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=> Surprise! Another Christian Terrorist
| Surprise! Another Christian Terrorist |
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- Wednesday, March 25 2015, 2:03:05 (UTC) from 173.13.27.45 - 173-13-27-45-Michigan.hfc.comcastbusiness.net  Network -  Windows NT -   MozillaWebsite: Website title: |
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/24/surprise-another-christian-terrorist.html Anything But That 03.24.15 Surprise! Another Christian Terrorist Did you hear about the man who entered New Orleans’ airport with explosives and a machete? No? Well, you would have if he’d been Muslim. A Muslim American man carrying a duffel bag that holds six homemade explosives, a machete, and poison spray travels to a major U.S. airport. The man enters the airport, approaches the TSA security checkpoint, and then sprays two TSA officers with the poison. He then grabs his machete and chases another TSA officer with it. This Muslim man is then shot and killed by the police. After the incident, a search of the attacker’s car by the police reveals it contained acetylene and oxygen tanks, two substances that, when mixed together, will yield a powerful explosive. If this scenario occurred, there’s zero doubt that this would be called a terrorist attack. Zero. It would make headlines across the country and world, and we would see wall-to-wall cable news coverage for days. And, of course, certain right-wing media outlets, many conservative politicians, and Bill Maher would use this event as another excuse to stoke the flames of hate toward Muslims. Well, last Friday night, this exact event took place at the New Orleans airport—that is, except for one factual difference: The attacker was not Muslim. Consequently, you might be reading about this brazen assault for the first time here, although this incident did receive a smattering of media coverage over the weekend. The man who commited this attack was Richard White, a 63-year-old former Army serviceman who has long been retired and living on Social Security and disability checks. He was reportedly a devout Jehovah’s Witness. Given the facts that a man armed with explosives and weapons traveled to an airport and only attacked federal officers, you would think that the word “terrorism” would at least come up as a possibility, right? But it’s not even mentioned. Instead, law enforcement was quick to chalk this incident up to the attacker’s alleged “mental health issues.” That was pretty amazing police work considering this conclusion came within hours of the attack. There was no mention by police that they had even explored whether White had issues with the federal government stemming from his military service, if there was any evidence he held anti-government views, etc. Perhaps Mr. White truly was mentally ill. Interviews with his neighbors, however, don’t even give us a hint that he had mental problems. Rather they described White as a “meek” and “kind” man who a few had spoken to just days before the incident and everything seemed fine. You would think these neighbors would at least note that White had a history of mental illness if it was so apparent. Now I’m not saying definitively that I believe Mr. White was a terrorist. My point is twofold. One is that if White had been a Muslim, the investigation into his motivation by the media and maybe even the police would have essentially been over once his faith had been ascertained. If a Muslim does anything wrong, it’s assumed to be terrorism. (Apparently we Muslims can’t be mentally ill.) In contrast, when a non-Muslim engages in a violent attack, even on federal government employees, law enforcement and the media immediately look to the person’s mental history, not possible terrorist motivations. No wonder so many parrot the line, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” When the press uses the word terrorism only in connection with the actions of Muslims, the average person would assume that’s the case. However, as I have written about before, in recent years overwhelmingly the terrorist attacks in United States and Europe have been committed by non-Muslims. If White had been a Muslim, the investigation into his motivation would have essentially been over once his faith had been ascertained. My second point is that this could have in fact been act of terrorism. White clearly targeted only the TSA officers. He didn’t assault others in the airport, such as the passengers waiting on line at the security checkpoint. And for those unfamiliar, there has been a great deal of animus directed at the TSA by some conservatives and libertarians. Simply Google the words “stop the TSA” and you will see pages of articles denouncing the TSA as an organization hell bent on depriving Americans of our liberty. For example, Alex Jones’ Infowars website is filled with anti-TSA articles claiming that the TSA’s goal is not to prevent terrorism but to “harass” travelers and get into “our pants.” Glen Beck warned in the past that the TSA was potentially becoming President Obama’s “private army” with the goal being to take away our liberties. And in 2012, Senator Rand Paul lashed out against the TSA for what he viewed as the agency’s improper treatment of him. In fact after the incident, Paul penned an op-ed denouncing the TSA, writing that “it is infuriating that this agency feels entitled to revoke our civil liberties while doing little to keep us safe.” Even more alarmingly, the attacks on the TSA have not been limited to words. In October 2012, Paul Ciancia traveled to LAX, where he took out a rifle from his bag and shot two TSA officers, killing one. Ciancia had written anti-government tracts in the past and was—to little media fanfare—actually charged months later with an act of terrorism. Given this climate, how can the police not even mention that they investigated the possibility of terrorism and ruled it out? I spoke with Colonel John Fortunato, the spokesperson for Jefferson County Sherriff’s Office, which is the agency in charge of the investigation. Fortunato explained that due to state law, they couldn’t release any additional information regarding White’s mental illness or reveal information regarding any treatment he may or may not have undergone. When I asked Fortunato if they had investigated White’s digital footprint to ascertain whether he had visited any anti-government websites or had searched his residence to see if he possessed an anti-government literature or made or written anti-government statements, he gave me what sounded like a boiler plate response that the investigation has revealed no affiliation to any outside groups. Fortunato expressed his confidence that White had acted alone and that no ties to any terror groups. But he added that we will never truly know what motivated White given he died before being questioned. But part of me actually believes that there are some in the media and law enforcement who prefer to use the term terrorism only when it applies to a Muslim. Why? Because it’s easy to do. Muslims are viewed by many as the “other,” not as fellow Americans. But discussing domestic terrorism carried out by fellow Americans is at best, uncomfortable, and at worst, undermines the narrative that some in our country have a vested interest in advancing. I’m not sure what will change this mindset, but if we want to truly keep Americans safe, law enforcement and the media need to understand that terrorism is not just a Muslim thing. share tweet post Promoted Stories Gov. Jindal’s Implosion Gov. 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Jindal’s Implosion Ridiculously Popular Sweatshirt has a 4-Month Wait List 75 Rare Historical Photos That Will Leave You Speechless Is This New Wearable Tech going to Bigger than GoPro? This App is Quickly Replacing Human Financial Advisors 20 Worst Cars of All Time 12 True Facts About Drew Carey That Will Blow Your Mind How to Get Rid of Blackheads Without Picking Your Skin Recommended by Gustau Nacarino / Reuters Clive Irving Clive Irving HORROR 03.24.15 Whatever Happened to Germanwings Flight 9525 Happened Fast All we know right now is that the plane fell 30,000 feet in 8 minutes. That points to sudden structural or engine failure that doomed all 150 aboard. Whatever happened to Germanwings Flight 9525 happened very fast. The Airbus A320 had followed a normal flight path from Barcelona north up to the Alps, climbing steadily to 30,000 feet on its way to a cruise height of 36,000 feet. Then, according to the airline’s CEO, as it approached the most mountainous region it began descending for about eight minutes until it disappeared from radar without any communication from the pilots. The flight should have continued at cruise height into southern France before beginning a descent to Duesseldorf. An eight-minute loss of altitude like that does not suggest a dive but some kind of controlled descent until something more catastrophic occurred. All of this was happening in some of the most closely monitored air space in the world. The flight would have been monitored on the radars of air traffic controllers in Spain, France and Switzerland. So why were the pilots unable to send a distress call—or contact controllers during their descent? The one certainty in this sequence of events is that the end came suddenly—not from flying into a mountain but because the airplane was unable to maintain a safe altitude. This means that there must have been either a structural failure or an engine failure. Video screenshot One of those failures could involve a sudden loss of cabin pressure due to a rupture in the skin of either the cabin or the cargo hold. The first thing a pilot needs to do in this event is lose altitude: get below 10,000 feet to equalize the atmospheric pressure outside and inside the cabin (difficult to do if you are flying over mountains). As the pressurized air in the cabin escapes, the oxygen goes with it, creating the condition called hypoxia. Hypoxia quickly renders passengers and pilots unconscious. If it was violent decompression, not a slow leak, it would have been very difficult for the pilots to realize what was happening and make a distress call. In 2005 a Helios Airlines flight from Istanbul to Athens suffered a slow pressure loss that incapacitated the passengers and crew, leaving the airplane to fly on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed into a mountain. And one of the most viable theories about the greatest aviation mystery of all time, the loss of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, posits that it, too, suffered an oxygen loss that incapacitated everyone on board. Although the wreck is in a very inaccessible site the black boxes will be located quickly—this time they don’t have to be fished out of an ocean. The most dramatic example of this recently in the U.S. was in 2011 when Southwest Airlines Flight 812, a Boeing 737, lost part of its cabin roof and the pilots made a rapid descent from 36,000 feet after radioing: “…declaring an emergency we lost the cabin.” In that case the airplane landed safely. We haven’t seen a catastrophe like this over the Alps since the 1950s, before the age of jets, when relatively primitive piston-engine airplanes labored to gain enough altitude to get safely over the Alps—some airliners of that era were so under-powered that they had to go west and over the Atlantic to avoid the peaks. Bad weather could make this very hazardous without modern navigation aids. So this is a crash that ought never to happen, involving an airplane with an extremely safe record, same for the airline, plus state-of-the-art navigation aids and air traffic control and an absolutely routine route. Although the wreck is in a very inaccessible site the black boxes have been recovered, according to authorities. This time they didn’t have to be fished out of an ocean. share tweet post Hani Mohammed/AP Jamie Dettmer Jamie Dettmer Bloodbath 03.20.15 With Attacks in Yemen and Tunisia ISIS Launches a Global War of Terror The gruesome bombings in Sanaa and Tunis this week show ISIS expanding its theater of operations. ISTANBUL — Twin suicide bombings today on two Shia mosques in the heart of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa killed as many as 137 people and wounded 280 others in an attack timed to coincide with worshippers attending noon prayers. Bodies were left lying in pools of blood as the injured were rushed to hospitals. U.S. officials at first suspected the coordinated attack was mounted by al Qaeda’s local offshoot, but it was claimed quickly by the so-called Islamic State. The claim for responsibility was made in an online statement posted on the same website the Islamic State, widely known as ISIS, used to claim an affiliate was behind Wednesday’s deadly attack on a landmark museum in Tunis that left 20 foreign tourists dead. In the statement the bombings of the Sanaa mosques was described as a “blessed operation” against the “dens of the Shiites.” A U.S. official cautioned that it was too soon to know definitively who is behind the attacks, which bear the hallmarks of al Qaeda-type operations using complex, coordinated attacks by multiple bombers. The two mosques — Badr and al-Hashoosh — are used by Houthi rebels, members of the Zaidi sect, a branch of Shia Islam, and three Houthi leaders are reported among the dead. Al Qaeda and other jihadists had vowed to confront the Houthis after they overran Sanaa in September demanding a greater share of political power. The Houthis subsequently seized the presidential palace in January, forcing President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, a U.S. ally, to flee. Bombings of mosques in Yemen have been rare and some analysts warn that Friday’s attacks mark a new low in the country’s violence which could plunge Yemen into a spiral of sectarian conflict between the country’s majority Sunnis and minority Shia Muslims. If so, it will be hard to stop. A separate explosion triggered by a suicide bomber rocked a compound in the Houthi stronghold of Saada—111 miles northeast of Sanaa—killing two people and seriously injuring a third, say local Houthi security officials. Houthi officials say another suicide bomber was prevented from attack a mosque in Saada. Among those killed in Sanaa was a prominent Houthi religious leader, Murtatha al Mahathwari, the state-run Saba news agency reported. Yemeni politicians from Hadi administration warned that the attack was pushing Yemen closer to an all-out civil war. “Someone is trying to widen the schisms in the country and are happy to escalate the violence,” said Mohamed Qubaty, a former political advisor to the Hadi government. The timing of the attacks in Sanaa virtually guaranteed a bloodbath, and the tactics used did too. According to witnesses a suicide bomber started the attack on the Badr mosque inside the building and that was followed minutes later by an explosion outside, presumably planned to harm those fleeing the first blasts and to strike first-responders and civilian rescuers, say senior Houthi leaders. Those tactics are straight out of al Qaeda’s playbook. At Hashoush mosque the plan may have been the same but one of the bombers was stopped at a checkpoint outside and detonated his explosions before his companion made it inside to trigger his blast. Before the Islamic State’s claim of credit for the carnage, Houthis also blamed al Qaeda. Others pointed the finger at the country’s ousted strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, despite the fact that he has been implicated in the Houthis toppling of Hadi. A worshipper at the al Hashoosh mosque, in the north of the capital, told Associated Press that he was thrown into the air by the blast. “The heads, legs and arms of the dead people were scattered on the floor of the mosque," said Mohammed al-Ansi. “Blood is running like a river,” he added. Witnesses also reported that many of those killed and wounded were struck by glass shards from the mosques’ shattered windows. On Houthi-run al Masirah TV channel volunteers could be seen ferrying the injured using blood-soaked blankets. “The heads, legs and arms of the dead people were scattered on the floor of the mosque. Blood is running like a river.” Yemen has been the base of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which controls several provinces in the south and has carried out similarly complex suicide attacks on the Houthis before. A car bomb in January that killed 30 outside a police academy in Sanaa was blamed on the group. But the Islamic State, al Qaeda’s rival, announced the formation of a local branch last November, drawing some AQAP defections, among them possibly some bombing tacticians. The mosque explosions came a day after fierce clashes erupted between Houthi rebels and their supporters and government forces still loyal to Hadi in the port city of Aden, nearly 200 miles southeast of Sanaa. Houthi warplanes attacked the presidential palace in Aden, where Hadi has been based since fleeing last month from Sanaa, where he had been placed under house arrest. Hadi’s downfall and the Houthis’ sweep into the Yemeni capital was a blow to U.S. counter-terror efforts. The Hadi government had cooperated with Washington to target al Qaeda operatives in drone strikes. If ISIS was responsible for the blasts in Sanaa, it would mark, along with the attack in Tunis, a spectacular, albeit grisly, debut week on the international terror stage. In a matter of days it has killed nearly 160 people and wounded at least 300; retarded Tunisia’s economic comeback and therefore imperiled the country’s political stability; and set Yemen on a possible sectarian death spiral. Until this week, ISIS has focused on defending it’s so-called caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria. But the group’s international ambitions have been clear, encouraging al Qaeda affiliates to defect and swear allegiance to the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi or helping them to form new jihadist offshoots. AQAP remains for US officials the most worrisome of all the terror network's branches, U.S. intelligence officials say. That's because the group possesses sophisticated knowledge and expertise for building bombs that can be smuggled onto commercial aircraft without being detected by security scanners. Shane Harris in Washington contributed to this report. share tweet post ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection James Joiner James Joiner THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE 03.24.15 ‘The X-Files’ Creator Chris Carter on Scully and Mulder’s Return Here's what he's got planned for the sci-fi phenomenon's return to television. First Twin Peaks was supposedly resurrected, and now the other greatest ‘90s supernatural thriller is making a comeback. On Tuesday, Fox announced a limited 6-episode “event” of their beloved X-Files. Helmed by original series creator Chris Carter, the new miniseries will be bolstered by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reprising their roles as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, the dynamic duo that chase down paranormal cases left in the FBI files, often to the chagrin of shadowy government forces. “The X-Files was not only a seminal show for both the studio and the network, it was a worldwide phenomenon that shaped pop culture—yet remained a true gem for the legions of fans who embraced it from the beginning. We're ecstatic to give them the next thrilling chapter of Mulder and Scully they've been waiting for,” Fox executives Dana Walden and Gary Newman said in a statement. The series featured many indelible characters (Smoking Man, anyone?) and is the place where Vince Gilligan, who later created Breaking Bad, got his start as a TV writer—as well as the place where he met Bryan Cranston, who would later play Bad’s baddie Walter White, in the Season 6 episode “Drive.” The X-Files spanned 202 episodes after 9 seasons—as well as two feature films—and left the air back in 2002. While the airdate for the 6-episode “event” has yet to be determined, shooting begins this June. We caught up with the show’s creator, Chris Carter, to get the background. The truth is, as they say, out there. You must be having an exciting day. Yeah, it just got exciting as you can imagine. So what can we expect in the six episodes? It’ll be honest to the characters, and what happened to them since the series ended and the second movie. Will you personally be overseeing the scripts? There are no scripts yet! But yes, I will be overseeing them, but with several people who have been working on the show over the years. "I know what I want to do, how I want it to lay out—the balance of mythology to standalone episodes." There’s a lot of X-Files mythology, will casual viewers be able to jump right in? Yes. I like to think that anyone can enter this without much of a run up. That said, you don’t want to have to hit the hardcore fans over the head getting them up to speed. You must have the basic arc worked out in your head already. I do, actually. I know what I want to do, how I want it to lay out—the balance of mythology to standalone episodes. Even though none of us have had contracts, I’ve only had one since yesterday, the people that are going to be involved have been talking since the beginning of the year, so we have a clear idea of how this should be, or the best way we think this should be laid out. Does everyone involved, such as the actors, have a say in the stories? The X-Files has always been a group achievement. You benefit by being open to people’s good ideas. The show wouldn’t be the show it is without the contribution of so many good people who work on it. Video screenshot There have been a lot of ‘90s reboots lately. Why do you think that is? The cynical part of me says this is programming by feather duster. This is the stuff that’s worked before, and because its worked before there’s a possibility it can work again. The other part of me says that if something is good, that doesn’t necessarily mean its over. It’s not just sitting on the shelf gathering dust, its actually accruing value. What was the process with making it happen? Was it hard to get the actors? No, David and Gillian wanted to do it. It was kind of the perfect timing for everyone involved. We all had a space in which to do it, we all had a desire to tell these stories, and, as I said in the press release, I think the world’s gotten that much stranger in the last 13 years. For me, it’s an opportunity as a storyteller to take advantage of that. Everyone wanted to do it, and the negotiations actually began in November, and were finalized yesterday. I’d say that it was simply a matter of everyone agreeing to the ground rules. And what are the ground rules? [Laughs] You’ll have to ask the lawyers about that. People have been pretty obsessive about the show. Do you ever read any of the fan fiction? The characters have definitely lived on in that realm. Thank goodness for that! You know, I have to say, I work so hard to do what we do. While I’m flattered by that stuff and amused by it, I really try to stay away from anything that might influence what it is that I’m doing. Over the past 13 years, have Mulder and Scully lived on inside your own head? Every day. Every day I turn on the radio in the morning, I hear an X-Files story, or I pick up the paper and I see an X-Files story. So yes, the Mulder and Scully in my head are always switched on. So this will take up a lot of your time, does that mean that Area 51 wont be going forward? [Laughs] I don’t know, I can’t answer that question. But that said, I know this is my primary focus right now. If these episodes do well, will we see another X-Files movie? I think… First things first, we just want to do six great episodes. We’re all primed to do that, there are great stories to tell, and now it’s just distilling it down to telling the best stories possible in the time we have. share tweet post Reuters Tim Mak Tim Mak NOTHING TO SEE HERE 03.24.15 Congress Totally Cool With Israel Spying on U.S. Officials Negotiating With Iran Mossad reportedly listened into nuclear talks and used the information to lobby Capitol Hill. Democrats and Republican greeted the news with a big shrug. Israel is spying on the U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks? No problem, key Democrats and Republicans in Congress say. It’s just part of the game. “I don’t look at Israel or any nation directly affected by the Iranian program wanting deeply to know what’s going on in the negotiations—I just don’t look at that as spying,” Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said. “Their deep existential interest in such a deal, that they would try to figure out anything that they could, that they would have an opinion on it… I don’t find any of that that controversial.” The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday evening that Israel spied on U.S. diplomatic negotiations to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. Then the Israelis shared that inside information in an attempt to undermine support for the deal with U.S. lawmakers. Of course, the White House only found out about this because it too was spying—on Israel. But if lawmakers were upset by this turn of events, they weren’t showing it Tuesday. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, for one, joked that he was more concerned that Israeli intelligence hadn’t shared what they learned with him. “One of my reactions was, why haven’t they been coming up here sharing information with me? I mean Israel. I haven’t had any of them coming up and talking with me about where the deal is, so I was kind of wondering who it was they were meeting with. I kind of feel left out, if you know what I’m saying,” Corker said. If anything, lawmakers said they were perturbed that the Israelis were being accused of spying—not that they did any actual surveillance. Learning the details of the nuclear talk, lawmakers argued, was less like “spying” and more like information gathering. “There’s no non-pejorative way to use the word ‘spying.’ That is a pejorative accusation. That’s not the phrase I would use to describe what I read… they care deeply about the negotiation, as they should, they’re getting information about it, and they have an opinion about it,” Kaine said. Several lawmakers interviewed by The Daily Beast said that the Israeli government had not told them anything they weren’t already aware of in broad strokes. Corker said he speaks regularly with foreign ministers and officials from foreign governments, who from time to time pass on relevant information about the nuclear deal discussions. If anything, lawmakers said they were perturbed that the Israelis were being accused of spying “No one from Israel has told me anything that I haven’t already known,” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. He added: “I hope we’re spying on the Iranians.” Congressional frustration over the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran reflects a deep concern by many lawmakers that they’ve been cut out of the loop: worries about whether they’re being briefed in sufficient detail, all the way to the extent to which they’ll be given the chance to vote on any future deal. “If you think about it, if the White House was doing the normal advise and consent [function] with the Senate, then it wouldn’t be necessary to get our information [elsewhere],” said Corker. The day the report was published also happens to be the date of a requested deadline that Congress had set out for a nuclear deal. No deal has yet been reached by the P5+1, the parties negotiating an agreement. But the leaks about the talks—and the surveillance on those talks—continues. A senior congressional staffer called Obama administration allegations of Israeli spying “deeply irresponsible innuendo and destructive hearsay,” telling The Daily Beast that “these unsubstantiated allegations are all the more galling in light of the fact that this Administration has leaked, consistently and aggressively, details of Iran proposals to the front page of the New York Times and other news outlets, as well as to sympathetic think-tankers and pro-Iranian groups outside of government.” share tweet post by: Dean Obeidallah --------------------- |
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