Winning Hearts & Minds

British couple who helped Kenyan village with cannabis profits jailed

"Michael Foster, 62, and Susan Cooper, 63, made hundreds of thousands of pounds from a sophisticated cannabis growing operation at their Lincolnshire farmhouse, which was only discovered when a police officer chasing a burglar recognised the distinctive smell. The couple paid for live-saving surgery for a villager near Mombasa, Kenya, purchased computers for an eye hospital, and paid for schooling for children, the court heard." Continue reading →

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Government Bomb Plots

"If a private person undertook such a 'plot,' but called it off without carrying it out and then announced 'I meant it only as a joke,' wouldn't he face criminal prosecution nonetheless? Shouldn't the FBI agents involved in this make-believe 'plot' also be charged with a conspiracy to blow up a federal building? They were not only participants in the scheme, but its very instigators!" Continue reading →

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How Many Muslims in the World? How Many Muslim Terrorists?

"Muslim attacks worldwide and against all targets, failed and successful, add up to 18,000 since 2001. This number is bound to be controversial and subject to error. If this involved 18,000 Muslims, that's a little over one-thousandth of one percent of Muslims who engaged in a terrorist or violent attempted attack or attack anywhere in the world. How many Muslims have American forces killed since 2001? I've found a low-end estimate for 1990 to 2009, and it's 288,000. How many of these were Muslim terrorists? I can't find a tally so far. The number is very, very small relative to 288,000. The tally for drone strikes is 2-3,000 with a high proportion being innocent people." Continue reading →

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Green Party candidate: Police handcuffed me to a chair for eight hours

"Stein criticized the group that organized the event, the Commission on Presidential Debates, which was put together as a joint effort by Democrats and Republicans to administer the debates after the League of Women Voters stepped out of that role in 1987. Stein said the two women were handcuffed the entire time they spent inside a facility specifically designed to hold protesters, even though they had only been charged with violations. She said a request for their release was denied because, she was told, authorities did not want them 'wandering around.'" Continue reading →

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The Politics of Fear in America: A Nation at War with Itself

"Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams. Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language they are couched in—the language of fear. And, as John Whitehead says in this week's vodcast, the only thing which will improve our present condition is the taming of our fear." Continue reading →

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U.N. seeks detailed Mali military intervention plan

"The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution that gives regional leaders 45 days to provide specific plans for an international military intervention to oust rebels in northern Mali. The unanimous resolution marks a key step and speeds up preparations for a possible intervention to retake the region from al Qaeda-linked rebels. Mali plunged into chaos in March after a military ruler overthrew the president, shaking one of West Africa's most stable democracies." Continue reading →

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Michael Scheuer: Pity poor America: Obama, Romney, and Foreign Policy

"When you clear your way through all the spurious hot air about 'American exceptionalism' and 'a world eager for U.S. leadership,' you will hear the ardent desire of two men, two parties, and almost all of the media to maintain and even increase the cultural and military interventionism in the Muslim world that has killed so many Americans at home and abroad in the past sixteen years; which has brought the United States numerous, shameful military defeats; and which has created nothing but the prospect of an ever larger and more costly war with much of Islam in the years ahead." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMichael Scheuer: Pity poor America: Obama, Romney, and Foreign Policy

U.S. ‘influenced British government’s decision to introduce secret courts’

"The government argues that CMPs are needed to prevent courtroom disclosure of sensitive evidence from causing damage to the so-called 'control principle' governing intelligence shared between states. Secret evidence, which is already used in terrorism-related immigration tribunals, allows government lawyers to rely on evidence that cannot be seen by victims or claimants, or their lawyers. The evidence can be seen by security-vetted barristers known as special advocates, but they cannot discuss what they have seen. The system is widely regarded as inherently unfair and would inevitably lead to legal challenges." Continue reading →

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