January 2010

A common refrain from Muslim-hating bigots like Cao is that one never hears of moderate Muslims denouncing the acts of Muslim terrorists. In fact, moderate Muslims the world over have denounced terrorism, but the bigots are careful to never take any notice of such inconvenient facts.

That’s why articles like this rarely, if ever, get mentioned in the wingnut blogosphere:

A group of Canadian and U.S. Islamic leaders on Friday issued a fatwa, or religious edict, declaring that an attack by extremists on the two countries would constitute an attack on the 10 million Muslims living in North America.

The 20 imams associated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada said this marked the first fatwa by the Muslim clergy declaring attacks on Canada and the U.S. to be attacks on Muslims.

“In our view, these attacks are evil, and Islam requires Muslims to stand up against this evil,” the imams said in their fatwa.

Calgary Imam Syed Soharwardy, founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, said attacks on Canadian or U.S. soil are essentially attacks on Muslims.

“We are part of this society,” he said. “This is my home, and if anybody attacks on Canada, in fact, attacks on my home.”

The imams said it is a duty of every Muslim in Canada and the U.S. to safeguard the two countries.

Only a vanishingly tiny minority of Muslims ever commit terrorist acts, or would ever want to do so. That’s why any terrorist turns to terrorism in the first place; there are too few of them to get their views noticed in any other way. But to acknowledge the fact that the vast majority of Muslims oppose the terrorists would not feed the atmosphere of fear and loathing that the wingnut bigots are always trying to foster — and thus, the wingnuts ignore that inconvenient fact.

(hat tip: Friendly Atheist)

Since 9/11, accused terrorists have been tried in both civilian courts and military tribunals. Which venue produces a higher rate of convictions, do you suppose?

Civilian courts do, by an enormous margin.

Hoodathunkit?

Lizard bitch Cao has again demonstrated its core value: blatant intellectual dishonesty. Have a look:

diverting CIA satellites to monitor polar ice caps

This is the equivalent of sending the CIA to Siberia, IMO – the CIA’s area of expertise is INTELLIGENCE GATHERING on America’s enemies. Obama has some great priorities; this is yet another example of the Obot administration attempting to bust the CIA’s effective war on terrorism. Obama doesn’t want to acknowledge it exists; and global warming is a necessary lie in order to keep funding all of these government-funded green initiatives. As all those ‘learned scientists’ at Greenpeace demonstrates, you don’t need to be a scientist to prop the global warming lie, in fact, it behooves you NOT to be because then you’re not bothered with that pesky scientific method.

C.I.A. Is Sharing Data With Climate Scientists (New York Times).

If you want to look at what’s REALLY happening to the polar icecaps, the CIA’s satellite imaging isn’t really a good measuring tool. But the Polar Research Group in the Department of Atmospheric Science at the University of Illinois has great data to check out on it…the problem is, they’re not global warming enthusiasts and they have REAL DATA.

Where shall we start to catalog the stupidity and outright mendacity exhibited in Cao’s post? Let’s begin with the title: “diverting CIA satellites to monitor polar ice caps”. No satellites are being diverted at all. As detailed in the New York Times article that the lizard bitch linked but clearly did not read, images taken by spy satellites as they pass over the polar region are being released for scientific use. That’s all.

The good folk at TPMMuckraker have produced a carefully researched article reviewing what we know so far about the intelligence regarding the failed Christmas Day attempt to bring down an airliner: Flight 253 Intel: What Did They Know And When Did They Know It?

Glenn Greenwald:

This is what inevitably happens to a citizenry that is fed a steady diet of fear and terror for years. It regresses into pure childhood. The 5-year-old laying awake in bed, frightened by monsters in the closet, who then crawls into his parents’ bed to feel Protected and Safe, is the same as a citizenry planted in front of the television, petrified by endless imagery of scary Muslim monsters, who then collectively crawl to Government and demand that they take more power and control in order to keep them Protected and Safe. A citizenry drowning in fear and fixated on Safety to the exclusion of other competing values can only be degraded and depraved.

…

What makes all of this most ironic is that the American Founding was predicated on exactly the opposite mindset.  The Constitution is grounded in the premise that there are other values and priorities more important than mere Safety.  Even though they knew that doing so would help murderers and other dangerous and vile criminals evade capture, the Framers banned the Government from searching homes without probable cause, prohibited compelled self-incrimination, double jeopardy and convictions based on hearsay, and outlawed cruel and unusual punishment.  That’s because certain values — privacy, due process, limiting the potential for abuse of government power — were more important than mere survival and safety.  A central calculation of the Constitution was that we insist upon privacy, liberty and restraints on government power even when doing so means we live with less safety and a heightened risk of danger and death.

UPDATE 01/02/10 1:36 PM EST: Matt Yglesias has a good follow-up point, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal (!).

Digby:

Terrorism is an awful thing, but this bozo from Nigeria with explosives in his pants is not going to destroy America as we know it even if he did manage to do the unthinkable. But we can do that for him by allowing these panic artists, fearful children and political opportunists to turn the nation upside down every time a bozo like him attempts something. It’s nothing but an excuse for the authoritarians to take the country further down the police state road in the name of “keeping us safe” while the media gets to pretend they are living out some virtual Ernie Pyle fantasy, except with really good hair and make-up.

The panic is the point. That’s why they do terrorist attacks in the first place. And the damned bozo certainly succeeded, at least among the elites who, as far as I can tell, have worked themselves up into some kind of fugue state and are now practically speaking in tongues. It’s embarrassing.