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Eirik Bergesen wrote a brilliant article on the Norwegian response to this incidence. See it here. Rather than respond with fear and hand-wringing, the Norwegians are picking themselves up and getting back to work. While foreign media started flipping out and blaming Islam, Norwegian media kept its cool, seeking to inform, not to inflame. Rather than giving in to fear and thereby allowing the terrorist to "win" so to speak, Norway is returning to normal, in effect saying, You can't get us down. What an honorable, strong nation. Too bad the rest of the world cannot follow its example. Of course, if we did, perhaps fewer attacks like these would happen.
Bergesen says: "The typical step a society takes after a terrorist attack is towards stricter security measures. It happened after 9/11 and has continued to happen in the US in the decade that is soon to have passed. Obviously, as a symbol of Western civilisation the US is a more prominent terrorist target, and concise parallels are difficult to draw. However, Norway has surprised foreign observers I have spoken to, and maybe even ourselves, in that we instead have managed to take a step back. Through careful reflection proving that there are other ways of maintaining order than merely through more rules and regulations. That increasing the social trust, in a society that already enjoys amongst the highest levels of social trust in the world, is a more rewarding option."
Exactly.
While I think having some sort of belief in this life having a purpose has merit, I see religious absolutism as a sort of mental illness. Anybody can write whatever they like on a piece of paper and say it was inspired by their god or their prophet. What we are all doing here remains the biggest mystery of life. I think we should just follow the golden rule of, "Do unto others."
Right- Baggers, Palen Bachman & many others have made hateful inflamatory comments - like Palens ' Reload ' called Obama vile names: Anti Christ Muslim Hater of whites - Not like us- Newt called him a Neo colonial Mao Mao ! Fox Hannity & Beck have done the same. The Right wing / Baggers - GOP Fox have Vilified Obama from day one. To me that behavior suggests unbalanced violence leaning people.
He was a far right wing white man who hated all Muslims even kids. Hate has no religeon It has no soul. Must be stamped out whenever possible. .
Sadly Hate seems to be in human DNA God must be very angry at the evil that is done is his name. Religeous dogma is very dangerous. They are not God's laws They are manmade. That makes them suspect. I do not go to any church yet I lead a moral life. I do not believe as polls say that 90 % of us believe in God. Its almost a sin to admit you do not or have doubts. Evangelicals hold themselves up as more moral when truth is They are surely not. Religeous superiority is a sin to me. As a kid my Catholoc friends used to tell me I would go to Hell since I was not Catholic Thats Anti Christian ..Cathlic Church covered up for pedophile Priests. Thats about as evil as it gets.
The Far Right Christians seem to have lost the message of Jesus Christ's love for humanity. Instead they spew hatred. They are terrorists; they should be prosecuted for their crimes. Unfortunately, people such as Sarah Palin, Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner have no such understanding about Christianity. They believe that God is telling them to hate their fellow man.
Philip Henderson, Ethical Magician, Oxen Teamster, and Inspirational Listener
This is a case of madness just like that of the man who murdered in Arizona. The madness was inspired by hate messages from far right Christian Conservatives. I expect they will continue to fan the hatred and that more of these events will occur. This is what happens when religion mixes with politics, both are corrupted. If the Christians would keep their minds focused on loving their fellow man instead of hating those who are not Christian or who are gay or members of an ethnic group, they would bring positive results. These far right Christians only seem to be happy when they are spewing hatred.
Of course the perpetrator is mad. However, with out someone lighting his fuse he would not have blown up as he did. Instead of helping to heal his illness, they encourage it and stimulate the madness to action. They seem to reveal in his actions rather than act to diminish the pain these dreadful madmen endure.
Philip Henderson
the question of lunacy vs terror is not about being slighted. Giffords was shot by a man who is clearly mentally incompetent. but having a different view isn't necessarily insane. However, when you act in a way that intimidates others - and results in death or is meant to -- that is an of terrorism - instead of bullying.
I don’t believe a race of people was deliberately slighted because the massacre was referred to as an act of lunacy instead of terror. No ideology is worth taking a life.
Thom,
I believe that Clinton and Obama are the two worst Democratic Presidents in history.
It's unfortunate that America is so poorly served.
We expect Republicans to chip away at Social Security and Medicare but these two Democrats are shameless.
What happened to the person you were talking to, about the cold war and budget? (3rd hour)
Reagan FORCED the banks to extend loans to the USSR!
Granted it was madness
-- but I repeat Thom's question:
Why do we call it madness when the perpetrator is white, and terrorism when the perp is brown?
THis was a case of madness and the heartless rage of a twisted mind.
Thanks for all the info! Republicanista...... but then there is fashionista. republicanist? like jhaddist? to generic. Worth thinking about though. However, that made me think of another idea. We rarely get the Democratic and Republican view in one article -- maybe we should try referring to American view, legal alien view, illegal alien view, consumer view, corporate view, religious view, etc.,etc in covering issues in our own shares! Maybe we can get more people realizing just how limited most articles are in the news!
Water-Board a White Man?
...Will the blond, white, right-wing Christian extremist be water-boarded in an attempt to gather information about any others involved in the attack? Will he be water-boarded in an attempt to gather information about other planned attacks and the scope of the network he referred to? Will his maid (if he had one) be "rendition"ed to Gitmo and held incommunicado in an attempt to gain information?
Or do we only do these things to people with brown skin and dark hair?
I ask all Americans to think about how they feel about a right-wing white man being water-boarded in order to get at the truth about why we allow horrible things to be done to some members of the human race. It is still about color. Shamefully.... It is still about color.
This Week's Show "Pay For It"
In show 929
Pay for It (7-24-11), President Jefferson offers his insight about America's financial problems and what the nation should do about it.
http://www.jeffersonhour.com/listen.html
One way to fight back and draw the line is to remind the Kool aid drinkers that massive cuts and privitization will save nothing$$$$$$ for them, in fact it will only shift $$$$$ responsibilty from the elite onto the backs of the miiddle class and cost us all much more.....just ask Dick.
Obama's new book: Audacity of Dopes
From Robert Kuttner article on huffingtonpost:
"Whether Congress has voted to increase the permissible amount of total debt is a technicality. It's not as if the government runs out of money next week.
If President Obama were to invoke that emergency authority to prevent the economy from collapsing as money markets began shunning U.S. government bonds, it is hard to imagine Republican leaders suing the president... to demand what? That he let the economy go off a cliff? And it is even harder to imagine the Supreme Court, even a Court as partisan and corrupted as the Roberts Court, voting to tie Obama's hands in an economic emergency that -- keep in mind -- is entirely contrived.
Obama, the Great Conciliator, finally showed a bit of irritation and a bit of spine this past week. It would be perverse of him to reward Republican intransigence by agreeing to an 11th hour deal that, by definition, would have to be on almost entirely Republican terms to be approved by the Tea-Party besotted House of Representatives.
Better to show some leadership in an emergency, invoke the 14th Amendment, calm money markets, and leave the Republicans sputtering mad. Obama might even come to enjoy exercising leadership."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/obama-holds-the-cards-if-_b...
Get Ready! You will soon be selling your kids to these lecherous rich bastards...like they do in India. When I was in Saudi Arabia back in the early 80s, I read an English version of an Indian newspaper that talked about how the rich Arabs were going over to India to buy brides. These young children were being sold to the Arabs and the marriages usually only lasted for a day or week and then the Arab would divorce them before they left. It really amounted to a kind of "face saving" prostitution of children. The parents could say she was married. All it takes for a Muslim to divorce a wife is to say in public..."I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you" and that's the end.
And so as to not pick just on rich Arabs...lots of rich Americans were going on sex junkets in Thailand and surrounding far eastern countries just outright buying them as prostitutes. But the bottom line is that when you drive people into poverty...they often...in order to survive...have to do some pretty humiliating and shameful things. I sure hope the US never gets so peonized that people start selling their kids.
Our eldest son and our middle son voted for McCain. They said to me that the Republicans created this mess and let us see how they would get us out of this mess. With Obama as the Grand Experiment that has failed us, it does not matter what party is in control. Once Medicare and social security are history and they are certain to be history, these social safety net programs will never return to our Anti-Christ nation!!!!!
I am not sure if you've read Unequal Protection by Thom Hartman, but if you take Unequal Protections and Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine together you get a very clear picture of what the Republican Party is up too along with a little help from the "Democratic" friends. Both books present a blue print of how American and multi-national corporations along with their new Moses Milton Friedman and his gospel of "Free Market" economics have tried to game the system for complete control wealth and power.
No wonder the Dems are so chicken to stick up for their progressive constituents....the reich-wingers will send out anthrax letters to the Dems if they don't play the game the way the fascists want....or even send out JSOC hit squads for a little nighttime reconnaissance and fun murdering progressive politicians in their beds..
Brief Timeline of Anthrax Attacks:
Sept 18, 2001- First set of anthrax letters sent out (~5 letters to various news media including the tabloid The Sun in Boca Rattan, Fla. where Robert Stevens, first person to die.
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Oct 2, 2001- Patriot Act introduced into Congress. Democrats in general and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D) and Senate Judiciary Committee leader Senator Leahy not going for it.
Oct 6, 2001- Robert Stevens of The Sun dies of anthrax.
Oct 9, 2001- Anthrax letters, with even more lethal strain and containing silicon, mailed to Sens. Daschle and Leahy.
Oct 10-11, 2001- Anthrax library destroyed, with permission of FBI and CDC, hampering the ability of investigators to discover who was really behind the anthrax terrorism attacks.
Oct 12, 2001- Anthrax letter to Leahy was mis-routed to Virginia..not discovered until Oct. 17
Oct 17, 2001- It was confirmed that the FBI allowed the original batch of the Ames strain of anthrax to be destroyed, making tracing the anthrax type more difficult. Suspicions that the anthrax used in the letters was the Ames strain are confirmed on this date.
Oct 16-17, 2001-Anthrax letter opened in Daschle's office.
Oct 17, 2001 - Anthrax letter to Leahy, which was mis-routed to Virgina, was discovered
After the evacuation, 28 congressional staffers test positive for anthrax.
Oct. 26, 2001 Patriot Act passed with little opposition from Democrats even though most admitted they didn't even read it before signing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&add...
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Oct 9-10, 2001- The F.B.I. and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both gave permission for Iowa State University to destroy the Iowa anthrax archive, and the archive was destroyed on 2001 October 10 and 11.[95]
The FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) investigation has been hampered by the destruction of a large collection of anthrax spores collected over more than seven decades and kept in more than 100 vials at Iowa State University, Ames, IA. Many scientists claim that the quick destruction of the anthrax spores collection in Iowa have eliminated crucial evidence useful for the investigation. A precise match between the strain of anthrax used in the attacks and a strain in the collection would have offered hints as to when bacteria had been isolated and, perhaps, as to how widely it had been distributed to researchers. Such genetic clues could have given investigators the evidence necessary to identify the perpetrators.[95]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
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Controversy about the content and strain of the anthrax spores:
The initial letters sent out were deadly but not considered weaponized...ie: very, very fine particles that could easily be airborne and containing additives like Bentonite or Silicon (glass). Silicon was supposed to be a signature of Saddam Hussein...but it was discovered that the silicon was not encased inside the anthrax spores as real weaponized grade would have been but was probably hastily added as a mixture to the anthrax spores (so that it would show up in analysis and help incriminate Saddam Hussein, of course). The Bentonite was a wash and not true.
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Funny how our some controlling elements of the Bush government worked so hard to destroy evidence...the anthrax library...and the steel beams from 911! It makes one think that they had something to hide doesn't it?