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 "terrorists" don't even CARE if their bombs explode

it could be an empty box with a cheap clock ticking inside... no matter... our national security state will use it as a pretext to further humiliate and degrade us all in the name of our "safety"...

tom engelhardt...

Here’s a singular fact to absorb: we now know that a bunch of Yemeni al-Qaeda adherents have a far better hit on just who we are, psychologically speaking, and what makes us tick than we do. Imagine that. They have a more accurate profile of us than our leading intelligence profilers undoubtedly do of them.

Recently, they released an online magazine laying out just how much the two U.S.-bound cargo-bay bombs that caused panic cost them: a mere $4,200 and the efforts of “less than six brothers” over three months. They even gave their plot a name, Operation Hemorrhage (and what they imagined hemorrhaging, it seems, was not American blood, but treasure).

Now, they're laughing at us for claiming the operation failed because -- thanks reportedly to a tip from Saudi intelligence -- those bombs didn’t go off. “This supposedly ‘foiled plot,’” they wrote, “will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. That is what we call leverage.”

They are, they claim, planning to use the "security phobia that is sweeping America” not to cause major casualties, but to blow a hole in the U.S. economy. "We knew that cargo planes are staffed by only a pilot and a co-pilot, so our objective was not to cause maximum casualties but to cause maximum losses to the American economy" via the multi-billion-dollar U.S. freight industry.

This is a new definition of asymmetrical warfare. The terrorists never have to strike an actual target. It’s not even incumbent upon them to build a bomb that works. Just about anything will do. To be successful, they just have to repeatedly send things in our direction, inciting the expectable Pavlovian reaction from the U.S. national security state, causing it to further tighten its grip (grope?) at yet greater taxpayer expense.

things can't go on this way much longer... somethin's gonna snap...

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Terrorism and torture: a presumption of innocence for the powerful but not for anybody else

tom engelhardt...

The presumption of innocence may be slowly dying in the courtrooms where our terror trials are being held, as Karen Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at NYU Law School and author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, points out in today’s post. Here’s the curious thing, though: that presumption is stronger than ever when it comes to those who once ran or carried out the Global War on Terror. Afghanistan to Washington, Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo, they all continue to live within a bubble of official innocence.

karen greenberg...

Guilty Until Proven Guilty
Threatening the Presumption of Innocence

[...]

Since September 12, 2001, Americans have been systematically cowed to a degree that is hard to grasp, and the justice system in this country has in no way been inoculated from this virus. If you need a measure of which way the currents of politics are running today, start with the political calculation that the Obama administration has had to make when it comes to the trial of KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed], which has only grown that much more difficult in the wake of the Ghailani verdict.

So, too, for those of us who favor civilian trials. How do we really feel about having been put in a position where, to defend the merits of the system of justice, we feel compelled to equate certain conviction with the notion of success?

The deepest principle of American justice is being tested, right now in Washington, in lower Manhattan in the wake of the Ghailani verdict, and elsewhere. With terrorism trials, the more serious they get, the more the presumption of innocence seems to lie at the mercy of politics.

it's really a very vicious circle... when you capture, detain, torture and hold presumed terrorists for years without charges or trial, you are going to look even worse than you already do when they finally do come to trial and are subsequently acquitted so you better make damn sure the verdict is guilty, whether it's a civilian or a military trial... the implications of that for a fair, jury of your peers-based justice system underpinned by the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is frightening to contemplate... the sad reality is that "contemplation" at this stage of reality is just wishful thinking...

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A headline to make you weep

that such a headline could ever be written about the united states is a true abomination...

a joint statement from the aclu and the center for constitutional rights...

Obama Administration Claims Unchecked Authority to Kill Americans Outside Combat Zones

The Obama administration today argued before a federal court that it should have unreviewable authority to kill Americans the executive branch has unilaterally determined to pose a threat. Government lawyers made that claim in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) charging that the administration's asserted targeted killing authority violates the Constitution and international law. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments from both sides today.

"Not only does the administration claim to have sweeping power to target and kill U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, but it makes the extraordinary claim that the court has no role in reviewing that power or the legal standards that apply," said CCR Staff Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, who presented arguments in the case. "The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the government's claim to an unchecked system of global detention, and the district court should similarly reject the administration's claim here to an unchecked system of global targeted killing."

[...]

"If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state," said Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU, who presented arguments in the case. "It's the government's responsibility to protect the nation from terrorist attacks, but the courts have a crucial role to play in ensuring that counterterrorism policies are consistent with the Constitution."

The government filed a brief in the case in September, claiming that the executive's targeted killing authority is a "political question" that should not be subject to judicial review. The government also asserted the "state secrets" privilege, contending that the case should be dismissed to avoid the disclosure of sensitive information.

i cry for my country...

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If my passport didn't say I was a U.S. citizen, I'm not sure I'd know otherwise

cuz the country i thought was my own would never have supposedly intelligent, former senior government officials spewing this kind of bullshit...

former bush administration attorney general jack goldsmith in today's nyt...

THE Obama administration wants to show that federal courts can handle trials of Guantánamo Bay detainees, and had therefore placed high hopes in the prosecution of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, accused in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in East Africa. On Wednesday a federal judge, Lewis Kaplan of the United States District Court in Manhattan, made the government’s case much harder when he excluded the testimony of the government’s central witness because the government learned about the witness through interrogating Mr. Ghailani at a secret overseas prison run by the C.I.A.

Some, mostly liberals and civil libertarians, applauded the ruling, saying it showed that the rule of law is being restored. But many conservatives denounced it as proof that high-level terrorists cannot reliably be prosecuted in civilian courts and should instead be tried by military commissions.

The real lesson of the ruling, however, is that prosecution in either criminal court or a tribunal is the wrong approach. The administration should instead embrace what has been the main mechanism for terrorist incapacitation since 9/11: military detention without charge or trial.

[...]

[W]hile it is more difficult than ever to keep someone like Mr. Ghailani in military detention, it is far easier to detain him than to convict him in a civilian trial or a military commission. Military detention proceedings have relatively forgiving evidence rules and aren’t constrained by constitutional trial rules like the right to a jury and to confront witnesses. There is little doubt that Mr. Ghailani could be held in military detention until the conflict with Al Qaeda ends.

gosh, it all sounds so REASONABLE doesn't it...? until, of course, you read that last sentence and it suddenly dawns on you that plans don't call for the conflict with terrorism to EVER END... everything we read, everything we're told, says that we're in a forever war*, a war that cannot be won and will not end...

oh, yeah... don't forget that other little niggling bit goldsmith didn't bother to address... is mr. ghailani actually a terrorist...? after all, if the aumf put us at "war" with terrorism and if mr. ghailani is - presumably - a terrorist, how was that determined...?

if we're in an endless war and terrorism is the declared "enemy," then pow's have nothing to look forward to except a lifetime of detention... their lives are essentially over...

is the u.s. a great country or what...?

* [I]n November 2002, retired U.S. Army Gen. William Odom appeared on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" program and told viewers: "Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism."

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Our handlers seem particularly determined to keep us cowering under our sheets

be afwaid, be vewy afwaid...

The U.S. State Department issued an alert on Sunday urging Americans traveling to Europe to be vigilant about possible terrorist attacks in a statement that specifically cites the potential involvement of Al Qaida. The British government, meanwhile, raised the threat of terrorism to "high" from "general" for Britons in France and Germany.

[...]

The U.S. travel alert urges extra caution and does not discourage Americans from visiting Europe. An American official who confirmed the warning on Saturday, who did not want to be identified speaking about internal government deliberations, said a stronger “travel warning” that might advise Americans not to visit Europe was not under consideration. European officials have been concerned about the impact on tourism and student travel from any official guidance to American travelers.

i'm starting to get that old feeling left over from the bush years that i should constantly be checking under my bed for terrorists...

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A terrorist is tried in NYC... Say what...?

marcy - emptywheel - wheeler...

[A]s Bob Schacht pointed out, not that anybody would know it, but there has been a terror trial going on all week in a real live Article III courtroom in the heart of Manhattan. Exactly like all the Republicans with vapors and trembling Democrats said could not be safely done.

from human rights first...

Despite repeated warnings that trying Guantanamo detainees in New York would result in chaos, mayhem, kidnappings, astronomical security costs, a police take-over of Lower Manhattan, snarled traffic, street closures, and “utter, unmitigated disaster,” New Yorkers interviewed by Human Rights First are going about their daily business within blocks of the federal terrorism trial of a former Guantanamo detainee.

In an exclusive video released today, the group reveals that many New Yorkers are not only failing to fear, they do not even realize that accused terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani’s trial is underway. Some, despite the urgent warnings from those trying to “Keep America Safe,” even expressed pride that the prosecution was happening in New York City.

“We have trials like that here all of the time,” one woman observed as Human Rights First correspondent Reagan Kuhn interviewed her near the federal courthouse in Foley Square.

Despite the best efforts of Liz Cheney, Deborah Burlingame, Rudy Guiliani, and Karl Rove to spread panic, many naïve New Yorkers seemed completely uninformed about the chaos that was supposed to reign. Some even observed that “everything seems pretty normal,” “I haven’t noticed anything,” and “I’m sure everybody knows what they are doing.”.

all of the cravenly manipulative exhortations demanding that we live in endless, paralyzing fear are clearly aimed at one thing and one thing only - allowing those in power to exert more control over our minds and our lives... marcy offers a nice closing paragraph...

They have been holding terrorism trials of the highest order for years in New York City. SDNY is where the Blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman was tried for the first World Trade Center Attack. There is not a better secured and more appropriate place in america to try the 9/11 terrorism suspects. That is what we do in America, and what we do as Americans. Giving in to the fear and bed wetting of the Cheneys, Rudy Guiliani, Lindsey Graham, Lieberman and others of their ilk is giving up on our principles and giving in to the terrorists themselves. Besides, NYC is always a target of terrorists and would be even if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other four 9/11 suspects were tried in Gitmo.

Put the trials where the crimes happened and deal with it.

don't give in to the fearmongers...

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I'm not auditioning for president of the Glenn Greenwald fan club

but...

he made an excellent point this morning when commenting on michael mukasey's wapo op-ed in today's edition...

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, The Washington Post, today, arguing against civilian trials for Guantanamo detainees:

The civilized world has tried over several hundred years to establish rules of warfare so that those who wear uniforms, follow a recognized chain of command, carry their arms openly and do not target civilians are treated as prisoners of war when captured. Those who follow none of these rules are treated as war criminals, not as ordinary defendants accused of ordinary crimes and entitled to far more robust protection than war criminals.

[...]

The irony here is that the decision to declare enemy fighters in Afghanistan as "unlawful enemy combatants" -- which is what, in turn, "justified" denial of Geneva Conventions protections for them (at least until the Supreme Court ruled otherwise) -- was grounded in the fact that they do not, as Mukasey put it, "wear uniforms, follow a recognized chain of command, carry their arms openly." That's what made them, in the U.S. lexicon, not only "unlawful combatants" but even Terrorists. But, of course, exactly the same is true for our countless private contractors who are acting as combatants for the U.S. in multiple parts of the world... .

as i said yesterday, the ability of the u.s. to wax righteous to the rest of the world while blindly justifying its own utter disregard for accountability, the rule of law and internationally accepted standards of conduct is seemingly limitless...

speaking of which, a neighbor of mine in the rv park is on temporary duty here with the air national guard, serving as a mission commander for drone missions in afghanistan and pakistan and probably other places i'll never hear about... as with so many of these guys, he's a decent enough sort, pleasant to talk with, laid back and easy-going... i'm sure he doesn't think of himself as either a war criminal or a terrorist and i'm sure nothing i could say would change that... however, i'd be really curious to know how much and how deeply he actually thinks about what he's doing... i can't believe he doesn't think about it at all but i strongly suspect he tells himself that, unpleasant as it is, it's a job that's got to be done... if pressed, i'd guess most people would respond that way, so thoroughly have we been sold on the unimpeachable rightness of united states behavior in all things...

p.s. how come it is that former officials of a thoroughly discredited presidential administration - rove, cheney, yoo, mcconnell, mukasey, et al, ad nauseam - keep getting trotted back out to spew their fear-based, constitution-shredding garbage...? why do their opinions still matter...? why not john dean...? why not paul craig roberts...? for that matter, why not ramsey clark...? just askin'...

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I just heard about "Detention Without Trial of Unprivileged Enemy Belligerents"

there have been a lot of little steps taken toward a military/police state in the u.s. over the 8 years of the bush administration, steps that are being expanded by the obama administration...

and, yes, i was a fool to buy the snake oil sold as "hope" by the obama campaign...

"'brand' obama"...

The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel.

nothing has been done to halt our greased slide into the depths of hell...

torture has, if anything, become acceptable...

extraordinary rendition and indefinite, illegal detention are still on the menu...

our government is privy to every electronic communication and transaction over any network of any sort we choose to use, wherever we are, even outside the u.s., and those, along with our movements, are logged and archived for possible future retrieval...

peremptory, extra-judicial assassinations, even of u.s. citizens, are carried out in presidential-approved black ops...

hundreds, maybe thousands, of drones, flown remotely by pilots sitting behind consoles in nevada and new mexico, strike targets in afghanistan and pakistan daily without the specific knowledge or concurrence of those national governments...

"terrorist" has become the magic word that, once applied, can and will place anyone beyond the reach of the law of any country, possibly for the rest of that person's life...

and the list goes on...

now, here we have what looks like the next big step...

On March 4th, Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced a bill called the "Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010" that, if passed, would set this country on a course to become a military dictatorship.

The bill is only 12 pages long, but that is plenty of room to grant the president the power to order the arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment of anyone -- including a U.S. citizen -- indefinitely, on the sole suspicion that he or she is affiliated with terrorism, and on the president's sole authority as commander in chief.

[...]

[I]f at any point, anywhere in the world, a person is caught who might have done something to suggest that he or she is a terrorist or somehow supporting a terrorist organization against the U.S. or its allies, that person must be imprisoned by the military. [emphasis added]

For how long?

As long as U.S. officials want. A subsequent section, titled "Detention Without Trial of Unprivileged Enemy Belligerents," states that suspects "may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners."

when glenn greenwald sounds the four-alarm fire, i tend to pay attention...

As "war on terror"-era legislation goes, Greenwald calls the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act "probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act."

so, here i sit in one of my favorite neighborhood cafes in buenos aires (argentina, the home of la guerra sucia - the dirty war - fomented in large part by my own country), while i expound on the continued degradation of the u.s. constitution as i sip cafe con leche and nibble medialunas... life's little ironies, eh...?

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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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Sigh... Are people just intentionally blind to the realities of what's going on...?

i may have taken a break from posting but it's really hard to take a break from reality... after a long, three-leg flight back from pennsylvania, we arrived only to find that our bags - for a party of five, that would be EIGHT bags! - didn't arrive with us... as we were filing the missing bag report, there was a couple in front of us doing the same thing... as i listened to the conversation between them and the agent i overheard this...

agent: there was a big mess in los angeles today with the tsa... they were inspecting every bag and it's been giving us lots of problems...

woman: yes, and that's what they intended when they did their little stunt in detroit... just because we don't believe in the same god they do... and WE get to pay the price...

oh, fer god's sake, woman...! are you willfully blind or simply missing some critical brain cells...? YOU'RE missing a couple of bags, WE'RE KILLING THEM AND THEIR CHILDREN and YOU'RE angry because WE'RE paying the PRICE...? i bit my tongue because i knew if i said something, there was a good chance i would quickly devolve into an ugly rage and that wouldn't do anything but make things worse...

when is this insanity going to end...?

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9/11 - eight years to the day, I'm back in Dulles airport

september 11, 2001, i was working here at washington d.c. dulles international airport for united airlines... needless to say, it was a day that will be forever burned in my memory... i've posted on the details of that day in previous blog posts (here and here, among others), and i'm not going to repeat them here...

however, once again i find myself in dulles airport on 11 september, eight years on, this time waiting for a flight to london, and i'm stunned at how little things have changed... in many ways, it's as if the clock had been turned back... same gates, same crowds, same godforsaken airline...

here's what i consider to be a solid observation for the day from rebecca solnit at tomdispatch...

Eight years ago, 2,600 people lost their lives in Manhattan, and then several million people lost their story. The al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers did not defeat New Yorkers. It destroyed the buildings, contaminated the region, killed thousands, and disrupted the global economy, but it most assuredly did not conquer the citizenry. They were only defeated when their resilience was stolen from them by clichés, by the invisibility of what they accomplished that extraordinary morning, and by the very word 'terrorism,' which suggests that they, or we, were all terrified. The distortion, even obliteration, of what actually happened was a necessary precursor to launching the obscene response that culminated in a war on Iraq, a war we lost (even if some of us don't know that yet), and the loss of civil liberties and democratic principles that went with it.

it's a sobering day for reflection...

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