Category: Terrorism

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The Toronto Terror Plot

This is from the Globe & Mail, September 3, 2009:

During subsequent meetings over Chinese-food buffets and in coffee shops, Mr. Elsohemy says he helped the two key conspirators work out the finer points of spectacular plan. He claimed to know people who operated a chemical plant, and suggested he could get bomb ingredients.

It was Mr. Elsohemy who told police the targets of the alleged plot were the Canadian Security Intelligence Service headquarters in Toronto, the Toronto Stock Exchange, and a unspecified military base along Highway 401. He jotted down alleged remarks the conspirators made about the bombings they hoped would force Canadian troops from Afghanistan.

Through all this, the agent was trying to leverage the confidences into something concrete. According to sources close to the case, he asked his RCMP handlers for as much as $15-million to put himself and his immediate family into hiding, before settling on a package worth closer to $4-million.

It’s not clear who or what he was afraid of, precisely. But a car for his brothers, dentist bills for his wife, and a place for his parents were all under negotiation – a remarkable turnaround for a family occasionally mired in bankruptcy proceedings.

What do we have here? A police informant with a spectacularly obvious desire for big money. The informant advises the alleged plotters as to where and how to get bomb materials, and then proceeds to actually procure the bomb materials for them. He even helps to unload (the fake materials, from the RCMP) for them.

This is rather like a police woman enticing a man into her apartment for sex, undressing, rubbing up against him, taking his wallet out of his pants pocket, and then arresting him for soliciting for the purposes of prostitution. It’s called “entrapment”.

The alleged plotters might have been guilty of something– but I was astonished when one of them pled guilty, without an opportunity to put Mr. Elsohemy on the stand. I can only conclude he didn’t get good legal advice. Equally likely, he didn’t have the money for good legal advice. Maybe he just isn’t very smart, which would be consistent with the earlier reports on this case that talked about a ragtag, disorganized group of blowhards conducting a paint-ball tournament up north.

Maybe he was intimidated and frightened by the bully tactics of the police and prosecution.

Either way, a guilty plea is a dream come true for the RCMP which can now trumpet this conviction as “proof” that there really, really, really was a terror plot and Dudley Dooright saved the day.

If the RCMP had taken a similar approach to some domestic right wing survivalist groups, I have no doubt they might have obtained the same results.   Young men of all cultures are highly susceptible to the macho excitement of potential violence.

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This is a pretty naked, rather exquisite statement: if I was a Christian, I might want to show mercy. Well, no, as a matter of fact. At least, not if you were an American Christian. Apparently, American Christians are quite free to wish death and imprisonment with cheerful exuberance, on anyone they think “dun it”.

You don’t want to bore people like that with issues like evidence and proof. Good heavens! And they don’t really want to discuss compassion or mercy so much as scream hysterically at you that if we don’t beat the hell out of our enemies, they’ll take away our Hummers. It doesn’t seem to matter much if “them” is Al Qaeda, communists, liberals, drunk drivers, Canadians, or Scots.

Yeah, I’m not interested in sounding reasonable at the moment. I’m just a little nauseated by the orgy of hatred and paranoia that dominates American politics right now. And I’m really sick of seeing this coming from people claiming to be Christians.

There’s that division between Europe and America. Americans– at least, the vast majority of them, seem very, very excited about the idea of inflicting a lot of pain and suffering on Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and they don’t seem to care very much about whether he actually did the crime or not. At least, none of the posters or bloggers that I have found have devoted a single line, let alone a paragraph, to the fairly serious claim that his conviction was a frame-up in the first place. The people who do seem aware of the dubious integrity of the case against him see predisposed to approve of the early release any way.

The crucial witness against Megrahi for the prosecution was Tony Gauci, a Maltese storekeeper, who testified that he had sold Megrahi the clothing later found in the remains of the suitcase bomb.[17] At the trial, Gauci appeared uncertain about the exact date he sold the clothes in question, and was not entirely sure that it was Megrahi to whom they were sold.

You get the feeling the Americans don’t really care about the evidence. You get the feeling they suspect that requiring “proof” would merely be a way of hoodwinking them out of the satisfaction of seeing someone suffer and die in order to vitiate their rage.

Sorry– does that sound brutal? Yes, doesn’t it? Yes, yes, yes.

Even Obama, sadly, has joined the chorus. Has U.S. politics reached such a low point now that even a fairly honorable guy like Obama feels utterly compelled to name a few witches?

Just imagine Obama saying: “We do need to acknowledge that the evidence against Mr. al-Megrahi is controversial, to say the least, and we must respect the desire of whacky other countries to actually show something they call “compassion” even to people of Arabic ethnicity….”

Something like that. And the Republicans would be foaming at their mouths with apoplectic rage that an American president missed a valuable opportunity to advocate for cruelty and hatred around the world, instead of just in America.

“I’ll never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” Attaboy George! That about sums it up– George Bush Sr. responding to criticism of the U.S. warship Vincennes under Captain William Rogers for shooting down Iranian Air Flight 655 killing over 300 innocent civilians.

Yeah. Do you suppose there are Iranians out there who might be a bit miffed that Captain Rogers– widely regarded by his own military at the time as a “loose cannon” never paid for his sins?

No?  What if they know that he received a medal for it?

I suspect that that is the way America really means it: no matter what the facts are. It’s us vs. them, ours vs. yours, and if we need your oil, we’ll damn well take it, thank you.

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Canadian Tire and 9/11

I never knew this before, but during the 9/11 crisis, when thousands of airlines passengers were stranded in Gander, Newfoundland, the local Canadian Tire Store, with approval from head office, instructed their clerks to ask if any customer was one of the “airplane people”. If they were, the clerks were instructed to allow them to take whatever they needed without cost.

We drove past that Canadian Tire on our way to Trinity Bay from Twillingate. Across the road is a Walmart. Most of the “airplane people” were American, but the Walmart charged their usual prices for everything– they actually had more of what the passengers needed because all of the luggage was sealed in the planes and inaccessible.

Canadian Tire, when it ran out of sleeping bags and such, bought $10,000 worth of goods from Walmart and gave it away to the passengers.

Let’s not be tacky and notice how the grateful Americans have repaid us by slandering our health care system.

Well, probably not the ones who stayed in Gander, Newfoundland.

About that Canadian Health Care System– if you are an American and you have heard the ridiculous attacks, you should consider this one thing alone: there has not been a single federal politician in any recent election in Canada who has dared to advocate dismantling it. Not a single one. If Canadians were even remotely unhappy with our system, would you not expect at least a few daring rogues to run on a platform of making our system more like America’s?

Then consider this: Canadians, inundated with American media, have a deep familiarity with both systems. Most Americans have virtually no familiarity with the Canadian, or British, or French systems . I am eternally impressed with those citizens standing up at those town hall meetings with remarkable confidence in their own experiences and knowledge, of which there seems to us, very little, to let all Americans know just what should be done with the health care system, and don’t you dare require us to support anything we didn’t choose, even though they expect Americans to support every war– and there’s been a pile of them– whether they chose it or not.

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State Secrets

The government’s recent brief cited the leading Supreme Court decision on state secrets, United States v. Reynolds in 1953, but it said nothing about Judge Walker’s reading of it.

“Reynolds itself,” Judge Walker wrote, “leaves little room for defendants’ argument that the state secrets privilege is actually rooted in the Constitution.”

The Reynolds case concerned an Air Force accident report. The government refused to turn it over in an injury lawsuit, saying that disclosure of the report would endanger national security by revealing military secrets.

When the report was finally released in 1996, it contained no secrets, but it did show that the deaths of nine men in the crash a B-29 bomber had been caused by the Air Force’s negligence.

NyTimes, August 2, 2009

As seems inevitable… It is not surprising, of course, that the Bush Administration would have sought to establish Reynolds as a precedent– sparing the government having to defend itself against those annoying lawsuits. A more recent ruling by Judge Walker, against the Bush Administration, asserted that the Reynolds ruling established no such precedent. But once again, we have Obama’s Justice Department supporting Bush policy positions that Obama seemed to criticize on the campaign trail. What gives?

These policies are not abstractions: real individuals have been kidnapped and tortured as a result of Bush policies and their only recourse, the courts, have been denied them by rulings by other courts that are contrary to Walker. The government– the President!– reserves the right to tell the courts when a lawsuit might “endanger” national security, without, of course, ever being accountable for what that danger is. Civil libertarians are rightly aghast.

It is so, so perfect that the major precedent for this kind of judicial ruling is so, so discredited: the U.S. Air Force was trying to cover up it’s own negligence, exactly as the plaintiffs in Reynolds alleged. Does anyone even know or care?

It is nauseating to read conservatives complain bitterly about Obama’s health care plans because they don’t want the government telling them what to do. You idiots! The government is declaring that it has the right to seize and detain and even torture you , and spy on you, and obtain your library records, and tap your phones without any judicial oversight at all– and you are worried that you’re going to forced to have health insurance! You don’t like liberals because they want to infringe on your personal freedoms?! Oh, the rank hypocrisy!

I am waiting for conservatives to enunciate a clear-cut declaration that they no longer accept the idea of “innocent until proven guilty”. Perhaps the movies and television dramas like “24” have finally succeeded where generations of McCarthyites failed.

A director of Homeland Security explained that 60-year-old women in wheelchairs are routinely searched when flying because… “if Al Qaeda knew that we were letting 60-year-old women in wheelchairs through, do you think they would hesitate to plant a bomb on a 60-year-old woman in a wheelchair?”

By golly, he’s right. And if Al Qaeda knew that they couldn’t get bombs onto airplanes, they would start putting them on ships and trains.

Does Al Qaeda know that this dink is in charge of homeland security? Because, if they did, I think they would rest assured that a nation run by idiots cannot long prevail anyway.

The more you are afraid, the more powerful the government and police are. I suggest you laugh at your government at least once a day.

 

More bad news about Obama:  “Unfortunately, the House measure is opposed by the Obama administration, which still seems to operate on the principle that what’s good for Wall Street is good for America.”  Paul Krugman, NY Times.  Link to Story.

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Same as the Old Boss

Like a lot of people, I have been willing to cut President Obama a lot of slack. A vast network of incompetence, abuse, and secrecy can’t be turned around over night. But I am increasingly disturbed by clear signs that Obama, perhaps in the interest of finding “common ground”, is not making the changes he was elected to make.

The latest of these (see the link, above left) involve yet another case in which Obama, apparently terrified that Americans will find him inadequately ruthless, refuses to stop abuse, torture, and arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. He thinks that one of these detainees, after release, will conduct an act of terrorism and the Republicans will gleefully make the case that only assholes like Dick Cheney can stand up to the forces of darkness. Even worse: it might look like George W. Bush was right.

It’s not an isolated incident. Obama has refused to release photographs showing more prisoner abuse in Iraq. He hasn’t changed U.S. policy to Cuba, or Iran, or North Korea. He supported the amnesty for telecoms that violated your right to privacy at the behest of Homeland Security. He won’t reveal new details about who the government is spying on without warrants or how often they do it.

The photograph issue is a telling point– during the campaign, Obama argued that transparency and honesty would ultimately increase respect for America around the world. He can’t now argue that circumstances have changed. He can’t argue that he has new information that he didn’t have during the campaign. He can’t argue that there is a risk to American soldiers that did not exist during the campaign. The only thing that changed is that Obama now has the power to do what he said he would do. He promised something. He didn’t deliver.

Just another politician? It’s beginning to look like it. The style is different, yes, but so far Obama has not staked out a path that is substantively different from what we could have expected under McCain, or even Bush. What we have now are the same policies, but provided with more thoughtful, coherent explanations.

He is also trying to block investigations into the Justice Department’s procedures for authorizing torture during the Bush Administration. In other words, so you tortured a few Arabs? Big deal. We’ll just let bygones be bygones and let those evil lawyers and judges go on their merry ways while the victims of their actions lay shattered and broken in their prison cells.

Finally– his economic “reforms” leave in place most of the lousy structures and policies that created this massive economic disaster in the first place.

Is this what the majority of Americans– more than ever voted for Bush– wanted? Is this what they voted for? What is going on here? Do they have a right to feel betrayed?

Bush, with a razor thin margin of votes, took the U.S. into a disastrous war, violated the constitution, and destroyed the economy. Obama, with a substantial majority– won against a moderate Republican– seems afraid to do anything he promised the voters he would do.

The world is crying for a dramatic gesture from this government that things are different.

So far, things seem mighty same.

The story in the New York Times.

Obama prides himself on his ability to build consensus, to seek common ground, to forge compromise. Since the Republicans pride themselves on the fact that they are always so right that they don’t need to listen to anybody else (which is not to say that some Democrats believe the same thing), this is a win-win situation for conservatives. I fear that Obama’s health care proposals will be so compromised by this process that they will fail, which will allow the Republicans to proclaim that it was always a bad idea.

* Note: while some liberals can be as doctrinaire as conservatives (and conservatives love insisting they all are), it is also true that a core liberal belief is that there is some value in all points of view– precisely the kind of moral “flexibility” Conservatives say they detest. Can’t have it both ways: which is it?

More Compromises:
On Detainee Rights

“Second, Democrats learned never to go to war against the combined forces of corporate America. Today, whether it is on the stimulus, on health care or any other issue, the Obama administration and the Congressional leadership go out of their way to court corporate interests, to win corporate support and to at least divide corporate opposition.”
David Brooks, NYTimes, June 30, 2009

Yet another depressing story.

Added July 24:  It should be noted that a few days after the above comments, David Brooks complained bitterly that Obama was pursuing the radical agenda of the left wing of the Democratic party and not giving adequate respect to moderation and compromise.

Okay Brooks, which is it?

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Mr. Yoo Justifies His Unwarranted Intrusion

“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force. NY Times, March 3, 2009.

Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty were Bush Administration officials who believed they could justify unconstitutional and illegal actions because someone might die. This rationale would come as a huge surprise to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. How could they not have foreseen that lives would be endangered if the police were not allowed to enter your house and search it at will?

It’s just one final piece– the release of memos detailing how the Bush Administration, in hysterics after 9/11, contemplated a police state.

Don’t ever again ever believe a “Conservative” when he tells you he loves freedom and democracy and especially if he claims he loves the constitution.

And if he claims to be a Christian and he loves George W. Bush because he stood for Christian values then, lest you believe that Christians do not believe in freedom, let me tell you these people are not Christians.

They have all either spoken out clearly in condemnation of these memos, or they are all cold-blooded, contemptible liars.

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Those Whacky Lovable Lawyers!

“Lawyers are often asked to offer their views on complicated questions with significant real-world consequences, and the idea that offering the wrong answer could implicate an attorney in criminal wrongdoing is a frightening prospect to many in the profession. It is not surprising, therefore, that lawyers are reluctant to condemn fellow lawyers on the basis of the advice that they give.” Washington Post, December 17, 2008

Wow. Those lawyers! And I’m sure I’ll hear some more complaining about how lawyers are unfairly targeted for vilification and abuse…. but maybe the lawyers should get together and disbar Mr. Woo, a Bush Administration flunky, and Jack Goldsmith, a law professor (!) responsible for the muck- worthy insidiousness above.

Mr. Goldsmith asserts here that lawyers that advise government officials to do something illegal shouldn’t be held accountable because otherwise, in the future, they will hesitate to offer good advice to the government, like, “hey, why don’t you torture them”, or “arrest and detain them without evidence or due process”.

The discussion relates to the question of whether Bush Administration lawyers and other officials should ever be investigated for authorizing acts of torture. Hell, no, says Mr. Goldsmith. It will have a chilling effect on the ability of lawyers to encourage breaking the law in the future.

Normally at this point I would think of some kind of analogy to try to make clear how wrong I think it is to torture people. But that would be an insult to the idea that torture itself is about as evil an act as one can imagine. And the fact that you start thinking, “does someone need to explain to the Bush administration why torture is wrong…. do they not understand what torture is? Do they not care that, in the future, they won’t be able to complain about American soldiers being tortured because our enemies will be more than happy to adopt our rationale?

We know what will happen: the torturers will be forgiven because they only obeyed orders. The authorizers will be forgiven because they didn’t actually carry out the torture. Everyone else will be pardoned by Bush.

Will Bush pardon them all? It almost makes we weep to anticipate that Bush will probably pardon them without admitting that any of them did anything wrong. Even a child knows that you can’t be forgiven for something you won’t admit you did. It would not be enough to merely force them to acknowledge committing crimes before they are pardoned for them, but it would be infinitely better than what will happen.

Ford pardoned Nixon in a similar fashion. Nixon, if he had something like integrity, should have refused the pardon. He should have said, “but I didn’t commit any crimes.”

What if Obama chooses, for political reasons, not to prosecute the Bush torturers. But what if Obama changes government policy. If he says we will not torture any more because torture is wrong. Torture is illegal. It is immoral. It is deeply offensive to human dignity and constitutional democracy. Then how can he not allow the Justice Department to investigate allegations that government officials broke the law? That would also be repugnant.

Stay tuned…

 

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The Real Reason we go to War

The New York Times recently published a lengthy piece on General Barry McCaffrey which should make the military-industrial complex unusually transparent to everyone. General McCaffrey is a regular “military expert” on NBC and other media outlets and tirelessly advocates for a larger military and more defense spending and is an enthusiast for the so-called War on Terror.

What General McCaffrey does not tell his viewers or listeners or readers is that he is also an employee– they call him a “consultant”– of a company called Defense Solutions which makes a lot of money selling military equipment to the United States Government.

General McCaffrey wants your children to die so that Defense Solutions makes a good profit.

Now I am quite sure that General McCaffrey would never put things quite so bluntly for himself. He wants no one to die, of course. He only believes in wars of national defense, when absolutely necessary, after all other avenues of resolution have been completely exhausted, or we are running out of oil.

Then again, General McCaffrey also argues that just because he is paid $10,000 or more a month by a defense contractor doesn’t mean he would ever recommend their products to the Pentagon unless he absolutely believed they were the best products on earth for the task required.

In other words– those fools at Defense Solutions! They’re wasting their money! They thought they were paying McCaffrey to get some kind of advantage when it comes to getting big fat Pentagon contracts! Ha ha! The joke is on you Defense Solutions– you didn’t get anything for your money that you wouldn’t have gotten anyway!!

I’m sure that once they see General McCaffrey’s comments, they will immediately cancel their wasteful contract with them.

And George Bush is going to go to work for Habitat for Humanity.

And the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny and Rudolph will all be there.

General McCaffrey Pimps War

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Surge and Purge

Contrary to general belief–can I shock you?–the “surge” is not a “success”.

It has achieved the political goal of short-term reductions in the numbers of casualties. It hasn’t moved us one iota closer to a stable Iraq.

The supposedly left-wing media swallowed this one hook, line, and sinker. What has happened, in a nutshell, is this: local U.S. commanders have negotiated a sort of power-sharing arrangement with some of the powerful Sunni militias who were leading the attacks against troops and civilians in Baghdad. In exchange for local control, road blocks, and, apparently, considerable cash– and continued possession of their weapons and territories–, they have implemented a truce. One of the reasons President Maliki would like to see U.S. troops leave is so he can go into these enclaves and rout his political opponents for good so he can consolidate real power in his Shiite government. He doesn’t have real power over these militias. Does anyone other a few diligent journalists know about this in America?

Some of the Sunni groups were fighting both Al Qaeda and the Americans. Some analysts believe they have negotiated a temporary truce of convenience in order to focus on their Iraqi opponents. The idea that this is a step towards a stable, pluralistic democracy is rather naive. It looks more like Lebanon or Egypt or Syria.

The idea that the U.S. is fighting for democracy and freedom, and for a free pluralistic society in Iraq that will resemble…. well…. who? Nobody. Because such a state cannot exist in a nation in which the majority of citizens believe that Allah should govern and infidels should be killed. The only way such a state can evolve into a progressive, liberal western-style democracy, is through progressive secularization. We need to give them high-definition TV’s and Walmarts. We need to convince them that American Idol is satisfying entertainment, and that Paris Hilton really is important, and that Cadillac’s really do cause women to have orgasms. We need to convince them that you can feel quite spiritual by being anti-abortion and opposed to sex education and homosexuals without having to sacrifice the even the smallest material comfort.

Call me crazy but I stand by something I said years ago:  Iran will be the first true Islamic democracy in the Middle East.

I found this after I had written this rant.  It’s a rarity– a media outlet that questions the claims McCain and Bush are making about the success of the surge.  Here’s another.

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Obama’s Sell-Out

Barack Obama supported and voted in favor of the recent wiretapping bill that grants immunity to the telephone companies who didn’t bother to ask government agents if they had a warrant to look at telephone records of individuals they were curious about. They just handed them over. You’re the government, so you can’t possibly be doing something illegal.

Republicans– who seem to believe in the ruthless application of the law in all instances– or say they do– should be screaming bloody murder. But we know all about the Republicans. But Obama?

If the government’s actions were legal, there is no need for immunity. If they were not illegal, then the Senate should initiate proceedings against the Bush administration. They should bloody well impeach him and indict the attorney-general.

We know why Obama voted in favour of the bill. He was terrified of the Republicans portraying him as “soft” on terror if he didn’t. Here’s my fantasy: Obama rails against the bill and tells Americans that he is standing up for the rule of law and for the constitution, and all those Americans who just can’t stand the thought of the federal government intruding on their sacred rights– like the right to own sub-machine guns– say Amen and vote for him.