Is it time to talk about guns yet?
The suspect in the horrific shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin has now been identified. He is Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old army vet and described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white power band.” He’d also washed out of the army [...]
...read moreMy Views On National Security As A Seventh Grader, and How it Took A Social Movement to Make Me Proud to Be An American
America. Baby, it’s complicated. But like all complicated relationships, underneath it all, I love you. It wasn’t always like this. We’ve been on quite a journey. It started when I was eleven—my first week of Middle School. I heard my mother on the phone with my father in the other room. “Oh my god. That’s [...]
...read moreNorway and terrorism as a daily event.
In the West, we seem to have at least a double standard when it comes to violence and mayhem. When violence and mayhem involves People Who Look Like Us (“us” in this case generally translating to: ethnically European/white, not-poor, citizens of a Western-style democracy) — we experience society-wide woe. When it involves People Who Don’t [...]
...read moreLife in America sucks. It used to suck more. Discuss.
Huh! So – not a single comment [thanks for the comments there, too!] on my Israel/Palestine post! Hardly even a click to see how I look on the small screen! I’m so used to people just waiting to jump into battle on that front, that I hardly know what to do with myself. I’ll actually [...]
...read moreThe Man Who Hated Women
Shocker: Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik is a racist and a misogynist, and his shooting rampage was inspired by his hatred of women, Muslims, and brown people. He uses a lot of the same tropes as Men’s Rights activists. He was encouraged by anti-Islam bloggers in the United States who routinely warn of the “Islamicization” [...]
...read moreCowardice
The trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man who is accused of plotting the September 11th attacks, will be held before a military commission in Guantanamo Bay instead of in federal court. Why? Because apparently the American criminal justice system is too soft to adequately try a terrorist — a view that is stunningly insulting [...]
...read moreNew York politician opens hearing on Muslims
Well, Peter King will definitely be getting his name in the history books in the chapter on post-9/11 racism and fear-mongering. I’d like to think we learned something from McCarthyism and Japanese internment and other uglier-than-even-usual periods in our history, but I guess not. (Surprising? No. Disgusting? Yes). It’s appalling that a United States congressman [...]
...read moreRape, Trauma, and Terrorism
Jessica Stern had an incredible op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday. Stern is a noted expert on terrorism and national security, and is a lecturer at Harvard and served on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council. But in her piece yesterday, she talks about the violent rape she was a victim of in 1973 – and [...]
...read moreAnti-Choice Dems Receive Death Threats From Pro-Lifers
Oh the irony. This isn’t surprising, given the far-right’s habit of threatening and sometimes carrying out violence against those they disagree with; it is particularly predictable given the anti-choice movement’s reliance on violence and intimidation. This is what radicals in the anti-choice movement do — they threaten people, they scream outside of clinics, they yell [...]
...read moreIntentionally flying planes into buildings because you don’t like a particular government: Terrorism or no? Let’s debate.
Newsweek editors and reporters discuss the use of the word “terrorist” and essentially conclude that it’s mostly applicable to foreigners with beards. The conversation is an off-shoot of the story of the IRS “protestor” (as the Wall Street Journal designated him) who flew his plane into an IRS building because he didn’t like paying taxes. [...]
...read moreThe Washington Post or The Onion?
“Bin Laden blasts U.S. for climate change” My favorite part: The change in rhetoric aims to give al-Qaida’s message an appeal beyond hardcore Islamic militants, said Evan Kohlmann, of globalterroralert.com, a private, U.S.-based terrorism analysis group. “It’s a bridge issue,” Kohlmann said. “They are looking to appeal to people who don’t necessarily love al-Qaida but [...]
...read moreRoeder, voluntary manslaughter and the future of anti-abortion terrorism
I will write more about this later as time allows, but the judge in the Scott Roeder case — Roeder is the man who shot abortion provider George Tiller at Tiller’s church — has ruled that Roeder may present a case for voluntary manslaughter instead of murder. Voluntary manslaughter is a less serious crime than [...]
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