Matt Taibbi - does getting filthy rich now equate with winning the full rights of citizenship?

matt discusses some of the ramifications of the passage of the national defense authorization act with its indefinite detention provisions...

On which side of the societal fence do you think the McCains and Grahams would put, say, an unemployed American plumber who refused an eviction order from Bank of America and holed up with his family in his Florida house, refusing to move? Would Graham/McCain consider that person to have the same rights as Lloyd Blankfein, or is that plumber closer, in their eyes, to being like the young Muslim who throws a rock at a U.S. embassy in Yemen?

A few years ago, that would have sounded like a hysterical question. But it just doesn’t seem that crazy anymore. We’re turning into a kind of sci-fi society in which making it and being a success not only means getting rich, but also means winning the full rights of citizenship. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see this ending well.

no... i don't see it ending well... not at all...

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The UK classifies Occupy protestors as "domestic terrorists"

the uk has always led the way in oppressing the masses...

Police in City see occupiers as 'terror' risk

The City of London Police force was facing criticism last night after including the Occupy London demonstration in a letter warning businesses about potential terrorist threats.

The letter, a "Terrorism/Extremism Update", lists al-Qa'ida, the Colombian dissidents Farc, and Belarusian terrorists who bombed the Minsk underground. It also lists Occupy London under the heading "Domestic".

It states: "It is likely that activists aspire to identify other locations to occupy, especially those they identify with capitalism. City of London Police has received a number of hostile reconnaissance reports concerning individuals who would fit the anti-capitalist profile. All are asked to be vigilant regarding suspected reconnaissance, particularly around empty buildings."

An Occupy London spokesman said: "Activism is not a crime and the desire to participate in democratic decision-making should not be a cause for concern for the police in any free society.

“An institution that confuses active citizens with criminals and equates al-Qa'ida with efforts to reimagine the city is an institution in danger of losing its way."

A police source said the letter was authentic but was poorly worded and never meant to imply demonstrators posed a terrorist threat.

A spokesman for City of London Police said: “City of London Police works with the community to deter and detect terrorist activity and crime in the City in a way that has been identified nationally as good practice. We’ve seen crime linked to protests in recent weeks, notably around groups entering office buildings, and with that in mind we continue to brief key trusted partners on activity linked to protests.”

i'm almost positive that occupy groups have been classified similarly in the u.s... it just hasn't hit the media yet...

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The Mall of America security team accosts and interrogates an average of 1200 shoppers a year

max blumenthal offers a chilling vision of how our domestic police and security forces have become increasingly militarized along the israeli model...

al akhbar...

The Israelification of America’s security apparatus, recently unleashed in full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed. The phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news reports that typically highlight Israel’s national security prowess without examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave human rights abuses. But it has never been the subject of a national discussion. And collaboration between American and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg.

Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people. The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of the so-called War on Terror creeping into every day life. Revelations like these have raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement.

The process of Israelification began in the immediate wake of 9/11, when national panic led federal and municipal law enforcement officials to beseech Israeli security honchos for advice and training. America’s Israel lobby exploited the climate of hysteria, providing thousands of top cops with all-expenses paid trips to Israel and stateside training sessions with Israeli military and intelligence officials. By now, police chiefs of major American cities who have not been on junkets to Israel are the exception.

[...]

Given the amount of training the NYPD and so many other police forces have received from Israel’s military-intelligence apparatus, and the profuse levels of gratitude American police chiefs have expressed to their Israeli mentors, it is worth asking how much Israeli instruction has influenced the way the police have attempted to suppress the Occupy movement, and how much it will inform police repression of future upsurges of street protest. But already, the Israelification of American law enforcement appears to have intensified police hostility towards the civilian population, blurring the lines between protesters, common criminals, and terrorists.

we're all terrorists now...

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Right-wing domestic terrorism in Norway

from the nyt...

Norway suffered dual attacks on Friday when powerful explosions shook the government center here and, shortly after, a gunman stalked youths at an island summer camp for young members of the governing Labor Party. The police arrested a Norwegian in connection with both attacks, which killed at least 87 people and stunned this ordinarily placid nation.

[...]

The state television broadcaster, citing the police, said seven people had been killed and at least 15 wounded in the explosions, which they said appeared to be an act of domestic terrorism.

[...]

After the shooting the police seized a 32-year-old Norwegian man on the island, according to the police and Justice Minister Knut Storberget. He was later identified as Anders Behring Breivik and was characterized by officials as a right-wing extremist.

[...]

Mr. Breivik had registered a farm-related business in Rena, in eastern Norway, which authorities said allowed him to order a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an ingredient that can be used to make explosives. Authorities were investigating whether the chemical may have been used in the bombing.

the nyt, as in most other news accounts, placed heavy emphasis on the popular perception of norway as an idyllic, peaceful, scandinavian country...

The attacks bewildered a nation better known for its active diplomacy and peacekeeping missions than as a target for extremists.

glenn provides several counterpoints...

[I]t is simply a fact that Norway has sent its military to two foreign countries [Afghanistan and Libya] where it is attacking people, dropping bombs, and killing civilians.

[...]

The point is that it's completely unsurprising that a nation at war -- whether Norway or the U.S. -- is going to be targeted with violent attacks. That's what "being at war" means, and it's usually what it provokes. And the way this fact is suppressed ("a coordinated assault on the ordinarily peaceful Scandinavian nation" = the post-9/11 why do they hate us?) highlights how we view violence as something only those Others commit, but not we.

[...]

Ever since news of the attacks emerged this morning (U.S. time), the interest in them has been intense, as has media coverage of them and the disgust expressed toward them.

[...]

Still, I can't help noticing, and being quite bothered by, the vast difference in reaction to the violence visited on Western nations such as Norway and the violence visited by Western nations (particularly our own) on non-Western nations. The violence and indiscriminate death brought today to Oslo is routinely and constantly imposed by the U.S. and its closest allies in a large and growing list of Muslim nations. On a weekly basis -- literally -- the U.S. and its Western allies explode homes, mangle children, extinguish the lives of innocent people, disrupt communities, kill community and government leaders, and bring violence and terror to large numbers of people -- those are just facts. And yet a tiny, tiny fraction of attention, interest and anger is generated by such violence as compared to that generated by the violence in Oslo today. What explains that mammoth discrepancy in interest, discussion, and media coverage?

Still, I can't help noticing, and being quite bothered by, the vast difference in reaction to the violence visited on Western nations such as Norway and the violence visited by Western nations (particularly our own) on non-Western nations. The violence and indiscriminate death brought today to Oslo is routinely and constantly imposed by the U.S. and its closest allies in a large and growing list of Muslim nations. On a weekly basis -- literally -- the U.S. and its Western allies explode homes, mangle children, extinguish the lives of innocent people, disrupt communities, kill community and government leaders, and bring violence and terror to large numbers of people -- those are just facts. And yet a tiny, tiny fraction of attention, interest and anger is generated by such violence as compared to that generated by the violence in Oslo today. What explains that mammoth discrepancy in interest, discussion, and media coverage?

Whatever accounts for it, the impact is to minimize and suppress the consequences of our own violence while focusing almost exclusively on the violence of others. The solution is not to dismiss or justify acts such as the Oslo bombing. It's to realize that our own country and those in alliance with it -- unintentionally or otherwise -- replicate the horror that took place in Oslo in countless places around the world with great regularity, and that requires at least as much attention and discussion as the Oslo attacks are sure to receive.

when terrorism happens to "us," it's major news... when we inflict terrorism on others, not so much...

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With a "stroke of the pen," the right to be Mirandized disappears (if you're a domestic terrorism suspect)

the obama administration is out of control...

glenn...

Today, the Obama DOJ unveiled the latest -- and one of the most significant -- examples of its eagerness to assault the very legal values Obama vowed to protect. The Wall Street Journal reports that "new rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades." The only previous exception to the 45-year-old Miranda requirement that someone in custody be apprised of their rights occurred in 1984, when the Rehnquist-led right-wing faction of the Supreme Court allowed delay "only in cases of an imminent safety threat," but these new rules promulgated by the Obama DOJ "give interrogators more latitude and flexibility to define what counts as an appropriate circumstance to waive Miranda rights."

For that reason, the WSJ is surely correct when it calls these new guidelines "one of the Obama administration's most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S." Note that, in 7 years of prosecuting the War on Terror after 9/11, the Bush administration never tried to dilute Miranda guidelines (though doing so for them was irrelevant because they simply imprisoned even American citizens (such as Jose Padilla) without any charges or due process of any kind).

[...]

Although the DOJ memo is not public -- the WSJ saw a copy of it -- this presumably means that the dilution of Miranda applies to non-citizens and U.S. citizens alike, including those captured on American soil. In other words, with the sweep of a unilateral pen, Miranda simply no longer compels the government to read you your rights if you are accused of involvement in Terrorism and FBI agents unilaterally decide that it shouldn't.

every day, another pillar of our cherished constitutional rights falls...

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Keith on the insanity of our guns and violence-obsessed society

our nation needs to face the fact that a dedication to endless war, fueled by fear-mongering and the bottomless greed of super-rich elites who are totally committed to manipulating us by any means at their disposal, can expect this kind of horror... we must also remember that our nation is perpetrating this same kind of horror elsewhere in the world and that what goes around, comes around...

keith...

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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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The #1 surveillance society in the world, the UK, focuses on "domestic extremism"

make no mistake... these same tactics are being used in the u.s., it's just that the u.s. doesn't have as deep a tradition of investigative journalism that is willing to ferret them out...

all emphases added...

Police are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases.

The hidden apparatus has been constructed to monitor "domestic extremists", the Guardian can reveal in the first of a three-day series into the policing of protests. Detailed information about the political activities of campaigners is being stored on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime.

Senior officers say domestic extremism, a term coined by police that has no legal basis, can include activists suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience.

[...]

• The main unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), runs a central database which lists thousands of so-called domestic extremists. It filters intelligence supplied by police forces across England and Wales, which routinely deploy surveillance teams at protests, rallies and public meetings. The NPOIU contains detailed files on individual protesters who are searchable by name.

• Vehicles associated with protesters are being tracked via a nationwide system of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. One man, who has no criminal record, was stopped more than 25 times in less than three years after a "protest" marker was placed against his car after he attended a small protest against duck and pheasant shooting. ANPR "interceptor teams" are being deployed on roads leading to protests to monitor attendance.

• Police surveillance units, known as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and Evidence Gatherers, record footage and take photographs of campaigners as they enter and leave openly advertised public meetings. These images are entered on force-wide databases so that police can chronicle the campaigners' political activities.

then there's this lovely item innocuously called a "spotter card"...

This kind of highly confidential document – pictured above – is rarely seen by the public.

These so-called "spotter cards" are issued by police to identify individuals they consider to be potential troublemakers because they have appeared at a number of demonstrations.

The photographs are drawn from police intelligence files. This card was apparently dropped at a demonstration against Britain's largest arms fair in 2005.

"H" is Mark Thomas, the comedian and political activist. Asked why it was justifiable to put Thomas, who has no criminal record, on this card, the Metropolitan police replied: "We do not discuss intelligence we may hold in relation to individuals."

Thomas had been acquitted of criminal damage after attaching himself to a bus containing arms traders at a previous fair.

The Met said: "This is an appropriate tactic used by police to help them identify people at specific events … who may instigate offences or disorder."

so, now peaceful direct action and civil disobedience, so-called "minor order public offenses," along with protest, an act of free speech, are defined as "domestic extremism"...?

there's a phenomenon called "psychological reciprocity" which, loosely defined, means that when people are treated a certain way, they tend to respond in the manner in which they're treated... in my professional life, i've seen it a million times... management characterizes front line workers as "lazy," "untrustworthy," "cry-babies," and generally no damn good and, guess what...? they tend to respond that way which, in turn, justifies management's attitude...

to quote kurt vonnegut, "and so it goes"...

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The impact of all stops removed violence on returning military

from the colorado springs gazette via atrios...

stories from the 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, the "Lethal Warriors"...

[T]he time bomb exploded when [Teresa Hernandez'] son [Anthony Marquez] used a stun gun to repeatedly shock a small-time drug dealer in Widefield [Colorado] over an ounce of marijuana, then shot him through the heart.

Marquez was the first infantry soldier in his brigade to murder someone after returning from Iraq. But he wasn’t the last.

[...]

In December 2007, Bressler and fellow soldiers Bruce Bastien Jr., 21, and Kenneth Eastridge, 24, left the bullet-riddled body of a soldier from their unit on a west-side street.

kenneth eastridge speaks...

“The Army trains you to be this way. In bayonet training, the sergeant would yell, ‘What makes the grass grow?’ and we would yell, ‘Blood! Blood! Blood!’ as we stabbed the dummy. The Army pounds it into your head until it is instinct: Kill everybody, kill everybody. And you do. Then they just think you can just come home and turn it off. ... If they don’t figure out how to take care of the soldiers they trained to kill, this is just going to keep happening.”

and then there's this fine litany...

In August 2007, Louis Bressler, 24, robbed and shot a soldier he picked up on a street in Colorado Springs.

[...]

In May and June 2008, police say Rudolfo Torres-Gandarilla, 20, and Jomar Falu-Vives, 23, drove around with an assault rifle, randomly shooting people.

In September 2008, police say John Needham, 25, beat a former girlfriend to death.

it's an extremely sobering read but one that shouldn't be all that surprising... these are the natural consequences of a society based on violence and the denial of its impact by our all-too-removed-from-the-stark-reality-of-violence-and-death leaders who like to pretend it simply doesn't exist...

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More on the domestic terrorism of the anti-choice movement

meanwhile, there's a flock of folks locked up in guantánamo who haven't been charged, have spent over seven years there, and have no prospect of being released... why...? "suspicion" of terrorism... what about these other folks...? aren't they to be "suspected" of terrorism too...? not that i recommend putting one more person into the perpetual detainee netherworld, but aren't we incredibly vulnerable to accusations of gross hypocrisy...?

jill filipovic in the guardian...

Not surprisingly, [George Tiller's] killer is strongly suspected to be affiliated with the "pro-life" movement. If that's the case, it makes Tiller the 10th person in the United States to be murdered by anti-choice terrorists.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Since 1977, there have been at least 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery and three kidnappings [PDF] committed against abortion providers in North America. Tiller himself survived an assassination attempt in 1993.

Some pro-life groups are issuing statements of condemnation and attempting to paint this murder as the work of an extremist. But this latest act of terrorism is, sadly, not an anomaly. It is part of a clearly-established pattern of harassment, intimidation and violence against abortion providers and pro-choice individuals. And mainstream pro-life groups shoulder much of the blame.

Pro-life organisations routinely refer to abortion as "murder", a "genocide" and a "holocaust". They post the full names abortion providers on their websites, along with their addresses, their license plate numbers, their photos, the names of children and the schools those children attend (sometimes with helpful Wild-West-style "Wanted" posters offering $5,000 rewards).

When you convince your followers that abortion providers are the equivalent of SS officers slaughtering innocents by the millions, tell them that "it's all-out WAR" against pro-choicers and then provide the home addresses and personal information of the "monster" "late-term baby-killer" abortion providers you're supposedly at war against, you can't act surprised when those followers conclude that it's morally justified to use the information to kill doctors.

These are not fringe groups. Conservative television personality Bill O'Reilly called Tiller's clinic a "death mill", referred to Tiller as a "baby killer" who was "executing babies about to be born" and said Tiller was doing "Nazi stuff" for which he "had blood on his hands."

[...]

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, who had this to say about Tiller's assassination:

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name: murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

That's some definition of "peacefully protesting."

[...]

While individuals who self-identify as pro-life may be well-meaning and against violence, mainstream pro-life groups and the people who run them do not care about life, before or after birth. And while today anti-choice groups are half-heartedly condemning Tiller's murder, they continue to use the same outlandish and inflammatory rhetoric that inspired and enabled it.

Words mean things. Anti-choicers should certainly have every right to express their views, but they must also realise that actions have consequences and their rhetoric is not harmless. If you yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, it's reasonably foreseeable that people will panic and someone will be injured. And if you yell "Murderer!" "Baby-Killer!" and "Holocaust!" long enough, it's reasonably foreseeable that someone will take it upon themselves to make sure that vigilante justice is done (especially if you provide the name and address of the person who you claim is committing "genocide").

This was not the act of a lone extremist. It is one more act of violence to add to a long, long list of crimes committed by anti-choice terrorists, and it is the logical outcome of years of increasingly violent, dehumanising and threatening rhetoric and action on the part of supposedly mainstream pro-life groups.

why isn't action being taken against groups that incite to violence...? why isn't action being taken against bill o'reilly...?

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Domestic terrorism

and i dare you to tell me it's not...

Abortion Provider Shot Dead In Church

George R. Tiller, the nation's most prominent provider of controversial late-term abortions, was shot and killed yesterday in the lobby of his Lutheran church in Wichita, where he was serving as an usher.

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Domestic military deployments

although i've been following this story for the past few weeks, i've avoided posting on it primarily because it's so goddam depressing... i guess i find it preferable to pretend it isn't happening... unfortunately, like the dead skunk under the back porch, it's damn near impossible to ignore...

Following reports that US troops will be permanently on call to work inside the United States handling "civil unrest," "crowd control" and other functions traditionally carried out by civilian law enforcement agencies, activists are demanding to know why the Pentagon is reversing a longstanding prohibition on domestic deployment of the military.

The Department of Defense for the first time is assigning a full-time Army unit to be on call with Northern Command, which was created after Sept. 11 to facilitate military cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security in the event of another terrorist attack.

The American Civil Liberties Union is demanding more details on the domestic deployments, which appear to violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits use of the military to direct internal affairs of the US. The ACLU warns that without fully knowing the reasoning and justifications behind the Army's plan, the domestic deployments could be used to expand a militarized surveillance apparatus that already includes the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program and DHS's plans to turn military spy satellites inside US borders.

do you ever get the feeling that we're fighting a rear guard action against an enemy that already has us inescapably boxed in...?

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The Patriot Act nightmare continues for an innocent man

i posted about this in early january...

read this from the miami herald, a story i was pointed to by emptywheel... not only will it perfectly illustrate the degree to which our country is now behaving like a rogue police state, it will also chill you to the bone... sure, you may say, the government MUST have SOME reason for doing this, right...? RIGHT...?

Lyglenson Lemorin, acquitted of terrorism charges last week in federal court in Miami, is still a guilty man in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Lemorin, 32, a lawful U.S. resident, remains behind bars -- far from his Miami family -- in the tiny town of Lumpkin, Ga., a deportation center 150 miles south of Atlanta.

[...]

Immigration experts said that under the USA Patriot Act, adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a lawful U.S. resident such as Lemorin may still be locked up and possibly deported on terrorism-related charges -- even if they cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in federal court.

the nightmare continues, although NOW they're not using the patriot act as a legal basis...

Legally, there is nothing to bar the government from pursuing immigration sanctions against Lemorin, experts said, though such action is rare after an acquittal. The immigration charges are a civil matter, and a judge will apply a less strict standard of evidence to the charges that were brought at the criminal trial.

[...]

David A. Martin, a University of Virginia law professor who served as general counsel at the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the late 1990s, said that "the government is perfectly within its legal rights to go ahead in two different forums even after they've lost in one." He added, "Whether it's a sound use of prosecutorial authority is a much tougher question."

however, what i said in january still applies...

the strategy is clear... build a base of precedent on the backs of those who have no way to defend themselves, and, even if the justice system demurs, fall back on unconstitutional laws [and obscure regulations] to insure that the emerging police state isn't obstructed... when there's enough precedent established, you and i are next in line...

it's all about instilling fear...

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Attention, fans of fear-mongering... Here's your new tool...

fans of fear, paranoia, and imminent disaster have a new tool at their disposal... the global incident map displays in very nearly real-time incidents around the world in the following categories...

Airport/Aviation Incidents
Arson/Fire Incident
Biological Incidents/ Threats/ Anthrax Hoaxes etc
Bomb Incidents/Explosives/ Hoax Devices
Chemical Incident
Dam Incident
Radiation Incidents/ Smuggling/ Proliferation
Chemical Attack
Other Suspicious Activity
Shipping/Maritime/Ports/ Cargo/Waterways Security
Assassination/ Assassination Attempt
Railways/Train Stations
Bus Stations/ Bus Security/ Bus Related Incidents
Bridge / Tunnel Incidents and Security
Shootings / Sniper Incidents etc
Terrorist Arrests/Captured/Killed Locations
General Terrorism News
Oil Gas Infrastructure - Incidents / Threats/ News
Food/ Product Tampering
Embassy/ Consulate Incidents or Threats

here's the map, displaying various icons that represent the various categories of threats as listed above... note the one icon-free continent...


Click on map for larger version

here's the same map with an arrow roughly indicating my present location...



nyah, nyah, nyah...

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Holy crap! Yet ANOTHER Bill of Rights shredding piece of legislation is on the table

H.R. 1955: "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism" [PDF]

i no more than glance away when the next unconstitutional move, this one initiated by a house democrat no less, slaps me upside the head like a dead fish...

[C]ongresswoman Jane Harman has introduced legislation--H.R. 1955: "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism"--that is expected to be referred to the House Rules Committee for assignment of floor time for debate by the House. This is a bill that is unneeded, unwise, and unfortunately will pass and be signed into law as it purports to be part of the response to 9/11 and the global war on terror.

At base, Harman's proposal seems to be a direct attack on First Amendment rights. No where is this more clear than in the third introductory paragraph (the "where as" section) that provides the context for the action desired. Specifically, this legislation aims at the unregulated nature of the Internet:

"The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization,
ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism
process in the United States by providing access to broad and
constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."

Moreover, Harman is telling the American public, citizens and permanent residents, that they are too dumb to recognize hate speech, demonizing rhetoric, and propaganda, and are so morally immature that they are not capable of knowing when to "blow off" terrorists and their messages designed to incite large scale insurrection

One also gets the impression that Harman believes that terrorist criminality has become so wide and the number of people who mentally entertain thoughts of non-compliance with authority so numerous that the country is about to teeter into chaos.

are ya pissed off yet...? well, hang on to your seat... it gets better...

There is more. To get to this "more," it's necessary to reproduce three definitions contained in the bill.

VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.

HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE- the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.

The key is in the last definition. The history of democracy is that over time, government encroaches so much into the lives of its people that government itself becomes the problem. Consider that in the 1770s, had the U.S. been a country with a law that criminalized the "threatened use of violence," every one of the Founding Fathers who participated in the Boston Tea Party organized into the Minute Men detachments or refused to accede to the British soldiers foraging on private property would have been guilty of "violent radicalization" and of promoting "ideologically based violence."

What has become an "extremist belief" in some circles within the government is democracy. Look again at the three definitions. Do they not directly challenge one of the most fundamental rights that many in the U.S. trace back to time immemorial: the right of citizens to "keep and bear arms"? Again, a people who have access to firearms inherently pose a "threat" to any government, even one with a standing army at its beck and call. And the more centralized the power of the ruler (e.g., the unitary presidency), the greater the temptation to seize the weapons--and the rights--of its citizens.

the bottom line...?

In this legislation as drafted, the underlying unacknowledged assumption is that "radicalized thought" can lead to only one outcome: an attempt to overthrow government by violence.

the only thought that comes to mind is that they must be expecting the brainwashed masses to suddenly rise up...

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Opus is now a terrorist suspect

along with the rest of us...

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A sobering thought

for some reason, i tend to watch tv when i'm here in argentina... yeah, they're u.s. shows on cable and i confess to having gotten attached to a few, namely scrubs, house, heroes, and crossing jordan... most of them air some months following their initial showing in the u.s., but since i don't watch tv in the u.s., that really doesn't matter to me...

getting to the point, last night i was watching an episode of crossing jordan... one of the characters, bug, a doctor from india who had become a u.s. citizen, was abducted from a parking garage by homeland security and detained under suspicion of aiding and abetting al qaeda... the scenes of his interrogation were very faithful to what has appeared in numerous articles and reports about how detainees are treated - the total absence of due process; the threat of torture, extraordinary rendition, and secret detention; the refusal to respond to any outside inquiries; and the denial of fundamental constitutional rights... when, at the very end, the usual television plot device of deus ex machina saw him released (they detained the wrong man) and reunited with his friends and colleagues, i experienced a sharp rush of relief and realized just how much emotion watching the story play out had generated in me... then it hit me... as most of us have, i've watched tv shows and movies that reflect some of those same things, but none quite as accurately as this one did... but the most stunning (and completely obvious) thought was, OMG, THIS IS MY COUNTRY...

i return to the u.s. on friday...

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AlterNet Drug Reporter

Pot Growers Are New Target in "War on Terror"

Under Bush, terror has become a justification for any and every abuse of power.

When is enough enough? Is there no end to the lunacy? How far are we willing to let this moronic management, we call the Executive Branch, go?

Last time we checked in on the bizarro nexus between cannabis and terrorism, it was none other than actor/director Tommy Chong who was feeling the Bush administration's post-9/11 wrath. In fact, the stoner icon, whose fabled act was concurrently resuscitated for Fox's drugged and confused comedy hit, That 70s Show, was being slapped by John Ashcroft with a nine-month prison bid, a $20,000 fine and over $100,000 in seized assets for selling bongs. The terrorism connection? He was sentenced on Sept. 11, 2003. And if you think that's a specious connection, it's only gotten worse since. In fact, over the last few years, "terrorist" has become an epithet for all seasons.

In 2003, Iraq occupation architect Richard Perle slapped investigative journalist Seymour Hersh with the term, saying, "Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly." As if filing a story about the doomed occupation of a sovereign state in the pages of the New Yorker was the same thing as flying a 747 into the World Trade Center.

In 2004, Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union, "a terrorist organization" because of what Paige defined as the "obstructionist scare tactics" used by its lobbyists. Because we all know it's every educator's dream to buck the systemby blowing themselves up in front of their students.

And just this month, the Bush administration decided to employ the term to legally target the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a sovereign nation's standing army numbering in the hundreds of thousands. When you want a war that badly, you'll pretty much do or say anything to get it.

So how does the Bush administration get away with crying terrorist at every opportunity? Say hello to the Military Commissions Act. Thanks to this 2006 piece of legislation, terrorism has become the basis of American foreign and domestic policy. Yes, the term has become equivalent to everything from ideologically driven violence to petty theft, and can be used to incarcerate, exterminate or character assassinate anything in sight.

It's no wonder then that federal officials are now revisiting their previously failed effort to link terrorism to cannabis, the only real cash cow in the government's so-called War on Drugs. Only difference is, this time, they don't have Tommy Chong as a scapegoat.

Unable or unwilling to solve the nation's crippling meth addiction or its hypocritical dependency on prescribed narcotics like oxycontin, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) recently rang the terrorism alarm to nail pot growers in Redding's Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California. Along the way, ONDCP "czar" John Walters showed off not only the Bush administration's love of twisted terminology but also its subcultural savvy by coining a memorable phrase of his own.

"We have kind of a reefer blindness," Walters explained during a Redding press conference on the ONDCP's Operation Alesia, a cannabis-eradication program coordinated by the California National Guard's Counterdrug Taskforce and the Shasta County Sheriff's Office. Walters followed that clever turn of phrase with the reliable terroristdesignation to describe the armed growers cultivating cannabis in Shasta County. "These people are armed; they're dangerous. [They're] violent criminal terrorists." He even went so far to argue that the "terrorists" growing weed in Shasta County, as the Redding Record Searchlight reported, "wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties."

[...]

"Most of the increase can be attributed to the proliferation of foreign Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs), mostly Mexican in origin, which operate in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest and throughout California and much of the United States," Odle explained to me by email. "Frequently using illegal aliens residing outside the United States, or recently smuggled across the [sic] boarder, these Mexican criminal groups establish, maintain and protect an increasing number of clandestine operations."

Yet, predictably, Odle couldn't explain what made them terrorists.

"Some DTOs have been linked by law enforcement and investigations to terrorist organizations and pose a substantial and increasing threat to national security," he added in a subsequent email. "Our primary concern here on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest is the safety of our forest visitors and agency employees and the negative impacts marijuana has on the environment and natural resources, no matter what name is given to the DTOs that are illegally growing marijuana on America's public lands."

[...]

Plus, there are enough holes in the argument to plant your own cannabis seeds. To start with, cannabis may be many things, but it is far from an environmental negative. It has been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years, can grow in almost any climate, and is a naturally occurring dioecious perennial. (In other words, it's not fossil fuel.)
Further, Odle's claim that safety is Shasta's first concern is understandable, but he offered no examples of violent activity by any of the area growers to legitimize the ONDCP's inflammatory language. Sure, the fact that "some" DTOs have been linked to terrorist organizations is educational, but as with everything the ONDCP touches, specifics are elusive and generalizations are everywhere.

I pressed Odle for further clarification on the terrorism question. But instead of al Qaeda, all I got was more obfuscation. And more Mexicans.

Wait, now, this is MY favorite part.

We're going to need help soon, if the recent white papers on drug abuse from the ONDCP are any indication. Because they've enlisted God for help in beating back the devil weed, as their fact sheet "Marijuana and Kids: Faith" explains: "Religion and religiosity repeatedly correlate with lower teen and adult marijuana and substance use rates and buffer the impact of life stress which can lead to marijuana and substance use. ... Other studies show that teens who don't view faith as important are up to four times more likely to use marijuana."

In other words, smoke up, heretical terrorist! You're not only fueling al Qaeda's mass murder by purchasing weed cultivated by illegal Mexicans in the rural public lands of the world, but you're also turning your back on God in the process. As well as replacing the Bush administration's real world with your selfish virtual reality in which cannabis is a relatively harmless, naturally occurring plant that can chill you out as much as it can fill you out. A massive, multiplayer simulation where pot is a viable medicinal alternative to synthesized painkillers like oxycontin, which ease your agony by killing you off altogether.

According to the Bush administration and its politicized ONDCP, you need to unplug from that moonbat matrix and start praying. Fast. Or else.

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Coup You!

In response to this request, here is post on the topic of whether anyone is thinking ahead about a Bush coup.



In fact, some are. With this article, Pravda goes to some length theorizing "US GOV'T OUT, BUSH GOV'T IN":

Exec orders 11051, 11310, 11049, 11921 outline the bypass of the current leftovers of the US three branch gov't (technically, four branch since Cheney has swung himself onto a new vine last week) and install his own in its place.

In these exec orders, Bush consolidates the entire US gov't into a few dept's of his own which will oversee without any recourse the carrying out of his other exec orders that take over the US and thin the herd.

[...]

The US TVs pump the same lies. The web returns 505. No one knows a thing on the street but suddenly the dollar is no more. People fear but for themselves. Probably some bombs explode and the US media reminds everyone "the US is under attack". Bush blames the evil overseas terrists (sic) for conspiring against the US currency and promises to bring on help with some Amero food stamps programme. Meanwhile, Canada and Mexico become the US but no one knows, not even most of Canada. By the time people work it out, it's too late.

[...]

Blighted areas are cordoned off and under the guise of protecting the rest of the US communities, fatal power is authorized against the starving mobs. Some areas are razed and executive order 11004 goes into effect: "communities are relocated"

CounterPunch continues the scenario with "Declaring the US a Battlefield":

The other thing we saw early on was the establishment of an underground government-within-a-government, though the activation, following 9-11, of the so-called "Continuity of Government" protocol, which saw heads of federal agencies moved secretly to an underground bunker where, working under the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, the "government" functioned out of sight of Congress and the public for critical months.

It was also during the first year following 9-11 that the Bush/Cheney regime began its programs of arrest and detention without charge-mostly of resident aliens, but also of American citizens-and of kidnapping and torture in a chain of gulag prisons overseas and at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay."

And from an interview of American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, Amy Goodman asks about "unpredictability":

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky says that a superpower can exert its power most effectively, not by being rational, but by being irrational, where others in the world cannot predict what this number one superpower in the world, in this case, the United States, will do. What do you think of that?

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Well, he's certainly right about it being non-rational. In some ways, though, it is almost predictable. I don't think that our behavior has been so unpredictable once we saw its general direction. And part of the argument in my book [Superpower Syndrome] is that it's part of an ideology which pulls together a kind of military fundamentalism from a more or less secular influence, people like Rumsfeld and Cheney, together with a religious fundamentalism, the influence of the Christian Right to create a doctrine and a policy that has a certain consistency. And it polarizes the world into good and evil. It seeks to dominate militarily and it can employ cynical manipulations because they're in the service of what is perceived as a higher truth. So, in some ways the behavior is certainly consistent. It's certainly non-rational. It's a kind of fantasy of omnipotence, but it is consistent. We're doing this again and again and what we're doing fits into this category.

Expect the unexpected.

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Why I Wouldn't Vote For Ron Paul-Apology

Apologies to Dr. Ron Paul,
The quote below, taken from Hot Air, was not complete on that site. I was able to find the rest of it at Ace of Spades site. Ron Paul, no apparent relation to Dr. Ron Paul the candidate, pointed out the quote was part of a joke post. This appears to be true. Dr. Ron Paul did give a short radio interview where he does state he is not affiliated with the "Trutherism" group(s) and he doesn't believe that the gov't was involved in 911. I hope that Dr. Ron Paul does, however, have an open mind toward the idea of continued LEGITIMATE investigation into the 911 attack.
My failure to properly confirm the quote below not only damages the credibility of further investigation into that important issue, but it is also an unfair attack of Dr. Ron Paul.
I still can't vote for a candidate running as a memeber of either party for reasons I have posted in the past, however, this will not be one of those reasons.
I won't remove the original post I made below. I refuse to hide my mistake and I take full responsibility for my errors.
All I can ask is that ProfMarcus, my fellow contributors, the readers of this blog, Ron Paul, and Dr. Ron Paul accept my apology for my error.

Below is the original post.
Like I have said before, I won't speculate if the US gov't was in any way involved with the destruction on 911, but there is a lot of very rational, technical and sensible reasons to investigate the failures of those buildings in further detail.
If only for basic building and fire safety reasons, we need to understand how fuel driven fires caused the actual implosions.
Ron Paul, as I also said before, has some good ideas but he is still a Republican party member. This makes his true goals suspect, as I suspect any member of the DC Millionaires' Club.
Labeling folks who want to know more as "Truthers" is closed minded at best.
Here is a statement from a post on Hot Air.
Why do All these Truthers Keep Thinking I’m One of Them?
by Ron Paul
Look, I’m not a hateful person or anything—I believe we should all live and let live. But lately, I’ve been having a real problem with these Truthers. You see, just about wherever I go these days, one of them approaches me and starts talking about melted steel and conspiracies.
Take last Sunday, for instance, when I casually struck up a conversation with this guy who was attending one of my rallies. Nothing weird, just a couple of fellas talking about the gold standard and the true meaning of the Constitution. The guy looked like a real conservative, with the proper opinions and fervor for the cause. He didn’t seem the least bit crazy. At least not until he handed me a DVD with the movie “Loose Change” on it.
Where does this guy get the nerve to hand me that video? Did I look Truthery to him? Was I wearing a “Investigate 9/11″ t-shirt without realizing it? I don’t recall the phrase, “9/11 Truth” entering the conversation, and I don’t have a sign around my neck that reads, “Please, You Truthers, Talk to Me About Melting Steel.”
There are a lot of conspiracy nuts who are pushing for further investigation of 911. However, there are a lot of very credible individuals who are calling for a re-investigation of the collapse. Dismissing these individuals smells like a cover-up, or a total lack of care for finding the truth and protecting the public safety.
That's not somebody I would vote for in any election.
Paul should spend some time while he is on the Internet at Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth. He might actually start to open his mind.

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