glenn has been saying this along but it's vastly more impactful when it's coming from a yemeni...

How Drones Help Al Qaeda

By IBRAHIM MOTHANA

Published: June 13, 2012

Sana, Yemen

...the increasing civilian toll of drone strikes is turning the apathy of tribal factions into anger.

The strikes have created an opportunity for terrorist groups like Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Ansar al-Sharia to recruit fighters from tribes who have suffered casualties, especially in Yemen’s south, where mounting grievances since the 1994 civil war have driven a strong secessionist movement.

Unlike Al Qaeda in Iraq, A.Q.A.P. has worked on gaining the support of local communities by compromising on some of their strict religious laws and offering basic services, electricity and gas to villagers in the areas they control. Furthermore, Iran has seized this chance to gain more influence among the disgruntled population in Yemen’s south.

[...]

Certainly, there may be short-term military gains from killing militant leaders in these strikes, but they are minuscule compared with the long-term damage the drone program is causing. A new generation of leaders is spontaneously emerging in furious retaliation to attacks on their territories and tribes.

[...]

Only a long-term approach based on building relations with local communities, dealing with the economic and social drivers of extremism, and cooperating with tribes and Yemen’s army will eradicate the threat of Islamic radicalism.

i've been saying the same thing myself since i first started working in afghanistan and saw for myself the reality of the situation on the ground...

and of course how could i put up a post on this subject without referencing glenn...

What’s most amazing to me about this discussion is how it is simultaneously (a) so obvious (apparently, when you bomb people and constantly kill civilians, you make them want to attack you back: who knew?) and yet (b) so impervious to evidence and reason. It doesn’t matter how much proof you supply that this is true, that U.S. militarism and interference in the Muslim world is largely responsible for the very Terrorism problem that is invoked to justify them. It makes little difference.

afghanistan isn't yemen but there's enough similarity that we're not talking apples and oranges...the people i've come to know in afghanistan have no ax to grind against the american people but they do have plenty to say about our totally screwed up foreign policy and is it any wonder...? and now we've heard it straight from a yemeni...

and, let me add, since, as glenn says, it is so frickin' OBVIOUS that what we're doing with the drone strikes is increasing the likelihood of terrorists attacks against us, i can't help but wonder, yet again, if we are engaging in these atrocities precisely BECAUSE that will be the result, thus perpetuating the endless war scenario and keeping the money flowing into the pockets of those who benefit most...

 

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The NYT on "spy balloons" in Afghanistan - a day late and a dollar short

i've visited afghanistan, kabul in particular, at least a half dozen times over the past few years... when i arrived there in september 2009, the first thing i noticed was the surveillance airship floating over the vicinity of the main mosque and in fact i put up a blog post featuring a photo of it i had taken from the roof of our guesthouse (see here)... after inquiring, i was told that it had been there for a few months but that such tethered surveillance craft had been a familiar feature over military bases around the country for at least a couple of years... 

so, in may of 2012, the nyt "breaks" the story...

The dirigible, a white 117-foot-long surveillance balloon called an aerostat by the military, and scores more like it at almost every military base in the country, have become constant features of the skies over Kabul and Kandahar, and anywhere else American troops are concentrated or interested in.

Shimmering more than 1,500 feet up in the daytime haze, or each visible as a single light blinking at night, the balloons, with infrared and color video cameras, are central players in the American military’s shift toward using technology for surveillance and intelligence.

In recent years, they have become part of a widening network of devices — drones, camera towers at military bases and a newer network of street-level closed-circuit cameras monitoring Kabul’s roads — that have allowed American and Afghan commanders to keep more eyes on more places where Americans are fighting.

The dirigibles are now such a common feature in daily Afghan life that some people here shrug and say they hardly notice them. Other parts of the network have become lasting parts of the urban landscape as well, particularly in Kabul, where long-necked closed-circuit cameras overlook locations susceptible to attacks, like the Supreme Court building, traffic circles and main highways past the military camps.

But other Afghans describe a growing sense of oppression, the feeling that even as the Americans are starting to pack up to leave, the foreigners’ eyes will always be on them.

It is often expressed in typically Afghan fashion, as a grumbled undercurrent of quips and brooding pronouncements: “It is an American kite,” or “Afghans and Americans are up there.” (They are not; there is no one in the balloons.) “It shows us that, sure, the Americans are still here,” and, “It is not effective because there are still these suicide attacks and car bombs."

For others, the cameras are an outrageous intrusion into private lives, putting women and children on display for foreigners whom they see as immoral.

the value of this article for me which, i shamefacedly confess, i did not even think about until i read it, is the intrusiveness of such surveillance on afghans' private lives... we put bamboo screening around the rooftop terrace of our guesthouse for two main reasons - so we could be up there without being seen from the street or neighboring buildings and making targets of ourselves but also so we couldn't look down into the walled compounds of our neighbors and watch their women, an absolute no-no... it's just one more example that reinforces the idea that many afghans already have which is that we are disrespectful barbarians who don't give a rat's ass for their customs and their beliefs... and we wonder why they hate us... 

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Glenn: Not a single War on Terror victim and not a single government official has faced the courts - not one...!

rule of law...? accountability... ? the justice system...? blind lady justice...? fuhgedaboudit...

glenn...

[O]f all the American institutions that have so profoundly failed in the wake of 9/11 to protect the most basic liberties — Congress, both political parties, the establishment media, the Executive Branch, the DOJ specifically — none has been quite as disgraceful as the federal judiciary, whose life tenure is supposed to insulate them from base political pressures that produce cowardly and corrupted choices. And yet, just consider these two facts:

(1) not a single War on Terror victim — not one — has been permitted to sue for damages in an American court over what was done to them, even when everyone admits they were completely innocent, even when they were subjected to the most brutal torture, and even when the judiciary of other countries permitted their lawsuits to proceed; and,

(2) not a single government official — not one — has been held legally accountable, either criminally or even civilly, for any War on Terror crimes or abuses; perversely, the only government officials to pay any price were the ones who blew the whistle on those crimes.

[...]

Even worse, if you’re a Muslim accused of any Terror-related crime, your conviction in a federal court is virtually guaranteed, as federal judges will bend the law and issue pro-government rulings that they would never make with a non-Muslim defendant; conversely, if you’re a government official who abused or otherwise violated the rights of Muslims, your full-scale immunity is virtually guaranteed. Those are the indisputable rules of American justice. So slavish and subservient are federal judges when it comes to Muslim defendants that if you’re a Muslim accused of any Terror-related crime, you’re probably more likely at this point to get something approximating a fair trial before a Guantanamo military tribunal than in a federal court; that is how supine federal judges have been when the U.S. Government utters the word “terrorism” in the direction of a Muslim or any claims of “national security” relating to 9/11.

it's a pretty pass we've come to in the land of the free and the home of the brave...

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Glenn: The War on Terror is the end in itself, and Terrorism is merely its pretext

as with so many other things i've posted about on this blog, i find myself endlessly posting about and repeating the same sad litany of abuses and outrages time after time...

glenn greenwald...

In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s summary execution one year ago, many predicted that the War on Terror would finally begin to recede. Here’s what has happened since then:

*With large bipartisan majorities, Congress renewed the once-controversial Patriot Act without a single reform, and it was signed into law by President Obama; Harry Reid accused those urging reforms of putting the country at risk of a Terrorist attack.
* For the first time, perhaps ever, a U.S. citizen was assassinated by the CIA, on orders from the President, without a shred of due process and far from any battlefield; two weeks later, his 16-year-old American son was also killed by his own government; the U.S. Attorney General then gave a speech claiming the President has the power to target U.S. citizens for death based on unproven, secret accusations of Terrorism.
* With large bipartisan majorities, Congress enacted, and the President signed, a new law codifying presidential powers of worldwide indefinite detention and an expanded statutory defintion of the War on Terror.
* Construction neared completion for a sprawling new site in Utah for the National Security Agency to enable massive domestic surveillance and to achieve “the realization of the ‘total information awareness’ program created during the first term of the Bush administration.”
* President Obama authorized the use of “signature” drone strikes in Yemen, whereby the CIA can target people for death “even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known.”
* The U.S. formally expanded its drone attacks in Somalia, “reopening a base for the unmanned aircraft on the island nation of Seychelles.”
* A U.S. drone killed 16-year-old Pakistani Tariq Aziz, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed, three days after the older boy attended a meeting to protest civilian deaths from U.S. drones (another of Tariq’s cousins had been killed in 2010).
* NATO airstrikes continued to extinguish the lives of Afghan children; in just the last 24 hours, 5 more Afghan children were killed by the ongoing war.
* The FBI increased its aggressive attempts to recruit young Muslim-American males into Terror plots which the FBI concocts, funds, encourages, directs and enables, while prosecuting more and more Muslims in the U.S. for crimes grounded in their political views and speech.

Does it sound like the War on Terror and its accompanying civil liberties erosions are ending, or going in the opposite direction? The morning after the bin Laden killing, I wrote that the killing of bin Laden would likely re-ignite American excitement over militarism and would thus likely further fuel, rather than retard, the War and its various implications. As always: combatting Terrorism is not the end of the War on Terror; the War on Terror is the end in itself, and Terrorism is merely its pretext.

 as much as it pains me to say it (and it pains me every time i do say it), i believe the u.s. has quite deliberately and consciously fostered a strategy of endless war... there is so much money to be made from ceaselessly fighting yet another menacing enemy that our super-rich elites and all those who profit immensely from war and military action that they will never allow it to come to a halt, even if it means engaging in deliberately provocative acts carefully calculated to inflame conflict...

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Seymour Hersh reports on the U.S. trained terrorist group, the M.E.K.

from the new yorker...

[T]he Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training [at the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site], beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department.

[...]

The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations.

[...]

Despite the growing ties, and a much-intensified lobbying effort organized by its advocates, M.E.K. has remained on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations—which meant that secrecy was essential in the Nevada training.

[...]

The sources I spoke to were unable to say whether the people trained in Nevada were now involved in operations in Iran or elsewhere. But they pointed to the general benefit of American support. “The M.E.K. was a total joke,” the senior Pentagon consultant said, “and now it’s a real network inside Iran. How did the M.E.K. get so much more efficient?” he asked rhetorically. “Part of it is the training in Nevada. Part of it is logistical support in Kurdistan, and part of it is inside Iran. M.E.K. now has a capacity for efficient operations than it never had before.”

glenn weighs in...

So let’s review what we have here. If this report is true, it means the U.S. Government actively trained a group that the U.S. Government itself legally categorizes as a “foreign terrorist organization,” a clear felony under U.S. law:

Whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

That alone compels serious DOJ and Congressional investigations into these claims. Worse, this reportedly happened at the very same time that the U.S. aggressively prosecuted and imprisoned numerous Muslims for providing material support for groups on that list even though many of those prosecuted provided support that was far, far less than what the U.S. Government itself was providing to MEK. Meanwhile, right at this moment, America’s closest ally — Israel — is clearly a state sponsor of this designated Terrorist organization, providing training, funding and arms to it, and the U.S. may very well be as well (independent of all else, given that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid, the U.S., at the very least, is financing a state sponsor of Terror).

[...]

Anyone in government, media and think tank circles who routinely and angrily accuse others of being “terrorists” or “supporters of terrorism” without recognizing that the U.S. and its closest allies are plainly and routinely guilty of that is just a rank propagandist. That the U.S., in the midst of its vaunted War on Terror, directly trained a group on its own Terrorist list — while its closest ally and Washington’s venerated former officials continue to provide ample support to that group even as it escalates its violent acts – is about as conclusive a demonstration of that fact as one could have conjured.

lies, manipulation of fact, hypocrisy... is this a great country or what...?

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Why are SOME terrorist organizations not treated as terrorist organizatons?

inquiring minds want to know...

glenn...

[T]hose who are politically and financially well-connected are free to commit even the most egregious crimes; for that reason, the very idea of prosecuting [Rudy] Giuliani, [Ed] Rendell, [Tom] Ridge, [Fran] Townsend, [Howard] Dean and friends for their paid labor on behalf of a Terrorist group [Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK)] is unthinkable, a suggestion not fit for decent company, even though powerless Muslims have been viciously prosecuted for far less egregious connections to such groups. But this incident also underscores the specific point that the term Terrorism is so completely meaningless, manipulated and mischievous: it’s just a cynical term designed to delegitimize violence and even political acts undertaken by America’s enemies while shielding from criticism the actual Terrorism undertaken by itself and its allies. The spectacle whereby a designated Terrorist group can pay top American politicians to advocate for them even as they engage in violent Terrorist acts, all while being trained, funded and aided by America’s top client state, should forever end the controversy over that glaringly obvious proposition.

but, glenn, terrorism is whatever we say it is and, besides, it's NEVER terrorism when WE do it...

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The war on democracy is unmentionable in western elite circles

john pilger...

Since the Second World War, the US has:

1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of them democratically-elected.
2. Attempted to suppress a populist or national movement in 20 countries.
3. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
4. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
5. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

In total, the United States has carried out one or more of these actions in 69 countries. In almost all cases, Britain has been a collaborator. The "enemy" changes in name – from communism to Islamism — but mostly it is the rise of democracy independent of western power or a society occupying strategically useful territory, deemed expendable...

The sheer scale of suffering, let alone criminality, is little known in the west, despite the presence of the world’s most advanced communications, nominally freest journalism, and most admired academy. That the most numerous victims of terrorism – western terrorism – are Muslims is unsayable, if it is known. That half a million Iraqi infants died in the 1990s as a result of the embargo imposed by Britain and America is of no interest. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of western policy ("Operation Cyclone") is known to specialists but otherwise suppressed.

[...]

America is now a land of epidemic poverty and barbaric prisons: the consequence of a "market" extremism which, under Obama, has prompted the transfer of $14 trillion in public money to criminal enterprises in Wall Street. The victims are mostly young jobless, homeless, incarcerated African-Americans, betrayed by the first black president. The historic corollary of a perpetual war state, this is not fascism, not yet, but neither is it democracy in any recognizable form, regardless of the placebo politics that will consume the news until November. The presidential campaign, says the Washington Post, will "feature a clash of philosophies rooted in distinctly different views of the economy." This is patently false. The circumscribed task of journalism on both sides of the Atlantic is to create the pretence of political choice where there is none.

there are times - and today is one of them - when i'd almost rather not know the truth...

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Islamophobia rears its ugly head again in the attack on the TV series, All-American Muslim

The Jaafar family, one of the participating families in the Learning Channel's
'All-American Muslim' reality TV show.
Photograph: TLC

i first heard about this upcoming series while listening to an npr interview with a commentator who wrote a piece about it in the guardian...

wajahat ali...

I think it's refreshingly bland. It's honest, it's real, it's human. And it's nice to see a show where Muslims aren't terrorists, taxi cab drivers or potential terrorists, you know? They're just people.

i've actually been hoping for a show like this for quite a while... i had thought that maybe a sitcom a la the cosby show might do it but i was very pleased to hear about "All-American Muslim" and thought it might give a real push toward mitigating some of the more rampant islamophobia that has been plaguing the country...

guess not...

The cable channel TLC may have thought it was promoting the cause of ethnic and religious harmony by running a program that sympathetically examines the lives of five ordinary American Muslim families. But now the show itself has become a source of conflict, with the conservative Florida Family Association urging advertisers to boycott it and at least one major retail chain complying.

Media critics are already issuing scathing criticism of the decision by home retail giant Lowe’s to respond to the Florida Family Association’s campaign against the program. Gawker, for example, writes, “American Muslim, a TLC reality show that depicts the lives of Muslims in dangerous anti-American professions like ‘police officer’ and ‘high school football coach,’ is obviously the most egregious example yet of creeping Sharia. So thank (the Christian) God that all-American retailer Lowe’s has decided to pull advertising from the show!”

[...]

As viewed by the Florida Family Association, however, the normality and all-American quality of the families profiled is in itself a cause for suspicion.

“The Learning Channel’s new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law,” the group writes at its website. “The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.”

in response, the home improvement chain, lowes, has pulled its advertising...

Lowe’s actions are already being described as “a public relations disaster” and have aroused anger among the American Muslim community.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, for example, has issued a statement saying, “Sadly corporations, such as Lowe’s, have succumbed to the idiocracy of such garbage campaigns, which are orchestrated by groups and organizations which lack credibility, legitimacy, and are founded on the basic notions of bigotry and racism reminiscent of a shameful era in this country’s history.”

personally, i think this kind of attack is both disgusting and shameful... i've said repeatedly here that i have a fair number of islamic friends and count them among some of the finest people i know... they're people trying to make it just like the rest of us and to demonize them as a few brutally ignorant people in this country are trying to do is despicable...

here's the trailer for the series...



yes, bland, but also accurate... muslims in the u.s. live lives very much like everybody else... truth be told, muslims around the world live lives very much like everybody else... this overwhelming urge to demonize those whose beliefs, skin color, national origin, diet or surnames don't match our predetermined notion of what we think they SHOULD be needs to stop...

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Bullshit being spread about Muslims

this kind of garbage really pisses me off... i have made some very, very special friends in afghanistan, devout muslims all, and the notion that devout muslims are "violent" is not only the height of misinformation, it's criminally wrong...

spencer ackerman writing in wired's danger room...

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

“There may not be a ‘radical’ threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology,” one FBI presentation notes. “The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream.”

The FBI isn’t just treading on thin legal ice by portraying ordinary, observant Americans as terrorists-in-waiting, former counterterrorism agents say. It’s also playing into al-Qaida’s hands.

Focusing on the religious behavior of American citizens instead of proven indicators of criminal activity like stockpiling guns or using shady financing makes it more likely that the FBI will miss the real warning signs of terrorism. And depicting Islam as inseparable from political violence is exactly the narrative al-Qaida spins — as is the related idea that America and Islam are necessarily in conflict.

"focusing on the religious behavior of American citizens" not only "makes it more likely that the FBI will miss the real warning signs of terrorism," it also is just plain wrong... if they really wanted to teach those counterterrorism agents something worthwhile, they should make them read, study and discuss the koran, preferably with mainstream imams or mullahs who could explain what islam is really all about...

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Terrorism means nothing more than violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes

glenn...

The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of "Terrorism"

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Rejoicing in a corpse with half its head blown off

observing the orgasmic reactions of the news media over bin laden's murder from here in afghanistan is an interesting experience to say the least...

probably about half the afghans i know have said over the past few years that they aren't so sure that bin laden even existed, suspecting rather that he was a myth concocted and nurtured to feed the insatiable u.s. need for a "great satan"... in any case, the most common afghan reaction to the bin laden story was to ask those of us from the u.s. how WE felt about it, to remind us repeatedly that they had told us all along that he was in pakistan and to insist, as they have done ever since i've been coming here, that pakistan is the principal - if not the only - real source of the continuing violence in their country...

it's also interesting to note the hand-wringing in the u.s. over releasing the photo of bin laden's corpse... here in the house, we have access to a number of news channels in india and they splashed the photo all over their news reports within hours of the story breaking... whether they were the real thing or not is open to question, of course, but i can assure you, there was no hand-wringing...

meanwhile, back in the u.s., the blood lust is at fever pitch...

from glenn...

The Washington Times Editorial Page:

Those primitive, bloodthirsty Muslim fanatics sure do love to glorify death and violence.

yes, those nasty, vicious muslim fanatics...

meanwhile, i will sit here at my laptop for a while longer before heading off for a shower, breakfast, and spending the day working around a houseful of some of the most gentle, polite, good-natured, devout afghan muslims it's been my privilege to know...

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Here's a headline that is false on its face

ya gotta get a little perspective here... what if the headline read "hearings on 'catholics' in america will be fair," or "hearings on 'japanese' in america will be fair," or "hearings on 'italians' in america will be fair" or "hearings on 'jews' in america will be fair"... don't you think that might rub a few people the wrong way...?

King: Hearings on Muslims in America will be fair

The Republican congressman who has organized controversial hearings into radical Islam called Muslims "part of the mosaic" of America Wednesday and said they shouldn't feel threatened or intimidated by his inquiry.

"If there is going to be animosity, I would blame it on my opponents," Rep. Peter King said in a nationally broadcast interview.

having a "hearing" on any minority group and characterizing it as "fair" is almost a contradiction in terms...

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Seeing Islam in a different light - FINALLY...!

The Disappearance of the Nightmare Arab
How a Revolution of Hope Is Changing the Way Americans Look at Islam

Perhaps the two biggest surprises of all here: out of a culture that has notoriously disempowered women has sprung a protest movement rife with female leadership, while a religion regarded as inherently incompatible with democratic ideals has been the context from which comes an unprecedented outbreak of democratic hope. And make no mistake: the Muslim religion is essential to what has been happening across the Middle East, even without Islamic “fanatics” chanting hate-filled slogans.

Without such fanatics, who in the West knows what this religion actually looks like?

In fact, its clearest image has been there on our television screens again and again. In this period of transformation, every week has been punctuated with the poignant formality of Friday prayers, including broadcast scenes of masses of Muslims prostrate in orderly rows across vast squares in every contested Arab capital. Young and old, illiterate and tech savvy, those in flowing robes and those in tight blue jeans have been alike in such observances. From mosque pulpits have come fiery denunciations of despotism and corruption, but no blood-thirst and none of the malicious Imams who so haunt the nightmares of Europeans and Americans.

Yet sacrosanct Fridays have consistently seen decisive social action, with resistant regimes typically getting the picture on subsequent weekends. (The Tunisian prime minister, a holdover from the toppled regime of autocrat Zine Ben Ali, for example, resigned on the last Sunday in February.) These outcomes have been sparked not only by preaching, but by the mosque-inspired cohesion of a collectivity that finds no contradiction between piety and political purpose; religion, that is, has been a source of resolve.

It’s an irony, then, that Western journalists, always so quick to tie bad Muslim behavior to religion, have rushed to term this good Muslim behavior “secular.” In a word wielded by the New York Times, Islam is now considered little but an “afterthought” to the revolution. In this, the media is simply wrong. The protests, demonstrations, and uprisings that have swept across the Middle East have visibly built their foundations on the irreducible sense of self-worth that, for believers, comes from a felt closeness to God, who is as near to each person -- as the Qu’ran says -- as his or her own jugular vein. The call to prayer is a five-times-daily reminder of that infinite individual dignity.

it's about time somebody pointed out a few fundamental facts... islam is NOT a religion of fanaticism... the qu'ran's basic message is respect, compassion and service to your fellow man, all conducted from a peaceful mindset... the demonization of muslims and the religion of islam in general is a particularly vile and narrow point of view... it's absolutely equivalent to painting all christians with the same brush because of the extremist, violent actions of an abortion clinic bomber...

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An "angry individual" with a "grudge" who sends packages that burst into flames isn't a terrorist?

wtf...?

Terrorism Not Suspected in Md. Burning Packages

Two mail packages caused some kind of incendiary reaction when opened, burning the fingers of two employees in separate incidents at two state office buildings in Maryland at almost the same time Thursday afternoon. Officials say there is no apparent connection to any domestic terror group and that the mailings appear to be from an angry individual who has a specific grudge against the Maryland State Government.

and if the individual who sent the packages was a muslim...?

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Now, THIS is Thanksgiving...!

more like this...



juan cole...

[O]ne of the things we should be giving thanks for on this day is that we live in a society where, ideally, it should make no difference if you are Christian or Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist, agnostic or Hindu. You can build your place of worship anywhere you like, within the boundaries of civic zoning laws, no matter which path you follow. The liberties of the US Constitution require no religious test before they can be enjoyed. They are universal. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” Americans are not Americans because they are white, or Christian. Everyone born here or naturalized is an American. Muslim-Americans are Americans.

very cool...

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Glenn does a great job dissecting the Juan Williams firing

read it here...

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Keith says all I care to say about the ground zero mosque debate

keith olbermann...

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Extremism comes only from the Muslim world, not right-wing white people with persecution complexes and semiautomatic weapons

this should clear up any lingering confusion...

There seems to be some confusion about who are the real terrorists these days. Allow me to shed some light on the issue.

John Patrick Bedell was angry at the totalitarian federal government that had devastated public education, private property rights and monetary policy, so he shot two security guards at the Pentagon. He was not a terrorist.

Andrew Joseph Stack flew a small plane into a building housing an office of the Internal Revenue Service in Austin, Texas, killing one IRS worker and wounding 13 people in the structure. Earlier that day, Stack wrote a diatribe on his Web page against the IRS and the federal government. “Violence not only is the answer,” he wrote, “it is the only answer.” Stack was not a terrorist.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist of Palestinian origin, opened fire on fellow soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding 29. He strongly opposed U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a terrorist.

At first there may be some confusion about these designations, but there are clear differences among the three cases. The first two violent attacks were carried out as political protests by white conservatives angry at the federal government for taking over their rights. The third was carried out by an Arab-American Muslim angry at the federal government for taking over other people’s rights.

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America’s major media understand this distinction. They quickly explained that the first two cases were deranged individuals not part of any wider conspiracy. Three days after the Pentagon attack, The New York Times wrote that Bedell had been living with his parents and “seemed to slide into a deep paranoia.” The paper reassured us that “federal authorities said there was no indication that Mr. Bedell had a connection to any domestic or international terrorist group.”

On the day of the attack against the IRS, The Wall Street Journal conveyed the comforting news that federal workers had not been victims of terrorism. “I consider this a criminal act by a lone individual,” said Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo.

The major media offered a split opinion on Maj. Hasan. Some went with the “deranged loner” theory. Thank God that Fox News kept up the pressure on President Barack Obama and the liberal media to label it a terrorist attack. As Sen. Joe Lieberman pointed out on Fox, “There are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and therefore that this was a terrorist act.”

Lieberman correctly understands that extremism comes only from the Muslim world, not right-wing white people with persecution complexes and semiautomatic weapons.

i was struggling with this issue but i think i'm finally beginning to understand...

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What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

given the recent unfortunate increase in the public profile of sarah palin, juan cole feels moved to revive his salon article from september 2008...

Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

i've been of this same opinion for quite some time... there is very little daylight between fundamentalist religious extremists of any stripe... all of them are obsessed with control over the lives of others and use their supposed direct "pipeline" to "god's truth" to justify it, and it's all nothing but pure, unadulterated shit...

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Are Blackwater (a/k/a Xe Services LLC) and its founder Erik Prince going down...?

suggestion for the prosecutors... first, follow the money... second, make sure that when you do follow the money, you follow it UPSTREAM...

A former Blackwater [Xe Services LLC] employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

and while you're swimming upstream, be sure to check out cofer black...

Cofer Black, the company's current vice chairman, was director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001. He was the United States Department of State coordinator for counterterrorism with the rank of ambassador at large from December 2002 to November 2004. After leaving public service, Black became chairman of the privately owned intelligence gathering company Total Intelligence Solutions, Inc., as well as vice chairman for Xe. Robert Richer was vice president of intelligence until January 2007, when he formed Total Intelligence Solutions. He was formerly the head of the CIA's Near East Division.^[23][24] Black was senior advisor for counterterrorism and national security issues for the 2008 Presidential election bid of Mitt Romney.^[25]

swell folks, eh...?

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