Category Archives: Terrorism

Tea Party Is Just Another Version Of Posse Comitatus.

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Posse Comitatus is from Latin, meaning “power of the community.” As you might expect, the modern organization by that name rejects the authority of the federal government and any form of taxes. Its roots go back to the origins of our country and it blossomed briefly during the Great Depression. After fading into oblivion for decades, the group was given new life in 1970 by William Porter Gale who combined his anti-government beliefs with Christian Identity and racism. This modern version believes that blacks are subhuman and that Jews are children of Satan.

Posse Comitatus operated largely beneath the radar until Posse Comitatus follower, Gordon Kahl, murdered two federal marshals in North Dakota in 1983. Following that, the movement once again faded from public view. But those who share the group’s anti-government beliefs spawned numerous offshoots following the financial crisis of 2008.

Those include the Sovereign Citizens movement, various “Patriot” groups, and the Tea Party.

That fact was made abundantly clear by Tea Party support for Cliven Bundy’s confrontation with the Bureau of Land Management. Not only did the Tea Party’s greatest apologists – from Sean Hannity to Rush Limbaugh – use the incident to attack the federal government. Numerous Tea Party-backed militias (including military veterans) and politicians raced to Bundy’s side for photo ops and media statements. They turned Bundy into a poster child for their ideology.

Like Posse Comitatus, the Tea Party isn’t out to merely change our government. It’s out to destroy it!

For example, both the Tea Party and Posse Comitatus believe that all of the lands within a state’s borders should be under state control. They do not recognize federal authority over national parks, national forests and other government lands. They despise the Federal Reserve, and they believe we should return to the gold standard. They believe that the federal government has no authority to impose income taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes or any other kind of taxes. In fact, they don’t recognize the federal government at all.

They believe in the nullification of all federal laws. They believe county sheriffs are the only legitimate law. They collect large stores of weapons and ammunition. They refuse to comply with any court orders. And they threaten to exercise their Second Amendment rights to prevent the government from enforcing those orders.

All the while they wave the American flag and call themselves “patriots.”

The good news is that most Americans are finally beginning to recognize the Tea Party for what it really is…a hate group. In fact, a recent Gallup poll found that the Tea Party’s favorability rating has dropped to an all-time low of just 22 percent. That may explain why Tea Party candidates were soundly thrashed in this past week’s Republican primaries. Of course, it has become increasingly difficult to tell a Republican from a Tea Party candidate. Nevertheless, it appears the influence of these nitwits is finally waning.

Good riddance!

What Good Are Smart Guns With So Many Dumb Gun Owners?

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The National Rifle Association is apoplectic over attempts to market so-called smart guns by one of their own. They have threatened violence against the guns’ inventor and every retailer who has attempted to sell them. And they have shouted down those who support the guns by calling them just another attempt by the left to “take away their guns.”

Ordinarily, the fact that the NRA opposes something would automatically make me support it. But, on this issue, I have mixed emotions. On one hand, smart guns that can only be used by their owners wearing a watch-like device would likely prevent the deaths of children who innocently believe guns are playthings. On the other hand, the sale of these guns may give us a false sense of security. Don’t forget. Most of the guns would still be in the hands of the paranoid and mentally ill – the vast majority of those who purchase handguns today.

Smart guns wouldn’t have prevented the murder of Trayvon Martin or the movie-goer who was killed for sending a text to his young daughter. They wouldn’t have prevented a man from setting a trap and laying in wait to cruelly murder two unarmed teens who broke into his basement. They wouldn’t have prevented the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary, at the Aurora movie theater, at Fort Hood, or at Congresswoman Gabby Giffords’ Congress on the Corner meeting.

Certainly preventing the use of a firearm by someone other than its owner is an admirable goal. But it is only a beginning. Those who favor responsible gun reforms should view smart guns as only a first step. The bigger issue is to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and those with a history of violence; to stop the marketing of candy-colored guns to children; to stop the sale of semi-automatics to gun nuts for use against law enforcement and the government; to stop the sale of sniper rifles and silencers; to stop the development and sale of plastic guns intended to escape detection; and to undo the so-called “carry everywhere” laws that make it legal to carry guns to bars, schools, events – anywhere that doesn’t have full security including metal detectors and gun storage lockers.

The Cliven Bundy armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management gives us a glimpse of the future of our nation with the current gun laws. Smart guns won’t stop the militia, domestic terrorists and the criminally insane from bullying and killing. The only way to do that is through stricter gun laws, gun buybacks and the end of our nation’s insane love affair with guns.

Congress Should Have Given As Much Attention To Iraq As Benghazi.

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Congress has spent far more time debating and analyzing the events at Benghazi than it did the invasion of Iraq. The results of the terrorist attacks on the US Consulate in Benghazi resulted in the tragic deaths of four Americans. While the cavalier invasion of Iraq led to the deaths of 4,486 US soldiers and, by at least one authoritative estimate, the deaths of more than a million Iraqis. The invasion of Iraq was based on false pretenses while the concern over Benghazi is that the White House falsely stated the cause of the attacks.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Benghazi has been investigated, analyzed and politicized to death. And the GOP is still out for blood. They want someone, anyone, to pay. They already derailed the nomination of Susan Rice for Secretary of State for merely stating what she believed to be true. And every investigation has proven that her remarks were accurate. But the GOP wants to hang Benghazi around the necks of President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. There is talk of impeachment and the everlasting hope that further investigations of Benghazi will prevent Hillary from running for president in 2016. There is also the very real likelihood that another sensationalized kangaroo investigation of Benghazi will help the GOP capture the Senate in the mid-term elections.

Yet, the many falsehoods and lies that led to the invasion of Iraq have scarcely been investigated. No one involved in the lies at any level has paid a price. Only recently has the Senate investigated the accusations of Bush-sanctioned secret prisons and torture! In an attempt to heal the wounds caused by that costly and unnecessary war, President Obama chose not to pursue investigations and sanctions against the pepetrators of the lies, even though there is clear evidence that the Bush administration lied about the existence of WMD (weapons of mass destruction), sanctioned torture, and punished anyone who stood in their way, going so far as to commit treason by outing a clandestine CIA operative as payback for her husband’s op-ed debunking the notion that Saddam Hussein had purchased yellow cake uranium from Niger.

And what of the warnings Bush, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice received before 9/11? What of claims from numerous credible sources that the Bush administration received more than 40 detailed warnings of the impending attack? What of the single investigation led by Condoleezza Rice’s pal, Philip Zelikow, which whitewashed the lead-up to the attack and absolved Rice of wrongdoing despite obvious negligence as the National Security Advisor? What of the administration’s blatantly false claims that Saddam Hussein had partnered with al-Qaeda?

Are the American media really so stupid that they would treat the Benghazi hoax more seriously than the deception and lies behind the Iraq War and the negligence surrounding 9/11? Can the GOP be so cynical as to perpetuate the Benghazi myth for obvious political purposes? Are American voters so stupid or naive that they would believe the GOP’s disproven theory that Benghazi is worse than Watergate?

Unfortunately, I believe the answer to those questions is an unqualified yes.

Middle East Peace Held Hostage By Four Terrorist Groups.

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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s announcement that Israel is withdrawing from US-brokered peace talks with Palestinians came as no surprise. He and his conservative Israeli supporters have long looked for an excuse…any excuse…to avoid peace. That excuse presented itself when Palestinians announced that Fatah and Hamas, the two largest political parties in Palestine, had joined hands for the negotiations.

Certainly, Hamas has been an enemy of Israel. But so has Fatah. In return, Israel has been an enemy of Palestine. Exactly what is the difference? In the past, none of these groups has believed the others have a right to exist. But if warring parties want to achieve peace, they absolutely must negotiate with their enemies. That’s why they’re called peace talks! If you’re unwilling to negotiate with your enemies, you are doomed to be perpetually at war.

The other player in this standoff that is seldom recognized is the organization of Christian evangelicals that sponsors and finances the expansion of Israeli “settlements” in the occupied territories of the West Bank. These “settlements” are, in reality, large suburbs of Jerusalem built to ensure that the territories, and all of Jerusalem, remain under Israeli control.

Why, you may ask, would Christian evangelicals care about the settlements?

The answer is that they hope that complete Israeli occupation of the “Promised Land” will hasten Armageddon and the return of Christ. They believe that, when the “Promised Land” is fully occupied by Jews, the Messiah will return and they will be magically, and immediately, transported to the golden city in the sky.

Seriously.

So let’s review. The players in this bizarre melodrama include Fatah, the party of Yasser Arafat, that engaged in terrorist acts from the very beginnings of Israel; Hamas, the fundamentalist Islamic political party allied with the Muslim Brotherhood and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades; Israel, the Jewish nation that has ignored the nuclear proliferation treaty, spied on its allies, trampled on the civil rights of Palestinians and believes in disproportionate response to any form of attack; and Christian zealots who are in such a hurry to get to heaven that they are willing to foment terrorism and armed combat.

Ironically, these characters all claim to be following the teachings of their respective religions! I guess those teachings don’t include compassion and common sense.

20 Things President Obama Should Do After The Mid-Terms.

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In no particular order of importance:

  1. Normalize relations with Cuba.
  2. Support Palestine for UN membership.
  3. End the War on Drugs and begin the process of decriminalization.
  4. Renew calls for a Public Option as part of the Affordable Care Act.
  5. Negotiate pharmaceutical prices as all other industrialized nations have done.
  6. Rally Americans to aggressively deal with Climate Change.
  7. Push for an end to mandatory sentences for non-violent criminals.
  8. Order the Justice Department to aggressively pursue criminal charges against the banksters who collapsed our economy in 2008.
  9. Order the Justice Department to aggressively pursue charges of war crimes against those involved in the CIA’s torture program.
  10. Deny permission for TransCanada to build the Keystone XL pipeline.
  11. Push for changes to the tax code to prevent the use of offshore tax havens by individuals and corporations.
  12. Push the IRS to prevent 501c3s and 501c4s from engaging in politics.
  13. Aggressively push for immigration reform.
  14. End drone assassinations except as an absolute last resort to deal with terrorist leaders and increase transparency.
  15. Order the removal of ALL American troops from Afghanistan.
  16. Offer government-backed, interest-free college loans based on need.
  17. Demand that Congress pass common-sense gun control measures, including universal background checks and a ban on large ammo clips.
  18. Order the Justice Department to create uniform voting rights across all states.
  19. Aggressively push for an end to human trafficking.
  20. Order the Department of Defense to reduce its reliance on private contractors.

An Act Of Sedition.

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After watching videos of the armed confrontation between Cliven Bundy and federal agents executing a legal court order, I realized that I was watching more than a political demonstration or civil disobenience. When Bundy’s crowd of armed milita threatened government officials by drawing their weapons and taking aim from sniper positions, they crossed a very clear line into the realm of sedition. Incredibly, they were supported by Nevada Governor Sandoval, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar and dozens of state legislators from Arizona and Nevada.

Look up the definition of sedition yourself.

To save you the trouble, 18 U.S. Code 2384 reads, “If two or more persons…conspire to oppose by force the authority…or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States…they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.” Not only were the actions of Bundy and his friends in violation of that code, so, too, were the actions of the conservative media hosts and politicians who applauded and encouraged them.

Imagine if a group of drug dealers challenged federal authority to interrupt a smuggling operation. Imagine if a city neighborhood took up arms to prevent the arrest of a suspected murderer. Would anyone support and encourage them? If not, where do we draw the line?

I’d suggest that the line is crossed when someone, anyone, takes aim at government officials or incites someone else to do so.

Nevada Rancher Is Just Another Ungrateful “Taker.”

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The Tea Party and those who believe states’ rights trump the federal government have hailed Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy as a “freedom fighter” and an “American hero” for standing against the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. But the fact is, by the definition of Mitt Romney, he’s just another one of the 47 percent – a “taker” who relies on federal government largess.

As a cattle rancher, Bundy benefits from numerous federal subsidies to support his cattle business. He and other ranchers who graze their cattle on public lands receive $100 million annually in direct subsidies. Such ranchers receive federal subsidies for losses from drought. They are eligible for low-cost federal loans. Their private properties are taxed at a lower, agricultural rate. There are government subsidies to provide emergency feed for cattle stranded by blizzard. Even the fences needed to contain the cattle are built with public money.

Worse, like most ranchers who graze their cattle on public lands, Bundy is greatly contributing to the destruction of our ecosystem. According to Mike Hudak, author of Western Turf Wars: The Politics of Public Lands Ranching, “Among 1,207 plant and animal species that are endangered, threatened or proposed for listing, 22 percent are affected by cattle grazing…” This is especially true on arid lands such as those used by Bundy. Such grazing damages the area’s water supply. Cattle pollute streams, destroy riparian and forest habitats for wildlife, and cause erosion.

In addition, such ranchers are often given permission to kill predators the ranchers believe are preying on their cattle. (The Arizona legislature is currently considering a bill that would allow ranchers to kill one or more of the 90 Mexican wolves that remain in the wild.) Yet, although ranchers like Bundy have a large impact on sensitive lands, they have little impact on our food supply or our economy. They represent only 2% of America’s cattle producers and only 2.8% of the nation’s beef supply.

Despite the consequences, the BLM continues to make public lands available to ranchers for a modest annual grazing fee…a fee that Bundy has refused to pay for more than 20 years. As a result, Bundy now owes more than $1 million for unpaid grazing rights. Bundy’s only defense for his refusal to pay is that the government changed the grazing rules in order to protect an endangered tortoise. He refuses to accept the government’s authority to make changes, saying his family has grazed cattle on those lands since the 1800s. So what? Native Americans hunted on those lands for many thousands of years. Should that give them the right to hunt Bundy’s cattle? My ancestors farmed in Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland for generations. Does that give me the right to take produce from those lands without compensating the current owners?

Even after the BLM was awarded judgments by the federal courts, Bundy still refused to pay. As a last resort, BLM officials finally decided to seize Bundy’s cattle by removing them from federal lands and holding them until Bundy made restitution. Not surprisingly, Bundy and his government-hating friends went nuts. (Well, that’s not entirely true. They likely were already nuts.) Militias and Tea Party parasites swarmed to the area to make a stand against such “injustice.” They came armed with semi-automatic pistols and assault weapons. They waved their American flags and their “Don’t Tread On Me” flags. They screamed and shouted. They blocked roads. They threatened and assaulted BLM officials.

Never wanting to miss a good photo op and the opportunity to denounce our government, Tea Party congressional and legislative officials from several Western states, such as Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, flocked to the area to rally the resistance. Afraid that the incident might lead to more violence, the BLM eventually released Bundy’s cattle, packed up and left. The question is: Why? Not only did Bundy act in contempt of court, his gun-wielding militia friends are guilty of transporting weapons across state lines in support of civil disorder. Should other American citizens be allowed to defy the law by threatening violence? What message does this send to the more than 18,000 other cattle owners who pay for permits to graze their cattle on public lands?

Imagine what would have happened had the Occupy Wall Street crowds armed themselves with assault weapons and refused to obey orders. Do you think the local, state and federal agents would have shown such restraint? Would government officials show such restraint when confronted by a group of armed individuals who refuse to allow the arrest of an individual guilty of other crimes, such as drug sales, especially in a minority neighborhood? Would Fox News, Americans For Prosperity and the Tea Party support them?

You know the answer.

If Obama’s Foreign Policy Was More Like Reagan’s…

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Following the Russian confrontation in Crimea, the neocon politicians and right wing media have compared President Obama’s foreign policy to that of their idol’s – Ronald Reagan. Since I don’t remember those days as fondly as they do, and I remember conversations during a trip to Europe in which Europeans stated that they feared the US far more than the USSR, I thought it would be interesting to actually compare Reagan’s foreign policy with that of Obama’s.

Here’s what I found:

If Obama was more like Reagan, he would have immediately cut and run from Afghanistan as Reagan did from Beirut following the deaths of 241 Marines in a terrorist attack. He would illegally sell weapons to our enemies as Reagan did to Iran in exchange for the money needed to support death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua. He would embrace torturers and killers resulting in the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent peasants. And he would encourage his National Security Advisors to break the law resulting in 14 convictions and at least one other indictment.

Obama would escalate military spending on wasteful and unnecessary weapons programs tripling the national debt. He would bluster and threaten other military powers demanding an end to confrontation then reject their concessions as Reagan rejected Gorbachev’s initiative for total nuclear disarmament.

In defiance of international treaties, Obama would provide chemical and biological weapons to a brutal dictator for use against his neighbors and his own people as Reagan did for Saddam Hussein. He would break international treaties and norms in support of other repressive regimes. He would publically joke about using nuclear weapons. He would order the invasion of a tiny island nation despite the protests of Canada, the United Kingdom and the United Nations General Assembly.

Obama would channel military aid and propaganda materials to fundamentalist Muslims that would later be used by terrorists against the United States. He would support terrorists known for skinning captives alive and throwing acid in the faces of women who failed to wear burkas.

Yes, those were the “good old days.” Let’s have more of that.

Men (And Women) Of War.

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Now that the political upheaval in Ukraine is reaching a critical juncture, the usual warmongers are blustering and calling for military threats. At the same time, they’re blaming President Obama for “weak foreign policy.” Exactly which foreign policy do they consider weak? The policy that ferreted out and killed Osama bin Laden? The policy of targeting al-Qaeda leaders with drone strikes? The policy of providing air support for Libyan rebels? The policy of mandatory inspections and destruction of chemical weapons in Syria?

Or is it the policy of allowing the people of other nations to select their own government and leaders? Is it the peace negotiations with the new moderate President of Iran who requested a dialogue to end the severe economic sanctions in exchange for Iran ending its ambition for nuclear weapons? Or is it the resumption of US-led peace talks between Israel and Palestine? All of these are positive steps that stand as a welcome contrast to the Bush administration’s “you’re with us or against us” black and white approach to foreign policy.

The world is not merely black and white. It’s nuanced and complex. For example, Russia still has thousands of nuclear warheads with the capability of extinguishing all life on this planet. The US, Great Britain, France, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea all have nuclear weapons. And all but North Korea have long-range delivery systems for their warheads. As a result, military threats and war are seldom the best solutions.

Without using nuclear warheads, which could escalate into the complete destruction of our planet, our options are limited. We have seen what happens when we involve our military in nation-building projects such as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. We have seen what happened when we used our CIA to overthrow leaders in Chile, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and too many Caribbean and Pan American countries to count. We have seen what happens when we serve as the world’s largest arms and munitions dealer.

All of these tactics have created anti-American sentiment, anti-American terrorists and legions of heavily-armed militias who are determined to fight us and each other. Yet this reality seems lost on the neocons who still cling to Cold War beliefs and the ideals of the Project for the New American Century…a plan to expand the American empire by using our status as a superpower by bullying and threatening other nations to obtain an endless supply of cheap raw materials and underpaid labor.

It was neocons from both parties who led us to arm the Shah of Iran to help him oppress his people in exchange for selling us cheap oil. It was Teapublican neocons like Donald Rumsfled who armed Saddam Hussein to fight Iran. It was the neocon Richard Perle who convinced Ronald Reagan to rebuff Mikhail Gorbochev’s attempts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. It was the neocons who led us to arm and educate the radical Islamists of western Pakistan to fight the Soviets. It was neocons like George H.W. Bush, Oliver North, Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger and Richard “The Dick” Cheney who arranged to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the illegal funding of death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua. It was the neocons who supported the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in hopes that the Taliban would allow US oil companies to build a pipeline across Afghanistan so that they could gain access to Caspian oil and gas. It was neocons like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Condoleeza Rice who used the attacks of 9/11 to lead us into Iraq in order to ensure access to Iraqi oil.

More recently, neocon-lite Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham called for direct military involvement in Libya and Syria despite the fact that many of the militias involved in the war to overthrow Assad in Syria are allied with al-Qaeda. McCain, Graham and other warmongers from both political parties have called for increased sanctions on Iran – even as serious negotiations are underway – a move that would be likely to result in war with Iran. And now, the neocons are calling for confrontation and intervention in Ukraine. They are claiming that the problems in Ukraine are the result of the Obama administration’s “weak” foreign policy.

Seriously?

What do they want the administration to do? Invade Ukraine despite the fact that Ukraine has long been allied with Russia? Such an intervention rightly would be seen by Russia as an act of war. Since the end of the USSR, we have already broken our promises by moving NATO to the very doorstep of Russia, a move that is seen as a very real threat. We have already deployed our missile defense system in Europe, an act that is also seen as a threat to Russia by making a US first strike seem like a real possibility.

Any threat to use military force in Ukraine would, in effect, create a reverse version of the Cuban missile crisis. And there’s no guarantee that Putin is as realistic as Nikita Kruschev and as determined to avoid nuclear war.

The Project for the New American Century ended in 2006 in the aftermath of the group’s disastrous plan to invade and remake Iraq. Unfortunately, its members and proponents, including Richard “The Dick” Cheney, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, William Bennett, Jeb Bush, Steve Forbes, Dan Quayle and many others continue to sell the same bad ideas. Their ideas need to be relegated to the toxic waste dump of history where they belong. While we’re at it, we should bury the racist notion of American “Exceptionalism” along with the top-down economic policy known as Reaganomics, aka Trickle Down theory, Horse and Sparrow economics, and Voodoo economics. It’s time to leave the military and economic thinking of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries behind us.

It is a new century with new possibilities. It requires new thinking and new strategies.

The Growth Of Hate.

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The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the US, reports that the number of hate groups has grown by 67 percent since 2000. The SPLC website states, “Currently, there are 1,007 known hate groups of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes and others.” It lists as reasons for the increase “anger and fear over the nation’s ailing economy, an influx of non-white immigrants, and the diminishing white majority, as symbolized by the election of the nation’s first African-American president.”

Based on those criteria, I would suggest that nation’s largest hate group is the Tea Party. After all, the Tea Party is virulently anti-immigrant. It displays its racism on rally posters showing President Obama dressed in Nazi attire with a Hitleresque moustache. It continues to make unsubstantiated charges that the president is a socialist, a communist and a dictator. The Tea Party has launched relentless attacks on government institutions from the Environmental Protection Agency to the US Postal Service…even first responders and local school boards. Virtually every Tea Party meeting is devoted to tales of government conspiracies and fears of a “New World Order.” Moreover, Tea Party members continue to display guns at rallies and talk of “Second Amendment remedies.”

All of this paranoid nonsense is fueled by obstructionist Teapublican members of Congress, anti-government lies spread by Fox “News” Channel and right-wing hosts of hate radio, in addition to vicious attack ads paid for by a few angry billionaires. The resulting growth of hate has not merely divided our politics. It has pitted friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor, family member against family member, one race against another and the wealthy against the poor.

At its worst, this growing culture of hate can be seen in the recent “Stand Your Ground” slayings which have seen a teen killed for wearing a hoodie, another teen ruthlessly murdered for the volume of his music, and a military veteran killed for texting during movie previews and for throwing a bag of popcorn.

It may seem that these events are unrelated. They’re not. They are likely all symptoms of a growing national anger created by our toxic political environment and enabled by easy access to guns.

We have to ask ourselves, “Where will it end?”