Tag Archives | Terrorism

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Me? Nihilist? Another NSA Slander

Former National Security Agency boss Michael Hayden denounced defenders of Edward Snowden as “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years.” Hey, I’m no nihilist! And, though I am still a shy country boy,  it’s been a long time since I was accused of being […]

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New Terrorist Suspect Definition: “Someone searching the web for suspicious stuff”

The Guardian’s scoop today on the National Security Agency’s XKeyscore included documents that showed the “standards” that NSA employees can use to target Americans and others to vacuum up their email and all their Internet-related information. Page 14 of the documents reveals one of the new definitions of terrorist suspect: “someone searching the web for […]

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Bradley Manning Verdict & WikiLeaks Movie

Bradley Manning got nailed today by a military judge for exposing the truth. The folks who committed war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq have almost all walked scot-free. The folks who made the policies that led to the abuses have never faced federal charges. Dreamworks has a movie on Wikileaks that will be coming out […]

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N.Y. Times Snares Secret FISA Court Decrees – Fresh Hell for NSA and Obama

The New York Times published a long article today on secret rulings by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The article describes the FISA court as “almost a parallel Supreme Court” which has cast aside traditional understandings of privacy and the Fourth Amendment. Reading between the lines, it is clear that NYT has the actual decisions…. […]

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25 Years Ago: U.S. Shot Down Iranian Civilian Jetliner

Today is the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Navy shooting down an Iranian passenger jet.  Following is the writeup on the shootdown from my 2003 book, Terrorism & Tyranny: In the wake of the Iranian arms debacle, the Reagan administration sent the U.S. Navy to patrol the Persian Gulf—in part to reassure Arab nations that the U.S. […]

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Bravo! TSA Deluged With Angry Last Minute Comments

Midnight yesterday was the deadline for comments on the TSA’s checkpoint obscenities.   A stampede occurred near closing time and more than 5400 people added their 2 cents to the official forum. Below is my comment (extracted from last week’s Washington Times op-ed).  Looking at this riff with fresh eyes today, I lament that I […]

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