Category Archives: Terrorism

UPDATE II: TSA Blowback: Terrorism Begets Terrorism

Fascism, Government, Homeland Security, Terrorism

When you make a living by terrorizing and intimidating innocents, it is but a matter of time before one of your victims retaliates. This is not a normative statement, just a factual one.

It’s hard to know how else to frame the actions of Paul Anthony Ciancia, aged 23. Murder is wrong. Wrong! But can it be said that Ciancia’s shooting to death of a Transportation Security Administration agent at the Los Angeles International Airport, today, was without motive?

Chicago Tribune:

… a law enforcement official told The Times that a note was found on the gunman expressing “disappointment in the government” and noting that he had no interest in hurting “innocent people.” Ciancia also sent a sibling a text message last week suggesting that he was prepared to die, officials said.
It appears the gunman targeted Transportation Security Administration agents, who are not armed. Authorities said he approached several people cowering in the airport terminal, pointed his gun at them, asked if they “were TSA” and then moved on without pulling the trigger if the answer was no. A witness said the gunman cursed the TSA repeatedly as he moved through the terminal.
J. David Cox Sr., president of the union that represents 45,000 TSA flight screeners, called the shooting a “heinous act.” The gunman was not a TSA officer and “never had been,” according to the union, the American Federation of Government Employees.

From “‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp'”:

… As a mother—as a human being with a heart—it was particularly hard seeing children subjected to the cruelty of strangers. Watching footage of the kids down whose miniature trousers TSA goons have been reaching (including the heroic, iconic little Mandy Smith and her father in his reprehensible abdication)—I could not help but wonder: Where in all this has the FLOTUS been?

Never-ever could I condone such state sadism. Not against innocent adults. And most certainly not against children—not even against the president’s kids. Yes, it occurred to me, if only fleetingly, that the thought of Malia being mauled or Sasha scanned might make their mother speak up. The girls’ only flaw, however, is to have been born to a dreadful cur.

Make that two.

If Michelle Obama had experienced a gut reaction to the ordeal inflicted by her husband’s administration (begun under his predecessor) on travelers and their tots—she was not letting on. The First Lady, as you know, is in touch with her gut—and the gut of every kid in the country. The FLOTUS of the fat-based initiatives “cares” enough to decide what America’s bloated babes will ingest, but not enough to weigh-in when their bodies are being invaded by state workers.

WHERE ARE THE MEN in all this? This is no country for men. Emasculate them, feminize them, make them over in the image of woman—and they’ll sacrifice their own children to the state. Having been “liberated” from the natural instinct to protect their own, one can hardly blame men. Women most certainly don’t have a case against their compliant partners. The state as parent and protector: Is this not what most modern women have strived for?

It’s safe to say that the moms of the Fox News Blond Squad were with The FLOTUS. One of these interchangeable females implied that the interminable complainers at the terminals were no more than an insignificant group of noise-makers. Kirsten Powers, a liberal member of that squadron, expressed her satisfaction with the porn protocol. Her sympathies, she said, go out to TSA workers.

Yes, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”

From “Congress: Call Off Your TSA Attack Dogs!”:

When the large African-American woman ? in the employ of the American taxpayer to torment the same subjects at the Miami International Airport ? summoned me with a crooked finger for a pat down, I thought of the film “Midnight Express.” And in particular, the scene where Billy Hayes’ far-from-delightful Turkish jailer schemes to enjoy some time alone with the young American. My tormentor wore the same sadistic, atavistic expression. Her giant digits were soon upon my chest and between my legs.

In front of me, a frail woman was struggling to stand upright as the same goons, brows furrowed, studied her walking stick for traces of semtex. Once I had reached the safety of a privately operated cafe, I watched the agents of the Transportation Security Administration lunge at a middle-aged man’s groin.

Most recently ? and to banshee yelps of, “We have an Opt Out!”, “Opt Out!” ? the TSA attack dogs swarmed a young woman by the name of Meg McLain, who had declined the ostensibly optional full-body scan. The TSA’s website describes its scanners as consisting of “two types of imaging technology, millimeter wave and backscatter.” With the aid of stimulus loot, this rogue agency has acquired an additional “450 advanced imaging technology units,” which, of course, are “safe for all passengers,” tiny and tall. “The technology meets national health and safety standards,” we are assured.

A cursory perusal of the literature on the cumulative effects of ionizing radiation confirms that there is no consensus about this modality’s safety. However, truth in the TSA universe is adjudicated by coercion ? by forcing a captive audience to choose between the Scylla of the scan and the Charybdis of the “enhanced pat down.”

Properly cornered, Ms. McLain was escorted to a cordoned-off area. “This girl here has all kinds of opinion on how we’re doing our job, y’all,” boomed one of McLain’s TSA masters. Heeding the call of the wild, this employee’s manager left, only to return with a dozen cops to backup the seven pack animals already snarling at the young woman. As the malicious, out-and-out assault on her person and property continued, Ms. McLain soon found herself cuffed, her belongings confiscated, and her ticket ripped to shreds in malicious spite. She knows not how close she came to being seriously hurt for her defiant speech. (Ask the grieving family of Carol Anne Gotbaum, who met her demise not in a Pakistani or Saudi airport, but in Phoenix’s Sky Harbor.) …

So many atrocities, so little time. Search under TSA, here and here.

UPDATED I (Nov. 3): Some sources on TSA terrorism:

* “Congress: Call Off Your TSA Attack Dogs!”

* “TSA: Home Grown Terrorism (& Cretinism)”

* “‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp'”

* “The TSA’s Trayvon Martin Revenge”

* “Boston (And America) Betrayed”

* “The Republic of Rub-a-Dub-Dub Genitalia”

* “Rational Profiling: Cabbies Do It Too”

* “WHOSE PROPERTY IS IT ANYWAY?”

UPDATE II (11/3): Paul Ciancia’s motive and purpose, via USA Today:

Investigators recovered a rambling note from the bag the shooter allegedly was carrying, which detailed an intent to “kill” TSA officers, said two federal law enforcement officials familiar with the message’s contents.

Bowdich said the handwritten note made it clear that the suspect intended to kill “multiple” TSA employees and to “instill fear into their traitorous minds.”

Long Live Big Brother

Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Internet, Law, Liberty, Media, Propaganda, Regulation, Terrorism

Long live Big Brother
By Myron Pauli

In 1788, Jefferson observed: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground”. Now, apparently, our National Security Agency might be compiling a Yottabyte of data – a trillion trillion bytes which is over 3000 trillion bytes per American. Consider that to store a 9 digit zipcode on you every minute for 100 years is only 1 billion bytes (without data compression), that is a lot of information – “We want information”.

Banks, FBI, IRS, and “Fair-Tax advocates” want to eliminate cash – thus, everything you spend can be monitored. Devices in your car, phone, person, and probably soon clothing can track you 24/7. Like Santa Claus, the government knows when you are sleeping and knows when you’re awake – and stores that knowledge indefinitely.

Search engines can find out who you call, where you go, what you read and write, your friends, your relatives, your medical records, your purchases – all accessible. Is Joe Biden a stingy tipper or did Rand Paul ever set foot in a strip club – ask Uncle Sam? Blackmail-R-Us.

And who has access – potentially millions of people – J Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, Bradley Manning, IRS, Barack Obama, Verizon, Vladimir Putin, FBI, CIA, BATF, Alabama State Police, Citigroup, who knows… – and anyone that one of these people gives information to! Search for “libertarian Jews” or “anorexic Ukrainian lesbians” or imagine a Chinese agent in Utah searching for “Chinese grad students in America who read Ayn Rand” – all inside that Yottabyte – soon to be expanded to kilo-Yottabytes.

With new laws and “administrative regulations” passed each year, more and more Americans are probably in some degree of non-compliance. In the past, of course, surveillance was confined to hard core terrorists such as Wendell Willkie, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Robert Bork, and Martha Stewart.

Now it is YOU!

Just contemplate all the info in the hands of prosecutors such as Michael Nifong, Angela Corey, Torquemada, and John Yoo – exercising their prosecutorial discretion. America already holds 25% of jail inmates worldwide and the Yottabyte archive can assure our global leadership in this category for years to come.

The mainstream media, however, seems to care little. From FOX through MSNBC, the focus is not on the 4th Amendment (what’s that??) but just how “Snowden is evil” (24-1 in Washington Post op-eds). Harassing the lover of reporter Glenn Greenwald (is David Miranda a terrorist?) only receives minor attention.

When the media focuses on human rights, it concentrates on the specks and logs in overseas eyeballs and not in our own. We are told how things are bad for blacks in Libya or Christians in Egypt (sometimes as a result of our own meddling!). That is the “safe” human rights advocacy – it not only does not challenge the American power structure but actually supports the Department of Defense.

“Fight mistreatment of gays in Russia with the Lockheed F-35 fighter” or “Build the Zumwalt destroyer to liberate women in Afghanistan.” Where popular opinion could make a difference – that is, our own country. – we can just be told “Shut up – it is always worse in North Korea”.

Then we can add in “Stop-and-frisk.” Rightists love anything that involves police and military. Leftists only care if it is “fair” – frisking black “youths” at midnight is OK if you frisk oriental grandmothers at noon. Harassing Farouk from Yemen, when boarding an airplane is fine as long as 5-year-old Suzi from Ashtabula also gets the rubber hose. An Equal-Opportunity-Gestapo – hallelujah!

There are some signs that some Americans are changing their minds on the limitless Yottabyte Archive State. Unfortunately, there will always be “threats” – some wacko will shoot up a school periodically or a Boston Marathon bomber or DC Sniper will strut his stuff. In between the low-level carnage, the FBI can always find (typically) ex-con addicted minority dimwits and convince them to try to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with wire cutters or drive a bus into the Sears Tower. The trillions of $$ spent on defense can never be enough and the Yottabyte Archive needs more info on all of us. As they might say in Casablanca, “Round up the usual 313,900,000 subjects”.

Long live Big Brother!

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

And The Silent Conspirators in the Case Of Major Nidal Malik Hasan Are …

Islam, Jihad, Justice, Military, Multiculturalism, Terrorism

…The top brass of the US military, of course.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, “the Jihadi who committed fratricide at Fort Hood,” was promoted at every step of the way by “the wise monkeys of the military,” who chose “to see no evil, hear no evil, and most certainly speak no evil of Holy Hasan.”

Hasan was convicted, Friday, of murdering 13 people and maiming 32 on that United States Army post.

Hasan’s conduct, as was observed in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program,” was reviewed and dismissed the December prior to the attack by “no less than two Joint Terrorism Task Forces,” which determined that “Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s extensive correspondence with the infamous radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi” was but “an innocent exchange.”

Honest Hasan took every opportunity to inform his colleagues and classmates that he was a Muslim first, an American and an officer second, and that Islamic law usurped the Constitution. That minor tidbit failed to rattle the military.

During his secure career as a psychiatrist in the Army Medical Corps, Major Nidal, as he was known, openly proselytize for his faith. Preaching Islam to already traumatized patients did not hinder his rise through the ranks.

Since the Army was indifferent to Hasan’s place of worship ? “a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ‘spiritual adviser’ to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001” ? it should come as no surprise that the FBI was equally unexercised about the man’s internet postings back in May of this year. On the Scribd.com website, user name “NidalHasan” compared “the actions of an American soldier who threw himself on a grenade in Iraq with those of Islamist suicide bombers.”

Hasan’s poor powers of reasoning ? the analogy doesn’t work! ? did not arise in a vacuum. Those “abilities” were hothoused in the military’s Jihadi-hospitable hospitals. Before unleashing Hasan at Fort Hood, his higher-ups had him practice his anti-kafir “craft” on damaged soldiers in the venerated VA system, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, to be precise. A mother whose son was left to the mercies of the Major described him as scary, inappropriate and without empathy.

Instructed to “make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing as a culminating exercise of the residency program,” Hasan came up with this: “The Koranic World View As It Relates To Muslims In The U.S. Military.” The Washington Post tells of how the man “stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Would that his supervisors had at least failed this incompetent for his curricular creativity. As witnesses now crawling out of the woodwork attest, the products of the Major’s lazy, one-track mind drew no more than “really upset looks.” Substandard professional performance would get one purged from the private sector. It did nothing to undermine Hasan’s employment status, rank, six-figure income, and secret security clearance in the military.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s calling card advertized his commitment. Besides typos, the card features the SoA acronym which stands for “Soldiers of Allah.” Perhaps his superiors thought Hasan was a fan of a Muslim rap group that goes by that moniker.

If you doubt that psychiatry is quackery, read on. In mulling over Hasan’s devotional zeal, Army psychiatrists concluded that while he might be delusional, he was not dangerous. As an antidote to his preoccupation with Islam, Hasan was prescribed, wait for this, a course of lectures on Islam, the Middle East and terrorism.

The Diversity Doxology is clearly instantiated in the umpteenth iteration of the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Duly, the Army’s voodooists accepted Hasan’s “areas of interest” as merely “different.” Difference, as you know, is to be cherished.

From YouTube footage we glean that the military minded not a bit that Hasan breezed about the base in his Jihadi jumpsuit. The wise monkeys of the military saw no evil, heard no evil, and most certainly spoke no evil of Holy Hasan. A Muslim driven by devotion ? a potential murderer to the men around him; a martyr to his ilk ? Hasan was being Hasan.

As an extension of government, I submit to you that so too was the military being true to itself. When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small.

Conservatives can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.

For all its faults and infractions, it is inconceivable that Blackwater Worldwide would, as a matter of policy, expose its warriors to a man like Major Nidal. No private security firm would subordinate the safety of its prized assets to the missions of left-liberalism.

Leave that to Lieutenant General Robert W. Cone, commander of III Corps at Fort Hood.

Manacled by multiculturalism, Cone was, moreover, careful to keep his grunts defenseless. “As a matter of practice, we don’t carry weapons here, this is our home,” he bragged about the “no-guns” policies on base. It remained for the victims at Fort Hood to wait for civilian police officers to rescue them from a lone gunman.

For 13 of the fragged men and women it was too late.

Grunts are not the only Americans who’ll soon be at the mercy of a dhimmi, DC-dominated, Jihadi protection program.Hasan was a medicine man ? a “healer” ? in a system governed by codified laws of non-discrimination and political correctness. Rest assured that B. Hussein’s hulking healthcare ministry will hot-house more such Jihad-prone practitioners.

If you doubt that military top dogs should have been in the dock with Hasan, read “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program.”

Hasan was “convicted Friday in the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, a shocking assault against American troops at home by one of their own who said he opened fire on fellow soldiers to protect Muslim insurgents abroad,” reports the bewildered Associated Press.

A jury of 13 high-ranking military officers reached a unanimous guilty verdict on all charges — 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder — in about seven hours. Hasan is now eligible for the death penalty.

Surveillance Societies Condition Helplessness, Anxiety and Compliance.

Constitution, Individual Rights, Internet, Justice, Law, Liberty, Regulation, Technology, Terrorism, The State

“It’s slow and subtle,” writes Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez, “but surveillance societies inexorably train us for helplessness, anxiety and compliance. Maybe they’ll never look at your call logs, read your emails or listen in on your intimate conversations. You’ll just live with the knowledge that they always could — and if you ever had anything worth hiding, there would be nowhere left to hide it.”

An superb piece by Sanchez, which I’ve followed, below, with a Sanchez segment on Stossel:

Some of the potentially sensitive facts those records expose becomes obvious after giving it some thought: Who has called a substance abuse counselor, a suicide hotline, a divorce lawyeror an abortion provider? What websites do you read daily? What porn turns you on? What religious and political groups are you a member of?

Some are less obvious. Because your cellphone’s “routing information” typically includes information about the nearest cell tower, those records are also a kind of virtual map showing where you spend your time — and, when aggregated with others, who you like to spend it with.

It’s precisely this kind of analysis the NSA is likely interested in doing to help “fingerprint” either specific suspects or the general profile of a terror suspect. Link that information to other data sets being collected, like credit card bills, and you can even deduce when a woman is pregnant before her own family knows. Think of big data analysis as a statistical Sherlock Holmes, capable of making surprising inferences from seemingly insignificant details and patterns.

But fine, so what if a bunch of strangers in a room in Fort Meade could, in principle, discover these things about you? There’s no reason to think they’re digging for that kind of stuff, and even if they did, it’d be like learning there are naked photos of you circulating in a Mongolian village: A little creepy, maybe, but unlikely to have a concrete effect on your life.

Assuming you don’t match a profile that gets you flagged for more intensive surveillance, that’s probably right — as long as they’re only using that vast, rich database to look for specific terror or espionage suspects. If they change their minds about the rules governing access to the database or how it’s put to use, of course, we’re unlikely to ever know; we didn’t know what the rules were before the leak either.

That’s one problem with bulk collection of data. The information often sticks around indefinitely, while the rules only stick around until someone decides to change them. The IRS is all fired up to use big data to hunt for tax cheats, and in principle, the NSA can disseminate evidence of some crime. Sooner or later, other agencies may start to wonder why such a juicy data set is going to waste.

But the average person is unlikely to pique the NSA’s interest, even when those sweeping surveillance powers are abused for purposes ranging beyond terrorism. It probably won’t affect you personally or directly.

However, that seems like an awfully narrow way to think about the importance of privacy. Folks don’t usually say (aloud, anyway), “I’m white, why should I care about racism?” or, “My political and religious views are too mainstream to ever be restricted, so why should I care about the First Amendment?”

READ ON.

And watch (no transcripts, of course) Stossel, as Sanchez explains that “most cellphone carriers have the capability to install remote spyware on your cell phone,” in addition to the dozens of [other] ways we can [and are being] tracked.