What defines a terrorist? In the wake of the Boston tragedy.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. ~ Martin Luther King Jr

 

So I’ve been disturbed in the last few days, another horrific crime has occurred in America, another senseless act of violence.  Once again someone has made the decision to kill innocent people.  That is disturbing enough, but what has disturbed and confused me more is the reaction to this particular event.

The conversation has revolved around whether or not a “terrorist” who is a US citizen, should be allowed to have his constitutional rights.  I would remind people that the ideas of liberty and freedom are messy.  A system that presumes innocence will sometimes let a guilty man go free and convict an innocent man.  But it is to try to provide the utmost protection possible to the wrongly accused man that these rights were created in the first place.  Not an avenue to exonerate monsters, but a system that strives to and will hopefully exonerate you should you erroneously be accused of being a monster.

Let’s take a recent act of horrific violence, the Aurora, CO theater shootings.  On July 20, 2012 James Eagan Holmes is alleged to have killed 12 people and injured 58 in a mass shooting during a midnight showing of the movie The Dark Knight.  Basically, a young Caucasian male used firearms to kill a large number of people and planted booby-trapped explosives in his apartment that he luckily confessed about saving further carnage.  People were upset, they wanted to string him up but I didn’t hear the word terrorism thrown around, nor did I hear anyone upset that Mr. Holmes was being afforded his constitutionally guaranteed rights as a US citizen.

Fast forward to last week and the horrific violence in Boston, MA.  Two brothers set off pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon killing 3 people and wounding nearly 150 others.  They were well armed and were reported have thrown explosives at and to have fired repeatedly on law enforcement personnel.   People are of course upset , they want to string the surviving brother up but this time, the suspect is labeled a “terrorist” and many people want to deny him his constitutionally guaranteed rights as a US citizen.

So what has been eating at me is what is the difference between these two acts that makes one terrorism and the other a crime.  First what is similar, both men used firearms and explosives to inflict injury and terror on Americans.  Both men were young Caucasian American citizens.

 

So what is different between these two men:

 

1.  One used guns as a primary form of killing the other used bombs, but both were prepared to use both.

 

2.  One was born a US Citizen, one was a naturalized citizen.

 

3.  One was not a Muslim, one was a Muslim.

 

So which of these differences makes one a terrorist and not the other, is terrorism defined by your weapon of choice?  I doubt many people would make that distinction and quite frankly I never heard anyone screaming terrorist at Eric Rudolph or demanding his rights be removed.

 

Does being born a US citizen make you immune to being called a terrorist?

 

Does being a Muslim make you a terrorist?

 

When you look at the objective facts I think what determines your view that one of these men is a terrorist and the other isn’t, if you share that view, might be a bit disturbing.  I know, most of you who hold that view will dismiss this as some liberal rant, but let’s remember I’m defending the idea that both of these men should be given all of their legal rights guaranteed under the constitution to all US citizens.  Up until this week that was the rallying cry of conservatives, they supposedly believed in liberty, freedom and were the defenders of the constitution.  But not this week, why?

I think the most hypocritical idea is this.  When the shootings in Sandy Hook occurred, conservatives rallied around the idea that as much of a tragedy as the shooting was, a single tragedy shouldn’t allow the government to infringe on any American’s constitutional rights.  Now however, conservatives are rallying around the idea that a single tragedy, because it has been labeled terrorism, should be used to deny an America citizen his constitutional rights.

The funny thing is that conservatives are arguing that President Obama sucks because he will give this “terrorist” his rights.  So thought about another way, conservatives are arguing that what they want is for President Obama and his administration to have the power to name someone an enemy combatant and deny them their rights even if they are US citizens living in America.   Really, is that what conservatives want?  Do they really want the guy they call names and threaten in comment sections to have the power to snatch them up and make them disappear?  The same folks who call him a fascist, want him to have fascist powers, at least when it’s convenient, in the news and when white people are being killed by someone who prays to Allah instead of Jesus Christ and that is one of the least Christian ideas I’ve ever encountered.

 

American Hypocrisy: Pissin on the Taliban

Warning, the following piece contains offensive language, there are words, thoughts and ideas below that may offend you and even worse make you challenge what you believe, finally the piece might just piss you off.  You’ve been warned.

 

American Hypocrisy: Pissin on the Taliban

So as I’m sure most of you have heard by now a video has gone viral on the internet showing several US Marines pissing on Taliban soldiers they had just killed in battle.  If you haven’t somehow heard about this, here’s a link: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/asia/video-said-to-show-marines-urinating-on-taliban-corpses.html

Now everyone is of course up in arms that US Marines would do something as horrible as piss on the enemy’s dead.  America, land of the free, home of hypocrisy.  I mean really folks, pissing on a corpse, is this so horrible?  First let’s address the thing you all want to say to me right now, what if it was your relative?  My answer, piss away Marine, piss away and you, can piss off.  If you have ever seen the dead body of a loved one you know, there is nothing in a corpse that is remotely reflective of the individual you once knew.  A corpse is, a piece of rotting meat, or in most cases these days, oddly preserved meat that won’t rot as quickly in the ground.  Really, what’s the point, either can the embalming or don’t waste the flowers.  That’s right kiddies the reason people historically brought flowers to a funeral was to help hide the smell of rotting meat.

You see the hypocrisy I’m point out here is the fact that everyone is ok with us killing people, as long as we treat them with respect once they are dead?  C’mon people, we spend all of our time brainwashing soldiers into thinking that the enemy is inhuman, that’s how you get people to kill other people, by convincing them that the enemy is less than human.  Towel heads, Sand Niggers, Islamic fanatics, people who hate our freedom, liberals, hippies, all of the terms the state and corporations use to dehumanize their perceived enemies.  It’s not a new idea friends gooks, chinks, heinies, krauts, commies and of course Charlie.  It’s a tried and true method, just ask the kikes, the niggers, the faggots and the dykes see if anyone called by those names feels like this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, that we are all created equal under one God.

So in summary my friends, and those of you swearing at me right now, we’re a bunch of hypocrites.  We’re ok with killing the Taliban, bombing civilians to death in Iraq, assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and government approved fake drownings that we gently call “waterboarding.”  We have no problem locking “Taliban” and “terrorists” away for the rest of their lives in Guantanamo Bay (and by the way with recent legislation even Americans), without as much as a trial, a lawyer or even anyone knowing they’re gone.  To those same people who wanted to ask me, I now turn that question around, what if it was your family killed, maimed or abducted in the middle of the night with no notice.   So really people, we’re ok with all of that, but we’re outraged by a couple of US Marines pissing on creatures we have spent our tax dollars convincing them are subhuman, really?

So if no one else will tonight, I will stand up for the US Marines, you know the Marines, when you absolutely, positively have to have something destroyed overnight.  We’ve made them our trained killers, sent them in first to every hellhole on the planet and for that we owe them our thanks, our apologies for what it does to them and their loved ones,  and more than a little forgiveness if they slip out of line now and then and do something as offensive and ultimately innocuous as pissing on some rotten meat.

Poor Christian, Tim Tebow shouldn’t be criticized

Larry Taunton, the director of Fixed Point Foundation wrote an article today that has been picked up by a number of papers about how it’s unfair that people are picking on Tim Tebow.  It’s not about football in his mind, according to him, Tom Brady should be jealous of Tim Tebow’s football pedigree.  I think it’s a safe bet that Tim Tebow would happily trade his Heisman trophy for Tom Brady’s Superbowl rings, or at this point maybe even his completion percentage.  That Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos are making the best of a bad situation can’t be denied.  That they’ve won some games recently, can’t be denied.  But the idea that Tim Tebow is a quality level NFL quarterback is still fully a debatable question but one the majority of folks believe will turn out with Tebow being a backup quarterback or running back at best.

However that is not Taunton’s point in his piece, his point is that the reason Tim Tebow takes criticism is because he’s open about being a Christian.  Taunton is playing an old song, one I heard often from Southern Baptists when I lived down south, that Christians are horribly discriminated against all over the world.  That in America, Christians, unlike any other group are under attack for their religious beliefs.  What a bunch of shit! 

We constantly hear about how this is a  “Christian society.”  In the 20th century Christian’s got statements like In God We Trust put on our money, and One nation under God put into the Pledge of Allegiance.  We are constantly told by the Right, that this is a Christian nation the way our founding fathers wanted it.  Yet the points above show the founding fathers didn’t do that, they were the ones who wanted church and state separated.  It is not the Christian equivalent of Sharia Law that people fear monger about, millions of Christians were not slaughtered by the Nazis, it is however Christian extremists who murder people with terrorist bombings, assassinate physicians with rifles and protest the deaths of America Soldiers at their funerals.

I believe that if Mr. Launton were to be honest the fact is he doesn’t really care about Tim Tebow or that football pundits are giving him a hard time in the media.  Mr. Launton is out to spread the message of the Fixed Point Foundation, which is that Christianity is under attack.  The organization on its own website says that the organization is out to erase the fallacies like that the Bible contradicts science, and to repair the fact that we have gradually lost sight of our Christian Heritage, a heritage that I point out earlier in this piece was rising over the last 100 years, not diminishing and yes Mr. Taunton, the Bible does contradict science, there is a passage about rain falling through a window in the sky and my favorite, that 2 members of every animal species that are alive today on earth fit on Noah’s Ark, a 450 foot long by 75 foot wide boat.  Seriously Mr. Taunton are you telling me that idea is scientifically sound?  Please!

What I really can’t stand about people like Mr. Taunton is their intolerance, their insistence that America is a Christian Nation that leaves no room for Jews, Muslims, Gays, Atheists, Agnostics, Heterosexuals, Buddhists, Taoist, or Pagans.  America’s best characteristic has always been that it is a nation tolerant of a multiplicity of beliefs, not the one-size fits all world that people like Mr. Taunton wants us to have.  Hell Mr. Taunton and his ilk don’t even truly mean Christian Heritage, you see they don’t consider Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, 7th Day Adventists or Mormons, all followers of Jesus Christ to be Christians, only the people in their own personal sect of Christianity can be true Christians.  This is the same kind of isolationist egotistical thinking radical Muslims like Osama Bin Laden use to justify murder and it’s not just bad or wrong it’s dangerous.

Mr. Taunton, you and Tim Tebow can believe any damn thing you want that’s America, but deal with two simple facts.  First, we are all tired of Tim Tebow talking about Christianity all the damn time, if a Muslim football player said Allah is Great every time he was interviewed he’d be ostracized from society by people like you.  Secondly, one of the reasons people watch sports is to escape all of the general stupidity of politics and religion that we have to deal with everyday.  So go find a new corner to proselytize on and leave the NFL the hell alone.

America’s Crisis Crisis

I’m tired, and I was thinking about this today and it finally dawned on me why, it’s the crisis and the war that has me down.  You see in America there is a crisis; do you know what the crisis is?  Well neither did I so I decided to do what you do in the modern technological age to find something out, I Googled it.  What did I find, well in the first four pages of a Google search, “crisis in America,” I came up with the following crises: 

Traffic

Obesity

Cheating in schools

Jobs/unemployment

Health care/medical

Energy

Food

Water

Housing/foreclosure

Debt

Education

Prison

Social

Unspoken

Bullying

Bible literacy

 

Not that this isn’t bad enough, but in the first four pages of a search “War on” I found we’re involved in the following wars on:

America (domestic terrorism)

Domestic air industry

Tea Party’s war on America

Drugs/marijuana/crack/methamphetamine

Terror

Kids

Science

Gaza

Poverty

Christmas

Guns

Cancer

Nonsense

ALS

Women

No wonder I’m tired, between the crises and the wars, not to mention two actual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we all ought to be exhausted! 

 Maybe it’s time for just a little sanity in America, everything isn’t a crisis.  Yes, there are lots of problems in America, we’re too fat, too broke, losing our homes and our jobs, our education system is not doing the job it should, we are too dependent on foreign oil and kids killing themselves after being bullied is truly terrible.  But are any of these truly a crisis?  What defines a crisis?  What if I told you something out there has killed over 600,000 Americans between 1994 and 2009, 33,000+ just in 2009 alone, would you consider that a crisis?

How about the fact that more soldiers died by their own hands than by being killed by our enemies in 2010? 
http://www.good.is/post/more-us-soldiers-killed-themselves-than-died-in-combat-in-2010/

To me, that sounds like a crisis, but don’t ask me, I’m just tired and cranky, what about you?

Osama Bin Laden is Dead

The US government is reporting that American operatives in Pakistan have assassinated Osama Bin Laden and are in possession of the body, here are some links to the story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/02/osama-bin-laden-dead-obama

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/source-al-qaida-head-bin-laden-dead-us-in-possession-of-body-obama-to-speak-sunday-night/2011/05/01/AF1D5hVF_story.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2011/05/01/2011-05-01_osama_bin_laden_dead_us_has_body_nearly_10_years_after_911_terrorist_attacks.html

Libya, Gaddafi, and the idiocy of NATO and the United Nations

Tonight on CNN I heard John King say, “Muammar Gaddafi is now using bombs meant to maim and kill people.”  As opposed to what, bombs meant to give Swedish massage?!?  This whole Libyan situation has gotten beyond ridiculous and I’m sick of the US government, NATO and the United Nations.  I never believed the US wanted to do anything about Libya and laid out why in a piece I posted several weeks ago.

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/why-the-military-industrial-complex-commanded-we-abandon-libya/

So why are in Libya, simply look at who fired the first shot, the French.  The French were the first to recognize the rebels and drove the UN and NATO into this fight, why?  Well, it’s as simple as why we went into Iraq.   We went into Iraq to protect American oil company interests and the French led us into Libya to protect French oil interests.

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/8578907

So, let’s face reality, Gaddafi is a criminal, a murderer specifically, we know for a fact that he is a terrorist.

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/why-we-will-do-nothing-about-libya/

So let’s stop playing games, if we want him out of power then take him out.  I know, it will make all of our other dictator/partner/oil suppliers nervous if we do so.  God forbid we should make oil hoarding dictators nervous, it might cause gas prices to go up.  Either go in and remove Gaddafi by any means and quickly, or get the hell out of Libya!

Terry Jones, a burning Koran in Florida, Karzai’s gambit and Death in Afghanistan

This is not the first time I’ve written about Pastor Terry Jones in Florida, a man who calls himself a Christian Pastor but is in fact nothing but a hate monger and a media whore, my last post was so entitled and the link is below:

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/pastor-terry-jones-is-nothing-but-a-christian-media-whore/

Recently Mr. Jones put the Koran on trial, judged it guilty and burned it in his church in front of his massive 30 person ministry.  You can read more about the sickening details below:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/under-god/post/un-workers-killed-during-protest-of-terry-jones-koran-burning/2011/04/01/AFLOqKIC_blog.html

Happily, as you will notice by the date of the piece I linked to, the US media basically ignored this act, finally treating Jones with the level of disdain he deserved.  In fact I had also planned on ignoring him in this blog as well.  However, and unfortunately, this past week in retaliation to this blatant act of disrespect, Mullahs in Afghanistan fired up their congregations and in fact violence and deaths ensued.  The news however was not ignored by the media in fact it has been a lead story everywhere.  In condemnation of what Jones did, the media became an equal criminal by playing up how Muslims took to the streets and in an attempt to kills Americans instead attacked and killed UN workers.

However, this morning on CNN and also in several news outlets I found there was much more to the story.  In fact, this was not Muslims running wild and being unreasonable and violent as many people and much of the media want to portray it.  In fact, what fired up the Mullahs in Afghanistan was a speech by President Hamid Karzai in which he called for Terry Jones’ arrest, which in fact Karzai knew could not happen under American Law.   A political gambit by President Karzai that has back fired as Taliban elements in Afghanistan incited the violence that led to 20 deaths.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/263719/karzais-incitement-andrew-stuttaford

So at the end of the day, Jones, Karzai, the Taliban and the American media are all to blame for the misrepresentations of Islam and the deaths of innocent people.

Republican Peter King is a bigot and a hypocrite

Recently in this blog we wrote about Republican Peter King’s hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims.  We called it like we saw it, as state sponsored bigotry.  You can read the previous piece below:

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/muslim-radicalization-hearings-or-state-sponsored-bigotry/

However it turns out not only is it states sponsored bigotry, but the ringmaster, Peter King is also a hypocrite as he is on record supporting the Irish Republican Army, a group that used explosives and killed civilians.  Below are two links, the second a straight up news treatment of the story, but the first is how Jon Stewart took this issue on the Daily Show.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Jon-Stewart-attacks-Congressman-Peter-King-over-his-support-for-the-IRA—VIDEO-117818444.html

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/03/09/peter-kings-ira-support-resurfaces-as-lawmaker-probes-muslim-ra/

Why the military-industrial complex commanded we abandon Libya

I am not prone to flights of conspiratorial fancy but sometimes the conspiracy theory nuts get close to the truth.  So in this post I want to lay out an idea about how significant our abandonment of democratically focused freedom fighters was always a foregone conclusion.

So what is the military-industrial complex?  In 1961 President Dwight D Eisenhower made a farewell speech to the nation.  In that speech he clearly related the coming marriage between the defense industry and our nation and how powerful that new relationship would become and the impact it would have.  The most significant passage from his talk is below:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

The amount we spent on defense in America in 2010 was $663 billion, roughly one-sixth of the entire US budget (16%).  By comparison, we spent $46 billion to fund the Department of Education.

The top ten defense lobbyist spent $27 million in the last quarter of 2009 at a time when the US had decided to ramp up the military efforts in Afghanistan.  With this type of money being spent the defense industry becomes a significant player in our government with significant influence on the policies and actions of congress and the president.

In a nutshell what this means is that the defense industry has a vested interest, which they pay heavily for, in how we conduct ourselves in the world.  Corporate leaders look for opportunities to support conflict which drives their profits, likewise they need fear to hold continued support from the public, and have an interest in maintaining a healthy economy that allows for significant defense spending.  So the military-industrial complex needs a growing economy, an American public in fear and conflict to drive military spending.

So how does this relate to Libya?  Libya is an oil rich country, granted, not a significant importer to America but an oil rich Arab nation none-the-less and let’s not forget that the defense industry is a global, not an American, phenomenon.   So as Egyptian students revolted in the streets we could be supportive, Egypt does not provide us with oil and as such is not a threat to our growing economy.  Saudi Arabia however is and literally across a causeway bridge is a burgeoning revolt in the country of Bahrain.  If the United States stepped in and helped out the Libyan rebels with military assets, it would be difficult to justify not helping similar rebels in Bahrain and then potentially, rebels in Saudi Arabia, our third largest energy provider after Canada and nearly equal to Mexico.  But North American sources are easily protected, the Saudi’s our good friends are not. 

So by not stepping in to help the Libyan rebels we do two things.  First, we stay on Gaddafi’s good side and also keep the oil fields pumping and oil profits from Libya flowing.  Secondly, we set up a situation where it would be hypocritical to go into Bahrain.  And so today, our good friends the Saudi’s moved in to help Bahrain quell their street protests with a military presence.  I’m sure this was done to send a clear message to people in Saudi Arabia that if they would use their military against protestors in Bahrain, they would certainly do the same at home.  Staying out of Libya guaranteed the Saudi’s could act with impunity.

We have one of the elements the military-industry complex needs, oil is flowing and that allows for economic growth in the world.  Now all we need is to keep the American public afraid and find a military option to make up for monies no longer being spent in Iraq.  Well my friends, both of those things can be taken care of in Yemen.  First there is a revolt going on in Yemen as well, and secondly they specter of Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula is alive and well.  Those two things give the United States all of the justification we need to perform airstrikes and missile attacks and eventually move forces into Yemen.  The purpose will be to quell the protests against the Yemeni president we support and of course to remove the bogey man of the 21^st century, the Al Qaeda terrorist threat.

Why we will do nothing about Libya

Unless you are living under a rock and if so thanks for coming out to read this blog, you probably know that the most recent of the countries to be having a little revolt is Libya.  A country run by the ever highly entertaining, dangerous, insane bastard by the name of  Muammar Gaddafi or Khadhafi, it seems like each news organization picks a new way to spell his name.  The link below will give you a little background on this madman and his past atrocities which include sponsoring the terrorist who destroyed a flight over Lockerbie, Scotland which included killing one of my friend’s siblings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaddafi

Without a doubt Gaddafi is a bastard who in seeing what was happening to Saddam Hussein decided to give up his WMD programs in order to pacify the Bush Administration.  He’s insane, not stupid.  He bought himself a place outside of the spotlight and stayed tucked away in his little corner until the recent uprising.  Now, his people, seeing the successes in Tunisia and Egypt decided it was time to take the tyrant down.  However Libya is not Egypt and Gaddafi has not been above hiring mercenaries, killing civilians or using airpower and his military to subdue his citizens.

So today both the EU ministers and the NATO Alliance folks sat around and debated what they might do.  Of course they will do nothing without a mandate by the United Nations.  The fact is, that by time they get around to seriously considering doing anything Gaddafi will quite literally have crushed the opposition.  Libya is small potatoes in the oil business, a small country that accounts for only 1-2% of the world’s oil supply so in the end, unless the French oil companies doing business there can truly pressure NATO, we will watch the Libyan people get crushed.  Gaddafi and his family know this and they are so sure that they are brutally bombing, torturing and killing their citizens to put down this revolt.  As usual, in order to see what drives the events of history, we need look no further than the financial impact on the military industrial complex and Libya just doesn’t register a large enough hit.