Carnage in Manchester - The Evil Fruits of Religion

In the aftermath of the horrific bombing in Manchester, it is appearing increasingly certain that the suicide bomber was either acting on behalf of ISIS or at a minimum following its anti-Western, anti-modernity religious based jihad.  While shocking, the atrocity is in keeping with what religion has unleashed throughout history: hatred and violence against those with different beliefs and those who have cast off Medieval ignorance and myths.  Be it Catholic versus Protestant, Hindu versus Muslim, or Christian versus Muslim, religion and the tribalism that it needs to survive are the common threads.  The religious tenets of ISIS, like those of fundamentalist Christians in America, are threatened by science, knowledge and modernity and those who through there lives demonstrate that there is another way of believing and living become hated an targeted.  ISIS uses murder and violence.  Here in America, at least to date, Christofascists push for passage of anti-LGBT laws and special rights to discriminate against others. Differing responses, yet both reactions to perceived threats to fairy tale based beliefs, or, in the case of Islam, the delusional writings of an individual who would likely be in a mental institution nowadays.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the horrible situation.  Here are excerpts:

By Tuesday, 22 people had died, and 59 others had been hospitalized, some with life-threatening injuries. The dead included 8-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos, who had come with her mother and older sister, and 18-year-old Georgina Bethany Callander, who had posted an image of her brand new driver’s license on Instagram.

The Islamic State said one of its “soldiers” had carried out the bombing, which took the life of the man British police officials believe was behind it, Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old whose parents emigrated from Libya. It is still unclear whether Mr. Abedi acted alone or as part of a network. No one yet knows what motivated him to commit such a horrific deed. It is also unclear whether the Islamic State’s claim is legitimate. Only further investigation can answer these questions.

Meanwhile, as hard as it is amid the shock and the mourning, it is important to recognize this attack for what it is: an attempt to shake Britain — and, by extension, the rest of Europe and the West — to its core, and to provoke a thirst for vengeance and a desire for absolute safety so intense, it will sweep away the most cherished democratic values and the inclusiveness of diverse societies.

The Islamic State wants nothing more than to watch Western democracies embrace its mad version of a holy war pitting Muslims against Christians, the newly arrived against others. This has been the goal of other attacks in Europe. With cold calculation, extremists have ripped apart the lives of people simply out enjoying themselves — whether at a concert or sitting around cafe tables in Paris in November 2015, or gathering for Bastille Day fireworks in Nice last year, or shopping at a Christmas market in Berlin in December.

Maximum vigilance is needed, and Britain raised its threat level from severe to critical. Public spaces must be made as safe as possible, even as people recognize that more attacks will very likely occur, despite our best defenses. In Britain, as in the rest of Europe and in the United States, it is critical that immigrants, especially Muslims, are not stigmatized. As Richard Barrett, former director of global counterterrorism operations at MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, said, “engaging the community and letting the community inform us” is one way “to understand why people do this” and to prevent future attacks.

The quickest way for open societies to lose the freedoms they enjoy and the Islamic State seeks to destroy would be to whip up divisive ethnic, racist and religious hatreds. But there will be those who try. The Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson tweeted on Tuesday: “We need a State of Emergency as France has. We need internment of thousands of terror suspects now to protect our children.” Then there was the unbelievably vile tweet by Katie Hopkins, a British commentator: “We need a final solution.” She later changed “final” to “true” in a new tweet after her original was widely condemned.

Throughout history religion has needed an "us versus them" mentality to survive just like any cult or gang.  It is easy to reflexively blame Islam, but the real driving force is the rejection of knowledge and the embrace of ignorance and antiquated, myth based beliefs.   Religion is the real enemy of humankind be it Islam or Christianity.  Both have destroyed countless lives through the centuries and brought death and destruction.   

Refusing to Give in to Fear

As regular readers  know, back in May of this year the husband and I and three friends spent a week in Paris and journeyed all over the city, including to points mere blocks from some of the sites that witnessed carnage last Friday.  I hear some saying that they won't be going to Paris any tie soon or may avoid going to Europe all together - which is precisely what the ISIS connected terrorists want.  They want to impose fear and they want to replace freedom and openness with fear and disrupted lives.   By giving into fear or by using fear mongering to exacerbate hostility to Muslims for self-promotion, those included to embrace fear and despicable Republican politicians are doing exactly what ISIS wants.  I for one would go back to Paris in a heart beat - I have a higher risk of being  victim of gun violence here in America.   A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

Like millions of people, I’ve been obsessively following the news from Paris, putting aside other things to focus on the horror. It’s the natural human reaction. But let’s be clear: it’s also the reaction the terrorists want. And that’s something not everyone seems to understand.

Take, for example, Jeb Bush’s declaration that “this is an organized attempt to destroy Western civilization.” No, it isn’t. It’s an organized attempt to sow panic, which isn’t at all the same thing. And remarks like that, which blur that distinction and make terrorists seem more powerful than they are, just help the jihadists’ cause.

Think, for a moment, about what France is and what it represents. It has its problems — what nation doesn’t? — but it’s a robust democracy with a deep well of popular legitimacy. Its defense budget is small compared with ours, but it nonetheless retains a powerful military, and has the resources to make that military much stronger if it chooses. (France’s economy is around 20 times the size of Syria’s.) France is not going to be conquered by ISIS, now or ever. Destroy Western civilization? Not a chance.

So what was Friday’s attack about? Killing random people in restaurants and at concerts is a strategy that reflects its perpetrators’ fundamental weakness. It isn’t going to establish a caliphate in Paris. What it can do, however, is inspire fear — which is why we call it terrorism, and shouldn’t dignify it with the name of war.

The point is not to minimize the horror. It is, instead, to emphasize that the biggest danger terrorism poses to our society comes not from the direct harm inflicted, but from the wrong-headed responses it can inspire. And it’s crucial to realize that there are multiple ways the response can go wrong.

It would certainly be a very bad thing if France or other democracies responded to terrorism with appeasement . . . .

A much bigger risk, in practice, is that the targets of terrorism will try to achieve perfect security by eliminating every conceivable threat — a response that inevitably makes things worse, because it’s a big, complicated world, and even superpowers can’t set everything right. On 9/11 Donald Rumsfeld told his aides: “Sweep it up. Related and not,” and immediately suggested using the attack as an excuse to invade Iraq. The result was a disastrous war that actually empowered terrorists, and set the stage for the rise of ISIS.

[P]eople can and do exploit terrorism for political gain, including using it to justify what they imagine will be a splendid, politically beneficial little war. 

Oh, and whatever people like Ted Cruz may imagine, ending our reluctance to kill innocent civilians wouldn’t remove the limits to American power. It would, however, do wonders for terrorist recruitment.

Finally, terrorism is just one of many dangers in the world, and shouldn’t be allowed to divert our attention from other issues.  

Paris may have changed that calculus a bit, especially when it comes to Europe’s handling of refugees, an agonizing issue that has now gotten even more fraught. And there will have to be a post-mortem on why such an elaborate plot wasn’t spotted. But do you remember all the pronouncements that 9/11 would change everything? Well, it didn’t — and neither will this atrocity.

Again, the goal of terrorists is to inspire terror, because that’s all they’re capable of. And the most important thing our societies can do in response is to refuse to give in to fear.

How the CIA, George W. Bush and Others Create ISIS

To hear Republicans the ongoing debacle in the Middle East is all Barack Obama's fault.  Like so much of what the GOP noise machine puts out nowadays, these claims bear no resemblance to the truth.  Moreover, just as George W. Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney were caught completely at the wheel by the 9-11 attackes, George W. Bush and his evil minion - or is puppeteer more accurate? - bear responsibility for the rise of ISIS.  Rather than missteps by Obama, it was the failed Middle East polices of Bush/Cheney that are to blame for the current unfolding disaster. But, again, when do truth and reality mean nothing to today's Congressional Republicans.  A piece in Salon looks at the those truly at fault in the creation of ISIS.  Here are excerpts:

Since 1980, the United States has intervened in the affairs of fourteen Muslim countries, at worst invading or bombing them. They are (in chronological order) Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo, Yemen, Pakistan, and now Syria. Latterly these efforts have been in the name of the War on Terror and the attempt to curb Islamic extremism.

Yet for centuries Western countries have sought to harness the power of radical Islam to serve the interests of their own foreign policy. In the case of Britain, this dates back to the days of the Ottoman Empire; in more recent times, the US/UK alliance first courted, then turned against, Islamists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. 

The Turkish Ottoman Empire was, for centuries, the largest Muslim political entity the world has ever known . . . Britain’s support for the Ottoman Caliph—a policy known as the Eastern Question—was entirely motivated by self-interest. Initially this was so the Ottoman lands would act as a buffer against its regional imperial rivals, France and Russia. . . .

It was only with the onset of the First World War in 1914 that this 400-year-old regional paradigm unraveled. When Mehmed V sided with the Germans, Britain was reluctantly excluded from dealing with the caliphate’s catchment of over 15 million Muslims, reasoning that “whoever controlled the person of the Caliph, controlled Sunni Islam.” London decided that an Arab uprising to unseat Mehmed would enable them to reassign the role of caliph to a trusted and more malleable ally: Hussein bin Ali Hussein, the sherif of Mecca and a direct descendant, it is claimed, of the Prophet Muhammad. The British employed racism to garner support for the uprising, appealing to the Arabs’ sense of ownership over Islam, which had originated in Mecca and Medina, not among the Turks of Constantinople.

The Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, fomented by the British, got underway in 1916, the same year that the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement was made in secret, carving up between the British and French the very lands Sherif Hussein had been promised. Betrayal, manipulation, and self-interest were, and remain, the name of the game when it comes to Western meddling in the Middle East.  

In a memo to British intelligence in 1916, Lawrence described the hidden agenda behind the Arab uprising: “The Arabs are even less stable than the Turks. If properly handled they would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of small jealous principalities, incapable of cohesion . . . incapable of co-ordinated action against us.” In a subsequent missive he explained, “When war broke out, an urgent need to divide Islam was added. . . . Hussein was ultimately chosen because of the rift he would create in Islam. In other words, divide and rule.” 

To counteract the rise of pan-Arabism, the West began to support Islamist tendencies within each country—mostly branches of the Muslim Brotherhood—and also worked hard in the diplomatic field to create strong and binding relationships with Islamic, pro-Western monarchies in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Jordan. These relationships endure to this day. 

The most extreme manifestation of radical Sunni Islam was Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism, which it had started to disseminate via a string of international organizations and its self-designated Global Islamic Mission.  

For the West, radical Islam represented the best way to counter the encroachment of Arab nationalism communism.

“More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by the CIA and MI6, with the SAS training future al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia.” That Western interference in Afghanistan actually precedes the Soviet invasion by several months is rarely acknowledged.

Because IS is a product of Western interference in Iraq and Syria, none of the powers that backed the Afghan mujahideen anticipated the emergence of alQaeda, with its vehemently anti-Western agenda and ambition to re-establish the caliphate. Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf wrote in his autobiography, “Neither Pakistan nor the US realized what Osama bin Laden would do with the organization we had all allowed him to establish.”

In the course of the 1990s, radical political Islam became more extremist—a shift that was encouraged and funded by Saudi Arabia. . . . The House of Saud now linked its survival with the rise of the Salafi-jihadist tendency, which was consistent with its own custom-fit Wahhabi ideology.

Saudi entities and individuals funded al Qaeda and other violent Salafist groups to the tune of $300 million through the 1990s, and the United States and UK remained stalwartly supportive.

The First Gulf War brought two changes into play. The first was that Saudi Arabia now became completely dependent, militarily, on the United States for its survival. The second was that, in an attempt to weaken Saddam Hussein, the CIA encouraged Shi‘i groups in southern Iraq to rebel, resulting in thousands of Shi‘a being slaughtered by regime helicopter fire. George H. W. Bush spent $40 million on clandestine operations in Iraq, flying Shi‘i and Kurdish leaders to Saudi Arabia for training, and creating and funding two opposition groups . . . 

The West continues to behave as if Saudi Arabia can deliver the world from the menace of extremism. Yet the kingdom has spent $50 billion promoting Wahhabism around the world, and most of the funding for al Qaeda—amounting to billions of dollars—still comes from private individuals and organizations in Saudi Arabia. The Sinjar Records (documents captured in Iraq by coalition forces in 2007) provided a clear picture of where foreign jihadists were coming from: Saudi nationals accounted for 45 percent of foreign fighters in Iraq. They swell the ranks of IS today. 

As noted in other posts, it is ridiculous that the USA continues to support the Saudi royals who are funding  - or allowing - the funding of ISIS and extremist groups.  Sadly, due to American and European dependence on Middle East oil, we have supported the Saudis even as they work for terror attacks against us.   

We Must Offend Religion More: Tolerance of Ancient Myths is Harmful

If we look at the horrors being done by ISIS in the Middle East, the constant homophobia disseminated from pulpits daily, and even a fair amount of racism in America, there is one common thread: religion and beliefs based on ancient myths and writings of individuals who were totally ignorant about almost every aspect of modern knowledge, both scientific, medical and in the realm of mental health.  Despite the fact that the unknown authors of the Bible and the falsely honored Prophet Mohammed" were utterly ignorant of knowledge that is the base of everyday life and modern technology, their rants and ravings are given undeserved deference - as are those who cling to, if not openly embrace, ignorance.  A lengthy piece in Salon makes the case that we need to offend religion and the religious more if we are to stop the harm that often seems to be the principal fruit of religion.  Here are highlights:

“Yes, it is freedom of speech, but,” said Inna Shevchenko, the 24-year-old leader of the topless, fiercely atheist activist group Femen in France.  On Feb. 14 she was addressing the conference on art, blasphemy and freedom of expression held at the Krudttønden, a café and cultural center in Copenhagen.  She continued.  “Why do we still say ‘but’ when we…”

A sustained barrage of automatic gunfire interrupted her.  She, the Swedish cartoonist with her onstage, Lars Vilks (famous for his 2007 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked deadly riots in the Islamic world), and much of the audience hurled themselves to the floor before escaping through the building’s rear exit.  The hooded terrorist assailant, a 22-year-old Danish citizen of Arab descent . . . 

The attacker’s primary target was probably Vilks, but he would have rejoiced at the chance to get Shevchenko, too.  After all, Femen has pronounced religion – in particular, Islam — a bane on women’s rights and has carried out a number of widely publicized, bare-breasted protests against it, burning the Salafist flag in front of the Great Mosque in Paris . . .

The morning after the Copenhagen assault I spoke with Shevchenko by Skype.  Still in the Danish capital, she had spent much of the night at the police station, and had slept poorly after returning to her hotel.  Yet she was calm and lucid, determined to continue with Femen’s fight against religion.  This fight had turned extremely personal for her even before Copenhagen: She lost 12 friends in the Charlie Hebdo massacre last month in Paris, where she lives as a political refugee.

If we have free speech only up to where we might hurt someone’s feelings, then it isn’t free.  ‘You have freedom of speech, just don’t offend,’ people tell me.  Those who say this are only trying to shut down our freedoms.  If we cede to this, we play their game.  Now that offends me.”

In the month between the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the attack in Copenhagen, I both read and heard a number of arguments that in essence blame the artists for their own deaths.  Most, in fact, start with “I believe in freedom of speech, but  . . .”

No Western constitution or legal code guarantees citizens the right to go about life free from offense.  Laws provide for freedom of expression (with some restrictions, especially regarding state security, hate crime and incitement to violence), but they cannot forbid potentially offensive expression without destroying the very right they are meant to protect.  

To devout Muslims, the sight of uncovered women and the serving of pork and alcoholic beverages cause offense.  Devout Hindus would certainly find beef offensive.  Devout Catholics could draw up their own list, and Jews, another.  In short, a lot of things might offend a great number of people all over the place.  In a world ever more connected by the Internet . . . . there is no way to guard against offending someone, somewhere.  We should not be obligated to take into account a work’s potential for inciting murderous mass tantrums in faraway lands or slaughter at home when evaluating it for publication.

Steadfast belief in the inerrancy of religious dogma, coupled with (at times fanatically held) convictions that the dogma’s many mandates are meant to apply to all humanity, clash with principles of secular governance and Enlightenment-era precepts that oblige us, at least ideally, to sort out our problems relying on reason, consensus and law.  . . . . We must unabashedly stand by reason, the rule of law, and secularism.

Our enduring deference to all religions, despite their verifiably phony explanations for the origins of the cosmos and our species, to say nothing of their toxic preachments, only furthers their survival.  We need not less but more frank talk about faith.

Concepts of freedom of expression and the laws designed to protect it were born in Europe’s blood-soaked history of interfaith warfare, mostly between Catholics and Protestants.  The (atheistic) French Revolution aimed to “de-Christianize” France in order to smash the (temporal, wealth-based) stranglehold the Catholic Church had on the country.  

The Founding Fathers well knew how the state could use religion against the people; hence, the First Amendment safeguards both freedom of speech and freedom of religion by forbidding Congress to enact laws abridging the exercise of either.  The Abrahamic faiths have never been simply matters of conscience; they have always served as weapons to impose control, especially over women and their bodies, sexual minorities and education.  Weapons need to be kept under lock and key, or better yet, eliminated. 

Attempts to shield religions from censure in the face of overwhelming evidence – President Obama leads the pack of invertebrate Western politicians doing this — amount to nothing more than pandering acceptance of ancient myths, harmful ideas and the increasingly gruesome violence to which they often lead.  Ideologies merit no a priori respect; people do.

[W]e are engaged in a struggle for the soul of our Enlightenment civilization.  Shevchenko said as much.  . . . To continue accepting quisling pseudo-justifications for — or sophistic, à la Reza Aslan, misdiagnoses of — the role of Islam in motivating terrorism throughout the world presages one thing: We will lose.

America’s 10 Worst Terror Attacks by Far Right Extremists and Christian Fundamentalists

If one only listens to Fox News and various right wing news outlets, one would quickly believe that only Muslims commit terror attacks and atrocities.  However, a post at Civil Commotion sets one on the right path:

There is something here that needs to be faced: Islam today is what Christianity once was — domineering and brutal. The Roman church ruled the West for 1000-years, and gave us the grotesque indecencies of the Inquisition, the witch burnings, and the auto da fe (sometimes claiming the lives of dozens in a single huge fire); it did not, inspired by its own teachings, end violence. It was secularism that tamed Christianity, the [Albert] Mohlers and [former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin] Cochrans of the past, and secularism is more needful than ever as they come to grips with the fact that their backward-looking worldview has lost to the progress of knowledge.

The pious Christian crowd and Fox News followers obviously won't like hearing the truth.  A piece in The Raw Story  reminds us of some of the heinous deeds done by fundamentalist Christians and elements of the far right.  Here are highlights:

From Fox News to the Weekly Standard, neoconservatives have tried to paint terrorism as a largely or exclusively Islamic phenomenon. Their message of Islamophobia has been repeated many times since the George W. Bush era: Islam is inherently violent, Christianity is inherently peaceful, and there is no such thing as a Christian terrorist or a white male terrorist. But the facts don’t bear that out. Far-right white male radicals and extreme Christianists are every bit as capable of acts of terrorism as radical Islamists, and to pretend that such terrorists don’t exist does the public a huge disservice. . . . many terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who were neither Muslims nor dark-skinned.

In fact, most of the terrorist activity occurring in the United States in recent years has not come from Muslims, but from a combination of radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.

Below are 10 of the worst examples of non-Islamic terrorism that have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years.

1. Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre, Aug. 5, 2012. The virulent, neocon-fueled Islamophobia that has plagued post-9/11 America has not only posed a threat to Muslims, it has had deadly consequences for people of other faiths, including Sikhs. . . . .  On Aug. 5, 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael Page used a semiautomatic weapon to murder six people during an attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page’s connection to the white supremacist movement was well-documented . . .

2. The murder of Dr. George Tiller, May 31, 2009. Imagine that a physician had been the victim of an attempted assassination by an Islamic jihadist in 1993, and received numerous death threats from al-Qaeda after that, before being murdered by an al-Qaeda member. Neocons, Fox News and the Christian Right would have had a field day. A physician was the victim of a terrorist killing that day, but neither the terrorist nor the people who inflamed the terrorist were Muslims. Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder on May 31, 2009, was a victim of Christian Right terrorism, not al-Qaeda.

3. Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church shooting, July 27, 2008. On July 27, 2008, Christian Right sympathizer Jim David Adkisson walked into the Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee during a children’s play and began shooting people at random. Two were killed, while seven others were injured but survived. Adkisson said he was motivated by a hatred of liberals, Democrats and gays, and he considered neocon Bernard Goldberg’s book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, his political manifesto. 

4. The murder of Dr. John Britton, July 29, 1994. To hear the Christian Right tell it, there is no such thing as Christian terrorism. Tell that to the victims of the Army of God, a loose network of radical Christianists with a long history of terrorist attacks on abortion providers. One Christian Right terrorist with ties to the Army of God was Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 3, 2003 for the murders of abortion doctor John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett. Hill shot both of them in cold blood and expressed no remorse whatsoever; he insisted he was doing’s God’s work and has been exalted as a martyr by the Army of God.

5. The Centennial Olympic Park bombing, July 27, 1996. Paul Jennings Hill is hardly the only Christian terrorist who has been praised by the Army of God; that organization has also praised Eric Rudolph, who is serving life without parole for a long list of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Christianity. Rudolph is best known for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics—a blast that killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others. 

6. The murder of Barnett Slepian by James Charles Kopp, Oct. 23, 1998. Like Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder, James Charles Kopp is a radical Christian terrorist who has been exalted as a hero by the Army of God. On Oct. 23, 1998 Kopp fired a single shot into the Amherst, NY home of Barnett Slepian (a doctor who performed abortions), mortally wounding him. Slepian died an hour later.

7. Planned Parenthood bombing, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994. Seldom has the term “Christian terrorist” been used in connection with John C. Salvi on AM talk radio or at Fox News, but it’s a term that easily applies to him. In 1994, the radical anti-abortionist and Army of God member attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, shooting and killing receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols and wounding several others.  . . . .  The Army of God has exalted Salvi as a Christian martyr and described Lowney and Nichols not as victims of domestic terrorism, but as infidels who got what they deserved. 

8. Suicide attack on IRS building in Austin, Texas, Feb. 18, 2010. When Joseph Stack flew a plane into the Echelon office complex (where an IRS office was located), Fox News’ coverage of the incident was calm and matter-of-fact. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa seemed to find the attack amusing and joked that it could have been avoided if the federal government had followed his advice and abolished the IRS. Nonetheless, there were two fatalities: Stack and IRS employee Vernon Hunter.

9. The murder of Alan Berg, June 18, 1984. One of the most absurd claims some Republicans have made about white supremacists is that they are liberals and progressives. That claim is especially ludicrous in light of the terrorist killing of liberal Denver-based talk show host Alan Berg, a critic of white supremacists who was killed with an automatic weapon on June 18, 1984. The killing was linked to members of the Order, a white supremacist group that had marked Berg for death. Order members David Lane (a former Ku Klux Klan member who had also been active in the Aryan Nations) and Bruce Pierce were both convicted in federal court on charges of racketeering, conspiracy and violating Berg’s civil rights and given what amounted to life sentences.

10. Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995. Neocons and Republicans grow angry and uncomfortable whenever Timothy McVeigh is cited as an example of a non-Islamic terrorist. Pointing out that a non-Muslim white male carried out an attack as vicious and deadly as the Oklahoma City bombing doesn’t fit into their narrative that only Muslims and people of color are capable of carrying out terrorist attacks. . . . . Prior to the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing McVeigh orchestrated was the most deadly terrorist attack in U.S. history: 168 people were killed and more than 600 were injured.

The foregoing is not intended to diminish the heinous nature of the terror attacks in Paris last week.   But, if one reads the excerpts above, one thing becomes quickly apparent: most of the terror attacks, like in the Paris attacks, were motivated at least in part by fundamentalist religious belief.   Yes, we need to rid the world of Islamic extremism.  We also need to rid the world of fundamentalist Christian extremism as well.

Saudi Arabia and the Missing Pages of the 9/11 Report

As noted recently, the USA continues to treat Saudi Arabia as a key ally even though that nation continues to violate international law on human rights abuses and to foster Islamic extremism.  Now, in the wake of events in Paris last week, some want the pages redacted from the 9/11 report to be released.  What will they show?  Mainly that the USA's supposed ally provided most of the funding for the 9/11 attackers. It's past time that America stop giving a pass to and supporting regimes that in so many ways work against America's - and western modernity - interests.  Here are excerpts from a piece in The Daily Beast:

A story that might otherwise have slipped away in a morass of conspiracy theories gained new life Wednesday when former Sen. Bob Graham headlined a press conference on Capitol Hill to press for the release of 28 pages redacted from a Senate report on the 9/11 attacks. And according to Graham, the lead author of the report, the pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as the principal financier” of the 9/11 hijackers.

“This may seem stale to some but it’s as current as the headlines we see today,” Graham said, referring to the terrorist attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris. The pages are being kept under wraps out of concern their disclosure would hurt U.S. national security. But as chairman of the Senate Select Committee that issued the report in 2002, Graham argues the opposite is true, and that the real “threat to national security is non-disclosure.”

Graham said the redacted pages characterize the support network that allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, and if that network goes unchallenged, it will only flourish. He said that keeping the pages classified is part of “a general pattern of coverup” that for 12 years has kept the American people in the dark. It is “highly improbable” the 19 hijackers acted alone, he said, yet the U.S. government’s position is “to protect the government most responsible for that network of support.” 

The Saudis know what they did, Graham continued, and the U.S. knows what they did, and when the U.S. government takes a position of passivity, or actively shuts down inquiry, that sends a message to the Saudis. “They have continued, maybe accelerated their support for the most extreme form of Islam,” he said, arguing that both al Qaeda and ISIS are “a creation of Saudi Arabia.”

Standing with Graham were Republican Rep. Walter Jones and Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch, co-sponsors of House Resolution 428, which says declassification of the 28 pages is necessary to provide the American public with the full truth surrounding the 9/11 attacks. The two lawmakers echoed Graham’s assertion that national security would not be harmed . . . . 

The relatively few who have read the pages come away with varying levels of shock and surprise. Lynch said he was so blown away that the information was being kept from the public that he told the two room monitors he would be filing legislation. HR 428 had 27 co-sponsors in the last Congress.

Quinn told The Daily Beast, “It’s rather bizarre that we would go to these great lengths to air this heretofore confidential information about how we reacted to 9/11, and at the same time we keep secret information about protecting those who helped launch the attack.”  But now the wheels of justice are finally moving. The Senate passed by voice vote in the last Congress JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act). Co-sponsored by Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the bill would strip diplomatic immunity from nation states in cases of terrorism, and open the door to financial compensation for the 9/11 families from the Saudi government.

It all signals that the decades-long bipartisan policy of always keeping the Saudis happy, and never rocking the boat, may be coming to an end. In Sarasota, Florida, a federal judge is reviewing 80,000 pages of documents that relate to a prominent Saudi family and its extensive contacts with three of the hijackers when they attended flight school in Sarasota.

The family abruptly left the U.S. for Saudi Arabia a few days before the attacks, leaving dinner on the table and a brand new car in the driveway “as though they’d been tipped something was going to happen, and they’d better not be in the country,” said Graham. One member of the family is described as a high-level adviser to the Saudi royal family.

All but three Senate Democrats, joined by one Republican and one independent, signed a letter calling on President Bush to declassify the 28-page section detailing the role of foreign governments in bankrolling the 9/11 attackers.

Oh, and let's not forget how Bush and Cheney allowed a plane full of Saudis to leave the country even as all other flights were grounded. 

French Police Close in on Paris Terror Suspects

Police officer Ahmed Merabet who was murdered

Hopefully, French police will capture the two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  The two are reportedly holed up in a town near Charles DeGaulle airport where they are reported to be holding at least one hostage.  One of the sick ironies of the whole affair is that the police officer shot and killed like a dog was Muslim himself, a fact that those fanning anti-Muslim hate - e.g., French far right politicians - need to not forget.  Just as many Christians do not support the ugly actions of  fundamentalist "Christians," a majority of Muslims do not condone the savagery and hate that are the hallmarks of Islamic fundamentalists.  The Washington Post reports on the current stand off.  Here are excerpts:

French security forces closed in Friday on the brothers suspected in France’s worst terrorist attack in generations, surrounding a commercial building outside Paris where the pair was believed holed up with at least one hostage.

The search narrowed to a printing business in Dammartin-en-Goele, about 25 miles northeast of Paris, where authorities believe the brothers headed in a stolen car. Authorities say the suspects held at least one hostage, but gave no further details.

In scenes reminiscent of recent standoffs — including last month’s hostage-taking at a Sydney cafe — French police put the area under lockdown orders, asking people to stay indoors and turn off their lights as the drama played out on an overcast afternoon.

French media, citing police sources, reported that the brothers appeared ready to make a last stand rather than surrender. It was not immediately clear what weapons they had available, but previous reports said they had Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

They took refuge in the printing business after stealing a car and firing shots, French media reported.
A client at the business said he shook hands with one of the armed fugitives, believing he was a police special forces officer, France Info radio reported.

Fresh details emerged Thursday that one of the brothers had tried to meet with al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.

U.S. officials said the older of the two, Said Kouachi, is believed to have traveled to Yemen in 2011 in an effort to link up with al-Qaeda’s affiliate there at a time when that group was eclipsing the terror network’s core leadership in Pakistan as the principal threat to the United States.

U.S. officials said Kouachi may have received small-arms training and picked up other skills while in Yemen, but they described the years that followed that 2011 visit as a “kind of hole” in the timeline, with significant gaps in authorities’ understanding of the brothers’ activities and whereabouts.

French officials vowed to bring the men to justice and announced that they had taken nine people into custody in relation to the case. Authorities would not release their names, but French media said that those picked up in the dragnet included a sister of the men as well as her companion and the wife of Said Kouachi. 

“I’m afraid this is going to open a boulevard for the far right,” said Diane Tribout, 28, a public servant who joined a candlelight vigil in the Place de la Republique on Thursday, where crowds chanted, “Charlie isn’t dead!”

“On the streets of Paris, you might not see it as obviously, but I know that in small towns and villages all across France, this tragic event is going to be used to fuel anger and rage,” Tribout said.

Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right [Neo-Nazi] National Front, which has surged in opinion polls here well before Wednesday’s attack, spoke out Thursday, calling her party the only one that had challenged the notion of “Islamic fundamentalism on our territory.”

Religion's War on Freedom Strike in Paris

Suspected shooter in Paris Massacre

Religion - or in this case, conservative Islam - has added new names to the death toll that goes hand in glove with religion over the centuries.  For centuries, those deemed guilty of blasphemy or who refused to live by certain creeds and beliefs have been murdered by the "true believers" who, due to their own psychological issues, religious brainwashing, and/or ignorance, cannot stand to see anything or anyone challenge or mock their delusional fairy tale like religious myths.   I increasingly view deep religious fundamentalism to be a form of mental illness.  The New York Times has new details on the cowardly mass killing at the offices of French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris.  Here are highlights:

The terrorist attack by masked gunmen on the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, left 12 people dead — including the top editor, prominent cartoonists and police officers — and was among the deadliest in postwar France.

Officials said late Wednesday that the suspects had been identified and that two were brothers. They were identified as Said and Cherif Kouachi, 32 and 34, and Hamyd Mourad, 18. French news reports said the brothers had been born in Paris, raising the prospect that homegrown Muslim extremists were responsible.

Officials and witnesses said at least two gunmen carried out the attack with automatic weapons and an unusual degree of military-style precision. President François Hollande of France called it a display of extraordinary “barbarism” that was “without a doubt” an act of terrorism. 

The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said witnesses said the attackers had screamed “Allahu akbar!” or “God is great!” during the attack, which the police characterized as a “slaughter.”

Corinne Rey, a cartoonist known as Coco, who was at the newspaper office during the attack, told Le Monde that the attackers spoke fluent French and had said they were part of Al Qaeda.

An amateur video of the assailants’ subsequent gunfight with the police, showed the men shouting, “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo!” The video, the source of which could not be verified, also showed the gunmen killing a police officer as he lay wounded on a nearby street.

The victims at Charlie Hebdo included some of the country’s most revered and iconoclastic cartoonists. The weekly’s editorial director, Stéphane Charbonnier, had already been received light police protection after earlier threats, the police and the prosecutor said. An officer assigned to guard the newspaper’s offices and its top editor was among the victims.

Mr. Molins, the prosecutor, said that two men armed with AK-47 rifles and wearing black hoods, had forced their way into the weekly’s offices about 11:30 a.m., firing at people in the lobby, before making their way to the newsroom on the second floor, interrupting a news meeting and firing at the assembled journalists.

The attackers then fled outside, where they clashed three times with the police, shooting one officer as he lay on the ground on a nearby street.

One journalist who was at the weekly during the attack and asked that her name not be used, texted a friend after the shooting: “I’m alive. There is death all around me. Yes, I am there. The jihadists spared me.”

What's frightening is that religious extremists - both Christian and Muslim - want to deprive others of freedom of expression and freedom of religion - and/or freedom from religion.  Their beliefs are so fragile and psychotic that they cannot tolerate anyone who suggests that their beliefs are based on lies or myths.  These religious fundamentals deserve no deference, no respect and their belief systems need to be irradiated.

The publisher of Charlie Hebdo who was murdered in Paris

Four of the murder victims