Terrorism

I’ve Studied Terrorism for Over 40 Years. Let’s Talk About What Comes Next. (2/10/2021)

Vehicle Ramming: The Evolution of a Terrorist Tactic Inside the US (7/16/2020)

The Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States, CSIS Briefs (6/17/2020)

The Right Way to Understand White Nationalist Terrorism (8/4/2019) NYT

Warriors for Trump: #MAGAbomber's letter reveals how the right's scripted violence works (4/24/2019)

Let us make it perfectly clear: The Republican Party - who, at the NRAs behest, refuses to make a single effective change to our heartbreakingly stupid gun laws - is directly complicit in every massacre, gun suicide, dead wife, slain girlfriend, murdered family, slaughtered child killed by yet another clotted, gun-wielding male. And the National Rifle Association remains the truest terrorist organization in America, far more nefarious - and brutally effective - than ISIS could ever dream to be. Mark Morford.

White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist. The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has reported that 71 percent of the extremist-related fatalities in the United States between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far right or white-supremacist movements. Janet Reitman (NYT)

An Intercept analysis of federal prosecutions since 9/11 found that the Justice Department has routinely declined to bring terrorism charges against right-wing extremists even when their alleged crimes meet the legal definition of domestic terrorism: ideologically motivated acts that are harmful to human life and intended to intimidate civilians, influence policy, or change government conduct. Violent Far-Right Extremists Are Rarely Prosecuted as Terrorists.

"forms of non-violent action can serve effectively in the place of violence at every level of political affairs" Or, more eloquently, it was the method by which "the active many can overcome the ruthless few." Jonathan Schell quoted in Bill McKibben in his book Falter, Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?.

“You know, the left plays a tougher game. It’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. O.K.? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” President Donald Trump

"As the War on Terror lurches from decade to decade, it will distract attention from far greater threats. Nothing decisive can be done to combat global warming or curb nuclear proliferation without American leadership. These, not terrorism, are the dangers that threaten the survival of the human race." from Geoffrey Perret's book "Commander in Chief"

Fmr. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson on Jan 6th hearing: "What happened on January 6th almost certainly falls within the definition of terrorism. We broadly define terrorism as an act of mass violence to achieve some sort of political objective through illegal means..." (1/2) #AMRstaff
— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) July 28, 2021

Dept. of Homeland Security Names White Supremacy a Domestic Terrorist Threat (9/23/2019)

Trump, Tax Cuts and Terrorism: Why do Republicans enable right-wing extremism? (8/5/2019)

Homeland Security Disbands Domestic Terror Intelligence Unit (4/2/2019)

How the Justice Department Prosecutes Domestic Terrorism (3/29/2019)

Trial and Terror (12/14/2018)

U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Dont Know How to Stop It. (11/3/2018)

Terrorism, followed by elections, benefits the right wing.

War on Terrorism Will Compel Revisions to Posse Comitatus (2002)

"TeleSur" - An international poll found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan, with no one else even close. (10/21/2014)

https://t.co/O3bdEiSCNq
— Taurine Footie (@chamberhands) August 18, 2019

" In the United States, the Senate report on torture in the context of counter-terrorism operations is courageous and commendable, but profoundly disturbing. For a country that believes so strongly in human rights to have swiftly abandoned their fundamentals at a time of crisis is as astonishing as it is deplorable... Under international law, the report’s recommendations must be followed through with real accountability. There is no prescription for torture, and torture cannot be amnestied. It should also lead to examination of the institutional and political causes that led the US to violate the absolute prohibition on torture, and measures to ensure this can never recur." U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. (3/5/2015)

"US crimes in the war on terror matter […] because hundreds of thousands have died, millions have been made homeless, an unknown number have been kidnapped, tortured, and disappeared — and because the nation responsible for all this is the most powerful the world has ever known. These crimes matter because impunity is a dangerous thing, both for the souls of the people of this still nominally democratic country, and for the rest of the world […]" Rebecca Gordon: American Nuremberg

Taking domestic terrorism as seriously as int'l terrorism is overdue.

Read this statement from 6 Bush/Obama/Trump NSC Senior Directors for Counterterrorism: "We simply cannot wait any longer."

Signed by @NicholasRasmu15, @JenEasterly, @LukeHartig, Chris Costa, Javed Ali, & me. pic.twitter.com/RYbtq1ZwyF
— Joshua A. Geltzer (@jgeltzer) August 4, 2019

"...an American was more likely to be killed by lightning (1 in 5,500,000) or by a car accident (1 in 19,000) than by a terrorist attack (1 in 20 million) in the last five years (2005-2010). President George W. Bush used to say frequently. " We live in a dangerous world". He was dead wrong. Ronald Baily, Reason Magazine quoted in the Great Convergence: Kishore Mahbubani

“There’s a lot of talk about the growth of radicalization, ... Yes, there has been growth. But between September eleventh, 2001, and December thirty-first, 2009, we had forty-six cases prosecuted . . . and about a hundred twenty-five people involved. So I would say the numbers of extremists are very small. Let’s stay calm.” Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.

In case you don't know, on January 19 the latest audiotape from Osama bin Laden was released and in it he declared: "If you [Americans] are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book ‛Rogue State', which states in its introduction ... " He then goes on to quote the opening of a paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the Foreword of the British edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full reads:

If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America’s global interventions -- including the awful bombings -- have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -– oddly enough -– a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It’s equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

"That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated." William Blum

“My respect for the Abrahamic religions went up in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th. The last vestige of respect for the taboo disappeared as I watched the 'Day of Prayer' in Washington Cathedral, where people of mutually incompatible faiths united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place: religion. It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say 'Enough!' Let our tribute to the dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.” Richard Dawkins

"To give credit where credit is due, this is Ed Herman’s work, which was incorporated in our joint book The Political Economy of Human Rights and is spelled out in detail elsewhere in his own writings. He’s an economist, as you know, and he did a careful study of relations between U.S. aid and torture and found a quite dramatic correlation.

This correlation has also been noticed by others. One of the leading, maybe the leading academic specialist on human rights in Latin America, Lars Schoultz at North Carolina, published an article back in 1981 pointing out that U.S. “aid has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens” and “to the hemisphere’s relatively egregious violators of fundamental human rights.” That included military aid, and went on right through the Carter administration. I don’t think anybody has bothered to check it for the Reagan years because it was so transparently obvious. And it continues right up until today. Right through the Clinton years, Colombia was by far the leading recipient of U.S. aid, and also had by far the worst human rights record in Latin America. That alone makes the point.

In fact, if you look at the leading recipients of U.S. aid, most of it military aid, two countries are in a separate category: Israel and Egypt, which gets half the aid given to Israel. This arrangement is part of the Camp David agreements from back in 1979, unofficially. Aid to Egypt is basically aid to Israel, to encourage Egypt to sort of play along. But aid to Israel and Egypt is in a separate category, way above anybody else. If you look at the rest, the leading recipients of U.S. aid have typically been among the worst human rights offenders. Pakistan, for example, or Turkey.

In the late 1980s it was El Salvador. Then it switched to Turkey during the years of the Clinton-backed massive atrocities in Turkey against the Kurds in the 1990s. And then by, I think, about 1999, Turkey was replaced by Colombia. The reason, which was transparent, was that Turkey had succeeded in crushing any resistance to its atrocities, so it didn’t need the military aid that much. And Colombia was still engaged in vicious and violent counterinsurgency campaigns." Noam Chomsky: What We Say Goes

The common view that internal freedom makes for humane and moral international behavior is supported neither by historical evidence nor by reason. The United States itself has a long history of imposing oppressive and terrorist regimes in regions of the world within the reach of its power, such as the Caribbean and Central American sugar and banana republics (Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and the Somozas in Nicaragua were long-lived progeny of U.S. intervention and selection). Since World War II. with the great extension of U.S. power, it has borne a heavy responsibility for the spread of a plague of neofascism, state terrorism, torture and repression throughout large parts of the underdeveloped world. The United States has globalized the "banana republic." This has occurred despite some modest ideological strain because these developments serve the needs of powerful and dominant interests, state and private, within the United States itself.

We have wondered why it was that Dr. Savimbi's UNITA in Angola and the Contras in Nicaragua were 'freedom fighters', lionized by...Reagan...whereas our liberation movements such as the African National Congress...were invariably castigated as 'terrorist movements' ... We had our suspicions that there was a coherent, well-thought-out policy by the West to exercise a selective morality... This book confirms our suspicions...the 'terrorism industry has been very much needed in the West as a cover for its own activities and crimes'..." Archibishop Desmond Tutu Praise for THE TERRORISM INDUSTRY In the wake of the Madrid bombings of 2004, coming exactly three years and six months after the World Trade Center 9/11 incident, all people, particularly Americans, must develop the stomach to look at the root causes of the terrorism that threatens us all: THE TERRORISM WE SUPPORT and INITIATE. Edward Herman and Gary O'Sullivan have written a diagnosis of the ills of the modern world with this book THE TERRORISM INDUSTRY that becomes a moral issue of dangerous proportions for any rational person to ignore. In this, they uncover the actual definition of terrorism, in contradistinction to the definition that is used by the government and the media, is part of the reason why it continues to exist. In THE TERRORISM INDUSTRY, you will discover that that which we call the terrorism that justifies the waging of foreign wars and the shredding of the American Bill of Rights makes up little more than ten percent of the actual terrorism that has killed literally millions of (mostly non-White) people around the world. Read more

The United States is "The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World Today": Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Speech Against the Vietnam War On the 35th Anniversary of His Assassination. (Democracy Now)

An end to terrorism also depends on an impossibility, best articulated in a Utopian message written on a banner held by Pakistani demonstrators a few weeks ago: "America: Think About Why the World Hates You." Excerpted from pages 43-49 of 9/12: New York After by Eliot Weinberger,

The surveillance of Muslim communities is based on a false premise: that "extreme" religious beliefs necessarily lead to terrorism. (4/8/2016)

Western Aggression: The Highest Form of Terrorism (2/1/2016)

Thinking Rationally About Terror (1/2/2016)

U.N. Rights Chief Criticizes World Powers (3/5/2015)

Chomsky on Snowden & Why NSA Surveillance Doesn’t Stop Terror While the U.S. Drone War Creates It (3/3/2015)

Paris Terrorist was Radicalized by Bush’s Iraq War, Abu Ghraib Torture (1/8/2015)

It's Official: The US is a Leading Terrorist State (10/20/2014)

The US Is A Leading Terrorist State (10/21/2014)

From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington's man behind brutal police squads (3/6/2013)

Washington's Open Door For Terrorists (9/26/2012)

The Decade's Biggest Scam (8/29/2011)

Republicans Making Nuclear Terrorism More Likely (3/24/2011)

Who Commits Terrorism ? (7/27/2011)

APA Scrubs Web Pages Linking It to CIA Torture Workshops (5/19/2010)

Who’s A Low Level Terrorist? Are You? (6/28/2009)

Stop Domestic Terrorism. (Petition)

Torturing Democracy (PBS video) did not play on all PBS stations. You can play it on-line though. (10/16/2008)

The Power of Nightmares (BBC video) Highly recommended. You can view it on-line.

U.S. terrorism watch list tops 1 million 14 Jul 2008 A U.S. watch list of terrorism suspects has passed 1 million records, corresponding to about 400,000 people, and a leading civil rights group said on Monday the number was far too high to be effective. The Bush regime disagreed and called the list one of the most effective tools implemented after the September 11 hijacked plane attacks -- when a federal "no-fly" list contained just 16 people considered threats to aviation.

UN rights investigator warns US drone attacks may violate international law28 Oct 2009 UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston said Tuesday that the use of unmanned warplanes by the US to carry out attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan may be illegal. Alston criticized the US policy in a report to the UN General Assembly's human rights committee and then elaborated at a press conference.

Army of God? 6 Modern-Day Christian Terrorist Groups You Never Hear About

Terrorism and the Constitution

Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism

Weapons of American Terrorism: Cluster Bombs

Privatizing Homeland Surveillance (12/07/2007)

In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood, and Bioterrorism (video...watch it on-line)