If you fly a plane into a building and kill people, apparently, that's not enough to make you a terrorist. You have to "be foreign" and "hate Americans" to qualify. In other words, Joseph Stack is not a terrorist. He's a "separatist/pr... more If you fly a plane into a building and kill people, apparently, that's not enough to make you a terrorist. You have to "be foreign" and "hate Americans" to qualify. In other words, Joseph Stack is not a terrorist. He's a "separatist/protester/activist", in the words of one journalist. Another points out that the media are afraid of suggesting that the radical fringe of the anti-tax movement in this country (in other words, the Tea Party people) is, for all purposes, actually connected with domestic terrorism. URL: www.newsweek.com
Something is broken. After the expense of billions of dollars in new data vacuums, disruptive bureaucratic restructuring, and more than eight years of human effort, the government has become expert at collecting the dots about terrorist attacks, those fragmentary clues gathered up in the massive, constant sweep. But it is not very good at connecting the dots, at forming them into a coherent narrative that can forecast events like those of Christmas Day. |
| The master database of terrorist names, TIDE, contains half a million records. Following the failed attack in December, Mr. Obama directed that the intelligence community immediately go through them to see if any of the individuals had been issued U.S. visas. |
| We’re collecting names. Hundreds of thousands of them. And yet we’re not systematically checking if these people have already been granted entry to the United States. Read more at online.wsj.com |
This is hilarious. When Khan saw some female airport personnel looking at his scans, he autographed them. Ha! Shah Rukh signs off sexy body-scan printouts at Heathrow |
London, Feb 6 (IANS) Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan isn’t intimidated by the full body-scan machines that have been recently installed at London’s airports - in fact, he’s been signing off printouts of his X-rays. |
| ‘I’m always stopped by the security, because of the name. And I think its okay: the western world is a little bit worried, paranoid and touchy, I guess - and feely when they’re frisking you,’ |
‘I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You’ve got to see them. It makes you embarrassed - if you’re not well endowed. ‘You walk into the machine and everything - the whole outline of your body - comes out.’ |
| ‘Then I saw these girls - they had these printouts. I looked at them. I thought they were some forms you had to fill. I said ‘give them to me’ - and you could see everything inside. So I autographed them for them.’Read more at in.news.yahoo.com |
Another gem: “police were suspicious that the student’s hair was shorter that day than it was in his Pennsylvania driver’s license photo. ‘That,’ Lt. Louis Liberati said, is ‘an indication sometimes that somebody may have gone through a radicalization.’” Glad these guys are being, well, careful, I guess. Daniel Rubin: Arabic flash cards got him detained at airport |
A federal agent sizing up Nick George might peg him as Most Likely To Be Recruited By The CIA. He’s a physics major at a top college, he minors in Middle Eastern studies, speaks Arabic, has lived in Jordan and is adventurous enough to have backpacked through Sudan and Egypt. |
The Wyncote native was detained for five hours after Transportation Security Administration screeners grew suspicious about something in his pockets. |
Arabic-language flash cards. |
Cutter said said she understands in the post-9/11 world why security officers would pay attention to someone who had been to Muslim countries and was learning Arabic. So can Mary Catherine Roper, George’s ACLU attorney. So can I. |
“Clearly we want them to be paying attention,” Cutter said. “But we want them to be paying smart attention.” |
Before Martyrdom, Breakfast |
Flagg Miller, of the U. of California at Davis, has listened to hundreds of audio tapes that once belonged to Osama bin Laden. It’s the everyday conversations among jihadis that he finds the most interesting. |
For the past seven years, Mr. Miller, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of California at Davis, has been poring over hundreds of audio tapes that were part of Osama bin Laden’s personal collection. Some of the tapes feature jihadis making small talk, cooking breakfast, laughing at each other’s lame jokes—not exactly riveting material.
But listen closely and they start to get interesting. |
It begins with mysterious hissing and popping noises. When he first heard it, Mr. Miller imagined militants in a remote outpost fixing a communications balloon or perfecting some as-yet-unknown terrorist weapon.
Turns out, they are making eggs. They are having a hard time, too—the kerosene stove is being uncooperative. |
GOP House members call for investigation of Muslim political activity |
A group of House Republicans is calling for an investigation into whether a leading American Muslim advocacy group tried to “spy” on congressional offices by placing interns on key security committees. |
Rep. Sue Myrick, North Carolina Republican, cited an internal January 2007 memo in which the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) discussed placing Muslim interns on Capitol Hill to “focus on influencing congressmen responsible for policy that directly impacts the American Muslim community.” |
| That’s consistent with what virtually every political advocacy group in the nation does; it’s normally called activism and democracy. But because, in this case, it’s a group of Muslims who are doing this, these House Republicans are depicting it as some sort of nefarious espionage plot against the U.S. that demands a criminal investigation. Read more at www.salon.com |
Exclusive: Lawyer says Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama |
LONDON (Reuters) - Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards “get their kicks in” before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees. |
Ghappour said he had spoken to army guards who, unsolicited, had described the pleasure they took in abusing prisoners, whether interrupting prayer or physical mistreatment. He said they appeared unconcerned about potential repercussions. |
In one of the six main camps at Guantanamo, the lawyer said all the detainees he knew were on hunger strike and subject to force-feeding, including with laxatives that induced chronic diarrhea while they were strapped in their feeding chairs. |
“Several of my clients have had toilet paper pepper-sprayed while they have had hemorrhoids,” Ghappour said. See more at www.reuters.com |
FBI Cuts Ties With CAIR Following Terror Financing Trial |
The FBI severed its ties with all local branches of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest
Islamic advocacy group, an FBI official told FOX News.
|
The FBI is severing its once-close ties with the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, amid mounting evidence that it has links to a support network for Hamas. |
All local chapters of CAIR have
been shunned in the wake of a 15-year FBI investigation that culminated with the conviction in December of Hamas fundraisers
at a trial where CAIR itself was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator. |
The new policy marks
a major shift for the FBI, which has long been close to CAIR. The agency has previously invited CAIR to give training sessions
for agents and used it as a liaison with the American Muslim community. See more at www.foxnews.com |
“After reviewing 517 of the Guantánamo detainees’ cases in depth,” she said, “they concluded that only 8 percent were alleged to have associated with Al Qaeda. Fifty-five percent were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the United States at all, and the remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, including having tried to flee U.S. bombs. The overwhelming majority ” all but 5 percent ” had been captured by non-U.S. players, many of whom were bounty hunters.” |
“One source of ideas,” she wrote, “was the popular television show ‘24.’ On that show as Ms. Mayer noted, “torture always worked. It saved America on a weekly basis.” |
I felt as if I was in Never-Never Land as I read: “In conversation with British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, the top military lawyer in Guantánamo, Diane Beaver, said quite earnestly that Jack Bauer ‘gave people lots of ideas’ as they sought for interrogation models.” See more at www.nytimes.com |
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Christianity Today on torture
David Gushee for the evangelical Christian magazine Christianity Today on five theological grounds for the unequivocal and universal condemnation of torture by Christians, and why, from a Christian perspective, no exceptional circumstances can ever justify the use of torture. From February 2006.