See, the "camp" event is really more akin to a political retreat and training, it seems. It's an annual event of Norway's "Worker's Youth League," (in Norwegian, the Arbeidaranes Ungdomsfylking, or AUF), which is itself essentially the youth arm of the country's ruling Labour Party.
That man picked off a substantial portion of the next generation of Norwegian political leaders. Considering that Norway's population is about 5 million, it's not a lot different from someone doing this to our young volunteers, say the Young Democrats. How many parents will support a child's attendance next time? How many young political volunteers will simply let things pass because they see the danger of this?
When I was living in Arizona in the early 00's, I helped register voters from a Democratic party booth at county fairs. One time, an armed young man approached our booth and moved his hand toward his holstered handgun and told us to "get out of town, Democrats ain't welcome here". He was not joking. My booth mate was a deputy sheriff and he sent the inebriated young man on his way. But what if he had decided to take his threat seriously?
Politics ain't beanbag, but there is a difference between political differences and mass murder. I've live a long life and am unafraid of bullies, but others may not share my outlook.
But it was the prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who spent childhood holidays on the island as a young Labour party member, who summed up the grief of a nation: "Utoya is my childhood paradise that yesterday was transformed into Hell."
Taking out 80+ of the people committed enough to go to the AUF's Utoya summer retreat? That's like sending a Terminator back in time to take out a future Parliamentary leadership.
The crime was unspeakably heinous to begin with. And telling Americans that the killer targeted a "summer camp," it was no doubt imagined, would only make it sound worse.
It did. But it didn't really describe the magnitude of the loss for Norway. Nor did it convey the calculated sickness-and the very, very intensely political nature-of what the gunman undertook to do.
There are a lot of problems without the United States military tribunal system. Not the least of which is that we have set a separate track for some prosecutions when it comes to terrorism and terrorism related crimes. This leads to a confusion of effort but also risks the expansion of our gulag in Cuba.
Mr. Alwan was, apparently, an insurgent himself who came to the U.S. with the intention of getting out of Iraq, where he was wanted, and gaining a U.S. passport which would allow him a much greater freedom of travel world wide.
He had been under investigation by the FBI since sometime in 2009. The details are sketchy but he had been working with an FBI informant who gave him weapons to ship to Iraq with the express intent of attacking Americans there.
All of this is pretty standard for anti-terror cases but it is when we get people like Sen. Mitch "Box-Turtle" McConnell involved that we see the perils of our "two track" justice system in regards to terrorism. The Senate Minority Leader is loudly saying that he wants the two men transferred from Federal custody to Guantanamo Bay.
In a Senate floor speech, McConnell said he wanted to "get these men out of Kentucky."
"Send them to Guantanamo where they belong," the Kentucky Republican said. "Get these terrorists out of the civilian (court) system - and out of our backyards. And give them the justice they deserve."
There are a lot of problems that that single sentence. First off it is hard to understand how a court system that is designed to let evidence that would never see the light of day in Article III courts be admissible is going to be any kind justice.
We all know how the U.S. justice system works. You're arrested, then tried, found guilty for a crime, then the court looks around for a different crime they are going to sentence you for. What? That is not how you think it is done? Well if you are a Guantanamo Bay detainee like Al Bahlul that is exactly what is going on today.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is highlighting this small bit of continuing legal (extra-legal?) chicanery going on in our Military Commissions Review in Cuba today.
Mr. Bahlul was part of the original prisoners brought to Guantanamo Bay nearly a decade ago. After serving several years without charge or conviction, he finally got a trial. He was charged and convicted on conspiracy, solicitation and providing material support for terrorism.
In the process of his appeals there has been a new administration, a Supreme Court decision, a reshuffling of the Court of Military Commissions Review (the appeals court in the Military Commissions system) and a decision that the appeal be held en banc (meaning that the whole appellate court heard the appeal). At this point the government has all but agreed that the charges that they originally convicted him on were not established at law-of-war offenses either under international law or U.S. law at the time they were committed.
This is an important fact as the U.S. Constitution bars ex post facto convictions Article One, Section 9 prevents the Congress from passing ex post facto laws. What this means is that you can not be held accountable as a matter of law for a crime that was not as crime at the time you committed it.
Today we might be seeing the start of the New McCarthyism is the House of Representatives. Homeland Security Committee Chair Peter King will convene the first of what he intends to be series of investigative panels on the supposed radicalization of Muslim Americans.
Rep. King, who represents a Long Island, New York district has been on of the most vocal of the Right-wingers shouting that we can not trust our citizens who happen to practice the religion of Islam because some of their coreligionists attacked the United States on 9/11 and have tried to do so again since.
When Sen. McCarthy kicked off his witch hunt for Communists it was along similar lines. First it was implications that there were people who would not help root out Communist infiltrators, then it moved on to accusations of people who were more than sympathetic to the Communists goals and finally it became a guilt by association hunt where just knowing Communists was enough to make you unemployable and semi-treasonous.
Today Rep King (R-Islamophobe) will be trying to bolster his claim that there most Muslim communities in this nation are not cooperating with law enforcement. Will he do it by calling expert law men from around the nation who've had these problems? Not even one. He has consistently refused to name the sources of those claims (maybe it is because the voice in his head only claim to be a Marshal?)
The whole issue of the full body scanners is a complex one. No one doubts we want to be safe in the air, but at what cost? You would be arrested if you showed up to the airport naked, yet it is deemed just fine for TSA employees to see you that way. We have been conditioned that when one is going to fly we will have to have some kind of security check, yet if you decide, at the point of the "grope search" that you'd rather not fly if it means you're person is going to be handled, there is now the chance of a $11,000 fine for refusing.
That's right, if you turn down the scanner then decide that you would rather take other transport, the TSA can fine you for refusing. I think this puts the TSA on really shaky legal ground. The search itself is predicated on you giving up some of your rights because of an action you wish to take that is regulated by the Federal Government. If you decide that you don't want to take that action, they are still insisting they can search you or fine you.
One of the issues that spurred our war of choice in Iraq was the false insistence by the criminal Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, specifically nuclear weapons. The premise was that he might fly a drone (nutty) or worse give one of his precious nukes to a terrorist group who would then try to smuggle it into the United States.
I am probably dating myself with this, but back when I was a kid one of the things that was almost an article of faith with my friends and I was the prospect of an nuclear war of some kind between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was not a daily worry but it was always there in the back of our heads. It led to a lot of blue sky talking about post apocalyptic survival (and the realization that Michigan had 300 primary targets and no one was likely to survive in the state if the worst happened).
In the movie Witness, there is a scene where a little Amish boy, who has witnessed a murder, takes the gun of the detective who is there to protect him from a chest of drawers. He is caught by his grandfather who sits him down for a talk. The grandfather asks if the boy would use this gun to kill. The boy says that he would only kill a bad man. The grandfather asks "How will you know who is the bad man?" This is the central point of our system of justice, we don't just assume that someone is a bad man before punishing them, we have an elaborate process designed to require proof of actions before we punish.
Unfortunately our trauma with terrorism has eroded this system. Today, as you read this, there is a list of people around the world who are targeted for death. They are suspected of being involved with terror plots, and some of them are your fellow citizens. If they are found anywhere in the world by our forces they will be killed. Not captured and brought to trial, not attempted to be captured, but killed out right.
They better not build that mosque down by Ground Zero, we're being told, not just because it's insensitive, but because we have no idea what they'll be up to down there.
I mean, where did the money come from?
Who does this Imam hang out with, anyway?
And, at a time when our Nation faces more threats than ever, why would we let these Muslim madmen situate their "terror command posts" anywhere?
Well, I don't know about all of that...but I do know a place where lots of these Islamic terrorists go to obtain the equipment and supplies they need to support their particular craft, and I decided to make a bit of an undercover visit to the spot, so that I might "observe and report" on what goes on at this specific location.
So put on your dark glasses...and let's go see what we can find out.
Well, Holy Crap! It looks as though there are a lot more conservative readers here at the Great Orange Satan than I thought. In twice in the last month I have been singled out by the Newsbusters crowd as someone to vilify. I was wondering what the sudden up tick in Radical Right e-mail that I have been getting was all about.
The first time was for my July 30th article about the Radical Right's hysterics about the building of a mosque (really more like a YMCA) two blocks from the 9/11 site. The second was about yesterday's post pointing out pointing out the failure of the Radical Right by thinking that we are at war with all of Islam.
Yesterday was a bad day for the First Amendment. The Roberts Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the material support law was, under the strict scrutiny test, constitutional. At issue was whether human rights groups can provide educational services to groups designated as terrorist without being in legal danger themselves. The High Court found that there was sufficient State interest in this area to limit free speech protections and limit them severely.
The Center For Constitutional Rights (CCR) were part of the legal team that brought the suit. They argued that the definitions of "material support" were overly broad and vague. Some of the words at issue were "expert advice", "training", "service" and personnel". These words can cover a lot of situations that have nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with bringing terrorist groups into the political process and ending their terrorist activities.
That was Dan Fanelli, Rep. Alan Grayson's GOP opponent in this years election. He is, as of this report, still an asshole
Now read this
On May 10th, a middle-aged man carried a can of gasoline and a pipe bomb into the Jacksonville Islamic Center of Northeast Florida during evening prayers and detonated it.
It is a central pillar of my philosophy of life that if you live in fear the worst thing that can happen to you already has. While not wanting to get all fan-boy about things Frank Herbert did hit on a small "t" truth when he wrote that fear is the mind killer. This is why there are and have been acts of terror all through the history of our species. Using our ability to be afraid of the next horrible thing to influence the actions of people is something Sun Tzu and Machiavelli would both approve of. Fear makes your opponent do dumb things and ultimately makes them easier to defeat.
Which is why the current spasms of legislation in response to the attempted truck bombing in Time Square is so disappointing. We have a couple of proposals which under any other climate would be laughed out of Congress that are going to be taking up time over the next few weeks.
