SciFi Weekend: Finales For Lost, 24, Fringe, V, and FlashForward

May 23, 2010 — Ron Chusid

It is a big week for television finales, especially with Lost concluding tonight and 24 concluding tomorrow night. The possibility of future movies might prevent a definitive ending to Jack’s story on 24 but we have been promised that everything will end tonight on Lost (with the exception of a few goodies being held back to help sell the DVD’s).

While Lost had a strong episode last week, it seems pointless to talk about it in depth when the conclusion is just a couple hours away. I suspect that the biggest mystery to be answered will be about the meaning of the two alternative time lines shown all season and how they play into the overall story of the main characters. We have learned a lot about the history of the island and the battle between Jacob and the Man in Black. Many points remain murky, and I bet most of them will be left that way.

The best season finale for a genre show so far has been with Fringe, which has improved tremendously from the first season. (Major spoilers ahead). Until the final moments it seemed that, at least for now, this story about the alternate world was concluded and it was not clear where they were heading for the third season.

The final moments answered that as we found that the alternative Olivia with the hotter hair style had replaced the Olivia of our universe. Seeing characters being replaced by others has been a common science fiction plot device, including Sydney Bristol’s room mate Fancie on Alias and even on Fringe with Olivia’s partner Charlie. It changes the show even more to have the main character being replaced by their evil twin–as if the Kirk of the mirror universe managed to pass as Kirk and remain. Now either Walter and Peter must figure this out on our side and return to free Olivia, and/or the Olivia from our universe must escape from solitary confinement and find a way to return–without William Bell’s help.

V ended the season with almost everyone taking a side. The conclusion with Anna experiencing human emotion and turning the sky red might force the rest of the planet to do the same. At very least it might get the Visitors to install better security on their ship.

The show has lost much of the appeal of the original series (at least early on) which used a Nazi allegory to have the Visitors gradually take over. Instead the producers of the remake decided to go with analogies to terrorism instead, but there was little meaningful to do with this. Rather than renewing V, I would have preferred that ABC had renewed FlashForward.

FlashForward has one episode to go and it is interesting to see many, but not all, of the characters falling into the positions they saw themselves in at the start of the season. Unfortunately while we should see what happens on that day the show will not have the time to address the questions it raised about those who caused the flash forward to occur.

Posted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

There Are Crazier People In The World Than Glenn Beck

March 7, 2010 — Ron Chusid

I’ve had many posts regarding the delusions and misinformation commonly spread by the right wing in the United States. Dealing with disputes involving domestic politics often ignores the fact that there are even crazier people in the world than Glenn Beck who we disagree with even more with regards to reality. For example, there is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Two days before his official trip to Afghanistan, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a “big lie” intended to pave the way for the invasion of a war-torn nation, according to Iranian state media.

Ahmadinejad, known for his harsh rhetoric toward the West and Israel, said the attack on U.S. soil was a “scenario and a sophisticated intelligence measure,” Iran’s state-run Press TV reported Saturday.

The assault was a “big lie intended to serve as a pretext for fighting terrorism and setting the grounds for sending troops to Afghanistan,” Press TV reported Ahmadinejad as saying.

It’s not the first time Ahmadinejad has denied a historical tragedy. In the past, he has denied the existence of the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of some 6 million Jews during World War II, and suggested Israel should be “wiped off the map.”

“Today,” he said Saturday, “with blessings from the Almighty, the capitalist system, founded by the Zionists, has also reached an end,” Press TV quoted Ahmadinejad.

Posted in International. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Out of Context Quote Distorts Obama Administration View on Response to Terrorism

February 9, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Here’s a good example of how a phrase taken out of context can really convey a different meaning. Jake Tapper, referring to an op-ed by John Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, has a misleading headline saying, WH: Some Critics ‘Serving the Goals of al Qaeda’. The same headline is going out on Twitter and Facebook, giving a misleading idea of what Brennan actually said.

The first impression from this title is that the White House has resorted to the same sort of jingoism seen during the Bush years, such as that if you are not with us you are supporting the terrorists. Reading Brennan’s actual op-ed gives an entirely different meaning when these words are not taken out of context. This quote comes from this passage:

Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda. Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill. They will, however, be dismantled and destroyed, by our military, our intelligence services and our law enforcement community. And the notion that America’s counterterrorism professionals and America’s system of justice are unable to handle these murderous miscreants is absurd.

Headlines do need to condense, but simply expanding the headline to “unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda” provides a far closer view of what Brennan wrote. He is repeating what many of us critics of the Bush administration and the right wing response to terrorism have been saying since 9/11. The goal of terrorists is to instill terror in the population. Fear-mongering by the right wing does play into their hands, and does serve the goals of al Qaeda.

Brennan also makes another point which many others have also made in recent weeks since the Obama administration has been attacked for handling the attempted Christmas day terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court (emphasis mine):

It’s naive to think that transferring Abdulmutallab to military custody would have caused an outpouring of information. There is little difference between military and civilian custody, other than an interrogator with a uniform. The suspect gets access to a lawyer, and interrogation rules are nearly identical.

Would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid was read his Miranda rights five minutes after being taken off a plane he tried to blow up. The same people who criticize the president today were silent back then.

Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lack foundation. There have been three convictions of terrorists in the military tribunal system since 9/11, and hundreds in the criminal justice system — including high-profile terrorists such as Reid and 9/11 plotter Zacarius Moussaoui.

Brennan also responds to those on the right who claim that the Obama administration is not taking the threat of terrorism seriously, noting Obama’s successes in 2009 and how they compare to Bush’s record:

This administration’s efforts have disrupted dozens of terrorist plots against the homeland and been responsible for killing and capturing hundreds of hard-core terrorists, including senior leaders in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond — far more than in 2008. We need no lectures about the fact that this nation is at war.

Update: An op-ed at The Washington Examiner further misquotes Brennan with a headline reading:  White House: People who criticize us are helping al Qaeda.

Posted in Barack Obama, George Bush, News Media, Op-eds. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

State of the Union Live Blogging

January 27, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Using Facebook, rebelling against the Twitter trend. Who needs the 140 character limit? The live comments are here.

Update: An actual post discussing the speech is posted here.

Update II: Text of the Facebook live comments have been pasted under the fold.

(more…)

Posted in Bill Clinton, In The News. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 8 Comments »

FBI Illegally Collected Information Citing False Terrorist Threats

January 19, 2010 — Ron Chusid

This shows the real danger of terrorism–how the government over-reacts and uses fear to restrict civil liberties. The Washington Post reports that the FBI frequently violated the law to obtain telephone records using false claims of terrorist emergencies:

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.

A Justice Department inspector general’s report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Terrorism. Tags: . 3 Comments »

Republicans Rewrite History While Blaming Obama For Attempted Terrorist Attack

January 2, 2010 — Ron Chusid

As the Republicans try to twist the facts to blame Obama for the attempted bombing on Christmas, Mike Allen notes how the Republicans also tried to blame a Democrat for the major terror attack which occurred on the first year of their watch:

The GOP is blaming Obama for the attack. But Republican lawmakers, candidates, pundits and commentators — and the Bush administration — blamed the CLINTON administration for 9/11. In September 2006, Secretary of State Rice told the New York Post editorial board, “Nobody organized this country or the international community to fight the terrorist threat that was upon us until 9/11. … We just weren’t organized as a country either domestically or as a leader internationally. But what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton Administration did in the preceding years…We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda.” … Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a few hours after the attacks: “We had Bill Clinton backing off, letting the Taliban go, over and over again.” … Then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), later CIA director, in The New York Times, 10/22/01: “[T]he fact is that the Clinton administration was not very interested in our intelligence community, did not spend very much time worrying about, or using it, or investing in it. … It’s impossible not to go there if you really do an anatomy of why we are where we are today.”

The difference is that, as his column also notes, Obama has been paying greater attention to threats from Yemen and other areas. Rice was lying, as I’ve written before, when she denied the fact that the Clinton administration had passed on plans for dealing with al Qaeda which the Bush administration ignored. Documents obtained from the National Security Archive showed that such statements from Rice were untrue. The documents include a January 25, 2001, memo from counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and “Tab A December 2000 Paper: Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects,”

The claims about Clinton are also false. It was the Clinton administration which paid attention to the intelligence on the planned Millennium terrorist attack and prevented it, while the Bush administration ignored warnings before 9/11. The Republican Congress also blocked attempts by Bill Clinton to fight al Qaeda. Bill Clinton discussed his record on terrorism in an interview on Fox News Sunday on September 22, 2006. Full transcript is here.

Posted in Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Democrats, Republicans, Terrorism. Tags: , , , , . No Comments »

Republican Double Standard In Politicizing Terror Attack

December 30, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Republicans such as Pete Hoekstra have been trying to politicize Barack Obama’s reaction to the attempted bombing over Detroit on Christmas, even resorting to using this in a fund raising letter. One line of attack is that Obama did not respond quickly enough, showing a double standard as Republicans did not complain when George Bush took six days to respond in a comparable situation. Politico reviews the two attempted attacks:

This year’s attack came on Christmas. The attempt eight years ago took place on Dec. 22. Obama was on vacation in Hawaii when the suspect, Omar Abdulmutallab, allegedly used plastic explosives in his try to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight. Bush was at Camp David when Reid used similar plastic explosives to try to blow up his Paris-to-Miami flight, which diverted to Boston after the incident.

Like the Obama White House, the Bush White House told reporters the president had been briefed on the incident and was following it closely. While the Obama White House issued a background statement through a senior administration official calling the incident an “attempted terrorist attack” on the same day it took place, the early official statements from Bush aides did not make the same explicit statement.

Bush did not address reporters about the Reid episode until December 28, after he had traveled from Camp David to his ranch in Texas.

Democrats do not appear to have criticized Bush over the delay. Many were wary of publicly clashing with the commander in chief, who was getting lofty approval ratings after what appeared to be a successful military campaign in Afghanistan. The media also seemed to have little interest in pressing Bush about the bombing, or the fact that the incident had revealed a previously unknown vulnerability in airplane security — that shoes could be used to hide chemicals or explosive devices.

The article reviewed some of the Republican attacks but also notes that some members of the Bush administration have avoided such criticism:

On CNN’s “Larry King Live” on Monday night, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who was a White House adviser at the time of Reid’s attempted bombing, brushed aside a question about whether Obama should have waited three days to speak out. “I’m going to leave that to the White House. I think he had Secretary Napolitano out there speaking,” Ridge said.

And over the weekend, former Bush pollster Matthew Dowd was asked if Obama was correct when, like Bush, he held off speaking at the outset. “Yes,” Dowd told Jake Tapper Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “Part of the problem here is that all the facts that you think are true at the beginning turn out not to be true as the days go on.”

Marc Ambinder has explained the wisdom of Obama’s approach:

Here’s the theory: a two-bit mook is sent by Al Qaeda to do a dastardly deed. He winds up neutering himself. Literally.
Authorities respond appropriately; the president (as this president is wont to to) presides over the federal response. His senior aides speak for him, letting reporters know that he’s videoconferencing regularly, that he’s ordering a review of terrorist watch lists, that he’s discoursing with his secretary of Homeland Security.
But an in-person Obama statement isn’t needed; Indeed, a message expressing command, control, outrage and anger might elevate the importance of the deed, would generate panic (because Obama usually DOESN’T talk about the specifics of cases like this, and so him deciding to do so would cue the American people to respond in a way that exacerbates the situation).
Obama of course will say something at some point. Had the terrorist blown up the plane, it’s safe to assume that Obama would no longer be in Hawaii. In either case, the public will need presidential fortification at some point. But Obama is willing to risk the accusation that he is “soft” on terrorism or is hovering above it all, or is just not to be bothered (his “head’s in the sand,” or “golfing comes first”) in order to advance what he believes is the proper collective response to a failed act of terrorism.
Let the authorities do their work. Don’t presume; don’t panic the country; don’t chest-thump, prejudge, interfere, politicize (in an international sense), don’t give Al Qaeda (or whomever) a symbolic victory; resist the urge to open the old playbook and run a familiar play.
In a sense, he is projecting his calm on the American people, just as his advisers are convinced that the Bush administration projected their panic and anger on the self-same public eight years ago.
It’s a tough and novel approach — and not at all (as they say in Britain) party political — because the standard political script would have the president and his attorney general appearing everywhere as soon as possible.
Steve Benen notes that the Republicans prefer not to respond like grown ups:

Republicans didn’t care for that approach, and preferred a collective display of pants-wetting. GOP voices and the media decided the strategy to deny terrorists a p.r. victory wasn’t good enough. This was a time for partisan grandstanding, not mature leadership.

Again, maybe Americans will find the president’s approach compelling. They should. But at this point, it seems pretty obvious that the president acting like a grown-up is going over the political world’s head.

There’s apparently an expectation that the president can — and probably should — exploit incidents for as much political gain as possible. So, for example, when U.S. forces, acting on the president’s orders, successfully took out Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, the ringleader of a Qaeda cell in Kenya and one of the most wanted Islamic militants in Africa, the president should appear before the cameras and explain, “Hey, look at me! I took out one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists!” When U.S. forces, acting on the president’s orders, killed Baitullah Mehsud, the terrorist leader of the Taliban movement Pakistan, Obama should assemble reporters to declare, “Booyah! Who’s da man?”

When the Obama administration took suspected terrorists Najibullah Zazi, Talib Islam, and Hosam Maher Husein Smadi into custody before they could launch their planned attacks, each and every instance requires its own press conference, in which the president can proclaim, “Republicans’ talk is cheap; I’m the one keeping Americans safe.”

The president, by all appearances, finds such shameless politicization of counter-terrorism offensive. And it is. But Republicans are running an aggressive misinformation scheme, and if it’s effective, the White House may need to reconsider whether the public rewards or punishes leaders who act like grown-ups.

Posted in Barack Obama, Blogs & Social Media, George Bush, Republicans, Terrorism. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Pete Hoekstra Plays Politics With Detroit Terrorist Attack Despite Having Voted Against TSA Funding For Detection of Explosives

December 29, 2009 — Ron Chusid

My Congressman is at it again. Pete Hoekstra, also a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor, sent out a fund raising letter in which he uses partisan attacks in response to the attempted bombing in Detroit last week to raise money. (A full copy of the letter is also available here).

I’ve already noted the absurdity of Hoekstra’s attacks considering that the Democrats have a better record in fighting terrorism than the Republicans. In this case, it was the Bush administration which gave the visa to the person who attempted the bombing, and it was the Bush administration which released those who planned the attack from Guantanamo to instead be placed in an art therapy rehab program.

Hoekstra’s argument in the fund raising letter makes even less sense considering that the governor has little to do with fighting terrorism. He also better be careful in distorting the records of Democrats as he does in his letter. Someone might ask him about his vote on June 24 against funding for the TSA, including funding for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures. In addition to blocking funding for the TSA, a Republican is also responsible for blocking the appointment of a TSA chief.

These acts by Republicans may or may not have contributed to the latest attack, but Republicans such as Pete Hoekstra are in a very weak position to play politics with this as they have been doing. Even one of his Republican opponents, Rick Snyder, has spoken out against Hoekstra for playing politics here:

“It is extremely disappointing that the congressman would us a potentially tragic incident to raise money for his political campaign,” said Snyder spokesman Jake Suski. “In these troubling times, words can’t describe how sad it is to see an attempt to politically capitalize on a failed terrorist attack just three days after it happened.

Perhaps the fact that Hoekstra is trying this, despite such a weak hand, shows how he really lacks any meaningful arguments as to why anyone should vote for him for governor.

Posted in Michigan News, Politics, Republicans, Terrorism. Tags: , , , . 3 Comments »

Peter Hoekstra Continues To Play Politics With Failed Terrorist Attack

December 27, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Yesterday I noted how my Congressman, Peter Hoekstra, extended his long track record of playing politics with terrorism by using this week’s attempt to blow up a plane in Detroit for political gain. Hoekstra, who is now a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in Michigan, continued this again today on (of course) Fox:

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said Sunday that it is fair to blame the Obama administration for the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.

Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Select Intelligence Committee said that the administration has not taken the threat of terrorist threats on the U.S. seriously.

Asked by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace if it is fair to blame the Obama administration for the attacks, the Michigan Republican replied “”Yeah, I think it really is.”

Hoekstra said that increased domestic threats have made themselves more evidence this year, with this attack and the Fort Hood shootings, but said that the Obama administration is trying to “downplay” the threat.

“The Obama administration came in and said we’re not going to use the word terrorism anymore, we’re going to call it man made disasters, trying to, I think, downplay the threat from terrorism,” he said. “In reality, it’s getting much more complex.”

So it is Obama’s fault that a  terrorist entered the country on a visa granted under former president George Bush while I have never seen Hoekstra criticize Bush for the multiple errors in judgment which contributed to the success of the 9/11 attack. As I noted in the earlier post:

The Clinton administration left the Bush administration warnings about al Qaeda. The Bush administration not only ignored these warnings but lied about receiving them. Then there was that CIA briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” just before the attack which George Bush ignored. As Al Gore discussed in The Assault on Reason, paying attention to this warning should have led to a review of the State Department/INS watch list which already contained the names of many of the 9/11 terrorists. Others could have also been identified before the attack as they were using the same addresses or frequent flier numbers. In 2006 Keith Olbermann also reviewed the many warnings which were ignored.

It is total fiction on Hoekstra’s part to claim either that the Obama administration is not taking terrorism seriously or that “The Obama administration came in and said we’re not going to use the word terrorism anymore.”  Barack Obama has spoken out several times about the need to respond to terrorism including his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars back in 2007. Steve Benen recently noted that the Obama administration is not only taking action against terrorism, but has had significant successes. A report from ABC News last August quoted National Security Adviser, Gen. Jim Jones who cited other ways in which the Obama administration is having greater success against terrorism than the Bush administration.

Taking such liberties with the truth is hardly new for Hoekstra who has previously made discredited claims of finding WMD in Iraq. He has also tried to play politics with terrorism previously. After having written an op-ed condemning others for divulging military secrets, he himself was found to have divulged secrets on Twitter. He previously resorted to scare tactics which have been criticized by several former national security officials when there was talk of moving prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to a maximum security prison in Michigan.

Posted in Barack Obama, George Bush, Michigan News, Republicans, Terrorism. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Peter Hoekstra Once Again Helps Al Qaeda Spread Terror For His Personal Political Gain

December 26, 2009 — Ron Chusid

The dumbest thing  you can do in response to a terrorist attack is further the goal of the terrorists by spreading more fear. My Congressman, Pete Hoekstra, couldn’t resist doing this yet again in hopes of obtaining political gain following yesterday’s terror attempt in Detroit.

A Nigerian man claiming ties to al Qaeda attempted to set off an explosion on an international flight arriving in Detroit yesterday. He had a powder and a fluid strapped to his leg which he mixed in an attempt to create an explosion as the plane descended into Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The attempt failed with only a minimal explosion and the man was subdued.

In response to this attack there needs to be an investigation as to why someone who was already on terrorist watch lists not only managed to get aboard the plane but to do so with potentially explosive substances strapped to his leg. We need to find out if he was really acting under orders of al Qaeda and what other plans they might have. This highlights a security problem I have long feared–we are vulnerable to the weakest link in screening anywhere in the world as once someone gets past security at one airport they can travel internationally with far less scrutiny.

This is a time for reasoned evaluation of our security systems, not to attempt to instill further panic for political gain as Hoekstra has. Hoekstra is the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee and is a candidate for the 2010 Republican nomination for Governor. Presumably he thinks that he improves his prospect among Republicans by making cheap political points such as this:

“It’s not surprising,” U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Holland Republican, said of the alleged terrorist attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit. A Nigerian who authorities said had told them he was ordered by al-Qaida to detonate an explosive was in custody. Reports linked the explosives to Yemen.

“People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration,” said Hoekstra.

Such conduct is hardly new from Hoekstra. He has previously made discredited claims of finding WMD in Iraq. After having written an op-ed condemning others for divulging military secrets, he himself was found to have divulged secrets on Twitter. He previously resorted to scare tactics which have been criticized by several former national security officials when there was talk of moving prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to a maximum security prison in Michigan.

Besides commenting before we have much information and unnecessarily spreading fear, Hoekstra’s message makes little sense in trying to blame a Democratic administration. It was the Republican Congress which blocked attempts to fight al Qaeda under Bill Clinton. Other Democrats such as John Kerry were warning about the threat of terrorism well before 9/11.

The Clinton administration even left the Bush administration warnings about al Qaeda. The Bush administration not only ignored these warnings but lied about receiving them. Then there was that CIA briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” just before the attack which George Bush ignored. As Al Gore discussed in The Assault on Reason, paying attention to this warning should have led to a review of the State Department/INS watch list which already contained the names of many of the 9/11 terrorists. Others could have also been identified before the attack as they were using the same addresses or frequent flier numbers. In 2006 Keith Olbermann also reviewed the many warnings which were ignored. Barack Obama has spoken out several times about the need to respond to terrorism including his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars back in 2007.

Playing politics with terrorism has also been commonplace from Republicans. After 9/11 we had a time of national unity when people of both parties were willing to support George Bush in taking reasonable action to respond. Instead the Republicans took advantage of 9/11 both for partisan gain and to push through their pre-9/11 agenda, including attacking Iraq, which has only acted to weaken the country and increase the risk of terrorist attacks.

There are many people in Michigan, including myself, who have family members who will be returning home from vacations on international flights through Detroit.I hope that rather than helping him politically, many more Michigan voters are repulsed by Peter Hoekstra’s irresponsible attempts to spread fear and seek personal political gain at a time when we need a serious review of the problem. Pete Hoekstra has demonstrated yet again that he is not fit to be Governor.

Posted in Al Gore, Bill Clinton, George Bush, John Kerry, Michigan News, Republicans, Terrorism. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . No Comments »

Obama Accepts Nobel Peace Prize

December 10, 2009 — Ron Chusid

articleLarge

Barack Obama has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

The full text of his acceptance speech is under the fold.

(more…)

Posted in Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . No Comments »

Nuclear Engineer at Cern Lab Arrested For Ties to Al Qaeda

October 9, 2009 — Ron Chusid

An al Qaeda attack might have been prevented in Europe. The Times of London reports:

Fears that al-Qaeda is planning an attack on the nuclear industry in Europe were renewed yesterday after French secret agents arrested a physicist working at an atomic research centre.

The 32-year-old man, who was detained with his brother, 25, is suspected of providing a list of terrorist targets to North African Islamic radicals. He worked for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, according to French police sources.

Agents were said to have intercepted messages in which the physicist, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, had suggested targets in France.

He is believed to have been in contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian-based terror organisation that joined Osama bin Laden’s network in 2007.

“He had expressed a wish or a desire to commit terrorist actions but had not materially prepared them,” an intelligence source said.

After he was identified, during an investigation into a French network that had sent Islamic radicals to Afghanistan, the man was put under surveillance for about 18 months. Last month Judge Christophe Teissier, an investigating magistrate specialising in terrorism, opened a formal inquiry into his activities.

The brothers apparently came to the attention of the secret services when agents monitored the internet as part of the inquiry into the recruitment of extremists to fight in Afghanistan. Several exchanges were recorded between the brothers and suspected al-Qaeda contacts.

As has generally been the case, terrorism was successfully fought with conventional gathering of intelligence and police work. During the Bush years, those who stressed the importance of such efforts were often attacked by the Bush administration and the right wing.

The pair were arrested by the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (DCRI) at their home in Vienne, eastern France. Police seized two computers, three hard discs and two USB keys.

The men were taken for questioning at the directorate’s headquarters in Levallois-Perret, outside Paris. “Perhaps we have avoided the worst possible scenario,” Brice Hortefeux, the French Interior Minister, said. “We are in a situation of permanent vigilance and we follow the declarations of the leaders of certain organisations day by day. Our vigilance is never lowered. The risk is permanent.”

CERN, the leading European laboratory for the study of sub-atomic physics, said that the suspect had never been in contact with any elements that could be used for terrorist purposes.

There is  no report of water boarding or other forms of torture being required in this case.

Posted in Terrorism. Tags: , , , . 4 Comments »

Terrorist Plot Stopped (Without Waterboarding)

September 25, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Many Republicans, who are unable to distinguish between an episode of 24 and reality, have been predicting that Obama’s policies would lead to another terrorist attack. They not only fail to understand that torture is a poor way to stop terrorism but also believe that it is necessary.  What could have been a significant terrorist threat has been stopped by using conventional law enforcement and intelligence:

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, senior government officials have announced dozens of terrorism cases that on closer examination seemed to diminish as legitimate threats. The accumulating evidence against a Denver airport shuttle driver suggests he may be different, with some investigators calling his case the most serious in years.

Documents filed in Brooklyn against the driver, Najibullah Zazi, contend he bought chemicals needed to build a bomb — hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid — and in doing so, Mr. Zazi took a critical step made by few other terrorism suspects…

If government allegations are to be believed, Mr. Zazi, a legal immigrant from Afghanistan, had carefully prepared for a terrorist attack. He attended a Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, received training in explosives and stored in his laptop computer nine pages of instructions for making bombs from the same kind of chemicals he had bought.

While many important facts remain unknown, those allegations alone would distinguish Mr. Zazi from nearly all the other defendants in United States terrorism cases in recent years. More often than not the earlier suspects emerged as angry young men, inflamed by the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden or his associates. Some were serious in intent. More than a few seemed to be malcontents without the organization, technical skills and financing to be much of a threat. In some cases, the subjects appeared to be influenced by informants or undercover agents who pledged to provide the weapons or even do some of the planning.

In two cases unrelated to Mr. Zazi in which charges were announced on Thursday, in fact, the subjects dealt extensively with undercover agents.

The Zazi case “actually looks like the case the government kept claiming it had but never did,” said Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University law school.

It is far to early to tell what their overall record will be, but so far the government has been successful in stopping terrorism under Obama. We know what Bush’s record was at this point in his administration. The United States suffered the attacks of 9/11, with George Bush having ignored warnings from both the Clinton administration and his own intelligence agencies. Besides demonstrating extreme incompetence in ignoring the warnings, the Bush administration proceeded to play partisan politics with national security. If we really want to look at the track records of the two parties, not only does Obama have a better record than Bush, but so did Clinton, who was successful in stopping the planned millennium terrorist plots.

Posted in Barack Obama, George Bush, Terrorism. Tags: , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Mixed Assessment On Preventive Detention

September 24, 2009 — Ron Chusid

The Obama administration has announced it will use current law to justify the indefinite detention of about 50 terrorism suspects being held without charges as opposed to seeking a new law.  Putting this in perspective, Glenn Greenwald calls this an incremental, perhaps only cosmetic, improvement. He does find some positives in this:

Regardless of what motivated this, and no matter how bad the current detention scheme is, this development is very positive, and should be considered a victory for those who spent the last four months loudly protesting Obama’s proposal.  Here’s why:

A new preventive detention law would have permanently institutionalized that power, almost certainly applying not only to the “war on Terror” but all future conflicts.  It would have endowed preventive detention with the legitimizing force of explicit statutory authority, which it currently lacks.  It would have caused preventive detention to ascend to the cherished status of official bipartisan consensus — and thus, for all practical purposes, been placed off limits from meaningful debate — as not only the Bush administration and the GOP Congress, but also Obama and the Democratic Congress, would have formally embraced it.  It would have created new and far more permissive standards for when an individual could be detained without charges and without trials.  And it would have forced Constitutional challenges to begin from scratch, ensuring that current detainees would suffer years and years more imprisonment with no due process.

Beyond that, as a purely practical matter, nothing good — and plenty of bad — could come from having Congress write a new detention law.  As bad as the Obama administration is on detention issues, the Congress is far worse.  Any time the words “Terrorism” or “Al Qaeda” are uttered, they leap to the most extreme and authoritarian measures.  Congress is intended to be a check on presidential powers, but each time Terrorism is the issue, the ironic opposite occurs:  when the Obama administration and Congress are at odds, it is Congress demanding greater powers of executive detention (as happened when Congress blocked Obama from transferring Guantanamo detainees to the U.S.).  Any process that lets Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein anywhere near presidential detention powers is one that is to be avoided at all costs.  Whatever else is true, anyone who believes in the Far Left doctrines known as the Constitution, due process and what Thomas Jefferson called “the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution” (i.e., jury trials) should consider it a very good thing that the Congress is not going to write a new law authorizing presidential preventive detentions.  However bad things are now, that would have made everything much worse.

This assessment comes a day after Greenwald called yesterday’s announced changes to the state secrets policy a “farce.”

Posted in Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Terrorism. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Obama on Anniversary of 9/11 Attack: “Every year on this day, we are all New Yorkers”

September 11, 2009 — Ron Chusid

US-POLTICS-OBAMA-HEALTH

Barack Obama on 9/11:

Eight years ago, on an ordinary Tuesday morning, nearly 3,000 lives were lost in the deadliest attack on American soil in our history.

It was an event that forever changed the life of this city. And it was a tragedy that will be forever seared in the consciousness of our nation.

Every year on this day, we are all New Yorkers.

We pause to remember the victims, to grieve with the families and friends of those who died, and to honor the heroes of that day and each day since who have sacrificed to save lives and serve their country.

We will never forget the images of planes vanishing into buildings; of billowing smoke rolling down the streets of Manhattan; of photos hung by the families of the missing.

We will never forget the rage and aching sadness we felt.

And we will never forget the feeling that we had lost something else: a sense of safety as we went about our daily lives.

The memory of those images and that vulnerability reminds us of the real and present danger posed by violent extremists who would use terrorism against Americans at home and around the world.

As President, my greatest responsibility is the security of the American people. It is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning. It’s the last thing I think about when I go to sleep at night.

That responsibility is the heart of the policies my administration has put in place.

The full text is posted here by The New York Daily News

Posted in Barack Obama. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »
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