PLEASE VOTE FOR BERNIE!!!!!
Happy Friday, Dot Calm Readers
and fellow Truth Crusaders!
So much going on...!
I have been mourning the terrorist attacks in Brussels...there are no words.
I have been frustrated with corporate media for sweeping Bernie under the rug in favor of Money Boo Boo and Rafael Bruised Cruz.
And I have been munching endless bowls of popcorn watching the monsters that Fux Noise created devour each other and their own.
I've also been super-busy with my day job. The last conversation I had with Dot Calm was to tell her I'd gotten that new job...she was so pleased, so proud for me. If you have to have a last conversation with someone, that was the one to have. And I am grateful indeed to have had that last conversation with such a special, beautiful, caring Lady--many people leave this world without getting to acknowledge their loved ones or vice versa. So I count that a blessing.
However, the workload at the day job has definitely taken a chunk out of my time for blogging. So, today, I'm featuring Conservative Clown Car--they were very pithy today--plus a piece or two from my travels on teh Intert00bs.
Be sure to take care of yourself and your loved ones!
Also, don't forget to read Dot Calm's shadow's favorite independent sources of news and information:
Daily Kos
AlterNet
Democracy Now!
Conservatives are Destroying our Future
Conservative Clown Car
Americans Against the Republican Party
Americans Against the Tea Party
Mrs. Betty Bowers
God, the Good Lord Above
...And, whatever you do,
VOTE BERNIE!!!!!
If at all possible, send him a buck o' five.
In other words, the fat lady ain't even warmed up to sing yet!
With that, here's todaze outrage (ugh).
Try to have a hoppy Easter just the same! (Isn't that when Jesus sees his own shadow, forecasting six more weeks of winter?)
- Dot Calm's shadow
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Je suis Brussels
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Rafael "Ted" Cruz had HOW MANY extramarital affairs?!??
This week, the National Enquirer published a story claiming Ted Cruz may have been involved in as many as five extramarital affairs. But the general allegations are nothing new. People have been talking publicly about, well, something involving Cruz for weeks.
The conjecture so far has been just that—speculation in the absence of receipts. Still, people have repeatedly pointed to Katrina Pierson, a former Cruz aide and one of the women whose blurred-out photo appeared in theNational Enquirer story.
On Twitter, conservatives have been discussing the scandal, in vague (and sometimes less-vague) terms since March, using the hashtag #thething, which seems to have originated, or at least gained popularity, around March 11, with the Stop Trump Super PAC twitter account and GOP strategist Rick Wilson. (Given that many tweets on the subject have since been deleted, it’s difficult to track down the actual origin of the term.)
Those tweets, at least initially, suggested the existence of some sort of video.
See the original article for the tweets. - Dot Calm's shadow
The only things about “The Thing” that people seem sure about are that 1) it involves former Cruz staffer and current Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, and 2) the media’s been sitting on it. (“I hate getting scooped,” Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari tweeted early this morning after the Enquirer story dropped.)
Pierson, for her part, weighed in on being involved in “The Thing” earlier this month, writing that “political hacks...couldn’t even come up w/a plausible scandal, the absurdity is obvious.”
Today, she denied the allegations made by the National Enquirer, saying: “Of course the National Enquirer story is 100% FALSE!!!” She also said: “I only speak for myself, however.”
Personally, I find the story of Rafael boinking anyone other than poor Heidi (poor dear) difficult to believe. On the one hand, it makes sense that he did phuque around outside of his marriage--otherwise, he would never be such a sanctimonious prick. And extra-marital boinking goes hand in hand with all of the phuqueage he does wherever and whenever he can politically and otherwise. But where the story lacks credibility is WHO THE PHUQUE would boink THAT ugly mug?!??!?? Not even a brown paper bag over his head could make him palatable to any woman with half an iota of taste or self respect. And even if she could get past his, er, looks (eww!!!), how would she put up with that awful nasal screechy voice of his?!?? YUCK!!!!!
- Dot Calm's shadow
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If you think education is expensive,
try ignorance!
try ignorance!
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How, er, "presidential" of them!
Rafael "Bruised" Cruz looks better
with the clown nose!
with the clown nose!
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73% of female voters view Trump unfavorably.
Could it be because he's always
treated women like objects?
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RightWingWatch: Glenn Beck thinks Rafael "Ted" Cruz is divinely anointed and has been "raised from birth" to save America
Save America?
As in, save us from the Republican Party by destroying it from the inside?
Could be, rabbit...could be!
Better safe than sorry: be sure to put on your tinfoil hat before reading this article and viewing the video!
Oh, and pardon the formatting--I tried to make it readable, but Blogger had other ideaRs.
- Dot Calm's shadow
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 3/25/2016 2:58 pm - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/glenn-beck-ted-cruz-divinely-anointed-and-has-been-raised-birth-save-nation#sthash.jxFu7Asi.dpuf
Glenn Beck dedicated an entire segment of his radio program today to responding to a Breitbart article criticizing him for telling Mormons while campaigning for Ted Cruz in Utah recently that they must rise up and save this nation because evangelical Christians in the South "are not listening to their God."
Beck took issue with a comment from Baylor professor Thomas Kidd, who said that while "there are many reasons why devout Christians should hesitate to vote for Donald Trump ... God has not revealed Ted Cruz as the divinely anointed alternative."
God has, in fact, revealed Cruz to be His divinely anointed choice, Beck insisted.
"To you, Dr. Kidd. To you," Beck responded. "To you God hasn’t revealed Cruz as divinely anointed. I understand that. And I respect your opinion on it. But here’s mine: I have seen this man’s life. I have watched this man. I have prayed about this man. I have prayed about it by myself, out loud, in quiet, with my family, with my staff, and I happen to believe that Ted Cruz actually was anointed for this time. Would there not be someone that was in the pool that might have the right qualifications for God? Is He that disinterested in all of us? Or is it perhaps possible that just like in the Bible, people were raised from birth for a specific time? Are we that inconsequential, Dr. Kidd? Are we really not that important enough for Him to raise someone up, at this critical juncture?"
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I understand why teh Interwebz
disdained Donald Drumpf
for tweeting vulgarity
about Mrs. Rafael "Ted" (Heidi) Cruz...
as if she doesn't have enough
problems of her own
problems of her own
being married
to the most punchable man on earth.
to the most punchable man on earth.
What I don't understand is why
Rafael "Ted" Cruz totally got a pass
for tweeting vulgarity
about Mrs. Donald (Melania) Drumpf.
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Conservative Clown Car says, "Alabama Governor Robert Bentley ran as a family-values Republican. He just wasn’t real clear about whose family he meant.
Do as I say, etc..."
From Crooks and Liars:
Republican Alabama Governor Robert Bentley "did not have sex with that woman"...
Family Values With Someone Else’s Family
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley ran as a family-values Republican. He just wasn’t real clear about whose family he meant.
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley admitted Wednesday he made “inappropriate” comments to his chief advisor two years ago but denied he had an affair with her.Bentley said there was no “sexual activity” between him and Rebekah Caldwell Mason, 43, a longtime staffer, influential consultant and former Miss Alabama contender.
I dunno. Rachel Maddow played the tapes (above) and they were rather explicit about touching Ms. Mason’s ta-tas and patootie.
“You know what? When I stand behind you and I put my arms around you, and I put my hands on your breasts, and I put my hands on you (unintelligible) and pull you real close…Hey, I love that too, putting my hands under you.”
He’s a Baptist deacon in his spare time.
- Dot Calm's shadow
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A Trump supporter
derailed a CNN segment
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Demand open carry at the Republican National convention! Because 2nd amendment, duh! Oh, and because Republicans are fighting tooth and nail NOT to have open carry at their convention! Could it be that Republicans don't want to be shot by the crazies they insist be able to buy guns? Nah...!
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Neo-Nazi Trump supporter
wearing Chinese-made ball-cap
calls for
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Every now and then, a journalist does his or her job. This was one of those rare but wonderful cases. By comparison to the rest of corporate media, Hallie Jackson deserves a Pulitzer! - Dot Calm's shadow
Cruz’s Attempt To Act Tough Hilariously Backfires When Reporter Asks Him Brutal Follow-Up (VIDEO)
Poor, poor Ted Cruz. He just can’t catch a break.
Having endured repeated attacks on his wife by Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Cruz practiced his best “tough guy” face in the mirror, found the nearest camera and told Trump: “Donald, you’re a sniveling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone.” And it almost would have worked if it weren’t for a meddling NBC reporter who pointed out the massive elephant in the room.
Without missing a beat, NBC’s Hallie Jackson stepped up to ask the one question Cruz didn’t want to hear: Are you more loyal to the Republican Party… or your wife? His flailing response speaks volumes.
A clearly unimpressed Jackson asks Cruz to explicitly say whether or not he would support Donald Trump as president if he got the nomination. Cruz was left temporarily speechless, before weakly saying the question was irrelevant because Trump was going to lose. Jackson didn’t let up:
Jackson: That’s not answering the question, Senator.Cruz: I am answering the question. Donald Trump will not be the nominee.Jackson: He’s leading right now and you just looked into that camera and said he was a coward. Will you support him as the nominee?Cruz: Donald Trump will not be the nominee
What makes Jackson’s questions so brutal is that for Cruz, he’s always struggled to distance himself from Trump while at the same time copying many of his ideas. And like many Republicans, Cruz has repeatedly said he would support the eventual nominee whoever it was, even as he publicly attacked Trump. Just earlier this month, Cruz was still adamant that party loyalty meant everything.
“My answer is the same. I committed at the outset. I will support the Republican nominee, whoever it is,” Cruz said.
Making things even more awkward, Cruz and Trump spent the early part of the election praising each other. Cruz would live to regret tweets like this one.
In the end, with Trump’s sizable lead in the primaries, Cruz will need to decide what he will do if Trump wins. As he calls Trump a “sniveling coward” on camera, he may soon be faced with having to grovel at Trump’s feet (just as his former fellow candidates Chris Christie and Ben Carson have already done). No doubt when that happens, Cruz is going to wish he never met Hallie Jackson.
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Miss Lindsey Graham says
that choosing between Trump and Cruz
is like choosing between
being shot or poisoned.
I couldn't agree more!
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Those damn occupiers! Just look at what a mess those brokeback boys made! They need to rot in jail 'til they've paid off every penny of the damage they wreaked! - Dot Calm's shadow
from KOIN Channel 6:
First look: How the occupiers left Malheur Refuge
The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge ended February 11
Andrew Dymburt and KOIN 6 News StaffPublished: Updated:
BURNS, Ore. (KOIN) — For the first time since the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge ended onFebruary 11, the media was allowed into the area to see the remnants of the occupiers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provided a tour for media and released photos of the way the occupiers left the refuge.
See the original article for slide show and photos--the Brokeback Rube snack-Attack Toddlers (aka BRATs) trashed the place. They stole what they could get their hands on, destroyed valuable, ancient archaeological items, broke into safes, and trashed whatever they couldn't steal. Pigs. Oh, sorry--I really shouldn't call them "pigs." That would be an insult to pigs.- Dot Calm's shadow
“It’s a little unsettling… when we come in every day we’re trying to take care of the land and build it up for wildlife,” wildlife biologist Linda Beck told KOIN 6 News. “I mean, you saw pictures of how much trash was here.”
The final cost of the cleanup is not fully known, even by officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. However, officials said the cost to taxpayers so far has been about $6.5 million.
Part of the cleanup process will involve the remediation of delicate, ancient archaeological items. Some were very damaged, officials said.
Safes were broken into at the refuge. Money, cameras and computers are missing and officials said that is just the beginning of the inventory.
Members of the media on tour were advised to watch their step in certain spots. After some pipes burst, officials said, militia members defecated “everywhere.”
Some of the very ranchers the occupiers claimed to represent said they didn’t want any of this.
“As far as I’m concerned it was a slap in our face for all the years that we’ve put in working, together,” rancher Andy Dunbar said.
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THIS is why it is SO IMPORTANT
to fight for everyone's rights
--not just your own--
because, once you let them get away
with stealing someone else's rights,
it's only a matter of time
before they come after YOURS!
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My Tea Party Christian friend thinks that Muslim extremists hate us because of our freedumbs. He has imbibed the Fux Noise Kool-Aid and turned off his critical thinking to the point that it doesn't even occur to him that maybe, just maybe, they hate us because of what we've done to them. Like sending in our military to rape and kill them and letting our government support the regimes that oppress them. - Dot Calm's shadow
William Blum
Myth and Denial in the War Against Terrorism: Just why do terrorists terrorize?
It dies hard. It dies very hard. The notion that terrorist acts
against the United States can be explained by envy and irrational
hatred, and not by what the United States does to the world – i.e., US
foreign policy – is alive and well.
The fires were still burning intensely at Ground Zero when Colin Powell declared: “Once again, we see terrorism, we see terrorists, people who don’t believe in democracy …”
George W. picked up on that theme and ran with it. He’s been its leading proponent ever since September 11 with his repeated insistence, in one wording or another, that terrorists are people who hate America and all that it stands for, its democracy, its freedom, its wealth, its secular government.” (Ironically, the president and Attorney General John Ashcroft probably hate our secular government as much as anyone.)
Here he is more than a year after September 11: “The threats we face are global terrorist attacks.
That’s the threat. And the more you love freedom, the more likely it is you’ll be attacked.”
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative watchdog group founded by Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice-president, announced in November 2001 the formation of the Defense of Civilization Fund, declaring that “It was not only America that was attacked on September 11, but civilization. We were attacked not for our vices, but for our virtues.”
In September 2002, the White House released the “National Security Strategy”, purported to be chiefly the handiwork of Condoleezza Rice, which speaks of the “rogue states” which “sponsor terrorism around the globe; and reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands.”
In July of the following year, we could hear the spokesman for Homeland Security, Brian Roehrkasse, declare: “Terrorists hate our freedoms. They want to change our ways.”
Thomas Friedman the renowned foreign policy analyst of the New York Times would say amen.
Terrorists, he wrote in 1998 after two US embassies in Africa had been attacked, “have no specific ideological program or demands. Rather, they are driven by a generalized hatred of the US, Israel and other supposed enemies of Islam.”
This idée fixe – that the rise of anti-American terrorism owes nothing to American policies – in effect postulates an America that is always the aggrieved innocent in a treacherous world, a benign United States government peacefully going about its business but being “provoked” into taking extreme measures to defend its people, its freedom and its democracy. There consequently is no good reason to modify US foreign policy, and many people who might otherwise know better are scared into supporting the empire’s wars out of the belief that there’s no choice but to crush without mercy – or even without evidence – this irrational international force out there that hates the United States with an abiding passion.
Thus it was that Afghanistan and Iraq were bombed and invaded with seemingly little concern in Washington that this could well create many new anti-American terrorists. And indeed, since the first strike on Afghanistan in October 2001 there have been literally scores of terrorist attacks against American institutions in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific, more than a dozen in Pakistan alone: military, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States, including the October 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, which destroyed two nightclubs and killed more than 200 people, almost all of them Americans and their Australian and British allies. The following year brought the heavy bombing of the US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations held by the American Embassy.
Even when a terrorist attack is not aimed directly at Americans, the reason the target has been chosen can be because the country it takes place in has been cooperating with the United States in its so-called “War on Terrorism”. Witness the horrendous attacks of recent years in Madrid, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
A US State Department report on worldwide terrorist attacks showed that the year 2003 had more “significant terrorist incidents” than at any time since the department began issuing statistics in 1982; the 2003 figures do not include attacks on US troops by insurgents in Iraq.
Terrorism is fundamentally propaganda, a very bloody form of propaganda.
It follows that if the perpetrators of a terrorist act declare what their objective was, their statement should carry credibility, no matter what one thinks of the objective or the method used to achieve it. Let us look at some of their actual declarations.
The terrorists responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 sent a letter to the New York Times which stated, in part: “We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region.”
Richard Reid, who tried to ignite a bomb in his shoe while aboard an American Airline flight to Miami in December 2001, told police that his planned suicide attack was an attempt to strike a blow against the US campaign in Afghanistan and the Western economy. In an e-mail sent to his mother, which he intended her to read after his death, Reid wrote that it was his duty “to help remove the oppressive American forces from the Muslims land.”
After the bombings in Bali, one of the leading suspects – later convicted – told police that the bombings were “revenge” for “what Americans have done to Muslims.” He said that he wanted to “kill as many Americans as possible” because “America oppresses the Muslims.”
In November 2002, a taped message from Osama bin Laden began: “The road to safety begins by ending the aggression. Reciprocal treatment is part of justice. The [terrorist] incidents that have taken place … are only reactions and reciprocal actions.”
That same month, when Mir Aimal Kasi, who killed several people outside of CIA headquarters in 1993, was on death row, he declared: “What I did was a retaliation against the US government” for American policy in the Middle East and its support of Israel.
It should be noted that the State Department warned at the time that the execution of Kasi could result in attacks against Americans around the world. It did not warn that the attacks would result from foreigners hating or envying American democracy, freedom, wealth, or secular government.
Similarly, in the days following the start of US bombing of Afghanistan there were numerous warnings from US government officials about being prepared for retaliatory acts, and during the war in Iraq, the State Department announced: “Tensions remaining from the recent events in Iraq may increase the potential threat to US citizens and interests abroad, including by terrorist groups.”
Another example of the difficulty the Bush administration has in consistently maintaining its simplistic idée fixe: In June 2002, after a car bomb exploded outside the US Consulate in Karachi, killing or injuring more than 60 people, the Washington Post reported that “US officials said the attack was likely the work of extremists angry at both the United States and Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for siding with the United States after September 11 and abandoning support for Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban.”
George W. and others of his administration may or may not believe what they tell the world about the motivations behind anti-American terrorism, but, as in the examples just given, some officials have questioned the party line for years. A Department of Defense study in 1997 concluded: “Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States.”
Former US president Jimmy Carter told the New York Times in a 1989 interview:
The ensuing retaliatory attack against US Marine barracks in Lebanon took the lives of 241 American military personnel.
The bombardment of Beirut in 1983 and 1984 is but one of many examples of American violence against the Middle East and/or Muslims since the 1980s. The record includes:
It’s not just people in the Middle East who have good reason for hating what the US government does. The United States has created huge numbers of potential terrorists all over Latin America during a half century of American actions far worse than what it’s done in the Middle East. If Latin Americans shared the belief of radical Muslims that they will go directly to paradise for martyring themselves in the act of killing the great Satan enemy, by now we might have had decades of repeated terrorist horror coming from south of the border.
As it is, there have been many non-suicidal terrorist attacks against Americans and their buildings in Latin America over the years.
To what extent do Americans really believe the official disconnect between what the US does in the world and anti-American terrorism? One indication that the public is somewhat skeptical came in the days immediately following the commencement of the bombing of Iraq on March 20 of this year. The airlines later announced that there had been a sharp increase in cancellations of flights and a sharp decrease in future flight reservations in those few days.
In June, the Pew Research Center released the results of polling in 20 Muslim countries and the Palestinian territories that brought into question another official thesis, that support for anti-American terrorism goes hand in hand with hatred of American society. The polling revealed that people interviewed had much more “confidence” in Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush. However, “the survey suggested little correlation between support for bin Laden and hostility to American ideas and cultural products. People who expressed a favorable opinion of bin Laden were just as likely to appreciate American technology and cultural products as people opposed to bin Laden. Pro- and anti-bin Laden respondents also differed little in their views on the workability of Western-style democracy in the Arab world.”
With such language do American officials avoid dealing with the idea that any part of the resistance is composed of Iraqi citizens who are simply demonstrating their resentment about being bombed, invaded, occupied, and subjected to daily humiliations.
Some officials convinced themselves that it was largely the most loyal followers of Saddam Hussein and his two sons who were behind the daily attacks on Americans, and that with the capture or killing of the evil family, resistance would die out; tens of millions of dollars were offered as reward for information leading to this joyful prospect. Thus it was that the killing of the sons elated military personnel. US Army trucks with loudspeakers drove through small towns and villages to broadcast a message about the death of Hussein’s sons. “Coalition forces have won a great victory over the Baath Party and the Saddam Hussein regime by killing Uday and Qusay Hussein in Mosul,” said the message broadcast in Arabic. “The Baath Party has no power in Iraq. Renounce the Baath Party or you are in great danger.” It called on all officials of Hussein’s government to turn themselves in.
What followed was several days of some of the deadliest attacks against American personnel since the guerrilla war began. Unfazed, American officials in Washington and Iraq continue to suggest that the elimination of Saddam will write finis to anti-American actions.
Another way in which the political origins of terrorism are obscured is by the common practice of blaming poverty or repression by Middle Eastern governments (as opposed to US support for such governments) for the creation of terrorists. Defenders of US foreign policy cite this also as a way of showing how enlightened they are. Here’s Condoleezza Rice:
In light of the several instances mentioned above, among others which could be cited, of US officials giving the game away, in effect admitting that terrorists and guerrillas may be, or in fact are, reacting to actual hurts and injustices, it may be that George W. is the only true believer among them, if in fact he is one. The thought may visit leaders of the American Empire, at least occasionally, that all their expressed justifications for invading Iraq and Afghanistan and for their “War on Terrorism” are no more than fairy tales for young children and grown-up innocents. But officialdom doesn’t make statements to represent reality. It constructs stories to legitimize the pursuit of interests. And the interests here are irresistibly compelling: creating the most powerful empire in all history, enriching their class comrades, remaking the world in their own ideological image.
Being the target of terrorism is just one of the prices you pay for such prizes, and terrorist attacks provide a great excuse for the next intervention, the next expansion of the empire, the next expansion of the military budget.
A while ago, I heard a union person on the radio proposing what he called “a radical solution to poverty – pay people enough to live on.”
Well, I’d like to propose a radical solution to anti-American terrorism – stop giving terrorists the motivation to attack America. As long as the imperial mafia insist that anti-American terrorists have no good or rational reason for retaliation against the United States for anything the US has ever done to their countries, as long as US foreign policy continues with its bloody and oppressive interventions, the “War on Terrorism” is as doomed to failure as the war on drugs has been.
If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days.
Permanently. I would first apologize – very publicly and very sincerely – to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce to every corner of the world that America’s global military interventions have come to an end. I would then inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -ññ oddly enough -ññ a foreign country. Then I would reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings, invasions and sanctions. There would be more than enough money. One year’s military budget in the United States is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That’s one year.
That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.
The question once again arises: Why was Mohammed planning on denouncing US policies in the Middle East? Why wasn’t he instead planning to denounce America’s democracy, freedom, wealth and secular government?
Two days later, Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia beheaded an employee of the leading US defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, maker of the Apache helicopter, on which the victim, Paul Johnson, Jr. had long worked. His kidnappers said he was singled out for that reason. “The infidel got his fair treatment. … Let him taste something of what Muslims have long tasted from Apache helicopter fire and missiles.”
Also in 2002, it was reported that:
The fires were still burning intensely at Ground Zero when Colin Powell declared: “Once again, we see terrorism, we see terrorists, people who don’t believe in democracy …”
George W. picked up on that theme and ran with it. He’s been its leading proponent ever since September 11 with his repeated insistence, in one wording or another, that terrorists are people who hate America and all that it stands for, its democracy, its freedom, its wealth, its secular government.” (Ironically, the president and Attorney General John Ashcroft probably hate our secular government as much as anyone.)
Here he is more than a year after September 11: “The threats we face are global terrorist attacks.
That’s the threat. And the more you love freedom, the more likely it is you’ll be attacked.”
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative watchdog group founded by Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice-president, announced in November 2001 the formation of the Defense of Civilization Fund, declaring that “It was not only America that was attacked on September 11, but civilization. We were attacked not for our vices, but for our virtues.”
In September 2002, the White House released the “National Security Strategy”, purported to be chiefly the handiwork of Condoleezza Rice, which speaks of the “rogue states” which “sponsor terrorism around the globe; and reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands.”
In July of the following year, we could hear the spokesman for Homeland Security, Brian Roehrkasse, declare: “Terrorists hate our freedoms. They want to change our ways.”
Thomas Friedman the renowned foreign policy analyst of the New York Times would say amen.
Terrorists, he wrote in 1998 after two US embassies in Africa had been attacked, “have no specific ideological program or demands. Rather, they are driven by a generalized hatred of the US, Israel and other supposed enemies of Islam.”
This idée fixe – that the rise of anti-American terrorism owes nothing to American policies – in effect postulates an America that is always the aggrieved innocent in a treacherous world, a benign United States government peacefully going about its business but being “provoked” into taking extreme measures to defend its people, its freedom and its democracy. There consequently is no good reason to modify US foreign policy, and many people who might otherwise know better are scared into supporting the empire’s wars out of the belief that there’s no choice but to crush without mercy – or even without evidence – this irrational international force out there that hates the United States with an abiding passion.
Thus it was that Afghanistan and Iraq were bombed and invaded with seemingly little concern in Washington that this could well create many new anti-American terrorists. And indeed, since the first strike on Afghanistan in October 2001 there have been literally scores of terrorist attacks against American institutions in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific, more than a dozen in Pakistan alone: military, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States, including the October 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, which destroyed two nightclubs and killed more than 200 people, almost all of them Americans and their Australian and British allies. The following year brought the heavy bombing of the US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations held by the American Embassy.
Even when a terrorist attack is not aimed directly at Americans, the reason the target has been chosen can be because the country it takes place in has been cooperating with the United States in its so-called “War on Terrorism”. Witness the horrendous attacks of recent years in Madrid, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
A US State Department report on worldwide terrorist attacks showed that the year 2003 had more “significant terrorist incidents” than at any time since the department began issuing statistics in 1982; the 2003 figures do not include attacks on US troops by insurgents in Iraq.
Terrorists in their own words
The word “terrorism” has been so overused in recent years that it’s now commonly used simply to stigmatize any individual or group one doesn’t like, for almost any kind of behavior involving force. But the word’s raison d’être has traditionally been to convey a political meaning, something along the lines of: the deliberate use of violence against civilians and property to intimidate or coerce a government or the population in furtherance of a political objective.Terrorism is fundamentally propaganda, a very bloody form of propaganda.
It follows that if the perpetrators of a terrorist act declare what their objective was, their statement should carry credibility, no matter what one thinks of the objective or the method used to achieve it. Let us look at some of their actual declarations.
The terrorists responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 sent a letter to the New York Times which stated, in part: “We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region.”
Richard Reid, who tried to ignite a bomb in his shoe while aboard an American Airline flight to Miami in December 2001, told police that his planned suicide attack was an attempt to strike a blow against the US campaign in Afghanistan and the Western economy. In an e-mail sent to his mother, which he intended her to read after his death, Reid wrote that it was his duty “to help remove the oppressive American forces from the Muslims land.”
After the bombings in Bali, one of the leading suspects – later convicted – told police that the bombings were “revenge” for “what Americans have done to Muslims.” He said that he wanted to “kill as many Americans as possible” because “America oppresses the Muslims.”
In November 2002, a taped message from Osama bin Laden began: “The road to safety begins by ending the aggression. Reciprocal treatment is part of justice. The [terrorist] incidents that have taken place … are only reactions and reciprocal actions.”
That same month, when Mir Aimal Kasi, who killed several people outside of CIA headquarters in 1993, was on death row, he declared: “What I did was a retaliation against the US government” for American policy in the Middle East and its support of Israel.
It should be noted that the State Department warned at the time that the execution of Kasi could result in attacks against Americans around the world. It did not warn that the attacks would result from foreigners hating or envying American democracy, freedom, wealth, or secular government.
Similarly, in the days following the start of US bombing of Afghanistan there were numerous warnings from US government officials about being prepared for retaliatory acts, and during the war in Iraq, the State Department announced: “Tensions remaining from the recent events in Iraq may increase the potential threat to US citizens and interests abroad, including by terrorist groups.”
Another example of the difficulty the Bush administration has in consistently maintaining its simplistic idée fixe: In June 2002, after a car bomb exploded outside the US Consulate in Karachi, killing or injuring more than 60 people, the Washington Post reported that “US officials said the attack was likely the work of extremists angry at both the United States and Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for siding with the United States after September 11 and abandoning support for Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban.”
George W. and others of his administration may or may not believe what they tell the world about the motivations behind anti-American terrorism, but, as in the examples just given, some officials have questioned the party line for years. A Department of Defense study in 1997 concluded: “Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States.”
Former US president Jimmy Carter told the New York Times in a 1989 interview:
We sent Marines into Lebanon and you only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many people for the United States because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers – women and children and farmers and housewives – in those villages around Beirut. … As a result of that … we became kind of a Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful. That is what precipitated the taking of our hostages and that is what has precipitated some of the terrorist attacks.Colin Powell has also revealed that he knows better. Writing of this same 1983 Lebanon debacle in his memoir, he forgoes clichŽs about terrorists hating democracy: “The U.S.S. New Jersey started hurling 16-inch shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style, as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll prior to an invasion. What we tend to overlook in such situations is that other people will react much as we would.”
The ensuing retaliatory attack against US Marine barracks in Lebanon took the lives of 241 American military personnel.
The bombardment of Beirut in 1983 and 1984 is but one of many examples of American violence against the Middle East and/or Muslims since the 1980s. The record includes:
- the shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981
- the bombing of Libya in 1986
- the bombing and sinking of an Iranian ship in 1987
- the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988
- the shooting down of two more Libyan planes in 1989
- the massive bombing of the Iraqi people in 1991
- the continuing bombings and sanctions against Iraq for the next 12 years
- the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998
- the habitual support of Israel despite the routine devastation and torture it inflicts upon the Palestinian people
- the habitual condemnation of Palestinian resistance to this
- the abduction of “suspected terrorists” from Muslim countries, such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Albania, who are then taken to places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where they are tortured
- the large military and hi-tech presence in Islam’s holiest land, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region
- the support of undemocratic, authoritarian Middle East governments from the Shah of Iran to the Saudis.
It’s not just people in the Middle East who have good reason for hating what the US government does. The United States has created huge numbers of potential terrorists all over Latin America during a half century of American actions far worse than what it’s done in the Middle East. If Latin Americans shared the belief of radical Muslims that they will go directly to paradise for martyring themselves in the act of killing the great Satan enemy, by now we might have had decades of repeated terrorist horror coming from south of the border.
As it is, there have been many non-suicidal terrorist attacks against Americans and their buildings in Latin America over the years.
To what extent do Americans really believe the official disconnect between what the US does in the world and anti-American terrorism? One indication that the public is somewhat skeptical came in the days immediately following the commencement of the bombing of Iraq on March 20 of this year. The airlines later announced that there had been a sharp increase in cancellations of flights and a sharp decrease in future flight reservations in those few days.
In June, the Pew Research Center released the results of polling in 20 Muslim countries and the Palestinian territories that brought into question another official thesis, that support for anti-American terrorism goes hand in hand with hatred of American society. The polling revealed that people interviewed had much more “confidence” in Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush. However, “the survey suggested little correlation between support for bin Laden and hostility to American ideas and cultural products. People who expressed a favorable opinion of bin Laden were just as likely to appreciate American technology and cultural products as people opposed to bin Laden. Pro- and anti-bin Laden respondents also differed little in their views on the workability of Western-style democracy in the Arab world.”
The Iraqi resistance
The official Washington mentality about the motivations of individuals they call terrorists is also manifested in current US occupation policy in Iraq. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld has declared that there are five groups opposing US forces – looters, criminals, remnants of Saddam Hussein’s government, foreign terrorists and those influenced by Iran. An American official in Iraq maintains that many of the people shooting at US troops are “poor young Iraqis” who have been paid between $20 and $100 to stage hit-and-run attacks on US soldiers. “They’re not dedicated fighters,” he said. “They’re people who wanted to take a few potshots.”With such language do American officials avoid dealing with the idea that any part of the resistance is composed of Iraqi citizens who are simply demonstrating their resentment about being bombed, invaded, occupied, and subjected to daily humiliations.
Some officials convinced themselves that it was largely the most loyal followers of Saddam Hussein and his two sons who were behind the daily attacks on Americans, and that with the capture or killing of the evil family, resistance would die out; tens of millions of dollars were offered as reward for information leading to this joyful prospect. Thus it was that the killing of the sons elated military personnel. US Army trucks with loudspeakers drove through small towns and villages to broadcast a message about the death of Hussein’s sons. “Coalition forces have won a great victory over the Baath Party and the Saddam Hussein regime by killing Uday and Qusay Hussein in Mosul,” said the message broadcast in Arabic. “The Baath Party has no power in Iraq. Renounce the Baath Party or you are in great danger.” It called on all officials of Hussein’s government to turn themselves in.
What followed was several days of some of the deadliest attacks against American personnel since the guerrilla war began. Unfazed, American officials in Washington and Iraq continue to suggest that the elimination of Saddam will write finis to anti-American actions.
Another way in which the political origins of terrorism are obscured is by the common practice of blaming poverty or repression by Middle Eastern governments (as opposed to US support for such governments) for the creation of terrorists. Defenders of US foreign policy cite this also as a way of showing how enlightened they are. Here’s Condoleezza Rice:
[The Middle East] is a region where hopelessness provides a fertile ground for ideologies that convince promising youths to aspire not to a university education, a career or family, but to blowing themselves up, taking as many innocent lives with them as possible. We need to address the source of the problem.Many on the left speak in a similar fashion, apparently unconscious of what they’re obfuscating. This analysis confuses terrorism with revolution.
In light of the several instances mentioned above, among others which could be cited, of US officials giving the game away, in effect admitting that terrorists and guerrillas may be, or in fact are, reacting to actual hurts and injustices, it may be that George W. is the only true believer among them, if in fact he is one. The thought may visit leaders of the American Empire, at least occasionally, that all their expressed justifications for invading Iraq and Afghanistan and for their “War on Terrorism” are no more than fairy tales for young children and grown-up innocents. But officialdom doesn’t make statements to represent reality. It constructs stories to legitimize the pursuit of interests. And the interests here are irresistibly compelling: creating the most powerful empire in all history, enriching their class comrades, remaking the world in their own ideological image.
Being the target of terrorism is just one of the prices you pay for such prizes, and terrorist attacks provide a great excuse for the next intervention, the next expansion of the empire, the next expansion of the military budget.
A while ago, I heard a union person on the radio proposing what he called “a radical solution to poverty – pay people enough to live on.”
Well, I’d like to propose a radical solution to anti-American terrorism – stop giving terrorists the motivation to attack America. As long as the imperial mafia insist that anti-American terrorists have no good or rational reason for retaliation against the United States for anything the US has ever done to their countries, as long as US foreign policy continues with its bloody and oppressive interventions, the “War on Terrorism” is as doomed to failure as the war on drugs has been.
If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days.
Permanently. I would first apologize – very publicly and very sincerely – to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce to every corner of the world that America’s global military interventions have come to an end. I would then inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -ññ oddly enough -ññ a foreign country. Then I would reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings, invasions and sanctions. There would be more than enough money. One year’s military budget in the United States is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That’s one year.
That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.
September 11 Commission
On June 16, 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (investigating the events of September 11, 2001), issued a report which stated that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, regarded as the mastermind of the attacks, wanted to personally commandeer one aircraft and use it as a platform to denounce U.S. policies in the Middle East. Instead of crashing it in a suicide attack, the report says, Mohammed planned to kill every adult male passenger on the plane, contact the media while airborne, and land at a U.S. airport. There he would deliver his speech before releasing all the women and children.The question once again arises: Why was Mohammed planning on denouncing US policies in the Middle East? Why wasn’t he instead planning to denounce America’s democracy, freedom, wealth and secular government?
Two days later, Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia beheaded an employee of the leading US defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, maker of the Apache helicopter, on which the victim, Paul Johnson, Jr. had long worked. His kidnappers said he was singled out for that reason. “The infidel got his fair treatment. … Let him taste something of what Muslims have long tasted from Apache helicopter fire and missiles.”
Addendum: Terrorists as mentally retarded
The reluctance to ascribe rational human motivations to militant political opponents is not confined to American leaders. Documents disclosed in 2002 in Spain reveal that during the 1936-39 civil war, the Spanish fascists subjected their leftist prisoners to a battery of physical and psychological tests for the purpose finding some inherent deformity that would explain their bizarre ideology. Unsurprisingly, they concluded that amongst the captured members of the pro-republican International Brigades, almost a third of the British nationals were “mental retards”. Another third were deemed to be suffering degenerative mental illnesses that were turning them into schizoids, paranoids, or psychopaths. Their fall into Marxism was, in turn, exacerbated by the fact that 29% were also considered “social imbeciles.” As The Guardian of London noted:For dictator General Francisco Franco’s chief psychiatrist, Dr. Antonio Vallejo Nagera, it must have seemed obvious. If the generalissimo and his fellow right-wing rebels in the Spanish civil war were crusaders for justice, God, and the truth, then their leftwing opponents had to be mad, psychotic or at least congenitally subnormal.Dr. Vallejo concluded: “Once more we see confirmed that social resentment, frustrated aspirations and envy are the sources of Marxism.
Also in 2002, it was reported that:
In an attempt to divine the terrorist impulse, German officials authorized the removal and study of the brains of four Red Army Faction leaders following their deaths in the 1970s, according to news reports in Germany, but scientists apparently came up with no physiological explanation for the leaders’ political violence.Anything for officials to avoid facing up to social and political realities.
Notes
- Miami Herald, September 12, 2001
- Agence France Presse, November 19, 2002
- The Guardian (London), December 19, 2001, article by Duncan Campbell
- Washington Post, August 1, 2003, p.4
- New York Times, August 22, 1998, p.15
- Washington Post, June 23, 2004
- Jim Dwyer, et al., Two Seconds Under the World (New York, 1994), p.196; see also the statement made in court by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who planned the attack, New York Times, January 9, 1998, p.B4
- Washington Post, October 3, 2002, p.6
- Agence France Press, December 23, 2002; Washington Post, November 9, 2002
- Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2002, p.6
- Associated Press, November 7, 2002
- Ibid.
- Voice of America News, April 21, 2003
- Washington Post, June 15, 2002
- US Department of Defense, Defense Science Board 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DOD Responses to Transnational Threats, October 1997, Final Report, Vol.1, p.31
- New York Times, March 26, 1989, p.16
- Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York, 1995), p.291
- Boston Globe, October 12, 2001, p.28
- Washington Post, March 27, 2003
- Ibid., June 4, 2003, p.18
- Pentagon briefing, June 30, 2003
- Washington Post, June 29, 2003
- Ibid., July 24, 2003, p.7
- Ibid., August 8, 2003
- Ibid., June 17, 2004, p.14
- Associated Press, June 19, 2004
- The Guardian (London), November 1, 2002
- Washington Post, November 19, 2002
This is a chapter from Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire by William Blum.
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Um...happy Easter?
Wouldn't you rather live in reality? I would!
I know I've run this one before, but I couldn't resist running it again!
posted by Dot Calm @ 7:51 PM
