Tag: terrorism

I’ve long since quit watching CNN but sometimes when I’m flipping through channels I catch a little piece of it here and there.  The other day I was subjected to an outraged, absolutely outraged Wolf Blitzer confronting Scotland’s equivalent of our Attorney General over the release of the man convicted of being the main perpetrator of the Lockerbie plane bombing.  Wolfie just went on and on about “mass murderers!” and the like, totally ignoring the fact that our own country is engaged in the business of slaughtering far more innocent people, in an ongoing consistent fashion, than any terrorist’s wildest dreams.

Nevertheless, there was never any doubt whatsoever in Wolfie’s little shrink-wrapped brain about the actual guilt of the man in question.   No, he was the “lone gunman”, he was the absolute nexus of evil in this case, right?   The Scottish guy was pretty interesting, he never wavered, never bought into the emotion, and was quick to admit that yes, this was the man convicted.  He never said the guy did it, he just said he was “convicted”.   Which is certainly true.  He was convicted.  

Well why don’t we take a little trip into The Memory Hole about this case, just for the pure rollicking heck of it, not that it will matter, but I’d just like to share a few little tidbits regarding this case that most people don’t even think about anymore, except of course for the families of those killed, as Wolfie was pointing out ad nauseum to the Scottish fellow.

It was claimed some time ago that key evidence in the Lockerbie case was in fact planted by the CIA:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n…

Crucial evidence against two Libyans for the Lockerbie bombing was planted by the CIA, it was claimed in the Commons yesterday.

A fragment of circuit board alleged to have been part of the bomb’s timing mechanism is the sole item of physical evidence linking the two Libyans to the December 1988 bombing. But Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow, declared: “I have come to suspect that the timing device in question was not that of Pan Am 103 but a different timing device that the CIA had picked up from the Libyans … I have been driven to the conclusion that the device was a CIA plant.”

Mr Dalyell, a long-standing critic of US and British government insistence that Libya was behind the attack, said an analysis of the fragment had shown it had been exposed to a temperature of 4,000deg C. But a Swiss police specialist had cast doubt on this, saying the explosion would have lasted only a fraction of a second in outside air temperatures of about minus 40C.

Accusing the Crown Office, the Scottish prosecuting authority, of failing to follow up the right leads, Mr Dalyell said – to strident denials from Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, the Scottish Office minister – that it had allowed itself for six years “to be suborned by political pressure into failing to carry out its duty”.

He said this was a “wicked” dereliction of duty that brought shame on Britain.

William Kostric wears a 9mm pistol as he stands outside a town hall meeting on healthcare held by President Obama, in Portsmouth, N.H., Tuesday. Who was that gun-toting anti-Obama protester?

One of Tuesday’s big mysteries was the motivation behind anti-Obama protester William Kostric, the man who brought a loaded gun to the town hall meeting and carried a sign referencing Thomas Jefferson’s famous credo, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

Snip

But at least one of those statements doesn’t seem to be true. A right-wing activist named “William Kostric,” who’s left a lot of footprints around the Web, is listed as a “team member” of the Arizona chapter of We the People, the far-right group best known for joining a lawsuit challenging Obama’s right to be president based on his not being a U.S. citizen. Kostric told MSNBC he recently moved from Arizona to New Hampshire. (Kostric did not reply to Salon’s e-mail request for an interview.)…………………

Crossposted at dailykos.com

I am fucking stunned as I write this.

At :24 seconds into this video

Scheuer:     ” The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. “

mediamatters.org

    Yes. It has come to this.

War Without End?

Is this Global War on Terror going to last forever? Has it already changed our nation from an historically defensive Athens to an offensive Sparta whose military looks everywhere for trouble and finds it? Who is calculating the cost-to-benefit ratio of sending Green Berets and other Special Operations troopers into remote corners of the world to assassinate suspected terrorists?

Ever since the Vietnam War, our presidents have ushered members of Congress into the grandstand where they can boo or cheer military decisions but not make them, despite what the Constitution says right there in Article 1, Section 8: “The Congress shall have power to provide for the common defense.”

Usually they get away with …

Usually they trade their knowledge, for money or power, and no one notices —

But not always:

Insider-Trading Ring Bust May Fuel Hedge-Fund Concern

By David Scheer – March 2, 2007

March 2, (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government’s accusations that Morgan Stanley, UBS AG and Bear Stearns Cos. employees were central figures in an insider-trading ring illustrate why regulators and lawmakers are suspicious of Wall Street’s relationship with hedge funds.

Prosecutors in New York and Washington yesterday brought criminal charges against 13 people, claiming that an executive at UBS and a former compliance lawyer at Morgan Stanley tipped off hedge-fund traders and brokers to new analyst ratings and secret takeover talks. Bear Stearns was home to at least four professionals who traded on information leaked from inside the two firms, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

(emphasis added)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…

White Collar Crime, is not any less heinous, because they commit it with a Keyboard, instead of a Handgun.  Yet more often than not, in the Wild West of electronic casinos, these criminals can make “a killing”, without having to pull that trigger themselves … without ever having to worry about ever facing their “day in court” …

The discussion on the Bill Moyers Journal, last night, shows the problem with War, Wars of Choice, Occupations and especially Guerilla/Insurgent Warfare, of which all conflicts are, and have been, now for many years, and will continue to be!

And why there is Criminal Terrorism and the rise of!

Bill Moyers Journal, January 30, 2009

Bill Moyers sits down with historian Marilyn Young, author of the forthcoming “Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-century History” and former Pentagon official Pierre Sprey, who developed military planes and helped found the military reform movement.

Those spreading or falling for the cheney/bush administration spin on the Released Guantanamo Prisoners going directly back into the Guerilla/Insurgent conflict and or Criminal Terrorism might want to educate themselves on the studies exposing that the government numbers just don’t Tell The Truth, not surprising!!

On the Rachel Maddow show last night, 1-16-09. she had a discussion with Professor Mark P. Denbeaux, Director of Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research, who supervises a group of talented Seton Hall students in preparing a series of Reports concerning the United States Navy Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

#1 HERE

#2 HERE

Ok, today’s Math may need a little brain power.

As in “PULL YOUR REPTILIAN & LIMBIC BRAINS OUT OF YOUR ASS, AND USE YOUR CEREBRAL CORTEX.”

* There are actual numbers to back me up on this, but you know, in the interest of keeping it simple, and the fact that I, as a middle aged housewife with no education typing away with my first cup of coffee, have no interest in googling numbers AT ALL, am going to suggest if you don’t get the overall premise, Google may or may not be able to help you anyway. So have at it. I have run-on sentences to write.

Fear reflex is a good thing. It makes you duck when your kid hits a good hard fastball right back at your head when you pitch to him, and you only catch it peripherally too late because you are looking at your flowerbed over his shoulder thinking you should be weeding.

That’s what the lower function in your brains are for. They are NOT meant to be your primary data functioning unit.

So, using your cerebral cortex, the best reaction in such a case would be to realize you are becoming as ADD as the rest of America, choose to focus on your kid and the game, rationalize that your child is only young once, think, “FUCK THOSE WEEDS” and PLAY WITH HIM.

Were you to process this, keeping that REPTILIAN BRAIN to the forefront, you would instead think baseball evil, and your child under suspicion of trying to kill you. You would tell your husband for your own safety to ground him to his room forever, and watch his every word and move. Then you would start being suspicious of every one of those Motherfucking OUT TO GET you little bastards in America wearing baseball hats.

Lets Do The Math on THE WAR ON TERROR, shall we?

This fear is exactly backwards. During a terrorist attack — during any crisis situation, actually — the one thing people can do is exchange information. It helps people, calms people, and actually reduces the thing the terrorists are trying to achieve: terror. Yes, there are specific movie-plot scenarios where certain public pronouncements might help the terrorists, but those are rare. I would much rather err on the side of more information, more openness, and more communication.

He gets it.

I was going to post a reply to his previous blog on the subject that said the same thing, but then – especially having realized that he wasn’t buying the Associated Press bullshit erm, disinformation piece which claimed there were “only 10 terrorists” either – I realized that 1) I was preaching to the choir and 2) he’d probably find a way to say the exact same thing I wanted to, and say it better. He did.

My 20 year career in IT has revolved around the use of technology to ensure that people can communicate, especially in a time of crisis. I’ve lived through two such crises in which there was a major disruption of communications: the Flugtag/Ramstein Air Show disaster of 1988, and the attacks on the WTC. I’ve provided mission critical IT support during the first Gulf War. What I’ve learned from these experiences is that it’s far better to have a well-informed citizenry who are on your side, untrained civilians though they might be, than to worry about giving away information to a small number of enemies. Our government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people. In such a crisis I, for one, would never hesitate to give any civilian – perhaps a fellow citizen soldier – the best possible fighting chance, even if their only desire was to get away unharmed.

So yes, as clinical as I might sound, there actually is a shred or two of compassion in there. Indeed, I find the willingness of the media to outright lie to the folks who need them the most to be one of the foulest manifestations of the lack of compassion displayed by the mindless and yes, heartless servants of the military/industrial complex.

Schneier seldom, if ever, disappoints. I really hope the coming administration will take his advice seriously.

Fifty days until sanity…

The city of Mumbai is India’s financial capital. India’s New York City.

From Magnifico in his Four at Four today:

The Guardian reports Terrorist gunmen are holed up in Mumbai hotels. “About 10 to 12 gunmen remain holed up with hostages inside two Mumbai hotels and a Jewish centre, a top Indian general said today. Major General RK Huda told New Delhi Television that the rest of the gunmen appeared to have been killed or captured.” 125 people have been killed and more than 325 wounded.

Mumbai (Marathi: ?????, Mumba?, IPA:[?mumb?i] (help·info)), formerly Bombay, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the financial capital of India. With an estimated population of 20 million, it is one of the most populous cities in the world. Along with the neighbouring suburbs of Navi Mumbai and Thane, it forms, at 19 million, the world’s fifth most populous metropolitan area. Mumbai lies on the west coast of India and has a deep natural harbour. Mumbai’s port handles over half of India’s maritime cargo.

Mumbai is the commercial and entertainment centre of India, generating 5% of India’s GDP and accounting for 25% of industrial output, 40% of maritime trade, and 70% of capital transactions to India’s economy. Mumbai is one of the world’s top ten centres of commerce by global financial flow, home to important financial institutions such as the Reserve Bank of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India and the corporate headquarters of many Indian companies and numerous multinational corporations. The city also houses India’s hindi film and television industry, known as Bollywood. Mumbai’s business opportunities, as well as its high standard of living, attract migrants from all over India and, in turn, make the city a potpourri of many communities and cultures. –wikipedia

PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images Indian army personnel taking position at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal hotel on Nov. 27

The BBC says this morning:

Commandos are fighting to clear the last gunmen from two luxury hotels in Mumbai, more than 24 hours after a series of attacks across the city.



The Taj Mahal hotel was nearly free of gunmen, officials said, but operations continued at the Oberoi-Trident hotel.

At a third stand-off, at a Jewish centre, seven hostages were freed, a security official said.

Indian PM Manmohan Singh vowed to track down the attackers, who have killed at least 119 people and injured 300.

Gunmen targeted at least seven sites in Mumbai late on Wednesday, opening fire indiscriminately on crowds at a major railway station, the two hotels, the Jewish centre and a cafe frequented by foreigners.

George Friedman’s STRATFOR (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.) has produced an early tentative analysis of possible geopolitical repercussions from the attacks in Mumbai.

Let’s hope that STRATFOR is not as on the mark with this analysis as they usually are:

PAL PILLAI/AFP/Getty Images A fire in the dome of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai on Nov. 26

Red Alert: Possible Geopolitical Consequences of the Mumbai Attacks  (Open Access)

Stratfor, November 27, 2008

^{NOTE: As Stratfor is a paid subscription site, some of the links in this article may lead to a subscriber wall, while some will be Open Access.}

Summary

If the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Islamist militants as it appears, the Indian government will have little choice, politically speaking, but to blame them on Pakistan. That will in turn spark a crisis between the two nuclear rivals that will draw the United States into the fray.

Analysis

At this point the situation on the ground in Mumbai remains unclear following the militant attacks of Nov. 26. But in order to understand the geopolitical significance of what is going on, it is necessary to begin looking beyond this event at what will follow. Though the situation is still in motion, the likely consequences of the attack are less murky.