#american nationalist

[quotesfromall]

A national fantasy is the very way nationalists inhabit, experience and conceive of their nation and themselves as nationalists. The nationalist in this construct is always a nation-builder, a person whose national life has meaning derived from the task of having to build his or her ideal homely nation, a national domesticator. This is why the most vocal nationalists are often people who feel unfulfilled in other fields of social life. Nationalist becomes the means of giving one's life a purpose

Ghassan Hage, White Nation

[mueritos]

happy pride to all queer children of immigrants

patreon

[batboyblog]

Link

this is the future Republicans want, criminalize porn, sex outside of marriage and divorce.

get out and vote if you don't want to live in their nightmare world.

[raisin-gran]

sometimes i wish that les miserables took place in the usa. not for any valid or smart reasons, but just because i think it would be funny for enjolras to be like this guy

[alluralater]

thoughts/vent post

yesterday i was thinking about how big the united states is and how it’s crazy that if someone were to invade, we really just wouldn’t know if they were quiet and smart about it. then i started today thinking about the insane amount of cop cities being built all over this country, quietly. specifically being built in places that have been known for protesting. we are being invaded right now, quietly but surely. our government has realized that there is possibility to overthrow them and they’re putting all this shit into motion now because in 5-10 years there will be an INSANE amount of unrest, even more than we’ve seen in the 2020 black lives matter protests, even more than we’ve seen in the current palestinian genocide protests. the police presence at both of these kinds of protests have been overwhelming. though protesting is a legal right. (for non-americans-> it is legal but it isn’t actually and that’s why it’s so dangerous to do. our government will pretend certain laws don’t exist whenever convenient). all cops here are bad and they serve a system meant to harm and imprison citizens + protect property of the rich. doing anything else is actually what you’d consider outliers to their intended purpose, though it still doesn’t negate ACAB. even the way it’s taught in our country, protesting was actually only okay for this group of white guys when THEY wanted to overthrow the british government. that one we’re supposed to clap for and anything else historically was frowned upon at the time. many people are killed, jailed, and/or injured at protests at the hands of police and our mainstream media is owned by those in power, so they’ll call it “rioting” and flip shit around to confuse even more of the population + try to turn us against each other. it is extremely rare that anyone protesting actually does something to cause harm and therefore dEseRvEd to get their shit rocked by these weirdos in uniform that sold their soul for 22k a year. in my opinion it’s like the stanford prison experiment but imagine it large scale because there is very little training and they’re basically taught to shoot without more thought than it takes to upholster their weapon. oh and they’re taught to aim for kill shots so that’s… ??? pretty much they’re just untrained idiots walking around with no idea what they’re doing and they get off on the sense of power given to them. AND the way the military + police system work similarly is that they teach people not to think. don’t think, just shoot. don’t think, just take someone to the ground. don’t think, act. they are vessels without thought and harm people the same way— thus in my opinion, are soulless.

btw does anyone wonder where all this funding is coming from?? where this country refuses to help their own citizens or deliver aid to countries in need while saying it isn’t in the budget, they will instead always have money for weapons, for bombs, for sending money to other countries that want to commit atrocities. they will always have money for militarization. this country is guilty of so many things and the fact that we can just print more money to continue the horrors is— well, it’s horrifying. you can’t even count on the idea of us running out of money because somehow there is somehow ALWAYS money for murdering people overseas. fucking disgusting. that pentagon tax audit missing trillions of dollars is makin reeeal noise right now.

does anyone know the process of how you go about getting a country disbanded? more on that, how do we go about ruining the process of these cop cities. i’ll be researching. i want them left empty like those unfinished amusement parks. i want them turned into free or low-income housing. i want them turned into agriculture or food centers because food deserts are at an all time high.

the media is flooded right now with trending pop culture topics and while this is distracting, if you live in the USA, cop cities are a HUGE problem and we’ll be seeing just how bad the effects are in a few years. we’re going to see a lot of our citizens desperate for work (because the economy is in a perpetual state of decline and the rich are getting richer while costs of living for the rest of us increase even more and jobs become more scarce) and there’s no way these cop cities won’t start eventually offering programs for debt relief, education, healthcare, and housing— pretty much exactly what the military here does already for many citizens who believe they have no other options than to enlist so they can survive.

militarizing your citizens against your citizens??? leading by fear and oppressive force??? taking advantage of the vulnerable populace??? not changing the system but instead doubling down when eyes are drawn away?? overturning laws meant to protect them??? drafting new laws to smite them?? encouraging genocide and taking part in said genocides because it’s profitable?? that’s just… so… american government. we have literally never lived in an actual democracy. not once. everything we have is stolen and/or covered in blood. there is no changing or redeeming the past but the future is wide fucking open for change. if we lived in a true democracy, the changes we (the overwhelming majority noted in polls and census taking) have been asking for would already exist. america is a force of greed and deception, eating and eating itself and everything around it without pause while claiming it is still hungry for more. it will consume itself eventually but not anytime soon. i doubt i’ll be around to see the fall. i doubt any of us will. i wanna grab people by the shoulders and be like— please don’t wait on the future to save you. we only have right now to save ourselves.

god ugh anyways okay i’m done. probably gonna talk more shit in the tags though

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Maryland’s top utility regulator was watching the news one February morning when a headline blindsided him: Two suspects with neo-Nazi ties had been charged with plotting to take down Baltimore’s power grid.

Jason Stanek, the then-chair of the state’s Public Service Commission, said Maryland regulators were “caught flat-footed,” not hearing a word from law enforcement before the news broke — or in the months afterward. Federal prosecutors have alleged the defendants were driven by “racially motivated hatred” to try to cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in the state’s largest city, which has a predominantly Black population.

The FBI declined to comment on its communications with the Maryland commission. But Stanek’s experience is not uncommon.

A POLITICO analysis of federal data and interviews with a dozen security, extremism and electricity experts revealed that despite a record surge in attacks on the grid nationwide, communication gaps between law enforcement and state and federal regulators have left many officials largely in the dark about the extent of the threat. They have also hampered efforts to safeguard the power network.

Adding to the difficulties, no single agency keeps a complete record of all such incidents. But the attacks they know about have regulators and other power experts alarmed:

— Utilities reported 60 incidents they characterized as physical threats or attacks on major grid infrastructure, in addition to two cyberattacks, during the first three months of 2023 alone, according to mandatory disclosures they filed with the Department of Energy. That’s more than double the number from the same period last year. DOE has not yet released data past March.

— Nine of this year’s attacks led to power disruptions, the DOE records indicate.

— The U.S. is on pace to meet or exceed last year’s record of 164 major cyber and physical attacks.

— And additional analyses imply that the true number of incidents for both 2022 and 2023 is probably even higher. POLITICO’s analysis found several incidents that utilities had reported to homeland security officials but did not show up in DOE data.

According to a report on grid security compiled by a power industry cyber clearinghouse, obtained by POLITICO, a total of 1,665 security incidents involving the U.S. and Canadian power grids occurred last year. That count included 60 incidents that led to outages, 71% more than in 2021.

While that report does not break down how many of those incidents occurred in which country, the U.S. has a significantly larger grid, serving 145 million homes and businesses, with nearly seven times Canada’s power-generating capacity.

Law enforcement officials have blamed much of the rise in grid assaults on white nationalist and far-right extremists, who they say are using online forums to spread tactical advice on how to shut down the power supply.

Concerns about the attacks have continued in recent months, with incidents including a June indictment of an Idaho man accused of shooting two hydroelectric stations in the state.

But law enforcement officers investigating alleged plots against the grid don’t necessarily alert the Energy Department or other regulatory bodies.

“We have no idea” how many attacks on the grid are occurring, said Jon Wellinghoff, a former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the U.S. electric grid. “It looks like they’re escalating if you look at the data. But if you don’t have enough data, you can’t discern patterns and proactively work to stop these things from happening.”

Wellinghoff was FERC’s chair when an unknown sniper attacked a Pacific Gas and Electric substation in San Jose, Calif., in 2013 — an incident regulators have described as a “wake-up call” on the electricity supply’s vulnerability to sabotage.

Last year’s record number of physical and cyber disruptions to the U.S. power system included several incidents that captured public attention, such as a December shooting attack against two North Carolina substations that left 45,000 people without power for four days. The state’s medical examiner has blamed the attack for the death of an 87-year-old woman who died after her oxygen machine failed, ruling it a homicide. Nobody has been charged.

“There is no doubt there’s been an uptick over the last three years in the amount of incidents and also the severity of the incidents,” said Manny Cancel, senior vice president at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the nonprofit body in charge of setting reliability standards for the bulk power system. He is also CEO of its Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which gathers and analyzes data from power companies.

Cancel said NERC has “seen two pretty substantial increases” in incidents coinciding with the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.

Grid attacks that led to power outages increased 71% from 2021 to 2022, totaling 55 incidents in 2022, according to a NERC briefing to utilities that POLITICO obtained. That increase was primarily due to a rise in gunfire assaults against critical infrastructure.

The largest outage reported from a physical attack early this year — which occurred in March in Clark County, Nev. — affected more than 11,000 people, according to DOE data.

But the state Public Utilities Commission was not aware of any outage due to an attack occurring that day, spokesperson Peter Kostes told POLITICO by email. That’s even though state regulations require utilities to contact the commission within four hours of a significant outage.

The state’s largest utility, NV Energy, said in a statement that it had reported the incident to local law enforcement “as soon as we learned about this incident ... so we can continue to increase our resilience against ongoing threats to the energy industry.” A spokesperson for the utility did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether it had informed the commission.

Federal regulations also require utilities to report cyber or physical attacks to DOE, including physical attacks that cause “major interruptions or impacts” to operations.

They must also tell the department about disruptions from weather or other causes that meet certain criteria, such as those that cut off service to more than 50,000 customers for at least an hour, an uncontrolled loss of more than 200 megawatts of power, or a utility voluntarily shutting more than 100 megawatts, according to an Energy Department spokesperson. The spokesperson provided the information on the condition that they not be identified by name.

The Energy Department’s records don’t include at least seven reported physical assaults last year and this year that the Department of Homeland Security and the affected utilities said caused substantive economic damage or cut off power to thousands of customers. POLITICO found these incidents by cross-checking the department’s data against warnings issued by DHS and the FBI’s Office of the Private Sector.

DOE said the incidents may not meet its reporting thresholds.

Several of the incidents missing from DOE’s data involved clear physical attacks, based on other agencies’ descriptions. But the utilities involved said they did not report the incidents to the department because the attacks did not affect the kind of major equipment that could lead to widespread, regional power failures.

One of the incidents not found in DOE’s records cut off power to about 12,000 people for roughly two hours in Maysville, N.C., after a shooting damaged a substation in November, according to a DHS report. The FBI’s investigation into the incident is ongoing, according to the intelligence agency.

The utility affected by the incident, Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative, reported the incident to NERC’s Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, but didn’t report the attack to DOE because it was a “distribution-level” incident, said Melissa Glenn, a spokesperson for the utility. That means the outages caused by the damage would have been limited to local power customers and not lead to the wider blackouts federal regulators are most concerned with.

In another case unreported to the Energy Department, a substation owned by the East River Electric Cooperative serving the Keystone oil pipeline in South Dakota was attacked by gunfire late at night in July 2022, according to DHS. The incident caused more than $1 million in damage and forced the pipeline to reduce operations while repairs were underway.

East River co-op spokesperson Chris Studer said the utility reported the incident to local law enforcement, which brought in the FBI. East River also reported the incident to NERC and its E-ISAC, along with regional grid agencies, but said it did not report it to DOE because the attack did not affect the bulk power system.

Brian Harrell, a former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at DHS, said in an email that utilities have too many competing agencies to report to, and suggested reporting be streamlined to NERC’s E-ISAC.

“This lack of consistency, by no fault of the utility, suggests that the numbers may not paint a complete picture,” he said.

Grid experts said these data gaps clearly indicate a lack of understanding about which agencies utilities need to report to and when.

Utilities may be using a “loophole” based on definitions of what constitutes “critical infrastructure,” said Jonathon Monken, a grid security expert with the consulting firm Converge Strategies. He was previously senior director of system resilience and strategic coordination for the PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest power market.

There are “lots of ways” to work around DOE requirements, Monken added, but as he reads the regulation, utilities are required to report any operational disruptions caused by a physical attack.

“[I]t appears the information you collected shows that companies are still missing the boat when it comes to mandatory reporting,” he said. “Not good.”

One former FERC official who was granted anonymity to speak about a sensitive security issue said the commission also received no alerts from law enforcement officials about the planned and actual attacks that took place last year. That omission hinders agencies’ ability to respond to these kinds of events, the person said.

A spokesperson for FERC declined to comment on the commission’s communications with law enforcement.

But Cancel defended government agencies’ response to these incidents, and said federal investigators may have had specific intelligence reasons for keeping FERC and state utility agencies out of the loop.

“I’m not a lawyer or a law enforcement professional, but you had an active criminal investigation going on,” he said. “I don’t think they wanted to sort of blow the horn on that and compromise the integrity of the investigation.”

An FBI spokesperson offered no direct response to these criticisms in an email, but said the agency “views cybersecurity as a team sport.” The person commented on the condition that the remark be attributed to the bureau.

The FBI urged utility executives last month to attend security training hosted by intelligence agents in order to ensure they are up to speed on the threats posed by bad actors.

“We can’t do it without you,” Matthew Fodor, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said during an all-day FERC technical conference on Aug. 10. “The challenges that we have — and DOE can probably speak to this better than anybody — is limited resources.”

People attacking the electricity supply have thousands of potential targets, including power substations and smaller but critical pieces of utility infrastructure. The smaller pieces often go unprotected because federal standards do not require utilities to secure them.

Nearly half of the 4,493 attacks from 2020 to 2022 targeted substations, according to the NERC briefing from February, making them the most frequent targets for perpetrators over that period.

Details on how to carry out these kinds of attacks are available from extremist messaging boards and other online content, researchers and federal security officials say. These include maps of critical entry points to the grid, along with advice that extremists have gleaned from incidents like the assault in North Carolina.

Stanek, the Maryland electricity regulator, said he was “disappointed with the level of coordination and communication” that federal and state law enforcement displayed in handling the alleged plot in Baltimore. No trial date has been announced for the case, which is in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

Maryland’s Public Service Commission is in charge of ensuring that the state’s power system keeps the lights on. Regulators need to be kept informed of threats to the system so they can coordinate with other agencies in case an attack succeeds, Stanek said.

At the same time, he quipped, maybe he was better off in the dark after all.

“There’s a lot of colorful details in [the FBI report],” Stanek said. He paused, thinking. “And honestly, as a regulator, had I received these details in advance and shared the information with trusted sources within state government, I would have had sleepless nights.”

“So perhaps the feds did a favor by only sharing this information after everything was all said and done,” he added.

[sher-ee]

If you are outside of the United States and watch our news it’s as bad as it looks.

[epically-epic-epicosity]

[nando161mando]

"Hindu nationalists have used the ongoing conflict in Gaza to vilify other Muslims globally. BJP troll farms have spread disinformation and anti-Palestinian hatred online, and Hindu nationalist groups in India have organised pro-Israel marches.

Where does this curious Hindutva-Zionist solidarity spring from? One origin is from the earliest Hindu nationalists who modelled their Hindu state on Zionism."

[traumatizedbymay2016]

The thing that really makes me upset when people try to make the "they're the same candidate" argument about Biden and Trump with respect to America's complicity in the genocide Israel is committing — putting aside literally any thought not directly tied to that exact issue — is that they're not even exactly the same on that front.

Like, I'm not going to lie to you and say that I like Biden's response here any more than you do. But one of these candidates has responded to protests with silence, and the other one thinks that your first amendment rights shouldn't apply on this issue.

Not only are there a mountain of tiebreaker issues that you could use to determine that one of these presidents is meaningfully less awful than the other, the issue where they're supposedly the same level of awful takes less than a minute's worth of googling to show that there are significant differences in the approach here that are one hundred percent worth choosing a side between.

[hotmess-exe]

the way that this world we live in revolves around the portrayal of so many western powers as The Good Guys and Saviors of Democracy or whatever the fuck

and yet it was an African country that finally stepped in and took this shit to The Hague

[slog-the-book]

i find it funny when everyone is like “[their country] RAHHHHHH” during olympics like yes!! be proud! brazil rahhhhh philippines rahhhhhh indonesia rahhhhhhh etc etc. but then when an american does it, its so corny

[anarchotolkienist]

I should also specify that the reason I post so much about anti-Zionist and left-wing anti-Semitism and not other ones is because I am an anti-Zionist and a Leftist and so are most of my social circle. It is the one I see and interact with the most in my day to day life, and as such is the ones that both concerns, confronts and bothers me the most on my day to day life, not because I necessarily believe that it is the most dire threat facing Jewish life at the moment.

[goldmanguyperson]

my main kintype is shapeshiftery but i also have a bald eagle theriotype and i gotta say being a bald eagle specifically is really damn weird in dominant human social context. They’re so heavily associated with the United States that plenty of people have a negative, or overly positive, view of the birds as living things. Many animals are unfairly viewed by humans, but bald eagles have among the most intense good and bad associations i feel. the right call isn’t even used for us most of the time. The call you hear in most media is from a red tailed hawk. Bald eagles sound like a seagull mixed with a songbird. it’s beautiful to me.

I won’t lie and say the dominant social view of them is not a likely part of why i feel like one. i will admit one of the reasons i find bald eagles so relatable as to call myself one is that they are expected to be noble and good (in a human sense), they are expected to be great, but they are just animals, they can’t live up to those expectations.

Yes. they mostly scavenge and “steal”. they are not “noble” predators, whatever that means. But they are not evil or bad. Those are human concepts that mean nothing outside of humanity.

Being a “national animal” for an imperialist capitalist state that has far too much pride in itself was not our choice and we weren’t even their first choice; it could’ve been the turkey. We are not inherent symbols of horror nor are we inherent symbols of greatness, we are just animals trying to survive. I am just trying to survive. I don’t want to be viewed as great. I don’t want to be viewed as terrible. i just want to be.

also i fucking love salmon. humans do so many great things with salmon and fish in general. i go crazy for smoked salmon

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Oh but maybe I'm not done. Maybe in this world where we all have to reckon with the damage our nations and our cultures have done and still do, maybe just maybe invoking the idea of colonial cultural genocide when talking about internal reform within a former imperial power, maybe that's crossing a line actually

[sher-ee]

Reading the reporting on Justice Alito's flag preferences, this 1986 edition of CNN's Crossfire where Frank Zappa calls out America's path to a fascist theocracy.

Frank Zappa was spot on.

We are in such big trouble. Even Republicans who are uninformed or a victim of propaganda are going to regret what they didn’t pay attention to.