>>14659585 lb

> https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-fbi-entrapment-is-inventing-terrorists-and-letting-bad-guys-off-the-hook-244905/

>MAY 15, 2012 7:10PM ET

>How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing ‘Terrorists’ – and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook

>The feds have seized an Orwellian power – the power to decide which ideas are dangerous, regardless of the genuine threat they pose

>By RICK PERLSTEIN

This past October, at an Occupy encampment in Cleveland, Ohio, “suspicious males with walkie-talkies around their necks” and “scarves or towels around their heads” were heard grumbling at the protesters’ unwillingness to act violently.

At meetings a few months later, one of them, a 26-year-old with a black Mohawk known as “Cyco,” explained to his anarchist colleagues how “you can make plastic explosives with bleach,” and the group of five men fantasized about what they might blow up.

Cyco suggested a small bridge. One of the others thought they’d have a better chance of not hurting people if they blew up a cargo ship. A third, however, argued for a big bridge – “Gotta slow the traffic that’s going to make them money” – and won. He then led them to a connection who sold them C-4 explosives for $450.

Then, the night before the May Day Occupy protests, they allegedly put the plan into motion – and just as the would-be terrorists fiddled with the detonator they hoped would blow to smithereens a scenic bridge in Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park traversed by 13,610 vehicles every day, the FBI swooped in to arrest them.

Right in the nick of time, just like in the movies. The authorities couldn’t have more effectively made the Occupy movement look like a danger to the republic if they had scripted it. Maybe that’s because, more or less, they did.

The guy who convinced the plotters to blow up a big bridge, led them to the arms merchant, and drove the team to the bomb site was an FBI informant. The merchant was an FBI agent. The bomb, of course, was a dud. And the arrest was part of a pattern of entrapment by federal law enforcement since September 11, 2001, not of terrorist suspects, but of young men federal agents have had to talk into embracing violence in the first place. One of the Cleveland arrestees, Connor Stevens, complained to his sister of feeling “very pressured” by the guy who turned out to be an informant and was recorded in 2011 rejecting property destruction: “We’re in it for the long haul and those kind of tactics just don’t cut it,” he said. “And it’s actually harder to be non-violent than it is to do stuff like that.” Though when Cleveland’s NEWS Channel 5 broadcast that footage, they headlined it “Accused Bomb Plot Suspect Caught on Camera Talking Violence.”

In all these law enforcement schemes the alleged terrorists masterminds end up seeming, when the full story comes out, unable to terrorize their way out of a paper bag without law enforcement tutelage.

(“They teach you how to make all this stuff out of simple household items,” one of the kids says on a recording quoted in the FBI affidavit about a book he has just discovered, The Anarchist Cookbook.

Someone asks him how much it says explosives cost. “I’m not sure,” he responds, “I just downloaded it last night.”) It’s a perfect example of how post-9/11 fear made law enforcement tactics seem acceptable that were previously beyond the pale.

Previously, however, the targets have been Muslims; now they’re white kids from Ohio. And maybe you could argue that this is acceptable, if the feds were actually acting out of a good-faith assessment of what threats are imminent and which are not.

But that’s not what they’re doing at all.

Instead, they are arrogating to themselves a downright Orwellian power – the power to deploy the might of the State to shape a fundamental narrative about which ideas Americans must be most scared of, and which ones they should not fear much at all, independent of the relative objective dangerousness of the people who hold those ideas.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/joe_pivot_to_asia_biden_insults_our_ally_south_korea__again.html

September 25, 2021

''Biden couldn't be bothered to take a 'dignified transfer' of US troop remains from the Korean war, either''

By Monica Showalter

Joe Biden didn't have much time for U.S. troops as he repeatedly checked his watch during a "dignified transfer" of thirteen service members' remains after they were killed in a terror attack during his Afghanistan pullout fiasco.

Now he's gone himself one better — he didn't even show up. When President Moon Jae-in of South Korea took the trouble to fly all the way to Hawaii for another dignified transfer of troop remains dating from the Korean war, Biden had better things to do.

He didn't even send a flunky.

RedState's Andrew Malcolm has a superb report:

The president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, and his wife, Kim Jung-sook, flew to Hawaii this week to personally return the recovered remains of six U.S. soldiers from the Korean War in a solemn ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. The story was first reported by our sister site, HotAir.com.

Almost 40,000 Americans died in that three-year conflict with North Korea and China. Another 100,000 were wounded and a stunning 7,500 still remain unaccounted for.

Bringing home the remains of the fallen is always an emotional issue for Americans, many of whom still fly black POW-MIA flags from the Vietnam War. Accessing remains even delayed peace talks after the Vietnam fighting. And the Leave No One Behind mantra raised its emotional head after Biden's Afghan retreat did leave Americans behind.

So, when the president of a long-time democratic ally and an economic powerhouse, especially one from Asia where signs of respect are so revered and expected, personally gets involved in the return of soldiers' remains, it's a pretty big deal. Or should be. The U.S. still has about 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea as a tripwire to deter another North Korean invasion.

The Biden administration, however, sent no one to the ceremony, which also involved repatriating remains of now-identified Korean soldiers to their homeland.

>>14659865

>https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/joe_pivot_to_asia_biden_insults_our_ally_south_korea__again.html

>September 25, 2021

>Biden couldn't be bothered to take a 'dignified transfer' of US troop remains from the Korean war, either

Malcolm has many more disgusting details, particularly with regard to Biden's long record of disrespect for U.S. service members, so be sure to read here.

Moon? That sounds familiar. Isn't President Moon the important ally of the U.S. who got degradingly insulted last May by idiot Kamala Harris, who literally wiped her hand immediately after greeting this leader?

According to Fox News:

Harris was caught on camera Friday immediately wiping her right hand on her jacket after shaking hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House.

Apparently, she thought he was filthy, or had disease, or might give her cooties or something. And as Malcolm notes, Asian nations hold great regard for deportment and "face," more so than, say, carefree Australia. A blunder of manners in Australia would likely be overlooked. In Asia, it would be noticed. Why would anyone do that, and for the cameras, no less? Imagine former president Trump, who's famously a germophobe, doing something like that! He most certainly never did, because even as a germophobe, he has something called "class." He thinks of the other guy first instead of himself. He knows how to be a cordial host and make his guests comfortable. Not so with roundheels Kamala.

Oh, that wasn't the only insult to South Korea, either. South Korea's top newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, reported that Biden gave South Korea's president the back of his hand at the United Nations, too, ignoring his calls to officially end the war with North Korea and apparently refusing to meet him:

U.S. President Joe Biden ignored Moon's plea in his own keynote address and did not meet him in New York. Biden merely said, "We seek serious and sustained diplomacy to pursue the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

After his speech, the U.S. president sat down for summits with the heads of Australia and the U.K. to discuss their scandal-ridden Aukus pact against China. On Friday he meets with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshide Suga.

Moon instead met the leaders of the U.K., Vietnam and Slovenia during his stay in New York.

That didn't go over well in South Korea. The South Korean president himself delicately said he believes he had been misunderstood (given that Biden wasn't paying attention).

For those of us counting, that's three insults.

What leaps out at me is the incredible incompetence shown here by Biden on the Asia front — not just the Afghanistan front, not just on the Latin American border, not just on the France and Europe front, but now on Biden's vaunted "pivot to Asia." Wasn't Biden supposed to be "Mr. Foreign Policy"?

>>14659868

First, start with South Korea itself:

How is South Korea supposed to look at this series of insults? Very likely, Biden may be viewed as simply disengaged and out of it, and the Koreans will adjust their stance accordingly. Will they, like Singapore, "make calculations and take positions, and they have to make recalculations and adjust their positions from time to time," as Singapore's prime minister chillingly told Harris on her August junket, effectively warning her that they don't consider the U.S., under Biden administration leadership, an entirely reliable ally? That's a warning sign that our Asian allies aren't too sure about Joe Biden as China emerges. South Korea is likely to be another one of them based on this unforced lousy treatment.

Yet Joe Biden repeatedly promoted his foreign policy chops when he ran for president. He was supposedly the experienced foreign policy hand, unlike his rivals, given that he made a lot of congressional junkets, many exaggerated. And that's despite the damning summary of his foreign policy prowess by former CIA director Robert Gates: "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."

Oh, but he learns, wrote Jackson Diehl (whom I like on many of his stances but who is wrong on this one) at the Washington Post:

Gates's verdict raises an awkward question: Would Biden not be better? Could he, in his own way, make it all worse?

The short answer is easy: Biden could and would quickly undo the distinctive evils of Trumpism. It wouldn't be hard for him to call the leaders of Germany and South Korea on Day One and say we're going back to being your reliable ally.

Well, turns out the opposite happened. The South Korean press is quite negative about it.

And it's not just Diehl. Here's Foreign Policy with another now embarrassing analysis:

That Biden is not Trump and will replace chaos in Washington with competence has sent strong messages of reassurance to most Asian allies. Biden's long foreign-policy experience and the team of familiar figures from the Obama and Clinton administrations have generated much comfort in Asian capitals.

Really?

Now let's look at how this series of insults impacts the broader Biden plan to "pivot to Asia."

As China runs rampant and begins threatening Taiwan and South China Sea countries, it's also menacing the northern part of the Pacific Rim, where the big economies of Japan and South Korea lie.

The purpose of the "pivot to Asia" (which several U.S. presidents have pursued, actually; Joe is never original) is to keep sea trade routes clear, something China is trying to put a stop to in order to achieve hegemony. All of the Asian states are critical players and need to be onboard, particularly South Korea, which has the additional role of helping check North Korea's nuclear ambitions and general aggressive tendencies, which is a separate menace.

Biden's repeated pitching of South Korea overboard based on his ineptitude, bad judgment, and general senility has plenty of potential for going haywire somewhere along the line. It's a critical relationship and should be handled with utmost respect. But Biden can't even be bothered to attend a dignified transfer of U.S. troop remains, which the South Korean president was good enough to do himself.

What does this say about Biden, other than that he's utterly unfit?

https://redstate.com/andrewmalcolm/2021/09/24/s-korean-president-returns-u-s-mia-troop-remains-in-person-biden-sends-no-rep-n447297

''S. Korean President Returns U.S. MIA Troop Remains in Person. Biden Sends No Rep''

By Andrew Malcolm | Sep 24, 2021 7:30 AM ET

…The president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, and his wife, Kim Jung-sook, flew to Hawaii this week to personally return the recovered remains of six U.S. soldiers from the Korean War in a solemn ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. The story was first reported by our sister site, HotAir.com.

Almost 40,000 Americans died in that three-year conflict with North Korea and China. Another 100,000 were wounded and a stunning 7,500 still remain unaccounted for.

Bringing home the remains of the fallen is always an emotional issue for Americans, many of whom still fly black POW-MIA flags from the Vietnam War. Accessing remains even delayed peace talks after the Vietnam fighting. And the Leave No One Behind mantra raised its emotional head after Biden’s Afghan retreat did leave Americans behind.

So, when the president of a long-time democratic ally and an economic powerhouse, especially one from Asia where signs of respect are so revered and expected, personally gets involved in the return of soldiers’ remains, it’s a pretty big deal. Or should be. The U.S. still has about 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea as a tripwire to deter another North Korean invasion.

The Biden administration, however, sent no one to the ceremony, which also involved repatriating remains of now-identified Korean soldiers to their homeland.

That five-sided military building did assign an admiral, who was very professional and respectful as a military man but not a government rep.

The Korean president, of course, delivered his remarks with dignity, showing no signs of umbrage as he and a Korean Honor Guard handed the remains of six Americans to the Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency. He then accepted the remains of 68 now-identified South Korean troops, which flew back to Korea on the president’s plane. “American and Korean heroes are finally returning home to their families after a 70-year-long wait,” Moon said. The solemn ceremony received little news coverage beyond Honolulu because without White House representation it was unimportant and any news coverage noting that, like this report, might be seen as critical of the administration that is not headed by Donald Trump.

>>14659978

>Kamala just got back from Hanoi, no?

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2021/09/23/2021092300902.html

''Moon Repeats Call to Declare End to Korean War''

By Kim Ah-jin

September 23, 2021 11:14

President Moon Jae-in on Monday reiterated a call to formally end the Korean War even as North Korea is restarting production of weapons-grade nuclear materials.

"I propose that three parties of the two Koreas and the U.S., or four parties of the two Koreas, the U.S. and China come together and declare that the War on the Korean Peninsula is over," Moon told the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

But Moon claimed declaring an end to the war will "mark a pivotal point of departure in creating a new order of reconciliation and cooperation on the Korean Peninsula." "I expect that the international community… remain always ready and willing to reach out to North Korea in a cooperative spirit," he added.

A Cheong Wa Dae official, providing the customary gloss, told reporters here, "It was a message calling for the creation of positive momentum by agreeing to declare an end to the war this year, which marks the 30th anniversary of the South and North joining the UN together."

''U.S. President Joe Biden ignored Moon's plea in his own keynote address and did not meet him in New York. Biden merely said, "We seek serious and sustained diplomacy to pursue the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."-''