Operation Featherweight: Month 18, Week 2, Day 6.

Yesterday (7/1/16) authorities in the US announced that in the past week they had arrested two men for supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). One of the these men was arrested in Dallas, Texas while the other was arrested in Sacramento, California.

As with Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez who carried out the July 16th (16/7/15) Chattanooga terror attack both of these men had been born in Palestine before claiming refugee status in neighbouring countries - in both case Iraqs. They then claimed refugee status again in order to enter the US.

I had been planning to incorporate this information into a wider post about the challenges of screening and then integrating refugees from ISIL that included the mass of sexual assaults carried out by asylum seekers in Cologne, Germany on New Years Eve (NYE). However the security screening and integration of refugees are both very broad subjects and I'm still feeling distinctly woolly headed.

Last night though the US experienced another terror attack this time in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a police car was making a turn into a residential street a man standing on the corner opened fire 13 times on the vehicle eventually getting close enough to reach inside the drivers window.

Despite being hit three times the police officer - Jesse Hartnett - was able to exit the vehicle and chase the suspect eventually shooting him the butt. During questioning the suspect - Edward Archer - declared that he had carried out the ambush in the name of ISIL because the US police enforce laws that contradict Islamic Sharia law.

In terms of analysis of this type of self-radicalised, lone-wolf attack it doesn't really matter whether they occur in Paris, France, Brussels, Belgium, London, UK or Philadelphia, US. The priority remains eliminating ISIL's propaganda by defeating on the battle fields of Syria and Iraq.

However the US does have the added problem of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign.

For almost exactly as long the international fight against ISIL has been going on BLM have been pumping out the message that the police and the law are the enemy and any tactic - no matter how violent - is perfectly acceptable to fight them. Both ISIL and BLM have specifically targeted black people to join their campaigns. As a result black America is effectively getting a double dose of terrorist agitation.

What is most interesting about last night's attack though is that it occurred around mid-night local time (05:00GMT). However it was not until roughly 13hrs later that a single US news agency reported on it. Even then the reporting only seems to be in response to the Philadelphia Mayor, the police commissioner and the local FBI office calling a press conference on the attack.

The primary reason for the silence of the US media seems to be a desire not to embarrass US President Obama.

Although the link to ISIL has only emerged today the story was immediately about a young black man attempting to assassinate police officers. This is a repeat of the December 20th 2014 (20/12/14) ambush of two police officers in New York City which was carried out in the name of the BLM campaign.

The story is also hugely embarrassing for Obama because through the Walter Scott case in South Carolina and the Laqan McDonald case in Chicago, Illinois it is clear that the BLM campaign Obama supports would now like to see Officer Hartnett prosecuted for his actions.

Rather then allowing police officers to shoot fleeing felons it's clear that BLM think that Mr Archer should have been allowed to escape triggering a situation similar to the one they've had in Tel Aviv, Israel following last Friday's (1/1/16) shooting. Here schools and businesses have been closed for the past week amid a massive manhunt for the attacker.

Finally last night, just before the attack CNN had granted Obama an hour long special program to justify his executive order to expand background checks on gun purchases. By comparison CNN's NYE coverage looked like an example of a rigorous political examination.

The gun used in last night's attack - like most guns used in crime in Philadelphia - had been stolen. As a result Mr Archer did not buy it from a registered gun dealer and did not have to pass a background check.

There is absolutely nothing in Obama's executive action that would have changed that fact or prevented last night's attack.

21:20 on 8/1/16 (UK date).