just for violence against actual people but also “economic sabotage including against public and private property” — a phrase broad enough to cover a broken window or a boycott. 

Rubio has spent a decade cultivating the image of the responsible statesman — fourteen years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the grown-up steadying a chaotic administration. The FLT designation is a good place to watch that image dissolve. The State Department is being turned into another clown car, and Rubio seems happy to be the driver.

State’s talking points drop any pretense that this is a politically neutral endeavor. Officials are instructed to rely on the following talking points (per the leaked documents):

  • “We go where the threat is. Political terrorism is resurgent, and far-left terrorism specifically poses a unique and distinctive threat today. Addressing and defeating that is the focus of the Ministerial.”

  • “The United States has observed a concerning convergence between violent far-left and anarchist networks and other violent extremist actors, including violent pro-Iranian and antisemitic networks, as well as militant anti-tech and eco-terrorist movements. This is a trend we are monitoring closely and engaging partners to address.”

  • “The Ministerial will focus world attention on the resurgence of political terrorism and bring together the United States and foreign partners to address the terrorist actors, particularly far-left terrorist networks, operating across Europe, Asia, the Western Hemisphere, and beyond. It focuses on improving coordination, information sharing, and practical law enforcement cooperation to counter political terrorism, including violent far-left attacks on law enforcement, critical infrastructure, political figures, and state institutions.”

  • “Political terrorism is resurgent, particularly among far-left terrorist networks that have grown more sophisticated. They leverage decentralized cell structures, encrypted communications, and transnational coordination to carry out attacks on rail, energy, and telecommunications infrastructure, as well as targeted violence against political figures and their families. In 2024 alone, there were 21 far-left and anarchist terrorist attacks in the EU — nearly matching the number of jihadist attacks that year.”

  • “These are not isolated incidents, but are part of a sustained, transnational campaign of political terrorism that is growing in sophistication and lethality, aimed at dismantling the foundations of self-governing societies.”

  • “The Department of State is committed to confronting organized political violence, including from far-left terrorist and other aligned groups that engage in or support terrorist or criminal activities, economic sabotage, or support far-left terrorist-led violent actions.”

  • “In support of this effort, the Department of State is announcing a new visa restriction policy that targets members of far-left terrorist and other aligned groups who have supported or incited acts of terrorism; supported violent criminal activity; participated in economic sabotage including against public and private property; financed, recruited, or provided logistical support for violent or criminal actions committed by far-left terrorist and other aligned groups; and/or facilitated the convergence of far left terrorist and other aligned networks for the purposes of economic sabotage.”

  • “…this policy will protect U.S. citizens and safeguard the American homeland by restricting entry of foreign nationals who finance, recruit, incite, or otherwise enable terrorist, violent, and criminal far-left terrorist networks — closing the visa pathways that far-left terrorists and other aligned groups could exploit to threaten American lives, undermine economic stability, and coordinate violent actions on U.S. soil.”

Consider who Rubio is comfortable putting in charge of the summit, names I gleaned from an internal State Department roster detailing the event.

Tera Dahl, a senior advisor in State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, is a Michael Flynn colleague from the first Trump administration who was pushed out of the National Security Council by H.R. McMaster. Before that, she wrote for Steve Bannon’s Breitbart, co-founded the now-defunct Council on Global Security — a think tank devoted to warning about the dangers of Islam. There, she worked with Katharine Gorka, wife of current Trump terrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, authoring a string of pieces praising Egypt’s strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for “leading Egypt towards democracy” as he jailed his critics.

Dahl got her start as a staffer for then-Representative Michele Bachmann — which is its own kind of full circle. In 2012, Bachmann and four House colleagues sent letters to federal inspectors general alleging that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the U.S. government, singling out longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The claim was baseless enough that John McCain went to the Senate floor to rebuke a member of his own party.

Then there’s Monica Jacobsen, another senior official at State’s Counterrorism Bureau, a holy warrior who prioritizes the defense of Global Christians. She testified to Congress this year that her agency would “hold governments’ feet to the fire when they fail to address terrorist threats that undermine religious freedom.”

Then there’s Brent Munyon, Senior Adviser to the Deputy Secretary of Management and Resources. A few years ago, he was a partisan dirt digger for the Republican National Committee. Finally, there’s Oscar Buynevich, Special Advisor for the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, another Breitbart commentator whose career amounted to shoveling culture war slop.

It’s a rogues’ gallery befitting the imaginary Iraqi WMD fiasco, the main contributor to the mess we are still in more than 20 years later. Think Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle.

Welcome to Rubio 2028.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2021

The US Congress: Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

But doesn't a politician receive a good wage?



By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired


Trump was right when he talked of the media in such derogatory terms; the media that didn’t promote him of course. But the mass media is not so much fake as biased. The mass media has a class bias whether it’s CNN, MSNBC or Fox News. It is owned and controlled by capital, by the US ruling class and its purpose is to present the ideology of the market and superiority of the capitalist system in a way that is believable, that despite its faults, it is the only system that works.

 

In this venture, language matters. I have raised many times how during the PATCO strike that opened up the offensive against organized labor in the 1980’s a reporter asked an airline passenger delayed due to the stoppage, how they felt being held hostage by the workers on strike. Isn’t that what lawyers call a leading question?

 

I read reports in the media yesterday that Facebook and Amazon, whose CEO’s have been questioned by friends in the US Congress regarding antitrust activity, are preparing for “new scrutiny of their businesses” by the Biden Administration. They are relying on a “time tested” strategy the Wall Street Journal reports and that is “opening their pocket books”. This is an even nicer term for Lobbying which is the usual term to describe what they are actually doing which is bribing members of the body politic. As they are being “investigated” for illegal practices, they are handing over swathes of cash to the investigators.

 

Facebook spent $20 million bribing politicians in 2020 an 18% increase from 2019 and Amazon, whose CEO, Steve Bezos is worth $193 billion as of 1-26-21 according to Forbes, spent $18 million in 2020 an 11% increase from 2019. It appears that 2020 was a good year for some. Compare the experience of these social parasites to the treatment health care workers received, or how ER nurse Cliff Willmeng was treated for demanding PPE’s that wouldn’t infect his family or members of the public.

 

Just for the record, Apple spent $6.7 million in 2020, Alphabet, the Google parent $$7.5 million. Even these figures pale when compared to some:

 

Spending on bribing politicians (lobbying) in 2020:


National Association of Realtors $84,113,368

US Chamber of Commerce (largest gang in the US bigger than MS-13) $81,910.000

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. $25, 946,000

American Hospital Assn. $23,648,466

Blue Cross Blue Shield (Health care industry) $22,662,720

American Medical Assn. $19, 575,000

 

This is just the tip of the iceberg and one important conclusion working people must draw from this, especially trade union members, is that those representatives your union has trying to influence members of the US body politic on your behalf don’t stand a chance. Capitalists are called capitalists because they are the owners of capital. Collectively they own the means of creating that wealth and determine how it is created, how it is spent and allocated. They do no productive labor, they live as we say, off the profit of capital and profit has its source in the unpaid labor of the workers.

 

Spokespersons for Facebook and other firms have made pronouncements about how they value integrity and support “updated regulations” and new laws etc. are just hot air. The tiger will not change it spots and the fox will never guard the henhouse except to protect his next chicken meal.

 

I added up the top numbers for a rough count on those figures above and they come to $254 million. This is a tiny amount of the bribery money spent every year and that has been spent for decades. When you add the defense, er, I mean offense budget, there’s another $700 billion minimum. The total amount wasted on feeding these parasites at the public trough is inconceivable and most of it kept from us. Just imagine that Jeff Bezos $193 billion net worth is somewhere around 800 times that $254 million figure. And if my language is harsh, go read how the big business press, especially the right wing journals refer to poor people, economic refugees and workers in general. Trump called us murderers, lazy and so on. A worker couldn’t steal in a lifetime what the above steal every minute of every day.

 

And this very same body politic can’t provide its citizens with health care, decent public transportation, a minimum wage that can actually keep a family from poverty ($15 an hour is not it. Where I live, a closet is $1000 a month) housing and much more. I remember when a truck driver could actually earn a decent living in the US.

 

The capitalist class a lot more money than we, or the unions do, that’s why they’re called capitalists so we cannot outspend or outbribe them. Not only that, the recipients of their monetary gifts are political representatives in parties that are financed and funded by the capitalist class as a whole.  What we have as workers is the numbers and the capitalists know that, so for them, instituting legislation that causes division in society is as natural as breathing; using language like “opening their pocket books” for bribery when describing their activity is a conscious decision based on class interest. It’s why they will never eliminate racism in society, it’s been the most successful divide and rule tactic so far; in Northern Ireland, religion plays this role.

 

Working class solidarity means solidarity across borders. Workers never created the borders of modern nations states; the capitalist class did. All the talk about walls and obstacles to immigration or migration, doesn’t apply to capital. For capital, there is only the world and what US capitalism strives for, as do all the major capitalist powers including state capitalist regimes, and for want of a better description I include China in that, is to dominate in the plunder of global resources.

 

The US political structure is profoundly undemocratic, just consider the Electoral College or the US Seanate. After the Georgia elections, the Democratic half of the US Senate will represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half. But that doesn’t change the relationship of power between the two parties.  As Ian Millhiser pojnts out at Vox.com, “If the Senate were anything approaching a democratic institution, however, the Democratic Party would have a commanding majority in Congress’s upper house. The Senate is malapportioned to give small states like Wyoming exactly as many senators as large states like California — even though California has about 68 times as many residents as Wyoming.”

 

While it is important for workers to strive for reforms because we learn through struggle, in the last analysis this animal cannot be reformed, it has to be discarded and dismantled. “James Madison, one of the authors of The Federalist Papers and a future president, stated that the American constitution he helped to write would mean “the total exclusion of the people, in their collective capacity, from any share [in the government]”.”  Guardian. That’s what the Senate is for in particular.

 

Society needs new managers.