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July 26, 2011

Expertise

By Charles Davis:

Experts: Drone Strike Has the 'Hallmark of al-Qaeda'

A missile from what witnesses described as an unmanned aerial vehicle left dozens of people dead and countless more injured in Pakistan's volatile tribal region this morning, a deadly strike that experts say shows all the classic signs of Islamic terrorism.

Carried out just before dawn, Pakistani officials say the attack killed at least 55 people, including dozens of women and children. According to experts, the obvious ruthlessness and casual disregard for innocent life are clear signs al-Qaeda – or maybe some other Muslims – were behind the strike.

“Killing people is a tried and true tactic of Islamists,” said One Important Expert who picked up the telephone. Indeed, the expert notes al-Qaeda first burst onto the scene with the novel idea of taking the lives of others with the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 – the first recorded intentional killings since the time of Jesus Christ, renowned savior and author of the Declaration of Independence

Read the rest.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Posted at July 26, 2011 11:09 AM
Comments

I think OUR economic problems with their attendant stalemate in Congress has ALL the markings of Al KKKaeda also.

Posted by: Mike Meyer at July 26, 2011 12:45 PM

"That the suspect here is a blond Norwegian does not support the proposition that we can rest easy with regard to the panoply of threats we face or that homeland security, intelligence and traditional military can be pruned back. To the contrary, the world remains very dangerous because very bad people will do horrendous things. There are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West.

In our own debates about national security, conservatives argue that national security spending is deserving of a higher priority than other expenditures. The defense budget is not numbers on a balance sheet as some of those on the left and right insist. Cutting defense spending is not the same as cutting domestic spending. That light rail project can wait, or states can do it, or we can decide it’s a boondoggle not worth doing even if we had the money. But national security is solely a federal function, and it can’t be put off."--Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/evil-in-norway/2011/03/29/gIQAtsydVI_blog.html

Posted by: Paul Avery at July 26, 2011 05:33 PM

Gosh, Ms Rubin is right. Anders Breivik isn't al Queda, but he COULD HAVE BEEN, and that's really scary!

Posted by: Paul Avery at July 26, 2011 05:46 PM

Timothy McVeigh was diasppointingly white as well, though, since he was not immediately discovered, the claim that The Brown People Had Struck ("Again") flew fast and furious until he was picked up.

Newsweek literally admitted that White People Cannot Be Terrorists. So KKK: sorry for the misunderstanding. White terrorists hit the perfect nexus of racism, bigotry, hatred of the poor/lower classes, and imperial water-carrying: those who protect established powers twist language to make sure that the nastiest thing you can ever be called can only apply to persons of a certain color, ensuring that victims of white terrorism have de minimus protection. (I'm sure the white victims in Norway are comforted by the fact that their attacker wasn't, according to many rightwing sources, a terrorist at all. Then again, rightwingers think the victims were the equivalent of Nazis, so maybe that is questionable comfort.)

Posted by: No One of Consequence at July 26, 2011 08:37 PM

oh yeah? what about ECO-TERRORISTS. horrible people who chain themselves to inanimate objects in order to give people heart attacks that in turn make other people afraid for their lives.

Posted by: hapa at July 26, 2011 10:09 PM

NOoC: Article I section 2 of The U.S. Constitution sez pretty much the same thing as Newsweek. Of course it excludes women from that favored status no matter what color.

Posted by: Mike Meyer at July 26, 2011 11:01 PM

hapa: The Eco-Terrorists, are they whitemen? If so they are probably designated as activists or "troublemakers" (boys will be boys)at best. Women and all others could be terrorists.

Posted by: Mike Meyer at July 26, 2011 11:08 PM

I apologize for that oversight: yes, being a member of an environmental movement is the surest way for a white person to be labeled terrorist. (And, yes, that's a billion times worse than being labeled racist: racists actually have tremendous political support and their own party, whereas terrorists can be denied due process for any reason entirely.) Actually, being a member of an anti-war movement gets you treated like a terrorist, but I have yet to hear of such individuals being called terrorists.

Give it a few months.

Posted by: No One of Consequence at July 26, 2011 11:20 PM

Meanwhile (speaking of who gets defined as terrorist), we have members of Congress lobbying to de-list the Mujahideen e Khalq from the State Department's terrorist watch list. Now, I'm not particularly sure of utility of the State Department's list, but the MEK are certainly a terrorist organization, even by the standards that would exclude, say, the United States, from the list. They're also despised by the vast majority of Iranians, so it seems that the lawmakers that are pushing such a plan wish to further alienate the Iranian population from the United States. Can you imagine the reaction if a news story ran saying the Iranians had declared al-Qaeda to be not a terrorist organization?

Posted by: Rojo at July 27, 2011 10:21 AM

Speaking of Jesus, as Charles Davis does in the excerpt posted supra, here is text and commentary from THE GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE, translated by Jean-Yves Leloup (Coptic to French) and Joseph Rowe (French to English).

Peter said to him:
“Since you have become the interpreter of the elements and the events of the world,
tell us, what is the sin of the world?”
The teacher answered:
“There is no sin.
It is you who make sin exist,
when you act according to the habits of your corrupted nature;
this is where sin lies.
This is why the Good has come into your midst.
It acts together with the elements of your nature so as to reunite it with its roots.”


Leloup comments:

Both in Yeshua's time and after, there were those that held that human nature itself is tainted with original sin, that matter, the world, and the body are traps from which deliverance is needed. When one sees sin and evil everywhere, the consequences are especially serious when they are seen as being in an "other", for this other must then be destroyed or killed. Those who have committed such crimes in the name of the Good see themselves not as murderers, but as saviors, ridding the world of sin and evil so as to make it pure again. ...The rotten apple must be removed from the barrel to rid the whole contents of contamination.


Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at July 28, 2011 10:35 PM

Speaking of Jesus, as Charles Davis does in the excerpt posted supra, here is text and commentary from THE GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE, translated by Jean-Yves Leloup (Coptic to French) and Joseph Rowe (French to English).

Peter said to him:
“Since you have become the interpreter of the elements and the events of the world,
tell us, what is the sin of the world?”
The teacher answered:
“There is no sin.
It is you who make sin exist,
when you act according to the habits of your corrupted nature;
this is where sin lies.
This is why the Good has come into your midst.
It acts together with the elements of your nature so as to reunite it with its roots.”


Leloup comments:

Both in Yeshua's time and after, there were those that held that human nature itself is tainted with original sin, that matter, the world, and the body are traps from which deliverance is needed. When one sees sin and evil everywhere, the consequences are especially serious when they are seen as being in an "other", for this other must then be destroyed or killed. Those who have committed such crimes in the name of the Good see themselves not as murderers, but as saviors, ridding the world of sin and evil so as to make it pure again. ...The rotten apple must be removed from the barrel to rid the whole contents of contamination.


Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at July 28, 2011 10:35 PM

Bart D. Ehrman concludes that Mary Magdalene was the original apostle. He quotes the 2nd century writer as indicating: "Christ showed himself to the (male) apostles and said to them, 'It is I who appeared to these women and I who wanted to send them to you as apostles.'" Ehrman concludes from this that Mary and the others could therefore be thought of as "apostles sent to the apostles," a title that Mary Magdalene herself came to bear in the Middle Ages (Latin: apostola apostolorum."[48]:p.253 Erhman further cites Mark 16:8 and Matthew 28:11 as evidence for his proposition.

Since the "gnostics" along with their gospels were nearly all destroyed by the early orthodox church (that additionally thought to brand Mary Magadalene an unreliable whore, just for good measure), and mostly unknown until the Nag Hammdi discovery in 1948, I'd say your hypothesis is not limited to any particular sect in Christianity.

Posted by: Paul Avery at July 29, 2011 02:14 PM

I'm so fvcking fed up with "counter-terror experts". Andrew Exum issued a list of "five CT experts to pay attention to" during Breivik's assault -- two Norwegian and three who "distinguished" themselves in various ways that day and afterward. But this is the most telling sentence in his post:

This list was compiled after jihadi groups claimed responsibility* for the Norway attacks. If the attacks were instead the acts of what we social scientists call an "LDA," or Lone Derranged A******, save this list for the next time there is an attack by bona fide terrorist group...

Because of course those are the only two possible choices.

*One guy on one jihadi forum said something that could be construed as claiming responsibility, tweeted and later posted by Will McCants, one of Exum's "experts to listen to", with some caveats. Exum turned this into jihadi groups, plural, with none of McCants' cautions. Because Exum's a bud of many DC writers, including many who should know better and even did some self-criticism (like Spencer Ackerman), not a word of criticism has been directed at him. Of course, the NYT did even more damage with McCants' post, and continues to, quoting two others on Exum's list in the "this is an imitation of al-Qaeda" b.s. vein that inspired Charles Davis' post.

Posted by: Nell at July 30, 2011 02:06 PM

Ever see the inside of the brain of one of these propagandists who may very well believe some of their own fantasy (even though we don't)?

Posted by: Dredd at July 31, 2011 10:48 AM