Tag: terrorism

Another Good Time

jasencomstock:

lemkin:

This is probably another good time to remind you all that all of us were carrying actual assault rifles, and some of us were also carrying pistols.

Well worth a read to see just how far the TSA goes, even when dealing with soldiers returning from one of our forever wars.
Setting the CIA aside for the moment, I’m hard pressed to come up with a better example of a rogue and seemingly uncontrollable agency in the federal government.

Also: I’d wager this is likely to be the one and only link to Red State you’re ever going to see here. So live it up.

Nope. Never had someone in Uniform do the terrorism. Never.  Ever.

If a domestic terrorist chooses to execute his (or her) cunning plan by enlisting, deploying for some period of years into an active war-zone, surviving said deployment, and then flying back on a plane full of other military personnel at which point the stunning plan can become known: to seize control of and crash the airplane on which they are all flying using a pair of nail clippers, then so be it.
I’m sorry, but I think that’s a level of “risk” with which a free society can live.

Another Good Time

[My study] found the exposure [from millimeter wave scanners] to be about one-fiftieth to one-hundredth the amount of a standard chest X-ray. [I] calculated the risk of getting cancer from a single scan at about 1 in 30 million, which puts it somewhat less than being killed by being struck by lightning in any one year, [and] while the risk of getting a fatal cancer from the screening is minuscule, it’s about equal to the probability that an airplane will get blown up by a terrorist.

Peter Rez, a physicist and professor at Arizona State University. This is exactly the way we should be talking about this. You are trading one minuscule risk for another, and are doing so with no measurable impact on the overall risk in terms of either health or the likelihood that you can actually even interdict an attack with this stupid machine.
Hey hey, hey ho: porno-scanners have got to go. And etc…
Source: daringfireball.net

In which Ron Paul and I Agree

Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.

The American Traveler Dignity Act. Good on you, Ron.
But: more to the point, it would be nice to see the conversation moved from being specifically about the scanners to a more general “the scanners are an entirely pointless invasion of deeply personal rights” realm. These scanners are a multi-million dollar boondoggle entirely aimed at stopping the underpants bomber of last year. They will do nothing whatever to stop the cecum bomber of 2011 or the vagina explosions of 2013. That we refuse to have this conversation, ever, is precisely why the next attack will succeed. Better to mark such a memo “classified” and hope nobody goes looking for it. Same with the memo on how these porno-scans are in fact saved and will inevitably get out; I’m surprised we don’t already have an airport scan of some celebrity. Likewise classify any health-related studies. And classify anything about the impact on pilots forced to go through this entirely needless screen daily for the rest of their careers. In the next fabulous version, your junk will be super-imposed on a stick figure! Won’t that be better for everyone? Left unasked, of course, is is this thing likely to stop any attack ever mounted, planned or attempted, past or present? Because it’s not clear it would have detected the very attack they point to when demanding the scans occur. It certainly wouldn’t have prevented 9/11; that fact is absolutely clear. I’m quite sure that any systematic testing of the assertion that these scanners offer no measurable improvement, if it’s been tested at all, is classified. File next to “what we deem as incredibly dangerous liquids in volumes greater than 3oz shall be stored in trash barrels directly adjacent to large concentration of passengers waiting in line.”

Listening to the tone of the recent hearings, I was unsurprised and yet still deeply troubled to hear that, mostly, the top concern was that this approach (apart from any particular utility or drawback) at least makes observant Muslims uncomfortable. I especially loved the back-slappy interchange between TSA chief John Pistole and John Ensign (R-Nev) who apparently agree that the most important part of any security technology or invasion of privacy is that it irritate Muslims. Does extending this underlying theory mean that if I agree to shave while in line I can thus skip the porno-scans?

Just as troubling, though, was the easy acceptance of the entirely false equivalency of “screened” airplane (using millimeter wave) and “unscreened” airplane (not using) and the relative preference a theoretical passenger would assert. Yes, we know a lot about everyone’s junk as they get on that “screened” plane, but it’s not actually any safer. And so far as I can tell from the transcripts I’ve found, not one Senator raised the issue of actual security improvement through this technology. In fact, they’ve only added a particularly demeaning bit of security theater to the already frothy mix of half-assed fixes to yesterday’s problems. And I guess that’s all we’re after anymore: The terrorists are coming; look busy!

It’s facile but still telling to point out that around 400,000 people have died in car accidents since 9/10/2001. About 3500 have died in domestic terror attacks since 9/10/2001. Feel free to compare and contrast national auto safety policy to national airline security policy.

In which Ron Paul and I Agree

I think the hug lacked dignity. It did not send a message of American power and forcefulness. So I fret about the reaction around the world to this kind of fraternity-like emotionalism in full public view.
Why not just a dignified, stand-up, serious handshake? That’s what Reagan would have done. A strong handshake shows friendship, respect, and even affection. But a big fat hug seems to go over the line.

Larry Kudlow, reacting to the Obama-Rahm-a hug. No, I am not kidding.

The Awlaki case speaks to something even more fundamental than law: Decent nations do not permit their governments to assassinate their own citizens. I am willing to give the intelligence community, the covert-operations guys, and the military proper a pretty free hand when it comes to dealing with dispersed terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates. But citizenship, even when applied to a Grade-A certified rat like Awlaki, presents an important demarcation, a bright-line distinction in our politics.
If Awlaki were to be killed on a battlefield, I’d shed no tears. But ordering the premeditated, extrajudicial killing of an American citizen in Yemen or Pakistan is no different from ordering the premeditated, extrajudicial killing of an American citizen in New York or Washington or Topeka — American citizens are American citizens, wherever they go. I’m an old-fashioned limited-government guy, and I am not willing to grant Washington the power to assassinate U.S. citizens, even rotten ones.

Kevin D. Williamson, writing for The National Review Online.
Yes, that’s right: I just gave the NRO a yep. That’s where we are. It is beyond belief that Obama, who the NRO folk would very likely identify as “Barack Hussein Obama, lately of Kenya: prove he’s not!!!,” is to the right of the very same NRO on this issue, and is making them uncomfortable with his administration’s aggressive stance on extra-judicial powers of the President. This is who we are. Unbelievable.
(via Peter Daou)

Uh, progress?

Glenn Greenwald takes an even dimmer view of the Awlaki “kill first, charge later” move:

It would actually be progress if the Obama administration were considering bringing charges against Awlaki in lieu of killing him without due process. But there’s no indication that’s so.

Worth noting for the tl;dr set: Awlaki is a US citizen, has been sentenced to death without actually being charged with anything, and is only “suspected” of inflammatory sermons…which are probably protected speech anyway. May God bless America!

Uh, progress?

When you see frightened Americans turning on brown-skinned people they see as potential “Muslims,” that is terrorism working. When the kind of Imam who will say Judaism’s holiest prayer in solidarity with Jewish victims of Islamic extremist terrorism and who tells Muslim audiences that the way to have a government more in line with the Islamic ideal is to be more like the United States is treated as a terrorist sympathizer, terrorism is working.

Adam Serwer
Unfortunately, these instances of terrorism working are being aided and abetted by one of the major political parties in this country. It’s one thing to combat al Qaeda or the Taliban or whatever group out there and quite another to combat this outgrowth of invincible ignorance within our own country; then ladle on top the fact that you’re being fought at each and every step in that long and slogging education initiative by both a party and its extremely popular misinformation outlet which is uncritically treated by most Americans as actual news that must bear some relation to fact, because Walter Cronkite never knowingly lied to us, now did he?
And do not believe for one second that there is any coincidence to the policy positions that lead the GOP to blithely cut funding for teachers, Head Start, and manifold other early intervention programs either. With the GOP’s demographic outlook and warm relationships with most of the emerging majorities in this country, such a move is necessary for survival. It’s their Joe Camel.

I don’t think Osama bin Laden sent those planes to attack us because he hated our freedom. I think he did it because of our support for Israel, our ties with the Saudi family and our military bases in Saudi Arabia. You know why I think that? Because that’s what he fucking said! Are we a nation of 6-year-olds? Answer: yes.

David Cross (via Tumble DC 25: Florida church plans to burn Qurans on 9/11 anniversary – Pew Forum on Religon and Public Life)  
Source: almaswithinalmas

Hero

azspot:

The hero of the Times Square bomb attempt was an immigrant. A Muslim.  Senegalese newcomer Aliou Niasse was the first to notice the smoldering car and draw attention to it. He had no time left on his cell phone and realized his English probably wasn’t up to the task, so he got a passerby to call 911.  In Arizona the cops would have hauled him off to jail while the car exploded.

I disagree. In Arizona, the guy would have never told anyone what he saw, specifically to avoid being “hauled off to jail while the car exploded.” He would simply have melted away into the crowd, never to be heard from at all. Then there would be lots of delayed retribution about “all these passersby” that didn’t do anything at all and much concern trolling about what is going wrong in the ‘Merican spirit.

Rest assured, though, that the wages of treating people like second-class shit and little more than domestic servants would never, ever come up. That would be shrill.

Hero

Cheneyism’s Test

Domestic terrorist plot unsealed:

Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an anti-government uprising.

Presumably the Tea Klan and the right-wing noise machine will come out strongly in support military tribunals, repeated torture, indefinite detention without trial, and all manner of other fundamentally anti-American treatment for this lot of thugs. It’s the only way for the Republic to survive, right? Right? I mean, we can’t be worried if we need to get some Christianists wet and splash them with a little water if that’s what it takes to Protect The Homeland. Right?