Terror in Dayton: Chemical Irritant Sprayed in Mosque

I've often said that the opposite of radical Muslims are NOT radical Christians. The opposite of radical religious nuts is a rational, independent thinker.

...several affected when a suspected chemical irritant was sprayed into the mosque at 26 Josie St., bringing Dayton police, fire and hazardous material personnel to the building at 9:48 p.m.

Someone "sprayed an irritant into the mosque," Dayton fire District Chief Vince Wiley said, noting that fire investigators believe it was a hand-held spray can.

According to fire dispatch communications, a child reported seeing two men with a white can spraying something into a window. That child was brought to the supervising firefighter at the scene.

More.

This site says this came right after the release of an anti-muslim DVD, and claims:

"She told me that the gas was sprayed into the room where the babies and children were being kept while their mothers prayed together their Ramadan prayers. Panicked mothers ran for their babies, crying for their children so they could flee from the gas that was burning their eyes and throats and lungs. She grabbed her youngest in her arms and grabbed the hand of her other daughter, moving with the others to exit the building and the irritating substance there.

"The paramedic said the young one was in shock, and gave her oxygen to help her breathe. The child couldn't stop sobbing.

Supreme Court Justices Rule Terror Suspects Can Appeal in Civilian Courts

Foreign terrorism suspects held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba have constitutional rights to challenge their detention there in United States courts, the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, on Thursday in a historic decision on the balance between personal liberties and national security.

“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court.

The justices rejected the administration’s argument that the individual protections provided by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 were more than adequate.

“The costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody,” Justice Kennedy wrote, assuming the pivotal rule that some court-watchers had foreseen.

Joining Justice Kennedy’s opinion were Justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter.

The dissenters were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, generally considered the conservative wing on the court.

More.

Profiteering from the 'War on Terror'

Editor’s Note: One of George W. Bush’s long-lasting legacies may be what President Dwight Eisenhower might have called the “terror-industrial complex,” a vast web of interlocking corporations, government agencies and consultancies that have turned the shock of 9/11 into a blank check against the U.S. Treasury.

In this guest essay, the Independent Institute’s Ian S. Lustick looks at the ever-expanding size of this leviathan that is devouring tax dollars and American liberties.

In 2004, I attended a lecture given by the official in charge of encouraging scientists to shift their research activities in this direction. We were told that no matter what topics we worked on, and whether we were natural scientists or behavioral scientists, our work likely could help in the fight against terrorism.

The official strongly encouraged us to submit grant proposals for projects based on “outside the box” thinking because, he said, there was plenty of money available.

Officially, the terrorist threat level is always and everywhere no less than elevated. The threat is constantly dangled before us: ports, border crossings, the milk supply, cattle herds, liquid natural gas tankers, nuclear power plants, drinking water, tunnels, bridges, subways.

The result: continued support for ever-increasing funding.

Within little more than half a decade America adjusted psychologically, politically and militarily to the Soviet enemy and its capacity to incinerate our cities on a moment’s notice.

We came to know the Soviet enemy very well and were able to adopt prudent, realistic and successful policies in the face of genuine threats of national destruction posed by Moscow’s nuclear arsenal.

Rather than let our fears and anxieties of Muslim fanatics drive policy, we need the same sober approach to the real but lesser threat posed by terrorists.

Very interesting article, worth the read. Click Here.

Homeland Insecurity: Pooped on

A man got into the Minnesota Homeland Security and Emergency Management office in downtown St. Paul last week and defecated in several rooms, police said Monday.

The incident happened about 1:30 p.m. Friday in a basement office area of 444 Cedar St., according to a police report. The man went in through an emergency exit door that hadn't been secured properly, said Tom Walsh, St. Paul police spokesman.

A contractor working for building management walked out and didn't properly secure the door behind him, said Susan Lasley, Minnesota Department of Public Safety spokeswoman.

Based on a description of the suspect, Walsh said he appeared to be homeless.

The man had left on foot before an officer arrived, the police report said.

More.

Bomb Goes Off in Times Square, NY

Seriously, there's no way to keep stuff like this from happening except removing the reason for this crap. Even 24hr camera surveillance didn't help. Will someone see it? Doubtful. Will someone do something within the 15 seconds it took to do this? Pretty darn impossible. Fight the causes, not the symptoms.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A small bomb caused minor damage to a landmark military recruiting station in the heart of Times Square before dawn Thursday, and police were searching for a hooded bicyclist seen on a surveillance video pedaling away.

The video shows the bicyclist getting off a bike at 3:40 a.m. Thursday and walking toward the building. A minute or so later, the person returned to the bike and rode away. A brief flash and a cloud of white smoke follows.

A bike, believed used in the crime, was later found in the trash on West 38th Street, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The blast left a gaping hole in the front window and shattered a glass door, twisting and blackening its metal frame. No one was hurt, but Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the device, though unsophisticated, could have caused "injury and even death."

More.

Waterboarding - Video (Controlled Drowning)

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Terrorrism Cartoons in Arab Countries

The Arab press recently published more cartoons condemning terrorism. These cartoons presented terrorism as an indiscriminately destructive force striking everything in its path, and mocked the terrorists for blindly pursuing the promise of the virgins of Paradise. The cartoons also expressed criticism of extremists who entice the youth, indoctrinating them to embrace extremist ideas.

More here.

Don't freak out in an airport -- OR YOU MIGHT DIE

If you want evidence that the terrorists have already gone a long way toward achieving their goals, look no farther than American airports. We have become so oversensitive at airports they're close to becoming college campuses. I mean, sure, taser a kid for yelling at John Kerry. If that kid had gone any farther, he could have ignited an open exchange of ideas. And we can't have that at our educational institutions. But don't threaten me with the cops because I want some decent service. Imaging being turned away from a sporting event because they sold your seat twice -- doesn't happen.

More.

The Terrorrism Conspiracy vs The Global Warming Conspiracy

After hearing about this:

Computerised speech capable of mimicking any human voice is in danger of unleashing a form of "vocal terrorism", where disinformation is spread by hacking into telephone networks, British scientists warned today.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

The researchers believe that advances in synthetic voices, made by recreating digital versions of people's vocal tracts, will make them indistinguishable from real human speech within 15 years.

"We'll be able to synthesize the voice of anybody saying anything, based on hearing just a sentence or two of them speaking," he said. "This gives rise to a notion of what I call vocal terrorism as a possible scenario in the future and we should be thinking about that now."

(...) it could be that I've taken over a communications network for a country and I broadcast the sound of a leader to the people," he added.

I find it interesting that the same people that often "claim that the theory that global warming is caused by humans is a conscious fraud, perpetuated for financial or ideological reasons" [more here], are usually in support of the exact same reasoning as far as Terrorrism is concerned.

The Real Threats to Americans?

Sort of put things in perspective... Details here.

Why Terrorrism Does Not Work

...like all cognitive biases, correspondent inference theory fails sometimes. And one place it fails pretty spectacularly is in our response to terrorism. Because terrorism often results in the horrific deaths of innocents, we mistakenly infer that the horrific deaths of innocents is the primary motivation of the terrorist, and not the means to a different end.

I found this interesting analysis in a paper by Max Abrams in International Security. "Why Terrorism Does Not Work" (.PDF) analyzes the political motivations of 28 terrorist groups: the complete list of "foreign terrorist organizations" designated by the U.S. Department of State since 2001. He lists 42 policy objectives of those groups, and found that they only achieved them 7 percent of the time.

According to the data, terrorism is more likely to work if 1) the terrorists attack military targets more often than civilian ones, and 2) if they have minimalist goals like evicting a foreign power from their country or winning control of a piece of territory, rather than maximalist objectives like establishing a new political system in the country or annihilating another nation. But even so, terrorism is a pretty ineffective means of influencing policy.

In other words, terrorism doesn't work, because it makes people less likely to acquiesce to the terrorists' demands, no matter how limited they might be. The reaction to terrorism has an effect completely opposite to what the terrorists want; people simply don't believe those limited demands are the actual demands.

This theory explains, with a clarity I have never seen before, why so many people make the bizarre claim that al Qaeda terrorism -- or Islamic terrorism in general -- is "different": that while other terrorist groups might have policy objectives, al Qaeda's primary motivation is to kill us all. This is something we have heard from President Bush again and again -- Abrams has a page of examples in the paper -- and is a rhetorical staple in the debate. (You can see a lot of it in the comments to this previous essay.)
(...)
Although Bin Laden has complained that Americans have completely misunderstood the reason behind the 9/11 attacks, correspondent inference theory postulates that he's not going to convince people. Terrorism, and 9/11 in particular, has such a high correspondence that people use the effects of the attacks to infer the terrorists' motives. In other words, since Bin Laden caused the death of a couple of thousand people in the 9/11 attacks, people assume that must have been his actual goal, and he's just giving lip service to what he claims are his goals. Even Bin Laden's actual objectives are ignored as people focus on the deaths, the destruction and the economic impact.

Very interesting. More.