Solidarity with Belgium!

We share the grief with those in Belgium after the terrorist attacks, and applaud their courage and resolution, their national response, in the face of violence and loss.  It is correctly being reported that given the EU and NATO entities located in Belgium make this as much an attack on the international community (particularly the western world) as it is specific to Belgium.

I applaud the courage and practicality of the Belgians in responding to the tragedy by using twitter to organize private cars to help people stranded by the attack return to their homes.  Well done.

I would argue that it is inevitable that in fighting a war on terrorism, we will experience attacks, people will be hurt or killed, but that we cannot let that shake our resolve or let it stampede us to act out of fear, including how we vote.  There is no magic solution that will ever keep us perfectly safe from all harm, not walls, not increasing our military activity in the middle East. Least of all should we let this gin up hatred for all Muslims because of the extremism of a few.  Time for Americans to toughen up, to emulate the stiff upper lip of the Brits, in how we respond to attempts to frighten us.

The two posters below were prepared by the British government in 1939, in anticipation of attacks in the coming WW II.  We should keep the advice in mind in the face of terrorism as well, in the face of attempts to frighten us away from fighting extremism by any name or acronym.



The attacks in Paris were the result of the success by allied forces in bombing ISIS oil, along with the economic 'war' with oil prices being at record lows.  That has caused ISIS to begin to go broke, to severely impair their ability to buy weapons and ammunition, explosives, or to pay their fighters, even to feed their fighters.  The Paris attacks were an attempt to stop the French from being effective against ISIS, as the French were taking the lead in those targeted bombings of ISIS resources.  ISIS claimed that was the reason for the attacks, and our own leaders have said the same.

Likewise, the terrorist attacks in Brussels is a push-back against the effectiveness of the Belgians since the Paris attacks in rooting out terrorists.  Success means push backs; it does not mean we run around in hysteria as a result of such attacks, it means we recognize this is what winning looks like. We must double down, and that we recognize that we might have more of these before we establish some kind of limited victory.  Realistically, given the complexity of the problems involved that have led to extremism, limited victory is the optimum possible.

Finally, I'd like to share a graphic from a European friend of mine; the translation is "Finally when one see what can be done in the name of God, one has to ask what activity is left for the devil."

I am seeing a lot of hateful things being done in the name of God or by those who claim deep religious belief in God, and it is not from Muslims, but from Christians.  Let us look to ourselves first in considering the wisdom below.

Trump-eting one of the many GOP lies

So, Trump, and the other Republican candidates for that matter, all claim we have done nothing against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, Trump most notably so in his recent comments re Pope Francis. 

And this, after chastising Ted Cruz for lying; more of the pot calling the kettle black!




This lie is in sharp contrast to the reality that we have been hitting ISIS hard for a long time, along with our allies, doing considerable damage to them. From this week's STrib indicating that ISIS is going broke, because of those airstrikes led by the good ol' US of A under the leadership of President Obama.

photo from the AP, circa 2014

IS faces budget crunch, cutting perks and trimming salaries:

FILE - In this summer of 2014 photo released on a militant social media account, a convoy of Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria. The extremist group that once bragged about minting its own currency is now accepting only U.S. dollars in Raqqa, slashing salaries across the board and imposing �exit fees� for those trying to leave its domain. BEIRUT — Faced with a cash shortage in its so-called caliphate, the Islamic State group has slashed salaries across the region, asked Raqqa residents to pay utility bills in black market American dollars, and is now releasing detainees for a price of $500 a person. The extremists who once bragged about minting their own currency are having a hard time meeting expenses, thanks to coalition airstrikes and other measures that have eroded millions from their finances since last fall. Having built up loyalty among militants with good salaries and honeymoon and baby bonuses, the group has stopped providing even the smaller perks: free energy drinks and Snickers bars. Necessities are dwindling in its urban centers, leading to shortages and widespread inflation, according to exiles and those still suffering under its rule. Interviews gathered over several weeks included three exiles with networks of family and acquaintances still in the group's stronghold in Raqqa, residents in Mosul, and analysts who say IS is turning to alternative funding streams, including in Libya. In Raqqa, the group's stronghold in Syria, salaries have been halved since December, electricity is rationed, and prices for basics are spiraling out of reach, according to people exiled from the city. "Not just the militants. Any civil servant, from the courts to the schools, they cut their salary by 50 percent," said a Raqqa activist now living in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, who remains in close contact with his native city. But that apparently wasn't enough close the gap for a group that needs money to replace weapons lost in airstrikes and battles, and pays its fighters first and foremost. Those two expenses account for two-thirds of its budget, according to an estimate by Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a researcher with the Middle East Forum who sources Islamic State documents, Within the last two weeks, the extremist group started accepting only dollars for "tax" payments, water and electric bills, according to the Raqqa activist, who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre Abu Ahmad for his safety. "Everything is paid in dollars," he said. His account was bolstered by another ex-Raqqa resident, who, like Ahmad, also relies on communications with a network of family and acquaintances still in the city. Al-Tamimi came across a directive announcing the fighters' salary cuts in Raqqa: "On account of the exceptional circumstances the Islamic State is facing, it has been decided to reduce the salaries that are paid to all mujahedeen by half, and it is not allowed for anyone to be exempted from this decision, whatever his position." Those circumstances include the dramatic drop in global prices for oil — once a key source of income — airstrikes that have targeted cash stores and oil infrastructure, supply line cuts, and crucially, the Iraqi government's decision to stop paying civil servants in territory controlled by the extremists.

And it's not like this is only recent damage to ISIS; from the International Business Times back in September 2014. This pretty much brings us to the choices that the GOP candidates are liars, so bone ignorant on the realities of the regional conflict as to disqualify them from serving in any office more demanding than dog catcher; or both. :

US Airstrikes In Syria Cripple ISIS Funding By Hitting Oil Refineries

ISTANBUL -- U.S. airstrikes in Syria targeting oil refineries controlled by the Islamic State group are cutting heavily into the group’s profits, which at one point were, on average, between $2 million and $3 million a day, analysts say.
“It is crippling for ISIS,” Luay al-Khatteeb, director of the Iraq Energy Institute, said of the destruction of oil refineries. After more than a week of U.S. and coalition bombings targeting the Sunni militant group in Syria, “profits [for ISIS] are out of the equation." The group’s profits are now in the thousands rather than millions of dollars per day, Khatteeb said in a discussion on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Istanbul. Khatteeb said before the airstrikes, ISIS was making anywhere between 30,000 and 40,000 barrels a day in just Iraq, and in Syria, they produced 50,000 barrels. Now, they are making on average 20,000 barrels a day.
Over the past three months the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has gained control of large parts of Syria and Iraq, including oil fields on the edges of Iraqi Kurdistan. The extremist group began selling oil, turning itself into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. The group has sold both crude and refined oil to locals in Iraq and Syria, and purportedly on the black market in Turkey. According to Khatteeb, ISIS sold the oil for prices ranging between $20 and $40 a barrel. Each truck transporting oil through the border via what Khatteeb said was an already well established "smuggling network" was worth about 7,000 barrels.
The money has been used to finance, at least in part, the group’s weapons, ammunition, soldier salaries and procure other resources needed to fight.
Describing ISIS as a “network of death” at his speech at the United Nations last week, President Barack Obama said the U.S.-led coalition would starve the group financially.  

Lying is for losers -- like Trump; THIS damage to ISIS is what winning looks like, regardless of polls or primaries, and this is what it looks like to be the president instead of a reality tv celebrity. If Republicans want to win the general election and get the White House back, they need to stop being such eager consumers of lies and the liars who peddle them.

Why do they hate us? Why do Islamic extremists recruit so successfully?

Abu Ghraib, late 2003

The radical right has made the same claim as Dubya does below -- that we're hated for our freedoms.

That is not true; no one hates us for being free.

It is a propaganda lie for the stupid and gullible.  It is part of the same mind-set that wants to eliminate AP History for taking on our failings in the past and present head on, honestly, while still loving our country. 

It is the same mindset as that expressed by Rudy Guiliani when he claimed Obama does not love America.

It is wrong. It is wilfully blind, and it is profoundly dishonest.

Sooner or later, we always have to come to terms with what we, as a nation, have done wrong, or allowed or encouraged to be done wrong, in our name and with our consent, including cover ups.




THIS described below, and other abuses like it, is why we have been hated, not our 'freedoms'.  This and other abuses, including some aspects of our drone policy and much of our policy in Iraq and Gitmo is why we see so many parts of the Iraq joining up with ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.  It is why people leave other countries and go to fight with ISIS.  It is why religion and religious government appear to offer an attractive alternative to our democracy.

Abu Ghraib

I've heard references to the following before, so it does not entirely surprise me that those rumors are true.  This does NOT appear to be the exception that proves the rule that otherwise we acted better than this, especially given the statistics on rape of our own soldiers by our own soldiers.

From If You Only News:

Classified Videos Allegedly Show U.S. Soldiers Raping Boys In Front Of Their Mothers (IMAGES)

There is a reason why the White House sent the President’s Chief of Staff to personally negotiate on what was going to be included in the CIA’s Torture Report. The Executive Summary released by the Senate was only a mere 525 pages out of the more than 6,700 pages that still remain classified.

There is a reason why top U.S. leadership was genuinely concerned about the reports release; things are much, much worse than they want you to believe.

According to multiple well-respected journalists, including Seymour Hersh, recipient of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting and known for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up in the Vietnam War, the Pentagon has a secret video. The video was recorded at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. torture dungeon in Iraq, that dominated the headlines a decade ago, where the inhumane tactics used at the prison were first exposed.

But, the problem is, the evidence released years ago was just a fraction of what was being done, all to the full knowledge of key U.S. authorities. While the video has remained under wraps thus far, Hersh says it is only a matter of time before it comes out.

Giving a speech at the ACLU, Hersh gave some insight on what was on the tape:

Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.

It’s impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had. I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we’re dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. So, it’s going to be an interesting election year.

When you put these statements together with another speech Hersh gave in Chicago, it becomes more clear that the women who witnessed these young boys were actually their mothers:

You haven’t begun to see evil, horrible things done to the children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.

Ten years ago when the initial Abu Ghraib scandal made headlines, the Guardian published the testimony of a detainee who witnessed one of these brutal attacks.
Photo from Abu Ghraib. Pic via Left Voices

Former detainee Kasim Hilas said in their testimony:

I saw [name blacked out] f*cking a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [blacked out], who was wearing the military uniform putting his d*ck in the little kid’s ass, I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And, the soldier was taking pictures.

Now, over a decade later, the evidence of what has happened is surfacing, but the government is doing everything possible to still keep the most damning evidence of these soldiers’ awful behavior classified.

With the torture report still fresh in the minds of the general population, this is why it’s important, now more than ever, to put pressure on elected officials and force the release of this evidence.

Please, share this with everyone you know.

I have to believe that if this had come out along with the other scandals from Abu Ghraib, that Dubya would not have been re-elected in 2014. 

I can only speculate what this coming out in advance of the 2016 elections could mean for the candidacy of Jeb Bush, given he has hired on his brothers old, bad advisers.

And I must believe that this coming out will result in a shake up at the Pentagon for the cover up and lack of any apparent accountability for this.

But what I hope will happen, more than anything else, is that those who have excused torture will stop excusing it, and that we as a nation will re-embrace the Geneva conventions and realize, fully realize and understand, WHY there are things we do not do, and should never do, no matter what the impulse at the time to do so, and that these actions taken in our name do not make or keep us free OR safe, they only shame us and make us as bad as our enemies.

History will conclude that Dubya was THE worst president ever, and for good reason.  It will also conclude that we were bad for this happening, and for our attitudes condoning torture and abuse of the prison at Gitmo and other locations, among other things we have done wrong as a nation in the 21st century.

The only option for any regaining of even a moral molehill, never mind the moral high ground, is what we do about these events when we can no longer hide them or hide from them.

That should include not electing another Bush, but it MUST include admitting what was done wrong, and NOT VIOLATING THE GENEVA CONVENTION ANY MORE, especially in how we deal with civilians.

That tends to rule out most of the recommendations and suggestions from the right on what to do about Islamic terrorism.

Fear of Facts, Fear of Ebola, Fear of ISIS, FEAR OF FAILURE

The Hagedorn campaign for CD-1 against Tim Walz has taken a hard right turn for the nastier foolish propaganda as the date for the election nears.  This is intended to appeal to the right wing neo-con hatriots, the ones who are the most science illiterate on the right, and who never met a war they didn’t like (so long as someone else fought it, and paid for it).


Not only does it fear monger to the anti-immigrant bigots, reaching for the broadest possible appeal among that ugly, wilfully ignorant demographic, but it reflects the attempt by the right to turn Ebola into a big dumb stick with which to try to beat Obama, in the hopes that it might at least indirectly damage any and every Democrat in the country running for office through guilt by association.

I’ve been watching this trend of right wing propaganda for a few weeks now.  It includes the usual suspects in the right wing propaganda machine, beginning with Alex Jones and his silly info-wars, claiming that the President and the CDC are LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT EBOLA!

In support of that red meat for the conspiracy theory crowd, they offer a publication in the Lancet, cited in the New York Times back in 2000 to argue that people riding the bus with you could appear perfectly healthy, not having any Ebola symptoms (you know, like bleeding from every orifice, looking like a Zombie), not even feeling ill, AND STILL SPREAD THE DISEASE TO EVERY AMERICAN (especially the right-wing red-blooded ones).  They don’t even have to eat your brain, or bite you (wait…that’s vampires, not zombies), all they have to do is breathe or sneeze on you!  You can get it like flu, from doorknobs, even if they don’t bite you or eat your brain!

Of course, the righties don’t actually READ these studies that gin them up and send them to the polls, but I do.  That 14 year old study appears to be an outlier, doesn’t appear to have been replicated anywhere; while another  referring to a few pig farmers in the Philippines who never showed any symptoms of having ‘the Ebola’, but who did register a weak immune response to it, suggesting they had been infected by it at some point in time.  Apart from the fact that it appears you can be infected and not be symptomatic, from the two different reports, it does NOT appear you can actually infect someone while asymptomatic, as no documented case of doing so appears anywhere.
from the original 2000 Lancet article:

The Lancet study does not warn of an apocalyptic scenario where any casual contact could cause infection. It is more focused on contagion through sex or blood transfusions.

It should be noted that NEITHER study claims that Ebola can be transmitted by asymptomatic individuals, or that anyone, anywhere, EVER, caught ‘the Ebola’ from asymptomatic individuals.  But part of the fear being generated by fliers like the one above, of ISIS suicide terrorists infected with Ebola is that they might not LOOK or FEEL sick enough to be identifiable, and if they lose their obvious terrorist outfits, they could walk among us — like ZOMBIES AND VAMPIRES!– infecting us all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bloomberg Politics did a great summary of 8 GOP leaders, linking closing the border, ISIS and Ebola, ranging from the claims of Congressman Duncan, to Senate candidates like Scott Brown in New Hampshire (he should be sure to say Hi to Chip Cravaack); here are just a few of the highlights:

“She’s [Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen] voted not to secure the border and I have and it’s so critically important that we really use every tool, shut out every mechanism for them and that disease and other potential diseases to come into our country.”
Distance from the Mexican border: 1,800 miles

North Carolina Congressional candidate Mark Walker:
“If you have foreigners who are sneaking in with drug cartels, to me that is a national threat. And if we’ve got to go laser or blitz somebody with a couple of fighter jets for a little while to make our point, I don’t have a problem with that, either.”
Distance to Mexican border: 1,340 miles

New York Representative Peter King:
“We definitely have to be on our guard. That’s the type of thing that ISIS has to be considering. Obviously, the southern border is more porous and vulnerable. We have to absolutely be on our guard on the southern border.”
Distance to Mexican Border: 1,700 miles

Arkansas Senate candidate Tom Cotton
“We’ve got an Ebola outbreak, we have bad actors that can come across the border; we need to seal the border and secure it.”
“Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown they’re willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas.”
Distance to Mexican border: 600 miles

It’s not like this is unique to Hagedorn, he’s just in GOP-stupid lock-step with the rest of the right wing candidates trolling for the radical tea party vote.   Hagedorn appears to be hoping that a mix of ignorance and hysteria might help him against Walz.

Politico suggests it is not working – at least, not against Rick Nolan in CD-8.  Perhaps with that congressional district snug up against our common border with Canada, those Minnesotans are just too far from the threat for that to work.  Distance from Mexico to Minnesota : 1,656 miles.  I doubt the difference between, say, Bemidji and Mankato, 233 miles,  will change that.

In Minnesota, the National Republican Congressional Committee has released two ads targeting Nolan for being soft on terrorism as part of a nationwide campaign attacking vulnerable Democrats.

But in Nolan’s 8th Congressional District, ISIL discussion has been surprisingly rare, even though the two candidates disagree.

“Launching airstrikes on another country, by any standard, by any definition, is an act of war,” Nolan said in a House floor speech the week of the vote on Syria military aid. “Have we not had enough of imperial presidencies doing what they want in the world?”

During a recent debate, Mills said he supports U.S. airstrikes and working with regional allies to “crush the threat.” But it was the one issue in the debate in which the candidates did not attack each other over their differences. Mills has spent more time on the campaign trail talking about guns and mining than ISIL.

“This is just not an area where either side sees the best punch,” said Larry Jacobs, an expert in state politics at the University of Minnesota. “It’s not that they don’t have differences — and they do … [but] it’s not kind of a hot issue that’s breaking decisively for one side.”

Nonetheless, ISIL is a significant issue in many midterm races.

Republicans are using the militant group’s rapid rise and the new U.S.-led military campaign to put Democrats on the defensive. Already, the fight has gained significant public traction: A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found it was the No. 1 issue for Republicans, with 41 percent calling it the most important factor for their vote.

Polling has been showing Walz with at least a 6% lead over Hagedorn.  I can only hope that even our right wingnut Minnesotans will have better judgement than to fall for this kind of lowest possible denominator appeal.

A vote AGAINST Hagedorn and the MN GOP, and the national GOP is a vote AGAINST sleazy, tasteless ignorance like this.  We’re finally shut of Michele Bachmann; we don’t need another tacky teabagger in Congress from Minneosta to embarrass us.

Don’t stay home — VOTE!

Throw fliers like this, and candidates like this, out with the trash.