Ft Hood

From this article:

Other than the fact we have the usual variety of reprobates gleefully celebrating the mass murder that Major Nidal Malik Hasan carried out at Ft Hood, Texas [because the senseless murder of defenseless people adds to the glory of “God”, however you may interpret Him], the real scary sentence in the article is this:

“Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said Sunday it's important for the country not to get caught up in speculation about Hasan's Muslim faith, and he has instructed his commanders to be on the lookout for anti-Muslim reaction to the killings at the Texas post.”

Here’s an idea, why not be “on the lookout” for other potential sudden jihadi syndrome/mass murderers to prevent more real deaths, rather than perceived/real/imagined “anti-Muslim reactions”. I would have figured that preventing the very real prospect of more depraved individuals carrying out further attacks was more of a priority than worrying if some beardie-weirdie got teased.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”…no more… however if that weedy kid in 4th grade you teased decides to come to school packing two FN Herstal 5.7mm semi-automatic pistols and starts shooting everybody, well, if we apply the emerging media narrative on Ft Hood, it’s your fault.

Tortuous

Today for your delectation, I offer the coherent tirade Andrew Sullivan (an ex-conservative who has moved leftward...and leftfield) who writes an open letter to "Dear President Bush" . It's a four page rant in which you could easily ignore pages 2-3, but encapsulates the (still!!?!) current rage against Dubya as exhibited by most of the mainstream media and about 53% of Americans.

The timing of this column is to provide support for the Obama administration's imminent prosecution of CIA officials and interrogators who were doing their job. More on that later.

"In long wars of ideas, moral integrity is essential to winning, and framing the moral contrast between the West and its enemies as starkly as possible is indispensable to victory, as it was in the Second World War and the Cold War."

There is a well established school of thought that suggests that the moral high-ground is THE only place from which a war can be won, justly, thus the comparison to the greatest ideological battles fought in the 20th century against the default evil of Nazism and the still not dead bad-guy of Communism. Here, the moral high ground was aparently not hard to see (although not so obvious to Charles Lindberg, King Edward VIII of England, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg , Obama's friend William Ayers, etc, etc..) The problem I have with the position: "If we don't have the moral high ground, what do we have?" is what use is the moral high ground if you're dead?

Perhaps the reason this position is logically untenable, is that if you look at diaspora of Western society as a whole including old and new immigrant groups, we are constantly told that no one culture or value set is superior to any other (a notion I explicitly deny). So if there is no one set of morals, or absolute values that is the "correct" way to live, then how can you claim any moral high ground if there is no 'ground'?

"I have come to accept that it would be too damaging and polarizing to the American polity to launch legal prosecutions against you, and deeply unfair to solely prosecute those acting on your orders or in your name. President Obama’s decision thus far to avoid such prosecutions is a pragmatic and bipartisan one in a time of war, as is your principled refusal to criticize him publicly in his first months"

Except that Obama IS moving forward on the prosecutions and despite the so called repeated view that "[CIA interrogators] should not be prosecuted if they acted within legal guidelines laid out at the time" it's pretty clear that the Attorney General could not proceed with the prosecution if Obama didn't want him to. And what about the interrogators that did use illegal methods of torture, yet obtained information that prevented a terrorist attack? Will they roll back the security measures and actions taken? If not, then the current administration are morally complicit and have blood on their hands.

"You have also claimed that defending the security of the United States was the paramount requirement of your oath of office. It wasn’t. The oath you took makes a critical distinction: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It is the Constitution you were sworn to defend, not the country. To abandon the Constitution to save the country from jihadist terrorists was not your job."

"It is the Constitution you were sworn to defend, not the country." I may be being naive but what is the point of a constitution if there is no country? The charge that the US Government abandoned the Constitution wholeheartedly at multiple levels is a little hard for me to swallow. And somehow, saving the country from jihadists is exactly what I would expect from the elected leader of a country.

"Western freedom begins with the right to protect one’s own body from government power. That’s what habeas corpus means. What was done to Jose Padilla makes a mockery of that freedom and, in fact, establishes a precedent that, if left in place, could destroy it."

Habeas Corpus is protection for an individual citizen against unlawful imprisonment. The Habeas Corpus Act was adopted by the English Parliament in 1679, and was incorporated into the the US Constitution (U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2.) The full text reads:

"The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

And even though I Am Not A Constitutional Lawyer (IANACL), I am pretty damn sure that this particular clause refers to the group identified in the first six words of the Constitution

"We the People of the United States."

Which would not include most of the current inmates in Guantanamo.

What follows in page 2 and 3 are descriptions of torture, and of course the mandatory inclusion of Abu Ghraib. What happened at Abu Ghraib was despicable, amoral and criminal. And the conflation of Abu and Gitmo is a convenient mash-up of all things American Evil, and photogenically illustrates the depravity of a superpower gone mad, crushing and torturing poor innocent Iraqi farmers in a repurposed Saddamite prison. The ever so slight problem with this is that Abu Ghraib has NOTHING to do with Gitmo, the torture memos, Rumsfield-Cheny-Bushhitler, the Christian Right and the Crusades. It was an aberration, a disgraceful example of what happens when the chain of command breaks down, and redneck hick reservists are left to rule the roost with no oversight.

Abu Ghraib has as much to do with American ideals and policy as Nazism had to do with the Enlightenment, ie nothing. Linking the lawlessness and the abuse that occurred in one prison in Iraq to the policy in practice of the US Government is disingenuous, but effective since the photos from one can be used as a surrogate for the other. There is a very important debate about State sanctioned torture in democracies, however it is important to distinguish between the actions of those that were carrying out orders, and those that were acting without. It does not diminish the seriousness of the abuse, but to merge these two issues to score an emotional point is a rhetorical flourish that neatly allows you to avoid answering the question: what if it works? What if information gained by the physical abuse of one individual allows you to save the lives of many? Would that change the moral calculation?

To bring the whole thing back to current events, this is currently what is happening on the political scene in the US, with the summary provided by Jennifer Rubin:

"The CIA discovers misconduct, which the CIA inspector general investigates. The information seems to suggest misconduct. They go to DOJ. DOJ tells them to stop and that [Justice] will now look at the issue, gather evidence, and investigate it themselves. They must decide if there is a reasonable belief that they could obtain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. They looked at it. They made a decision and declined [to prosecute]. They go back to the CIA, which can, and in several instances did, review the matters for internal discipline. "

Obama's Attorney General is bringing another department in to investigate the DOJ's handling , and move forward with prosecutions of CIA officials if they possibly can. It is a flagrant waste of time and resources, motivated by partisan intent to punish anyone they can from the hated Bush regime, and in the process make the US and World less secure. Why the the World? Well, as far as I understand, there is cooperation amongst allied intelligence agencies and I know for a fact that Australia relies on it's relationship with the US to supplement their own intelligence needs; how willing do you think international agencies are going to be to help the US if there is the prospect of being prosecuted? Or in other words, why would ASIO give the CIA information gained by dubious means if it meant that sometime down the road, they could be sent to jail for doing their job?

This is not meant as a defense of Guantanamo or torture, but an attempt to show that the Obama administration is pursuing partisan objectives couched in terms of morality that will endanger the World, and there is no end to fellow travelers that are supporting this position.

And besides, exactly how much do you think Obama is doing different from Bush?

"It's now apparent that the biggest sham in American politics is Barack Obama's pledge to close Guantanamo and, more generally, to dismantle the Bush/Cheney approach to detaining accused Terrorists."

Making the world safer?

As I previously wrote, there are ramifications regarding the US Attorney General prosecutions of CIA interrogators that will flow far from the borders of the United States. This is not about torture or righting wrongs, this is a vindictive partisan bloodletting, pure and simple.

And here I was believing that The One was going to help us evolve past these petty political urges (you know how he was going to get us "beyond politics"). These actions taken by the Obama administration are going to endanger the US and the West. And whilst The One will do the merry tap-dance to distance himself from the prosecutions, it is highly improbable that the Attorney General would be doing this without the explicit consent and encouragement from the Commander-in-Chief.

Reprising his take on this, Thomas Sowell has an excellent breakdown of what this will mean for the US...and the rest of us:

"Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi-- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people-- is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies in our time."

Speaking of the ongoing hand-wringing and outright creation of "rights" for those I would term "barbaric animals":

"So many "rights" have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you." (emphasis mine)

Read it all.

What are they thinking?!?!

The Scots have released the only person convicted for the bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. The accused, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, was released from life imprisonment on compassionate grounds because of a terminal illness.

Compassion? (picture source)

The Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill

agreed that Megrahi had shown no compassion to his victims.

Yet they still released him. In a letter to Mr MacAskill

Megrahi said: 'My continued incarceration in HMP Greenock is not conducive to my well-being as my life nears its end.

Boo-f@%#n-hoo. My opinion is if someone is directly responsible for the murder of 270 people, ya cannae’ really claim compassionate grounds. And of course the Libyan’s have given this dude a hero’s welcome. Classy.

A hero's welcome for a mass murderer

I have no idea what Scottish interests are served by sucking up to Libya, but you can be damn sure other would-be plane bombers are looking at this as a victory.

Links:

Trailer to the Air Crash Investigations episode on the Lockerbie bombing.

The politicisation of torture

UPDATE: 3/9/09 - fixed Clinton crosshairs link

It’s curious how you often find reading matter that conforms to your own views. To whit, Thomas Sowell’s column at townhall.com (yes, a conservative site to those a bit squeamish) talking about the revisited (and remanufactured) anger over torture memos, torturing, and all the other evils that the W. Bush regime visited on the world. Specifically about how Obama’s administration has now left open the door for prosecution of US personnel over what has been alleged (and probably occurred) at Gitmo. The crux of the column:

“We have already turned loose dozens of captured terrorists, who have resumed their terrorism. Why? Because they have been given "rights" that exist neither in our laws nor under international law.”

Why do those voices (predominately coming from the Left) demand rights to those who do not operate under the Geneva Convention? Why is it so important to ensure that head-sawing barbarians have ‘human rights’ that they so explicitly deny anyone who gets in their way?

“These are not criminals in our society, entitled to the protection of the Constitution of the United States. They are not prisoners of war entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. “

There was a time when people who violated the rules of war were not entitled to turn around and claim the protection of those rules. German soldiers who put on U.S. military uniforms, in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge, were simply lined up against a wall and shot. “

Why was David Hicks, who was caught fighting with the Taliban, not shot on the spot? He wasn’t in uniform (the Taliban don’t have a “uniform” nor are recognized officially) and as I have previously argued, the Taliban are hardly the types to subscribe to Geneva Conventions or any other recognizably humane code of conduct, so therefore do not deserve to have such protections given to them.

“In his visit to CIA headquarters, President Obama pledged his support to the people working there and said that there would be no prosecutions of CIA agents for prior actions. Then he welshed on that in a matter of hours by leaving the door open for such prosecutions, which the left has been clamoring for, both inside and outside of Congress.”

The argument of whether to torture or not to torture is a larger topic than this particular post, however the politicization of CIA interrogations carried out in the last 7 years will have a very real impact on how the US (and by proxy the West) conducts itself in future conflicts. Guantanemo and tough interrogation techniques are not symptoms of the US and the West losing their moral bearings, more responding to extraordinary circumstances. Besides, is it so important to hold the "moral high ground" if your dead?

To politicise the governmental advice, because you feel that being the leader of the free world is not vindication enough, seems to be rather childish and spiteful. Clinton literally had crosshairs on Osama, but decided for whatever reason, not to pull the trigger. Fast forward 1 year, and there's a smoking crater in Manhattan and 3,000 dead people. There was never any question of pursuing Clinton or his administration for what could be argued as the worlds most obvious case of gross negligence. Allowing criminal charges to be brought up against lawyers who simply advised the prior administration is waste of time, money and resources that could be put to better use.

In this brand new era of Hope and Change™, I thought we were getting beyond the era of old school politics, but it seems like we're just repeating the same ol' same ol'.

Please let this be BS....

(picture source)

I hope to the bottom of my heart and pray to the Almighty Space Monkey that this story is crap and a beat up. Allegedy, The Age had it up and then pulled it (possibly because it was BS, or maybe not..):

"A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for “Forest Jihad.”
...
"The writer called on all Muslims in the United States, Europe, Russia and Australia to “start forest fires.” "

Religion and Anti-Aircraft Cannons

From the guys that brought you "Hamas Booby traps a school AND a zoo", here is the sequel "Hamas hides an Anti-aircraft cannon in a mosque" (via LGF)




Please note that these are the same people that at least a 1,000 people were protesting IN SUPPORT OF, in Melbourne, Australia on Jan 4, 2009.

(Protest sign outside the State Library, Melbourne, 2009 - source)

(You certainly don't speak for me or the majority of Australians you pro-Hamas seditious cow,
Jan 4, 2009, Swanston St, Melbourne - source)

Language with Intent

Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

—Sun Tzu's Art of War, ss. 3.18: Attack by Stratagem (suntzusaid.com)

---

It will be interesting to note how the left reacts to the ongoing and bloody conflicts around the world now that they will be unable to blame and hate G W Bush for them. For the last 8 years, western governments and agencies have been bending over backwards, passing policies and issuing phrasebooks to avoid any simultaneous mention of "Muslim", "Islam (or Islamic)", and "terrorism".

UK:
The Daily Mail: "Government renames Islamic terrorism as 'anti-Islamic activity' to woo Muslims"

"Ministers have adopted a new language for declarations on Islamic terrorism.

In future, fanatics will be referred to as pursuing "anti-Islamic activity".

(I'm pretty sure the fanatics have their own ideas about how Islamic their activities are - Jack)

The Guardian: "Whitehall draws up new rules on language of terror -Phrasebook designed to avoid blaming Muslims for extremism"

EU:
The Telegraph: Don't confuse terrorism with Islam, says EU

"Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers "non-offensive" phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks."

(one wonders why the handbook had to be classified if there is no link between Islam and terrorism - Jack)

US:
From the official non-binding memo that was circulated to "Federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center," (Document here)

• Don't Invoke Islam
• Don't Harp on Muslim Identity
• Avoid the term 'caliphate,' which has positive connotations for Muslims, to describe the goal of al-Qaida and associated groups. The best description of what they really want to create is a 'global totalitarian state.' (oh that's much better - Jack)
  
• Never use the terms 'jihadist' or 'mujahideen' in conversation to describe the terrorists. A mujahed, a holy warrior, is a positive characterization in the context of a just war. In Arabic, jihad means "striving in the path of God" and is used in many contexts beyond warfare. Calling our enemies jihadis and their movement a global jihad unintentionally legitimizes their actions.
  
• When possible, avoid using terms drawn from Islamic theology in a conversation unless you are prepared to discuss their varying meanings over the centuries. Examples: salafi, uzahhabist, caliphate, sufi. ummah. Do not use "ummah to mean "the Muslim world." It is not a sociological term rather it is a theological construct not used in everyday life."
  

In the history of the World, has there even been such exquisite deference to those that proudly proclaim to be our enemies? Replace the words Islamic with Nazi or Nazism, Muslim with the words German, and caliphate with "The Third Reich" and tell me if you think any of the Western (and Eastern!) governments of the day would have willingly restrained their use of language when dealing with the Nazi threat?

"For Stalin's sake Comrade, don't mention the The 3rd Reich, it will only inflame them further!"	"Hey old chap, don't talk about 'Nazism' when speaking with our German POW's, as you simply don't have the correct philosophical underpinnings to debate the difference between Socialism, National Socialism and just plain genocide. I mean you're not a German so how could you possibly understand?!?"	"Hey Sarge, the guidebook says we can't call the Krauts: bosch, hun, Nazis, sauerkraut munchers, stein drinkin' lederhose wearin' tulip smellin' Farterlanders. Can we call em' "weiner suckers""?

The focus on "offensive" language and the attempts to control it demonstrates that there is a widespread belief we are not in fact in a war, and if anything it is all the product of Bush et al. And this has real policy implications.

However it is not all doom and gloom. There are groups that are recognising this inability to clearly identify the enemy is hampering our ability to fight. From the Washington Post:

""The fact is our enemies cite the source of Islam as the foundation for their global jihad," the report said. "We are left with the responsibility of portraying our enemies in an honest and accurate fashion." "

Further links

• "Not calling Islamism the Enemy" - Daniel Pipes
• "Government policies stifle Talk of Islam" - Pyjamas Media

Picture sources:

• Russkies
• Brits
• Doughboys

Law & Enforcement

A firebrand, a "radical right-wing extremist", an agent provocateur, someone who regularly gets death threats for her columns, one of the few people the left hate more than Dubya, I am of course talking about Ann Coulter.

My post here talked about the ethical and judicial difficulties of exactly what we should do with non-state, non-uniformed combatants today. In her latest column, she demonstrates quite well the difficulties of closing Guantanamo and the problems of recidivism from at least one of the ex-inmates.

The crux of the column:

"After being captured fighting with Taliban forces against Americans in 2001, Abdullah Massoud was sent to Guantanamo, where the one-legged terrorist was fitted with a special prosthetic leg, at a cost of $50,000-$75,000 to the U.S. taxpayer."

Go read it all. It's worth it.

Mumbai Massacre

Picture source

With bullets and explosions still ringing out in Mumbai, it's worth noting that this kind of coordinated chaos is possible anywhere in the world with the right motivations.

Mumbai does not have a great history when it comes to terrorist attacks. In July 2006, there were 7 explosions on commuter trains that killed 174 people. Bombs killed 52 Muslims in 2003. In 1993, bombs killed 250 civilians and 700 injured.

I'm sure there are more, but you get the picture. It is a city often targeted by terrorists.

Paranoia and misinformation are key weapons in these types of attacks, and the most recent ones are no exception. A previously unheard of group (Deccan Mujahaideen) is claiming responsibility. The Indian authorities have been fingering the Pakistani based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) since the beginning, and there appears to be more than a few crazies willing to point the finger at Mossad, because you know, Israel has so much to gain from blowing up India.

From a technical perspective, the popularity of Web 2.0 and social networking technologies has run circles around traditional news media, with BBC quoting twitter as a news source and emergency contact information being propagated at lightning speeds. Blogs and other new media technologies are not only reporting the news but also creating the news, in a strange self-referential feeding frenzy. This link will show you a real-time updated comments of twitter users on the #mumbai channel. Flickr, a popular photo sharing site is hosting snaps from locals about the incidents, with some contributors being interviewed by TV stations. The speed at which news gets out is incredible, and makes the world just that little bit smaller.

I hope the Indian authorities find and kill/prosecute all those responsible, however these kind of attacks are unlikely to stop. And inevitably they will spread to other countries.

Update: Fixed spelling and added link to Reuters story.

Agent of Change? Or Unreformed Socialist?

(source: http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/MichaelRamirez/2008/10/9)

Unless you've been living in Tasmania, you may have noticed that the US presidential election is weeks away. And the sheer volume of media coverage on Sarah Palin should give you cause for concern.

The more someone tells me I have to believe something, the less inclined I am to believe it. My current denial of man-made global warming is as a direct result of being bombarded with messages since I was about 5 that we (and by we, I mean the West and it's offspring, capitalism) are entirely responsible for all environmental degradation since the dinosaurs.

The 24/7 media "investigations" into every minute aspect of Sarah Palin's life is raising a constant source of non-scandals that is keeping the mainstream media way too busy to look into the real scandals of their chosen presidential candidate.

If you recognise even two of the names in the cartoon above, then clearly you're getting your news from sources other than the papers. If John McCain had been associated with any of those characters, he would have been publicly crucified and hung out to dry (and rightly so I might add).

However, instead of trying to work out what actually triggered the current financial crisis and the consequent USD$700 billion government bailout, (and exactly how much a particular presidential candidate had in causing it) we are treated to some real hard-hitting scoops on the cost of Sarah Palin's wardrobe.

The media bias in this election has got to such a stage that there is now an increasing. amount. of. journos. (registered Democrats some of them) that are horrified that among other things, instead of investigating Obama's ties with unrepentant domestic terrorists, they are going after a private citizen Joe the Plumber who had the temerity to ask the Chosen One a question.

In this media saturated modern age, perception is everything and that is exactly what the Obama campaign is counting on. The possibility that the next US president could be a fully committed socialist is astounding in the fact that there appears to be absolutely zero interest by the media in investigating it.



Links
Mark Steyn (as the last loyal right-wingnut pundit) on the current state of the campaign:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/obama-most-one-2205757-world-people

"We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. We are deeply affected by the historic events of our time in the struggle against U.S. imperialism.
Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the inside. "
Bill Ayers manifesto: http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/

Government Computers used to dig dirt on Joe:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/24/joe.html?sid=101

Taliban Summer Camps of Fun

(picture source)

Just in case you had forgotten exactly why we are in Afghanistan:

"It was like a factory that had been recruiting nine to 12-year-old boys, and turning them into suicide bombers,"

Note: these are the same ideological compadres of that treasonous-creep-cum-Guantanemo-martyr David Hicks.

And these are our heroes that we send there to stop these monsters.

"Suffering from serious upper-body wounds, the soldier struggled on to the front of his SAS long range patrol vehicle and, under heavy fire, used a rope to attach himself firmly between the vehicle's bull bar and radiator.
Once he was secured, and there was no chance he would fall off if he fainted, he picked up his DM-4 assault rifle and resumed firing at the enemy during a two-hour fighting withdrawal."

Audie Murphy would be proud...

Pirates as unwilling heroes?

If you do a stupid thing for all the wrong reasons, but the consequences of your actions prevent a much greater tragedy, are you a hero?

Here I posted about the MV Iran Denayat and how the Somali pirates that had hijacked the ship were all succumbing to a 'weird' affliction that had all the symptoms of radiation poisoning.

These are the facts as we know them:

the MV Iran Denayat (source)

• The tanker MV Iran Denayat is a tanker registered with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL)
• IRISL is an Iranian state-owned company
• August 21, 2008 Somali pirate speedboats hijacked the MV Iran Denayat around the Gulf of Aden, on it's way to the Suez Canal and according to it's shipping manifest carrying a cargo of "42,500 tons of iron ore and "industrial products" purchased by a German client" to be unloaded in Rotterdam.
• "Within a period of three days, those pirates who had boarded the ship and opened the cargo container with its gritty sand-like contents, all developed strange health complications, to include serious skin burns and loss of hair. And within two weeks, sixteen of the pirates subsequently died, either on the ship or on shore." (link)
• IRISL was designated by the US Government on 10 September, 2008 for nuclear "Proliferation Activities"
  









Radioactive Tangent: The difference between a nuclear bomb and a "dirty bomb" is that the former actually creates a nuclear explosion, and the latter uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material.



It is now alleged that the ship was never going to go to Rotterdam. Apparently it was going to moor somewhere in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Israel, and blow up as one huge, ship sized dirty bomb just in time for the jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, spreading radioactive sand all across Israel and anyhwere else the wind conditions would have carried it. The sand is clearly lethal as our pirate friends have discovered, so any doubt as to the intentions of the ship's crew should be dissolving like sand in the wind.

Otherwise, what other possible use could you have for shipping poisonous (radioactive?) sand halfway across the world?


Link:
IRGC inc

A powerful Dame

From this story in The Age on Sunday 19th October:

"A FORMER head of Britain's security service, MI5, yesterday described the response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction""

I would argue that a "huge overreaction" would have been the appearance of a mushroom cloud over a city (or cities), and anything else responding to a direct attack on a countries soil is, well, up for debate.

She goes further to say that:

"the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism"

Ah yes, that old chestnut. Root causes, blah blah blah. Remember kiddies, once the Obamamessiah takes the whitehouse, this silly thing call "Islamic Terrorism" will just disappear, having exposed itself to be just a right-wing conspiracy operation under the evil supernatural powers of Bush, Blair and Howard.

The actual article appears to cherry pick statements by Dame Stella so I'm not 100% convinced she is in fact against the "war on terror" rhetoric that the paper makes out to be, but a quick Google shows that the first female director of one Britains super secret organisations, is really not media shy in the slightest.

In fact, she's bringing out a spy novel, and has no problem doing many interviews, some of which are really hard hitting:

"With her pastel pink jacket and a demure single strand of pearls, Rimington might look like a typical society matron in Masterpiece Theater"

So as much as I should defer to the opinion of someone who ran an intelligence agency, which clearly The Guardian and The Age would like us to listen to, it's a bit hard for me to take seriously someone who has to face down religious fanatics daily and protect the West doing puff-piece interviews wearing a "pastel pink jacket and a demure single strand of pearls".

At the very least she should be wearing a dark colour business suit....

Prejudicial Projections

Further to debunking the argument that Western foreign policy IS THE cause of all this terrorism malarkey, there's this story about Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT graduate who is in US custody, after being captured in Afghanistan.

This ivy-league educated neuroscientist had 3 US born children, allegedly disappeared in 2003 in Pakistan, just about the time the FBI wanted to question her about connections to al-Qaeda.

Aafia Siddiqui, graduating from one of her two US university degrees	Aafia Siddiqui, Terrorist Mom
Before the Bin Laden Jihadi Make-over	After the Bin Laden Jihadi Make-over

Memo to the FBI: next time you want to question someone about terrorists ties, maybe don't tell them why you want to question them beforehand. Just a thought.

Allegedly caught outside "outside the governor’s compound in the central Afghan province of Ghazni on July 17" with a bag full of questionable material (bomb-making books, instructions on how to make certain chemicals, and the oft-media-repeated notebook with US landmarks and something about a "mass casualty attack") this highly educated women was then transferred to US custody whereupon she grabbed a rifle and attempted to shoot her interrogators:

“The warrant officer heard Siddiqui exclaim, ‘Allah akbar!’ Another interpreter heard Siddiqui yell in English, ‘Get the f*** out of here!’ as she fired the rifle.”

An M-4 Assault rifle.

"Allah akbar", "Get the f**** out of here" could perhaps sound similar. I'm not sure I'd be focusing too much on the enunciation if the enunciator was firing an M-4 rifle at me. Personally, I hope she said she said "Get the f*** out of here" as it sounds much more Hollywood.

Which brings me to my point: how exactly did the West oppress this clearly academically bright individual? A graduate of one of the most prestigious Western tertiary institutions, comfortable enough to have 3 kids in her adopted homeland, and clearly quick enough to rattle off a movie action hero line under duress, if interpreter #2 is to be believed.

The answer to my rhetoric question is of course: the West did nothing of the sort. It may have been the lack of job vacancies at the Bin Laden Neuroscience Institute, or perhaps one of her classmates called her "veily-head" one too many times and she thought "f** this, I'm going on jihad and make this dude and a whole bunch of random innocents pay" or maybe it was the fact that she was married to a nephew of a Khalid Sheik Mohammed (the 'mastermind' of September 11).

Either way, I doubt a couple comments in the classroom could really "radicalise" (jihadise?) someone to that extent. And I have real difficulty believing that even if you felt that strongly about the Iraq-Afghanistan-Chechnya-Palestine-Lebanon-[insert "islamists as the victims conflict" du jour here] that it would necessarily motivate you to go and work out how to blow up a whole bunch of random civilians.

The thought that the West (ok , mostly US) military action over the last 20-40 years is the cause of all this discontent is dangerously deluded at best. It also ignores the actual history of this conflict. We so desperately DO NOT want this to be a clash of civilizations, because in such a conflict, none of the options are good. But to say it is not so, because you want to believe it so, without taking into account what "the other guy" believes, is being shall we say, a little bit intolerant of other belief systems.

Ascribing your own world view on people that clearly do not share it, is dangerous and leads you to making bad decisions.

Suicide bombers, evil masterminds in Afghani caves, fundamentalists of all stripes do. not. want. an. iPod.

Anything you could possibly want, a family, a house, a maserati, fame, fortune, nice clothes, lots of $$$$, all of it is inconsequential to submission and devotion to "the one and only" (and I'm not talking about Obama). To suggest that Western "oppression" and military action today is the sole reason for these grievances, is really an exercise in projection.

Let's contrast the foreign policy expert Traceeeee Hutchinson who "is the author of 3 books – the Australian Music Anthology, ‘Your Name’s On the Door’ (ABC/1992), Rock Chefs for Mirabel – a fundraising cookbook for the Mirabel Foundation featuring over 30 musicians and their recipes – and Laughing Stock: Comedy Chefs for Mirabel – a sequel to Rock Chefs featuring local comedians." (link here) with Ed Husain, who was a member of the openly islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK and then decided jihad didn't suit him wrote one book "The Islamist"

Tracee Hutchinson	Ed Husain
("co-host of the weekly music program DIG TV with Australian rock icon James Reyne.")	(ex-Islamist)
"Or perhaps they were just disenchanted Muslim men reacting with misguided empowerment to the prevailing anti-Muslim sentiment whipped up by the Coalition of the Willing at the time. "	"Islamist terrorism started long before foreign policy blunders of Western government. "
link	link

I leave it up to you to decide who's word carries more weight.

The problem with such intellectual luminaries such as Traceeeee repeating these tropes, is that she and her ideological fellow travellers, want to frame ALL Islamic terrorism as a reaction against Bush, Blair, Howard, [insert hated conservative political figure of choice here]. The reason they do this is because they are too scared to think about the options if they are wrong.

Their world view is strictly binary: "It must be because of misguided conservative policies that these people want to kill us, because a: I hate conservative policies, and b: "Imagine all the people, Living life in peace..." I mean isn't that what EVERYONE wants?" I'm sorry Traceeeee (and John Lennon), but no, that is not the case.

To quote Alfred in the "Batman, The Dark Knight" (Warner Bros, 2008):

"Some people just want to watch the world burn"

It will be interesting to see how the West evolves to deal with an adversary who truly does not care what happens to him/her on this particular plane of existence. And it will be truly enlightening to the Traceeeees of this world when they realise the same.

The Melbourne Seven

A very scary-looking beard

Australia's biggest terror trial has just concluded, and the jury has found that 7 scary beards men of a certain non-christian religion GUILTY of conspiring to blow up a couple of Melbourne landmarks. And of course the media fall over themselves to prove what a tolerant society we are, that this does not reflect our attitude to all scary bearded non-buddhists, blah blah blah.

The Rhodes scholar Traceeeeeee Hutchinson from the Age writes an interesting opinion piece in the Age, suggesting a hypothetical equivalence between a Smith Street junkie and member of a terrorist organisation. Because you see the heroin the junkie uses could easily have come from Afghani poppy fields, and they then could be charged with being a member of terrorist organisation, because their $25 hit could be funding the Taliban.

"And, voila, shrieking from the little paper would be: Smith Street junkie in Terror Plot. "

Here, I assume Traceeee having a go at The Herald-Sun, which is mostly on the other end of ideological spectrum than The Age. The attempted snipe "little paper" is particulary funny in this context as The Herald-Sun has well over twice the circulation numbers than The Age. In fact, the "little paper" has the highest circulation of any paper in Australia. Not so much "little" as "the biggest".

"The actual plan was never, and never had to be proved, such is the wording of the Howard government's amended terror laws that refer only to proving the existence of a terror act."

You see, dear readers, it's the fault of John Howard that this bearded dole bludger was caught up in the dragnet that is the previous Government's "anti-terror" laws. It has nothing, NOTHING AT ALL to do with their particular non-buddhist beliefs. And of course, no one in the current Government ever voted for this legislation....

"Perhaps these men really were on a path of violent jihad. Or perhaps they were just disenchanted Muslim men reacting with misguided empowerment to the prevailing anti-Muslim sentiment whipped up by the Coalition of the Willing at the time. "

You know, opposed to that cuddly wuddly peaceful jihad that we hear so much about. The real frightening thing about this paragraph is that it reflects current western thinking about scary beards. They (us?) desperately want to believe that it is only the current oppression of Western culture and governments that is causing this blow back. The itsy-bitsy problem with this is that there is very good evidence of over 1,400 years of conflict between Islam and the West to kind of, you know, destroy this argument. But that's OK Traceeee, once the The Obamamessiah takes the Whitehouse and redeems us all, all these problems with scary beards will just...disappear.

Unfortunately, the Herald-Sun also bends over backward to not antagonise the remainder of the scary bearded population. In an otherwise mostly balanced article there's this little gem:

"But does this make these otherwise peaceful people vulnerable to charges similar to those laid against Benbrika? "

otherwise. peaceful. people.

Well, let's just say after I picked my jaw up from the floor, the counter-argument to this wishful thinking is I believe that the onus of proof of peaceful intentions lies with the scary beards, and not with the authorities who quite rightly investigate them. And conversations like the following:

"BENBRIKA: "You shouldn't just do, kill one or two or three, you need some good ... like close to the station, the train."

MERHI: "Yeah, like what's been going on in ..."

BENBRIKA: "Do a big thing."

MERHI: "Like Spain. I've been thinking about this heaps, a lot, a lot, a lot, but the thing is, all this stuff is pleasing to Allah. It's pleasing to Allah."

...

BENBRIKA: "When you, in here, in Australia, when you do something they stop to send the troops. If you kill, we kill, here a thousand, the Government is going to think ..."

kind of suggest that their intentions are not all that peaceful.

The failure of beards

You may have heard that this week, a jury failed to to convict three men accused of conspiring to blow up transatlantic airliners. The narrative that the news agencies have decided on is that this was once again an overreaction by the authorities acting against brown-skinned men with scary beards and funny names, and the jury verdict therefore vindicates the politically correct worldview that these gentle souls from the only peaceful monotheistic religion are being oppressed by evil Western forces.

Mohammed Gulzar (left) with a suspicious lack of beard, will most likely be let off.
Abdullah Ahmed Ali (right) was not found with plane tickets, but did have a beard; he's going to jail.

The real story is...a little different. The take-away points are:

• 9 defendants were charged.
• 4 of them had made martyr videos
• 3 of them had viable home made bombs that consisted of a bottles filled with concentrated hydrogen peroxide (the main charge), hollowed out AA batteries filled with hexamethylenetriperoxidediamine (HMTD) (a commercial grade detonator) with flash bulb filaments ready to be connected to a flash camera to deliver a strong electrical pulse to activate the detonator.
• Most of them had beards

A little YouTube of what 50g of HMTD can do.


The jury did in fact did find that three men were GUILTY of conspiracy to murder and cause explosions and they will all be going to prison for a long time. The reason why they weren't convicted of the apparently more heinous crime of blowing up planes is that they did not have any flight tickets on them when they were arrested. Also, they stated during the trial that:

"they intended to let off a small bomb inside a Heathrow terminal as a political statement. But they say they never wanted to wreck planes in flight, killing innocents by the hundred."

Yes officer, we were making bombs, but we were just going to let them off in the airport terminal...not on an actual plane. See, heaps better!! Now serve me some halal prison food or I'll report your government to the EU Human Rights commission.

If it walks like duck, talks like a duck, and builds bombs like a duck, then, in all probability it's a duck. The article does make the point that a "you don't deter suicide bombers by custodial sentences (or even death sentences)." Therein lies the rub. How do you stop people willing to die for their cause? Can you?

At the very least, the cops didn't lock them in dog pens...

A little bit of perspective

Re: this story from The Australian

Instead of a profanity laden post which I really feel like writing, I have found some appropriate pictures of Taliban type activity, contrasted with comments from the article. Apologies for the graphic nature of the pictures. It was either that or a post with FUCK YOU ARSEHOLES!!! copy and pasted 100 times.

“To be honest, I am appalled that Australian soldiers have been implicated with such disgusting treatment of human beings,” he said.
“No human bring should be in any way placed in a dog pen.”
--Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Iqbal Patel

“For Australia to find itself keeping prisoners in dog kennels, dog pens, even overnight, is a big mistake,” he told reporters in Canberra. "
--Australian Greens leader Bob Brown

"The situation in Afghanistan was “very nasty” and the Taliban were ruthless and destructive, but they should not be kept in dog pens, he said."
--Australian Greens leader Bob Brown

Links:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/8742
http://retorika.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/taliban-sisi-gelap-kemanusiaan/
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/04/30/world/30policy.inline.ready.html

Pacifist Paramilitaries

From this:

"Kent trained overseas at a para-military camp (and) trained in weapons, explosives and topography (the) training lasted about two months,'' Mr O'Sullivan said.

Mr O' Sullivan said the evidence was a fact.

"Obviously it has a resonance...there is no logical inference in connection between undertaking some form of military training (and) terrorist organisation,'' Mr O'Sullivan said.

to which I would reply "Are you !@#ing kidding?". I think Mr O'Sullivan, that there is more than just a whisper of "resonance" and there is indeed an iron-clad "logical inference" by undertaking, some form of 'freelance' military training in some random, as yet unnamed country, and an intent to be a participant in a terrorist organization.

A question I would put to Mr O'Sullivan would be: which country? Would this be one of the many countries DFAT reconmmend Australian citizens avoid? Would our actual military members be able to travel freely to said country? I think we all know the answers to those questions...

"Only a fundamentalist pacifist would suggest all those people are on the road to terrorism.''

A fundamentalist pacifist?? Don't you mean a fundamental pacifist? Ah no, of course you don't, you would like to confuse the jury with the term fundamentalist, because it's not just evil, civilisation fearing, misogynistic and barbaric animals who commit (or in this case, want to commit) mass slaughter of innocent civilians who are known as fundamentalists, it's also those who refuse to lift a finger even to defend themselves. Those damned fundamentalists pacifists!!!! Always stuffing shit up for the innocent terrorists.

"This training took place in 2001 (and) there's no evidence at all he was ever heard to say a single word about that training to anyone."

Well then, let's completely forget all about it. Nothing to see here, move along. Good ol' anglo sounding Shane Kent can turn a propane tank, some paper clips and old recycled copies of The Age into a device that could kill and maim hundreds of people in one go, thanks to his training, but he doesn't talk about it to anyone, so well, that's makes him just an innocent John Q Citizen, like you or me.

By the way, do you think Shane is known as "Shane" to his comrades in arms?