Category Archives: Terrorism

UPDATED: Here Comes The Bomb (Casus Belli)

Barack Obama, Homeland Security, Iran, Journalism, Media, Military, Technology, Terrorism, War

More war is on its way—and sooner than you think.

For the last week or so, the president’s most loyal lap dogs—America’s brain-dead broadcasters—have been beating the drum for an urgent need, identified by- and acted on by the Pentagon: “to develop its largest bomb because officials believe [the current arsenal] is not capable of destroying Iran’s fortified underground facilities.”

That acts of war and elections often coincide should come as no surprise. It’s unfortunate, but electability in fin de siècle America still hinges on projecting bully power around the world—an American leader has to aspire to “protect” borders and people not his own, and if they refuse his advances, he should be prepared to bomb them to kingdom come.

Having used the American military to particularly great political effect—the barefaced Barack Obama is preparing to blast Iranians with something even “better” than the BLU-82.

This flaccid, coward of a politician is intent on shoring up his commander-in-chief credentials so as to seduce a militarist America for the second time. The Pentagon, under the president who has perfected the art of state assassination, is working on a “13.6 ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP).” It “is the deepest penetrating ‘bunker buster’ currently in the U.S. arsenal, designed to take out fortifications built by Iran to hide their alleged nuclear weapons. (Via The DailyMail Online.)

UPDATE (Feb. 1): “Spy Chief Sees Iran Threats in U.S”:

The U.S., “spy chief James Clapper” “has concluded that some Iranian officials, probably including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ‘are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States as a response to real or perceived actions that threaten the regime,’ according to an assessment provided by Mr. Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence.”

Clapper’s claptrap evidence is here, detailed in my “Is A-Jad (Ahmadinejad) The Fall Guy For The AG (Attorney General)?”

[It’s]…the kind of cloak-and-dagger that belongs in an episode of “The Unit,” not in the courts of a civilized country. To entrap the two defendants, Mansour Arbabsiar and Ali Gholam Shakuri, assistant US attorneys relied on Title 18 of the United States Code. Sections in this “versatile” law were used to ensnare domestic diva Martha Stewart (for fibbing to the Feds about a recipe, not for insider trading).

Rand Paul Manhandled

Homeland Security, Regulation, Relatives, Republicans, Rights, Ron Paul, Terrorism, The State

I far prefer Ron Paul’s strident response to the TSA’s assault on Rand Paul than the son’s watered-down words. To CNN’s Erin Burnett, Rand said, essentially, that the TSA folks were good people bogged down by inflexible rules. He followed up with special pleading.

It is not the first time special interests—House and Senate representatives, for example—suggest a system of sectional privileges and rights, based on professional need and proximity to power. Patrick Smith, the author of Salon’s “Ask the Pilot,” has implied that because of his professional position, he should be entitled to “preferential, alternative checkpoints for pilots.”

Such cloistered concerns typified a 2,000-strong, flight attendant’s union, which has been fielding tons of complaints from its members, who were, nevertheless, none too concerned for their customers, the manhandled passengers.

Noelle Nikpour, contributor to Mr. Sean Hannity’s Great American Panel, is another. Nikpour, a tedious Republican strategist who talks up a storm on that forum, extended her exquisite understanding of individual rights to … people like herself and her co-panelists. You know, important sorts who fly a lot; they ought to be able to acquire a permit that’ll exempt them from being screened afresh as they scurry to their important appointments.

Rand seems to have joined these special-case pleaders in asking for wavers for frequent fliers who’ve been willing to share more personal data with the goons of the TSA.

I prefer the Ron Paul presidential campaign’s “strongly worded statement Monday afternoon, blistering the TSA for its practices”:

“The police state in this country is growing out of control. One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe,” it said.

UPDATE II: ANC Centenary Celebrations Kick Off in … America (Theron The Twit)

Africa, Celebrity, Hollywood, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Race, South-Africa, Terrorism

PBS is celebrating: “This week, the African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling political party, marked its 100th anniversary.” Drop the Newspeak. The ANC heads a dominant-party state. Not quite a one-party state, but almost.

To kick off the fun, I watched a rather well-produced, utterly one-sided, propagandist “documentary” yesterday. “Have You Heard From Johannesburg” is about the so-called Struggle. The behind-the-scenes reality popped into my head when watching the famously “exiled South Africans,” (like Oliver Tambo) suited up, and giving ponderous interviews:

“… There was certainly precious little that would have dampened Joseph Lelyveld’s enthusiasm for ‘The Struggle.’ But when the former (aforementioned) New York Times editor went looking for his exiled ANC heroes all over Africa, he found nothing but monosyllabic, apathetic, oft-inebriated men whom he desperately tried to rouse with revolutionary rhetoric.” (Page 143, Into the Cannibal’s Pot.)

Myth-making aside, the ANC’s manufactured heroes have nothing on the ascetic, self-sacrificing Salafis who man al-Qaeda (and who do not rely on European groupies for sustenance).

UPDATED I: “AFRICAN NATIONAL CORRUPTION.” A LOT TO CELEBRATE. DURBAN. I WOULD NOT recognize it today. Durban Bay is dying, environmentally.

UPDATE II: “Be a man who is not afraid to know his HIV status” broadcasts a billboard in the CBD of the once-magnificent city of Johannesburg. The image attached to the ad? A white man. HIV is almost non-existent, statistically, among whites. Such equal opportunity idiocy reminds me of that useless idiot, actress Charlize Theron, who, during a recent interview with another member of the idiocracy, Piers Morgan, hinted that South Africans should be disarmed. Her campaign against rape in SA was as vague, if not as dangerous. In addition to being a pretentious, rather poor actress, Theron is a major hypocrite: I believe her mother shot her father, all in a “good” cause, of course.

The image of your prototypical HIV carriers is at the 3:27 minute mark:

In my book I flesh out the facts about the Central Business District; what it looks like today—the JHB Stock Exchange has been forced to migrate to the suburbs, and businesses are shuttered—as compared to the time when I used to walk to work (it was in the Southern Life Building) from the bus station. I lived up the road in the once vibrant, humming, safe Hillbrow, where I used to stroll at night. A clip of Hillbrow today is below.

Have you ever heard of the hijacking of a … building? It’s a new concept. Of course, the woman in the clip is mouthing the allowable left-liberal platitudes, with her reference to the divinity “Madiba” (Mandela’s African honorific, and an adopted affectation among liberals). “Madiba” would not wish fear to replace his magnificent legacy. The old idiot interviewed seems to think that fear anchored in a fearful reality is a really bad thing. I’ve heard this pearl of wisdom repeated among many American liberals. Living life stupidly and fearlessly seems to be a great virtue.

UPDATED: The Despot’s Bag of Tricks

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Liberty, Military, Terrorism, The State

In apartheid South Africa, denial of due process very often took the form of detention without trial. But, as I observed in Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, the South-African model of detention-without-trial is slowly becoming a fixture of the American legal landscape.

Via the Tenth Amendment Center:

Congress just passed, and the President just signed, a bill that gives legal authority to the President to kidnap and perpetually imprison persons, including American citizens, without the benefit of due process. …

The relevant sections of the bill are 1021 and 1022.

* Section 1021 asserts the President’s authority to arrest suspected (not convicted) terrorists and gives him the option to choose whether or not they even get a trial, and if so, what kind of trial.

* Section 1022 requires that a certain class of terrorist get no trial. Instead they must be held in military prisons, for as long as this President, or any future President desires.

SECTION 1021

Section 1021 is very expansive in its reach. It “includ[es] any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

* Who is “any person?”
* What is a “belligerent act?”
* What is “direct support?”

One could be safe in assuming these words mean whatever a creatively-minded prosecutor, a flexible judge, and an ignorant jury define them to mean — EXCEPT THAT, UNDER THIS ACT, ONE MIGHT NEVER GET AS FAR AS A COURT HEARING.

These terms will be defined by the bureaucrats in power.

Note who the bill’s co-sponsor is: McMussolini.

UPDATE: RT: “He will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”

These harsh words come courtesy of the executive director of the ACLU, formerly a supporter of the president but also just one of the many dissenters who have since grown disillusioned with an administration tarnished by unfulfilled campaign promises and continuous constitutional violations.