Category: Politics

Security Theater

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Security Theater:

“This is a good piece by Ted Conover pivoting off the arrest of the Oregon bomber, to talk about the convictions of supposed terrorists in Newburgh, New York:

These prosecutions fail the smell test, and lately the odor has washed over my own Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale. Last month, if you missed the news, four African-American ex-cons from Newburgh, N.Y., were convicted of plotting to bomb two synagogues here, one of them half a block from my house. The government released a photo of some of the men casing the joint that our local paper ran the day they were convicted.

One of the men in the photo is an FBI informant, Shahed Hussain. The case seems like a slam-dunk–until you learn more about him. Hussain, driving a flashy Mercedes and using the alias Maqsood, began to frequent the Masjid al-Ikhlas in down-at-the-heels Newburgh in 2008. Mosque leaders say he would meet congregants in the parking lot afterward, offering gifts and telling them they could make a lot of money–$25,000–if they helped him pursue jihad. The assistant imam said the suspicion Hussain was an informant was so great ‘it was almost like he had a neon sign on him.’ A congregant told a reporter that, in retrospect, everyone wished they’d called him out or turned him in. ‘Maybe the mistake we made was that we didn’t report him,’ the man said. ‘But how are we going to report the government agent to the government?’

Hussain bought meals for the group of four men he assembled because none of them had jobs or money. The owner of a Newburgh restaurant where they occasionally ate considered him ‘the boss,’ because he would pick up the tab. Among his other inducements were the offer of $250,000 and a BMW to the most volubly anti-Semitic plotter, the man the government says was the ringleader, James Cromitie. To drive that car, Cromitie would have needed a driver’s license–which he didn’t have.

Another supposed plotter, a Haitian, was a paranoid schizophrenic (according to his imam), which was the reason his deportation had been deferred (according to The Nation’s TomDispatch.com), and who kept bottles of urine in his squalid apartment (according to the New York Times). The last two, both surnamed Williams, have histories of drug busts and minimum-wage jobs in Newburgh. At trial the government asserted that the plot was driven by anti-American hatred. But in papers filed in court by defense lawyers before the trial began, Cromitie is quoted in government transcripts explaining to Hussain that the men ‘will do it for the money. … They’re not even thinking about the cause.’

Greenwald makes a similar critique of the Oregon case. What scares me is how this sort of crime-fighting, post-9/11, basically justifies itself. So we’re at war with terror. A war means we need to find and isolate the bad guys. So we send agents provocateurs to areas where bad guys might frequent and, essentially, employ a version of buy-bust theory to smoke them out.Then we announce their neutralization via arrest, thus proving that….we’re at war with terror. Rinse. Repeat. Conover writes at the end:

This prong of our nation’s anti-terrorism strategy seems tantamount to sending lots of little devils out into Muslim communities and getting them to sit on people’s shoulders and whisper in their ears. One imagines that there is no shortage of Americans who, with enough money and other enticement, could be lured into crimes either ordinary or political: selling drugs or attacking gay people or racial minorities. But does dangling carrots that reward badness really make us safer? If it hadn’t been for the FBI, I don’t believe the Newburgh Four would have targeted my neighborhood, or anyone else’s.

Indeed, I suspect one could declare war against racism and just as easily employ provocateurs to cyclically ‘prove’ the problem of violent white supremacists. And once such a war is launched, and such a unit is formed, what incentive would such a unit have to declare the war won, essentially justifying it’s own dismemberment? Indeed, there’s always a potential terrorist out there somewhere…

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Wow.

Fear Is the Path to the Dark Side

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Fear Is the Path to the Dark Side: “

Fear leads to anger…

It’s no surprise that the former Navy pilot sees himself as a champion of the military, and he chides Obama for inexperience in pushing to lift the ban on openly gay service members. But McCain is indulging in semantics when it comes to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. 

In 2006, he said on MSNBC that ‘the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.’ Now that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, supports the Pentagon’s move toward junking DADT–and even McCain’s wife, Cindy, has appeared in a gay rights group’s video opposing the policy–the senator is blocking Obama’s plan.
Anger leads to hate…

‘I understand that’s his commitment to the gay and lesbian community,’ McCain says. But while a Pentagon study released Tuesday found more than two-thirds support for the change among service members and said disruptions would be minimal, McCain wants a broader study that would focus on combat readiness.

Hate leads to suffering…

His explanation: ‘The Marine commandant is opposed to [dropping] Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I know for a fact the other three service chiefs have serious reservations.’

As for their superiors, McCain casually mentions the commander in chief and defense secretary, ‘neither of which I view as a military leader.’

 

H/T to Andrew.

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Figure Out What You Think About Wikileaks

TNC on Figure Out What You Think About Wikileaks:

“I just closed the thread on Peter King, because I think–in terms of this community–I jumped the gun. It became clear in comments that there are a number of us who would actually like some space to sort out what we  think about Assange. In all honesty, I started a post on Wikileaks on Monday and deleted it, because I felt my thoughts weren’t focused. Peter King’s idiocy is a much easier target. It’s always a mistake to avoid the hard questions, in favor of the soft ones.

My rather muddled thoughts are as follows: I do think the American public is served by knowing that the U.S. forces killed civilians and reporters, and evidently tried to cover it up. I do not think it serves the American public, or those of us who prefer diplomacy over armed force, to basically allow no anonymity for diplomats. Much of the recent Wikileaks dump just struck me as the kind embarrassing gossip that exposes no cover-ups, but could make diplomacy harder.
Having said all that, I’m not sure that all of these question are even relevant. What responsibility does Assange have to this country? Does American media exist to serve the immediate good of the American public? Or is there some longer, greater, good in disclosing these dispatches? Is information, in and of itself, good?
It strikes me that there’s a lot of discussion about Assange. I’m much more interested in why an Army Pfc. was so easily able to access such sensitive material.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Not much expertise here. I’m still trying to figure it all out. But I think we’re better served talking about this, as opposed to the easily dismissed rantings of Peter King.

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

So how do we keep editorial judgment in the public interest?

He Reported the FBI’s Own Informant to the FBI

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

He Reported the FBI’s Own Informant to the FBI: “Here’s an incredible piece of reporting in the Washington Post about Craig Monteilh, a convicted criminal turned FBI informant-provocateur, and former foot-solider in our War on Terror:

Before the sun rose, the informant donned a white Islamic robe. A tiny camera was sewn into a button, and a microphone was buried in a device attached to his keys.

 

‘This is Farouk al-Aziz, code name Oracle,’ he said into the keys as he sat in his parked car in this quiet community south of Los Angeles. ‘It’s November 13th, 4:30 a.m. And we’re hot.’

The undercover FBI informant – a convicted forger named Craig Monteilh – then drove off for 5 a.m. prayers at the Islamic Center of Irvine, where he says he spied on dozens of worshipers in a quest for potential terrorists.

 

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the FBI has used informants successfully as one of many tactics to prevent another strike in the United States. Agency officials say they are careful not to violate civil liberties and do not target Muslims.

To wit:
Monteilh said he was instructed to infiltrate mosques throughout Orange and two neighboring counties in Southern California, where the Muslim population of nearly 500,000 is the nation’s largest. He was told to target the Islamic Center of Irvine, he said, because it was near his home.

 

FBI tactics were already a sensitive issue at the Irvine mosque, a stucco, two-story building that draws as many as 2,000 people for Friday prayers.

With tensions rising between law enforcement and Muslims over allegations of FBI surveillance, J. Stephen Tidwell, then head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, spoke at the mosque in June 2006.

 

‘If we’re going to mosques to come to services, we will tell you,’ he said, according to a video of his speech. ‘. . . The FBI will tell you we’re coming for the very reason that we don’t want you to think you’re being monitored. We would come only to learn.’


Two months later, in August 2006, Monteilh arrived at the same mosque. He had called earlier and met with the imam. That Friday, he took shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, before hundreds of worshipers.
Read the whole thing.  Monteilh can not be taken at his word, but the information the Post corroborated is damning. The parallels with the War on Drugs are alarming, particularly paying convicted criminals large sums of money to make cases against alleged criminals.

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Here we go again.

TSA Agents Harass and Threaten Mother, Force Her to Miss Flight

TSA Agents Harass and Threaten Mother, Force Her to Miss Flight:

Stacey Armato:

TSA rules allow for alternate screening (no x-ray) for breast milk and I almost never had a problem… until the week before this screening. I was held for 30 minutes that week while the TSA manager called to find out the rules. I was told to ‘pump and dump,’ and asked why the milk wasn’t clear, also asked where my baby was and if it was really milk (uh traveling, working mom pumping doesn’t usually have the baby with her).

After begging him to figure it out, they finally let me through. I called and complained to TSA and was instructed to travel with the TSA breast milk rules printed out and present them whenever there is a problem.

A week later, she traveled through the same airport and this time, the TSA agents recognized her and retaliated, detaining her in a special screening area for an hour, purposefully making her miss her flight unless she relented and allowed her milk to be X-rayed. She showed them the printed TSA regulations allowing alternative screening for breast milk and they told her those rules don’t apply.

And she got the security tape to prove her story. Minus, curiously, 20 minutes of footage.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

I wonder how conservatives live with themselves when justifying this at the same time going ballistic over 3 percentage points on taxes or access to healthcare.  That kind of hypocrisy simply escapes me.

Obama: A Non-Compromise Compromise?

So Obama decides to go the “This $hit is chess; it ain’t checkers” route.  Gangsta for the middle.  I like.

It should be interesting to see if the mass middle will support him.  Obama’s already painting the GOP as the bad guys.  The thinking goes this way: my agenda that protects the middle class will go forward in exchange for giving the GOP what they want.  He’s already painting the GOP as the party for the rich against the rest of us.  In other words, he calls out the GOP on class warfare without using those words.  On first blush, I thought this was terrible for Obama, but he just might be on to something.

Keep solving problems, Mr. President.  Serve them fools!

Close the Washington Monument

Schneier on Security: Close the Washington Monument:

“Terrorism isn’t a crime against people or property. It’s a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed — even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we’re indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail — even if their attacks succeed.”

(Via Schneier on Security.)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  We have been dancing to Osama’s tune for too damn long.  We need to stop taking cues from insane men in caves.  Refuse to be terrorized.

‘Reparations’

Full Repost.

‘Reparations’:

“I’ve looked at this clip a few times where King calls Barack Obama ‘very urban.’ I don’t think ‘very urban’ is a slur for black. I think the point is that urban politicians aren’t interested in rural Americans. In this case, Barack Obama is interested in ‘rural America’ because the farmers are black, and it gives Obama a chance to prosecute his nefarious plot to award slavery reparations:

‘We’ve got to stand up at some point and say, ‘We are not gonna pay slavery reparations in the United States Congress,” he said. ‘That war’s been fought. That was over a century ago. That debt was paid for in blood and it was paid for in the blood of a lot of Yankees, especially. And there’s no reparations for the blood that paid for the sin of slavery. No one’s filing that claim.’
There’s a lot wrong here, but let’s stick with the obvious. In point of fact, the black farmers suit is about discrimination during the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, there is no demonstrable movement in the Obama administration, among black legislators, or even among black people to push for damages for slavery. On the contrary, ‘reparations’ is something white populists yell when they want to rally their race-addled base. So for Rush Limbaugh, the way to understand food stamps, unemployment benefits are to ‘think forced reparations.’ For Glenn Beck health care reform is not something that can be debated with facts and figures, but ‘the beginning of reparations.‘ And so it is with Steve King, that a suit brought to remedy actions taken within the last couple decades, are actually revealed as ‘slavery reparations.’
Some further thoughts: First, Beck and Limbaugh are employing a formula that has proven remarkably successful throughout American history–rallying against social investment because it might actually help a despised minority of the population. The cause of public education in the South, for instance, was long hampered by the notion that, however it might help poor and working whites, it might also help blacks too.
Second, it’s been asserted that this recent tactic by white populists to brand those who protest racism as the actual racists, is some new innovation. In fact, as I’ve said before, it’s a time honored tactic of actual racists. All one need do is read the documents of Civil War secessionists, white supremacist to the core, claiming that the real goal of ‘Lincolnism’ was to make the enslavement of whites. Or read Phillip Dray’s At The Hands Of Persons Unknown, where people who collected the fingers, toes and testicles of lynched black men claimed that they were projecting white chastity from black brutes. Rarely does a racist label himself as such.
Third, this is the same Steve King who recently asserted that Obama ‘favors the black person.’ It’s also the same Steve King who will chair the House subcommittee on immigration. Elections have consequences.

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Excellent as always.

Terrorists Defined as ‘All Who Oppose Us’

Terrorists Defined as ‘All Who Oppose Us’:

“But in no real sense of the word is Assange a terrorist, except in the sense that ‘terrorists’ are people who we have come to see as belonging outside of our justice system, miscreants somewhere in the range of child molesters. Dubbing Assange a terrorist is, as Dave indicates, mostly about saying to your base, ‘I am willing to have those who oppose us hunted down and killed on the spot.’ It’s not about actual governing. It’s about rallying cries for the GOP’s white populist base.”

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

How Glad Are You That John McCain Isn’t Your President?

Reposted from TNC.

How Glad Are You That John McCain Isn’t Your President?:

“This glad, ‘my friends.’ Check out this exhibit in pettiness and condescension. You are watching a man obstinately etch his name on the wrong page of history. It’s amazing how all the high talk about respecting the opinions of the military disappears, when you don’t actually like those opinions.

 

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic.)

Unbelievable.  He’s vying well for a place with McCarthy and Wallace in history.  Sad.