The Resistance: Destroying One Weapon

That list of Muslims that Smirky/Darth started and the Orange Menace was hoping to use to launch his unconstitutional deportation of non-christians?

It's gone.  President Barack Obama destroyed it.

Alex Daugherty
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted with permission from Tribune Content Agency 

 

Republish
Reprint

WASHINGTON — In 2001, Roskana Mun was a 16-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant living in one of New York City's most diverse neighborhoods. After 9/11, the U.S. government started tracking foreign Muslim men and boys, and Mun's neighborhood changed as men were detained and in some cases deported.

"Women had to juggle raising a whole family and face the threat of detention," Mun said. "Girls had to step up, and young people who were 13 or 14 years old had to quit school to work."

Mun now works for DRUM, a New York-based advocacy group for South Asian immigrants. She said the U.S. government's tracking of men from Muslim-majority countries for a decade had disrupted daily life, causing shops to close in neighborhoods like Midwood, Brooklyn, after hundreds of men were deported.

The tracking program administered by the Department of Homeland Security, called the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, required males 16 and older from 25 countries to undergo additional vetting in the interest of national security.

After 10 years and 13,000 deportations, President Barack Obama stopped enforcing the program in 2011. It hadn't caught a single terrorist.

On Thursday, the DHS announced that the regulatory framework for the system has been dismantled, effectively gutting a quasi-Muslim registry just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House. The move prevents the dormant program from being quickly restarted to track the movements of certain Muslim men living in the United States.

The Constitution.  It's not just for white, straight, christian, male wingnuts.

Choosing Brave and Smart Over Scared and Stupid

Ever notice how real heroes are never the ones screaming "OMG we're all gonna die!"

Digby:

I've been aghast at the panic stricken bellowing coming from mainstream US media in the wake of Paris and needless to say, Fox News has been worse than most.  But once in awhile someone surprises you. Here's Fox's Shep Smith:

In the face of terror, will we panic or be calm and deliberative in approach?” Smith asked in a 90-second monologue. “Confronted with those who want to change our way of life, will we abandon our freedoms and the rights granted to us by the creator, or will we welcome huddled masses, yearning to breathe free? Will we take extreme measures to fundamentally alter who and what we are?” 

“Our shining city on a hill is vulnerable,” he continued. “We’ve always known that. If we change it to accommodate the savages, have they won? And what then would be left to protect? We profess to stand as an example for all the world. Our unique experiment in freedom, tolerance, openness, and equality, is our gift to societies and peoples everywhere. Come, join us. Enjoy a chance at the American dream.” 

He concluded, “Today we mourn but we cannot allow ourselves to become like those who want to destroy us. We cannot resort to tactics of the barbarians. We must fight for what we believe in and who we are. Guard our freedoms faithfully for the generations to follow. And we must not let the rhetoric of potential and political extremists among us lead us to self-destruction. When there’s panic, we show resolve. When there’s calm for extremism, we resist. We are America. We must lead.”

14 Years of Hysteria, Stupidity and Waste for No Good Reason

Some of us even predicted it back then.

Reader JB at TPM:

To me the most notable thing looking back on 9/11 13 years later is how crystal clear it is now that it was an anomalous event and not, contrary to all the rhetoric of the time, the dawn of a new era of domestic terrorism. The fact that basically nothing analogous – meaning a domestic terror attack planned and executed by foreigners or local cells funded by Al Queda or like groups -- has happened in the 13 years since is pretty incredible and unexpected. Perhaps more surprising still is that the only viable explanation for the dearth of attacks is that terrorists motivated to carry out attacks inside the United States do not exist.

We know this because, if they did exist, at least in any remotely capable form, they would have succeeded in carrying out dozens or hundreds of attacks by now because it is simply impossible to completely stop motivated terrorists from carrying out attacks in a free and open society with endless targets and no-questions-asked access to automatic firearm.

Could an attack happen tomorrow? Of course. But once every 13 years would still be an anomalous event, not a systemic threat. Remember the talk as the rubble smoldered of hundreds, maybe thousands, of “sleeper cells” lurking out there, waiting to strike? Well, we now know there were none at the time, and apparently none were formed even after we have fought two wars and killed thousands of innocent civilians since 9/11. One would think our actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etcetera would spawn at least a few motivated and effective enemies bent on revenge through domestic attacks. Apparently not.

So, ironically, if we had done absolutely nothing in response to 9/11 aside from hold funerals and shake our heads in disbelief, we would have been no less safe than we are now after two useless wars, trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost, and a decade of taking off our shoes for domestic flights. I’m not saying this was obvious when 9/11 happened. Far from it. I was just as freaked out as anyone else at the time and I think it would have been foolish to ignore the threat. But the fact is if we had we would have been far better off, because as it turns out there were not hundreds of other Mohammed Attas out there in the wings. In fact, there were none, at least not with any meaningful capabilities (which would exclude folks like the shoe bomber and the Tsarnaev brothers). We know this to be the case because if such people did exist we would have been hit 100 times over by now. It is too damn easy to sow terror and chaos with motivation and even a below average IQ. Think Newtown or D.C. sniper.

A few sad teenagers have committed far, far more domestic terror attacks than all the Islamic militants in the world over the past decade, and that is an outcome I think very few would have predicted, myself included, in the aftermath of 9/11. I’m sure the Rudy Guiliani set would love to take credit for the lack of attacks, but I think any serious expert on stopping domestic terrorism attacks would agree that the only way to bat as close to 1000 as we have is if your enemy is fictional.

Terrorists Are White Men With Guns and a Grudge

Maybe the Warren Terra wouldn't seem so intractable if we started paying attention to the people who are actually committing terrorism and the weapons they are actually using.

Michelle Goldberg at The Nation:

(Last week), an outspoken white atheist murdered three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We don’t yet know for sure whether this was a hate crime or whether the killer, Craig Stephen Hicks, had some other motivation; police have said the crime may have grown out of a dispute over parking. We do know that had Hicks been a Muslim and his victims atheists, few would be waiting for all the facts to come in before declaring him a terrorist. We know that there would be the usual calls for other Muslims to condemn the killings, coupled with the usual failure to take note of the many Muslims who did. And we know that demands for Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins to distance themselves from Hicks are largely facetious, because no one really blames them. Violence perpetrated by Muslims is almost always seen as part of a global conspiracy, whereas white men like Hicks are usually seen as isolated psychopaths.

There is, of course, some truth there. An organized jihadist movement exists; an organized cadre of terroristic atheists does not. Yet in the United States, Islamophobia has been a consistent motivator of violence. Hicks’s killing of Yusor Mohammad, her husband, Deah Shaddy Barakat, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, should not be treated like a man-bites-dog story, a reversal of the usual pattern of terrorism. After all, Muslims in the United States are more often the victims of ideological violence than the perpetrators of it.

According to the latest FBI statistics, there were more than 160 anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2013. Mosques and Islamic centers have been firebombed and vandalized; seven mosques were attacked during Ramadan alone in 2012. Several Muslims, or people thought to be Muslim, have been murdered or viciously attacked. In 2010, a white college student and self-described patriot tried to slash the throat of Bangladeshi cab driver Ahmed Sharif. The white supremacist who slaughtered six people in a Sikh temple in 2012 may have thought he was targeting Muslims. So, apparently, did Erika Menendez, the homeless New Yorker who pushed a man named Sunando Sen in front of a subway train that same year.

In most cases, the perpetrators have been disaffected, disaffiliated losers rather than part of any movement, but they’ve picked up broader currents of hatred and conspiracy theorizing. (The same can be said of some lone-wolf Muslim terrorists like Man Haron Monis, the fraudster and criminal who took hostages in Sydney last year, or the Tsarnaev brothers, who bombed the Boston marathon in 2013.) We don’t yet know if Hicks was driven by lonely fanaticism, but if he was, he’s not as much of an anomaly as he might at first appear. Explicitly atheist violence is unusual, but Hicks still fits the profile of the most common type of American terrorist: a white man with a weapon and a grudge.

Who's Afraid of a Lone Wolf?

Digby:

Terrorism carries a special brand of fear due to its political motivation.

But the "lone wolf" threat in the US? Considering the threat we live with from our fellow "lone wolf" citizens every day, even from political violence, it ridiculously hysterical. Nobody bats an eye at abortion clinics being targeted for years on end. A couple of right wing lunatics gunned down police officers in Las Vegas with a political beef a few months back and we didn't launch a national crusade against it. We can't even sustain any alarm at kids shooting up kids in schools for longer than a couple of days. We hardly even report it anymore it's so old hat. If there's one nation on earth that knows how to keep calm and carry on in the face of random armed misfits gunning down strangers it's us.

SNIP

From what I gather from the comments of various law enforcement officials and terrorism experts, the threat that concerns them is the Lone Wolf scenario. I'm sure it's very scary. But again, what makes it so much scarier than Adam Lanza or James Holmes or Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold? I don't think anyone wants those kinds of killings but we haven't decided to turn ourselves into a full-blown police state to stop them. In fact, we have pretty much done nothing to stop them, even the smallest common sense measures like trying to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill kids. So all this handwringing over Muslim lone wolves seems just a bit over the top.

But it is very convenient and lucrative for certain politicians, news networks and military contractors, so there's that ...

American Sucker

We'll be rid of racism before we're rid of jingoism.

Rude Pundit:

American Sniper is a film about stupid people who were brainwashed into doing something stupid and it justifies their stupidity so that the stupid people watching can feel good about themselves. See, the one thing you can't separate out from the film is history. It tries to elide over history, but just because it isn't mentioned doesn't mean it isn't there. Because of that, the overwhelming feeling the Rude Pundit had was pity, not pride.

SNIP

So, in the end, American Sniper is the story of a dumb man who wrecked himself for a worthless cause and about all the young men (and it is all, mostly white, men in it) who were sacrificed for nothing.

It's not the film that tells us it's nothing. We know it was for nothing. We know that one of the great crimes of the new century is the invasion of Iraq for absolutely no rational, demonstrable reason. We know that all those "savages," as Kyle calls the Iraqis, that we killed were for nothing. We know that all those Americans who died lost their lives for nothing. Our military was protecting us from nothing. Our freedoms weren't at risk from Iraq.

And the lie many soldiers from Iraq cling to and the lie we tell ourselves, and the lie that so many have worked so hard to maintain, is that as long as we don't discuss that it was for nothing, as long as we pretend that the fact that soldiers fought when they were told to fight and, mostly, did so nobly, we don't have to face the truly gut-wrenching reality of our national complicity in the crime.

SNIP

We're supposed to feel proud that men like Kyle defend us.  We should instead feel intensely angry that they died in vain.

How Marxist, Feminist, Environmentalist Muslims Defeated IS

It's liberal democracy the way it was supposed to be, the one that plutocrats, corporations and freakazoids fear the most.

I expect U.S. drones to "accidentally" obliterate it any day now.

TPM:

Months after it was supposed to fall, Kobane still stands, and IS has been forced back. The story of the town’s resistance is an epic tale of determination and self-defense, and it’s one U.S. officials would rather not discuss. When the Pentagon claimed there were no ground troops in Kobane, they weren’t exactly telling the truth. In 2012, Syrian forces withdrew from three northern areas, leaving their administration and defense to the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Now the three territories hold more than four million people, half of them refugees from the Syrian civil war or the Islamic State’s advance, and many of them armed and organized. Kobane is one of the three territories that together constitute the autonomous region of Rojava, and it endures today because of the fiercely egalitarian society the people have built, the kind idealized by many leftists around the world.

Most Americans, even the ones who pay close attention to national involvement in the Middle East, have little to no idea about what has been happening in Kobane. The Pentagon has been less than forthcoming with support for these enemies of our enemies; their fighters are still on the State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations. The American media has more or less ignored the political project in Rojava; they’ve been more comfortable painting Kurds as desperate fighters fending off the Islamic State. Besides, there are a lot of acronyms and complicated political affiliations to sort through. But while America isn’t watching, something incredible is happening. At the geographical nexus of so many of the world’s conflicts, a new post-national project is emerging.

SNIP

In 2005, his death sentence reduced to life in prison, Öcalan made a surprising announcement: He renounced nationalism. The PKK and its affiliates followed suit, dropping the fight for a seat at the UN and adopting a unique political ideology called democratic confederalism. When the Syrian government withdrew from what would be Rojava in 2012, they did not declare independence despite controlling the territory. Just when the world’s largest stateless group finally seems poised to join the modern nation state system, when the dream of a Kurdistan (if not a united one) in northern Iraq is nearly at hand, the PKK has abandoned its foundational agenda. What happened? The simplest answer is they thought of a better idea.

Despite being Turkey’s most notorious prisoner, Öcalan has kept in communication with his comrades (that’s what they call each other) through his writing, some of which has been translated for a western audience that has so far yet to appear. In a pamphlet on democratic confederalism, Öcalan laid out the premise for his unexpected turn:

So far, with a view to issues of ethnicity and nationhood like the Kurdish question, which have their roots deep in history and at the foundations of society, there seemed to be only one viable solution: the creation of a nation-state, which was the paradigm of the capitalist modernity at that time. We did not believe, however, that any ready-made political blueprints would be able to sustainably improve the situation of the people in the Middle East. Had it not been nationalism and nation-states which had created so many problems in the Middle East?

The Kurdish freedom struggle, he explains, had always been about “liberating the society and democratizing it” and resisting “the global domination of the modern capitalist system.” Inspired by decolonization struggles throughout the global south, the PKK’s founders followed their model, attempting a Maoist guerrilla war strategy to establish their own nation. They were always a little behind the times; by the PKK’s founding in 1978, the Cold War period of national liberation had drawn to a close. Even if, against all odds, they were to win, the most likely outcome would be a Cuba-style trade embargo enforced by Turkey. The organization needed a new vision, and democratic confederalism was Öcalan’s answer.

At the geographical nexus of so many of the world’s conflicts, a new post-national project is emerging.

 

So what is democratic confederalism? Öcalan calls it “a non-state political administration” or a “democracy without a state.” Instead of centralizing political power in a government, confederalism views society holistically, as an association of associations of intrinsically social people. It aspires to flatten the divisions the state places between public, productive and domestic life, linking together sewing cooperatives, neighborhood communes, refugee assistance groups, schools and self-defense forces in a common framework. The higher levels of organization exist to facilitate the grassroots, and decisions flow from the bottom to the top. It’s designed to work without, beneath, between and against nation-states, depending on the situation. Like the Islamic State, democratic confederalism does not recognize borders except as obstacles to overcome. “It is flexible, multi-cultural, anti-monopolistic, and consensus-oriented,” Öcalan writes. “Ecology and feminism are central pillars.”

They Knew It Was Wrong When They Did It

Gee, if only some powerful country had already - maybe seven decades ago - established the principle that "I was just following orders" is not an acceptable excuse for torture.

Digby:

Nobody's family deserves to be targeted and the government should protect them from harm if they are. But I  do not buy the excuse that the people who did this were just doing what they were told and bear no responsibility.  They could have said no.  Nothing terrible would have happened to them if they had.  And if they had resisted this program would likely not have gone forward.

I sincerely don't wish that any of these people become victims of violence. But there needed to be a reckoning for this hideous, immoral policy and this is the inadequate, weaselly way we've come up with.  It would be nice if I believed it would shock the consciences of Americans so much that they would insist it never happen again but from the looks of it, that's not going to happen.  After tomorrow, the Republican Party (and some Democratic hawks who operate out of fear and intimidation) are going to be officially pro-torture.

We will be fighting about this for a long time to come unfortunately.  And these operatives who could have said no bear some responsibility for that as well.

"This Is Not America's Fight Alone."

This is not America's fight, period, Mr. President.  Tell Saudi "18 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were ours" Arabia and the Gulf States to get off their asses and use some of the trillions of dollars' worth of military equipment we've given them over the decades. Field their own sons and daughters against a Muslim terror group murdering other muslims. America earns nothing but hatred meddling in the Middle East. Saving Africa from Ebola, however, will earn us the admiration and respect of the world.



Full transcript here.

"To meet a threat like this, we have to be smart."

The real threat here, Mr. President, is the warmongers and the hysterical, irrational fear they have again ginned up among Americans.  Don't give in to them, Mr. President.  I know you know better.   Spend the next two years giving the finger to the haters and just do the right thing.



Full transcript here.

"We have fallen from a high place"

Peter van Buren is writing specifically about the despicable excuses the Obama Justice Department came up with to justify the murder of an American citizen, but it applies to far more than the idiotic warren terra.

van Buren concludes:

We have fallen from a high place. Dark things have been done. Imagine, pre-9/11, the uproar if we had learned that the first President Bush had directed the NSA to sweep up all America’s communications without warrant, or if Bill Clinton had created a secret framework to kill American citizens without trial. Yet such actions over the course of two administrations are now accepted as almost routine, and entangled in platitudes falsely framing the debate as one between “security” and “freedom.” I suspect that, if they could bring themselves to a moment of genuine honesty, the government officials involved in creating Post-Constitutional America would say that they really never imagined it would be so easy.

In one sense, America the Homeland has become the most significant battleground in the war on terror. No, not in the numbers of those killed or maimed, but in the broad totality of what has been lost to us for no gain. It is worth remembering that, in pre-Constitutional America, a powerful executive—the king—ruled with indifference to the people. With the Constitution, we became a nation, in spirit if not always in practice, based on a common set of values, our Bill of Rights. When you take that away, we here in Post-Constitutional America are just a trailer park of strangers.

QOTD

Digby:

If all these patriots were really concerned about national security they'd be for closing Guantanamo instead of holding on to a rapidly aging group of prisoners, turning them into martyrs, and pretending that it is keeping us safe. It's doing the opposite.

Number 113

Kentucky's 113th sacrifice to the insatiable maw of the Permanent Warren Terra is Marine Master Sergeant Aaron C. Torian of far-western Paducah, on the Mississippi River.


From KFVS12:

They say he died Feb. 15 while conducting combat operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 2d Marine Special Operations Battalion, Marine Special Operations Regiment, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

There are many heavy hearts in the Paducah community as the news of Torian's death on the battlefields of Afghanistan sinks in.

The Heartland Worship Center in Paducah was Master Sergeant Torian's home away from home, when he was home on leave from the military.

He was just there at Christmastime this past year.

On Saturday, the decorated and highly recognized war hero was fatally injured in a IED attack in Afghanistan. Pastor Don Young says he remembers getting the call from Torian's step-father informing him about his death.

"Jim called back and he said, "pastor, Aaron didn't make it." Well, to make a long story short, I grieved and everybody that knew Esta [Torian's mother] and her family grieved. This whole church was shook up. This city is shook up."

Now those who knew him, are sharing their thoughts of the little boy who grew up to become a Marine.

"He would make a point to come by and say hi and give us a big 'ol hug; and, just tell us about some of the things he remembered in children's church when we were his teachers," said Gail Rothrock of Paducah. "I'm just crushed, there's just no words that can say what this has done. And what he meant to us and his family. He was a wonderful young man. And what an honor and privilege to have known him."

On Sunday his Heartland Worship Center family honored the Marine with a moment of silence and prayer.

"I think there's two kinds of people. Those who run into the mess and danger to try to do something about it. And those who run from it," Pastor Nathan Joyce said. "Aaron was the kind to run into it. He loved being a Marine. And he loved what he did.

Master Sergeant Torian was serving his sixth tour of combat duty, when his military career was cut short there in Afghanistan.

He leaves behind a wife and three children.

U.S. Marine Master Sergeant Aaron Torian will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

Yes, he died for nothing. They all died for nothing. They're all going to die for nothing.

Number 112

 

Died on the very same day as Number 111, the second of Kentucky's latest sacrifices to the insatiable maw of the permanent Warren Terra.

From Cincinnati.com:

Spc. Christopher A. Landis, 27, of Independence died Feb. 10, on Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, from wounds received when the enemy attacked his patrol with a rocket propelled grenade in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, the defense department said.


He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C. and deployed to Afghanistan in the fall.


“He gave his life to protect us and our freedom,” said Independence Mayor Donna Yeager. “We mourn for him and his family.”

Yeager said that once she receives official notice of the soldier’s death, she’ll order that flags at the Independence Municipal Center and other public buildings in the city be flown at half staff.

Landis enlisted as a cryptologic linguist in the U.S. Army in March 2011. He completed initial entry training at Fort Jackson, S.C., followed by Arabic language training at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey, Calif., and then advanced individual training for Cryptologic Linguist at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas.

He had already received a Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, the National Defense Service Medal and the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with Campaign Star among others.

He is survived by his parents, two brothers and a sister. His family declined any interviews.

That wailing and gnashing of teeth you hear is not from family and friends of Spc. Landis and Pfc Gray, not that they are not grieving. No, their grieving is drowned out by the anger, the fury, the rage of combat veterans - of WWII, of Korea, of Vietnam, of the Gulf War, and of Iraq and Afghanistan - who are sick unto death of the pointless waste of American lives and treasure that is the unsalvageable shithole known as Afghanistan.

Find out more here.

Number 111

UPDATE Below

Kentucky's 111th sacrifice to the insatiable maw of the Permanent Warren Terra is Private First Class Joshua A. Gray, of Van Lear, Kentucky.

21 years old.  He doesn't look a day over 15.

Van Lear is almost off-the-map tiny, even for Eastern Kentucky, where off-the-map tiny is normal.

The closest thing to a hometown newspaper in the Floyd County Times, which publishes so infrequently it has not yet covered the death of a boy probably everybody in the county knows.

That leaves the obituary to the Watertown Daily Times, near Fort Drum in upstate New York:

A Fort Drum soldier, Pfc. Joshua A. Gray, died Monday in a non-combat-related incident at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.

The news was released Tuesday afternoon by the Department of Defense. The department, in its news release, said the incident was under investigation.

Pfc. Gray, 21, was a native of Van Lear, Ky., and served as a satellite communications system operator-maintainer in the 10th Mountain Division’s Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion.

He joined the Army in November 2012, and his career included assignments at Fort Jackson, S.C., along with Fort Gordon and Fort Benning, Ga. He arrived at Fort Drum in October.

Pfc. Gray and the division headquarters deployed to Afghanistan in January.

According to Fort Drum, Pfc. Gray’s awards include the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the NATO Medal, the Overseas Ribbon, the Army Service Ribbon, the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal and the Expert Marksmanship Badge

He is survived by his mother and father.

Continuing the Warren Terra has gone far beyond bullshit, through stupidity all the way to criminal homicide. However he died, Pfc Joshua A. Gray, 21 years old, of Van Lear, Ky., was murdered by every lying motherfucker who claims a universal tactic is an existential threat to this nation.

What's an existential threat to this nation is the inexcusable horror of a permanent war that is extinguishing our economy, brutalizing our politics and devouring our young.

UPDATE: Article from the Ashland, KY, Daily Independent.

Myths of the NSA, Debunked

All 10 are great, but it's the last three that get to the heart of how thoroughly the terrist hysterics have bamboozled us:

Peter Van Buren at The Nation:

The debate Edward Snowden envisioned when he revealed the extent of National Security Agency (NSA) spying on Americans has taken a bad turn. Instead of a careful examination of what the NSA does, the legality of its actions, what risks it takes for what gains and how effective the agency has been in its stated mission of protecting Americans, we increasingly have government officials or retired versions of the same demanding—quite literally—Snowden’s head and engaging in the usual fear-mongering over 9/11. They have been aided by a chorus of pundits, columnists and present as well as former officials offering bumper-sticker slogans like “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear,” all the while claiming our freedom is in direct conflict with our security.

It’s time to face these arguments directly. So here are ten myths about NSA surveillance that need debunking. Let’s sort them out.

SNIP

8) Terrorists are everywhere and dangerous.

From 1776 to 2001 the United States did not experience a terror attack anywhere close to the scale of 9/11; the worst terror attack against the United States as of 9/10, the Oklahoma City bombing, claimed 168 lives compared to some 3,000 at the Twin Towers. Since 9/11 we have not had a comparable mass-scale terror attack. No dirty bombs at the Super Bowl, no biochemical nightmares, no suicide bombers in our shopping malls or theme parks. There have been only about twenty domestic terror-related deaths since 9/11. Your chances as an American of being killed by a terrorist (the figures are for the world, not just inside the US) are about 1 in 20 million. The inevitable comparison shows the odds of being struck by lightning at 1 in 5.5 million. You are, in other words, about four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist. Most of the “terrorists” arrested in this country post-9/11 have been tragicomic fabrications of the FBI. 9/11 was a one-off, an aberration, so unique that its “success” stunned even Osama bin Laden. It was a single morning of disaster and cannot be the justification for everything the government wishes to do forever after.

9) We’ve stayed safe. Doesn’t that just prove all the government efforts have worked?

No, that’s called false causality. There simply is no evidence that it’s true, and much to the contrary. It’s the same as believing government efforts have prevented Martian attacks or wild lions in our bedrooms. For one thing, we already know that more NSA spying would not have stopped 9/11; most of the needed information was already held by the US government and was simply not properly shared or acted upon. 9/11 was a policy failure, not a matter of too-little snooping. Today, however, it remains a straw-man justification for whatever the NSA wants to do, a way of scaring you into accepting anything from the desecration of the Fourth Amendment to taking off our shoes at airport security. But the government uses this argument endlessly to promote what it wants to do. Even the NSA’s talking points recommend their own people say: “I much prefer to be here today explaining these programs, than explaining another 9/11 event that we were not able to prevent.”

At the same time, despite all this intrusion into our lives and the obvious violations of the Fourth Amendment, the system completely missed the Boston bombers, two of the dumbest, least sophisticated bro terrorists on the planet. Since 9/11, we have seen some 364,000 deaths in our schools, workplaces and homes caused by privately owned firearms, and none of the spying or surveillance identified any of the killers in advance.

Maybe we should simply stop thinking about all this surveillance as a matter of stopping terrorists and start thinking more about what it means to have a metastasized global surveillance system aimed at spying on us all, using a fake argument about the need for 100 percent security in return for ever more minimal privacy. So much has been justified in these years—torture, indefinite detention, the Guantánamo penal colony, drone killings, wars and the use of Special Operations forces as global assassination teams—by some version of the so-called ticking time bomb scenario. It’s worth getting it through our heads: there has never been an actual ticking time bomb scenario. The bogeyman isn’t real. There’s no monster hiding under your bed.

10) But doesn’t protecting America come first—before anything?

What exactly are we protecting from what? If, instead of spending trillions of dollars on spying and domestic surveillance, we had spent that same money on repairing our infrastructure and improving our schools, wouldn’t we now have a safer, stronger America? Remember that famously absurd Vietnam War quote from an American officer talking about brutal attack on Ben Tre, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”? How can anyone say we are protecting our liberty and freedom by taking it away?

Generals Who Can't Handle the Truth

I've been watching the movie The Siege and marveling that a movie released exactly halfway between the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 could get the danger of using the military to replace law enforcement so very, very right.

And that three years after this movie came out, Smirky/Darth made the very mistakes the movie revealed as disastrous.

The result is that we now have a military unconstrained by civilian authority or any concept of separating law enforcement from warmaking

Raw Story:

Pretty much everyone who's seen the movie "A Few Good Men," (and probably many of you who haven't even seen the movie) are familiar with the famous "you can't handle the truth!" scene in which Colonel Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson explodes at Tom Cruise's character, suggesting that military men, like himself, who are on the front lines are the only ones who can truly understand what happens there in "protecting" the country, and that it's somehow despicable that anyone who hasn't done that might question the methods used -- even if they might be completely against the law.

We already wrote about Barton Gellman's fantastic interview with Ed Snowden, but there's another tidbit I wanted to call attention to in there, in which Gellman tells the story of a four-star general having a similar explosion towards an unnamed reporter "in contact with Snowden" -- which seems likely to be Gellman himself (it's unclear why this isn't indicated, though perhaps it's an excessive attempt to stick to the journalistic convention of keeping the reporter out of the story):

At the Aspen Security Forum in July, a four-star military officer known for his even keel seethed through one meeting alongside a reporter he knew to be in contact with Snowden. Before walking away, he turned and pointed a finger. “We didn’t have another 9/11,” he said angrily, because intelligence enabled warfighters to find the enemy first. “Until you’ve got to pull the trigger, until you’ve had to bury your people, you don’t have a clue.”

This is all sorts of ridiculous on so many different levels. First of all, arguing that we haven't had another 9/11 because of the NSA's activities -- despite a near total lack of support for this claim -- is just nonsensical without any clear causal explanation. But, the bigger issue is this insane belief among some that an "any means necessary" approach to defending the country means its okay to violate the law and the constitution, and, furthermore, the suggestion that a little sunlight might put people at risk.

If such programs are really necessary and do save lives, then those who support them should be willing and able to have them discussed in public. But, of course, we know the truth: that the Section 215 program at the center of all of this hasn't done much at all other than violate the privacy of nearly everyone.

It seems quite troubling that this attitude, as seen in Hollywood movies, might actually exist within our military. They're supposed to be protecting not just the American population, but the Constitution and principles we hold dear, like freedom of the press.

Who Stands With the Real Nelson Mandela?

Aviva Shen has a great piece at Think Progress on the real Nelson Mandela, but first, Wonkette brings us a fact about Mandela that manages to do the impossible: make him even more incredible in our eyes.

Seriously, go read the whole thing right now, but then come back here because you will definitely want to know about this other thing he did in 1996.

South Africa’s new abortion law passed its final legislative hurdle today, clearing the way for President Nelson Mandela to replace one of the world’s toughest abortion laws with one of the most liberal. [...]

The bill will cancel an existing law allowing abortion only in the case of rape, incest or immediate danger to the mother’s mental or physical health. Under the new law, women and girls will be entitled to a state-financed abortion on demand during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy if they have no private medical insurance, and, subject to widely defined conditions, for a further eight weeks.

We don’t really have any jokes to make about this because we are basically just in awe of his awesomeness. While the whole world (okay, except for wingnut commenters, but what can you expect from them?) is being mostly gracious and humble about Mandela’s passing and saying — rightly — that he was a great role model and an inspiration, we hope that’s actually true and that what he actually did and believed and said might serve as an actual example for other leaders to actually follow. Just a thought.

That's just the first of the reasons very few American politicians - and absolutely not a single repug - has the right to claim to be an admirer of the real Mandela: 

In the desire to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s life — an iconic figure who triumphed over South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime — it’s tempting to homogenize his views into something everyone can support. This is not, however, an accurate representation of the man.

Mandela was a political activist and agitator. He did not shy away from controversy and he did not seek — or obtain — universal approval. Before and after his release from prison, he embraced an unabashedly progressive and provocative platform. As one commentator put it shortly after the announcement of the freedom fighter’s death, “Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view.”

As the world remembers Mandela, here are some of the things he believed that many will gloss over.

1. Mandela blasted the Iraq War and American imperialism.

SNIP

2. Mandela called freedom from poverty a “fundamental human right.”

SNIP

3. Mandela criticized the “War on Terror” and the labeling of individuals as terrorists, even Osama Bin Laden, without due process.

SNIP

4. Mandela called out racism in America.

SNIP

5. Mandela embraced some of America’s biggest political enemies.

SNIP

6. Mandela was a die-hard supporter of labor unions.

SNIP

With the possible exceptions of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, there's not a member of Congress who would stand up and say, in reference to these seven issues, "I stand with Mandela." 

Alison Lundergan Grimes sure as fuck would not.

The Nobel Peace Prize Has Always Been Political

But until recently, it was political in the service of peace. Now it's political in the service of Wall Street, global elites and the Permanent War.

Norman Solomon at Firedoglake:

The announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, set for October 11, is sure to make big news. The prize remains the most prestigious in the world. But the award has fallen into an evasive pattern, ignoring the USA’s continuous “war on terror” and even giving it tacit support.

In his 1895 will, the dynamite inventor and ammunition magnate Alfred Nobel specified that Norway’s parliament should elect a five-member committee for awarding the prize to “champions of peace.” Yet the list of recent Nobel peace laureates is notably short on such champions. Instead, the erstwhile politicians on the Norwegian Nobel Committee have largely bypassed the original purpose of the prize.

SNIP

Since 2001, the Nobel Peace Prize has been on a prolonged detour around the U.S. government’s far-flung warfare, declining to honor anyone who had challenged any of it anywhere in the world. But the Nobel Committee has done more than just ignore peace activism seeking to stop U.S.-led war efforts. By giving the Peace Prize to Obama and the E.U., the committee has implicitly endorsed those military efforts as part of a rhetorical process that conflates war-making with peace-making. Orwell’s 1984 specter of “War Is Peace” looms uncomfortably large.

At times, the Peace Prize has earned goodwill in NGO circles by honoring humanitarian work that is laudable but not directly related to peace. And so far in this century, when the Nobel Committee has focused the prize on human rights, it has danced around Uncle Sam’s global shadow. The Peace Prize has gone only to dissidents in countries where governments are in conflict with Washington — such as Shirin Ebadi of Iran in 2003 and Liu Xiaobo of China in 2010 — while failing to honor any of the profuse activism against severe abuses by U.S.-backed governments.

It was not always this way. During previous decades, the annual announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize might alternately please or enrage the top leaders in the capital of a world power. In 1983, the awarding of the prize to Poland’s Solidarity leader Lech Walesa infuriated the Kremlin. When the 1992 prize went to Rigoberta Menchu, an indigenous foe of U.S.-supported tyrants killing Guatemalan civilians in large numbers, it was a much-needed rebuke to Washington.

SNIP

But in the “war on terror” world of this century, the Nobel Committee — far from an independent, evenhanded course — has steered the Peace Prize away from terrain where the U.S. government and its allies might appear to be anything other than noble peace-seekers. Relying on such a broken moral compass, the mission to assist “champions of peace” with the Nobel Peace Prize has lost its way.

Number 110

Kentucky's 110th sacrifice to the insatiable maw of Baal that is the Permanent War on a Tactic in Iraq and Afghanistan is 30-year-old Daniel N. Fannin of Morehead, in Eastern Kentucky.

Jim Warren, at the Herald:

Air Force Staff Sgt. Daniel N. Fannin's family remembered him Monday as a kind-hearted young man who enjoyed the simple pleasures of camping and fishing, and died serving the country he loved.

Fannin, a Morehead native, was killed Saturday in the crash of an Air Force reconnaissance plane about 100 miles from the Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan. He had turned 30 on April 9.

The U.S. Defense Department said authorities were trying to determine what caused the crash. Officials said, however, that no enemy activity had been reported in the area at the time of the crash.

Daniel Fannin grew up in Morehead, and joined the U.S. Air Force shortly after graduating from Rowan County Senior High School in 2001.

He had lived for several years in Oklahoma with his wife, Sonya Fannin, of Oklahoma City. He was assigned to the Air Force's 552nd Operations Support Squadron at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City.

 The only question now is whether Kentucky's last Afghanistan War casualty will die before or after its first Syrian War casualty.

The impenetrable stupidity of this shit is beyond comprehension.