Fear

Americans, I'm sad to say, are afraid. They're chicken shits. Because there was an attack on Paris. Over 100 people were killed.

Yet every year, over 10,000 Americans are killed by guns. We don't care. It's not that Americans die, it's HOW they die. Jealous husband -- that's life. Crazy guy -- it happens. Kid playing with dad's gun -- it's a tragedy. Depressed teen -- it was hormones. Black people -- take your pick of reasons that we write off.

The truth is, we're not afraid of killing. It's all around us. We're afraid of whatever the media and some fear-monger tells us to be afraid of. Because if we were objective about it, we'd do something reasonable. But fear isn't reasonable; it's the wrong stimulus to elicit a reasonable response.

Same with our compatriots in the armed services. If they die from an IED -- that's war. If they die from friendly fire -- that's war. If they drink themselves to death at home after PTSD -- that doesn't count.

Americans are afraid of the wrong things.

No, Syrian, Iraqi and other refugees aren't going to storm our borders like is happening now in Europe.

No, they're not going to "infiltrate" us through our southern border either. Not when ISIS or Al Qaeda could just send hundreds of jihadists with European passports to the U.S., without a visa, to wreak havoc.  Jihadists who can buy guns without a background check, and, in many states, openly carry firearms legally.  Why would terrorists take the former route, which takes at least 18 months, and may ferret out a real terrorist?  Why take the time and risk?  It defies reason and logic.

And yet we're afraid of them nevertheless, these refugees.

Americans are pussies. Especially the right-wing ones who say they want to defend America. They're the biggest fraidy cats of them all.  They'd rather upend the Constitution to defend against a lightning strike than take commonsense steps to defend themselves against much more likely causes of death.

But why?

It's the media. The same "lib'rul media" or "mainstream media" or "biased media" that they despise making them so afraid. They all -- we all -- get our information from SOMEWHERE.  So where are they getting information that's telling them that Syrian women and children are a threat to their very lives, to the American way? They didn't think of it themselves, that's for damn sure.

They are just as manipulable by the media as any liberal, as any other person... nay, more so, because they think their ideology gives them special perspicacity. And yet their fear blinds them.

And so I say, CHILL THE F--K OUT.  Stop being such f---ing pussies. If we're the strongest nation in the history of mankind -- and we are -- then that comes with some responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to serve. And serve we do -- at least some of us. Our men and women of the armed services go where we tell them, train whom we say to, kill whom we say to, and come home if they're lucky. But we civilians also have responsibility to NOT BE SUCH F---ING PUSSIES, and out of our fear, our ignorance and idiocy, send our brothers and sisters into harm's way halfway across the world to fight some bearded loonies in their caves, unless it really means something, unless it really protects us at home, or defends our interests as enumerated in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

The latter responsibility is where we're falling flat. Oh yes, we "honor" our troops with ribbons and FB posts... as we send them into one unsolvable mess, one quagmire after another.  As we ignore them when they return home and try to live in our great American society. Have we no shame? Have we no compassion? Have we no honor, to send these men & women of honor into stupid, dishonorable battles for nothing?

Swallow your Stars & Stripes and choke on them if you use them to justify your fear, to cover up you inadequacy, your latent racism, xenophobia, or religious vision of apocalypse.

Don't use our United States of America for your own stupid, selfish, fearful, short-sighted aims.

Don't buttress your own pathetic shortfalls with the might and resolve of the U.S. Military.

Don't ask our diplomats to say bullshit they don't believe.

Don't deceive yourselves, your family and your neighbors that you're in this fight when you're really not. You know nothing of war, or risk, or death or bloodshed or loss.

Just STOP. Just f---ing quit it. Just STOP.

Fuck Trump. Fuck Carson. Fuck Cruz. And yes, fuck Hillary. Fuck anybody who thinks we can solve civil wars or terrorism with "balls" or "bigger balls" or "brass balls" or salty balls or any kind of balls you can think of.  All that "balls" means is, some guy in a suit in a mansion with body guards sends thousands of Americans in uniform to die. Is that what you want?  Is that what you really need to feel safe, to go about your day?

If you really, truly need that, then I pity you. I despise you, yes. But I pity you.

You're not a worthy inheritor of America's greatness.  You're a scared little girl cowering under her sweaty bed sheets.

Godspeed, Ebola 'czar' Ron Klain!

Am I missing something or is the "unqualified" Ebola czar Ron Klain the most successful "czar" under any U.S. President? No Americans died, Ebola is off the TV and out of the papers, we're all breathing easy again.... I mean, the only possible retort I can think of is that Ebola wasn't that big a deal to begin with; that the CDC had it under control all along; that maybe the GOP and its colleagues on Fox and talk radio just made it erupt into a pants-shitting crisis to win votes and then promptly dropped it mid-November as soon as they had what they wanted -- a Congressional majority...

..But no, no. I can't accept that cynical explanation. I prefer the more positive explanation: that Ron Klain is public health genius on par with Albert Sabin and a saint on par with Mother Teresa.

Godspeed, Mr. Klain!  We thank you for your selfless service to our country!

Ebola czar Klain to depart White House in March

By Anita Kumar

December 8, 2014  | McClatchy Washington Bureau

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/08/249390/ebola-czar-klain-to-depart-white.html

TSA agent: We must laugh at underwear and toothpaste terrorists

This one deserves to be reposted in full, because too many Americans are susceptible to the craven U.S. media's attempts to spur us to support military action (and an anti-civil rights intelligence apparatus) ostensibly meant to keep us safe from non-existent threats -- bumbling terrorists with soggy shoes, crotches on fire, and the like.

And as a frequent international traveler let me say, I'm sick of it!  It's all because of unaccountable, CYA, security-apparatus bureaucrats in DHS and TSA whose only concern is, "Not on my watch!", statistics, facts and our comfort be damned.

Read on!

Take it from an airport security agent: it's OK to laugh at toothpaste terror threats

By Jason Edward Harrington

September 28, 2014 | Guardian

The other day in Syria, the US conducted air strikes on a relatively unknown and possibly non-existent entity called the Khorasan group, which sounds more like a job-killing consulting firm than a people-killing al-Qaida spinoff. It was a surprise plot point in the campaign against Isis that left the kind of Strangelovian headlines that have become par for the course in the War on Terror. Take this one, from the Independent: “Syria air strikes: Khorasan Group ‘were working to make toothpaste bombs and explosives that could pass through airport security’”. Or this one: “Khorasan Group plotted attack against US with explosive clothes”.

This isn’t the first time the plane-flying public has gotten word of cavity-fighting and/or sartorial threats to international airliners: the concept of the toothpaste bomb first surfaced during the Sochi Olympics earlier this year, and the clothes-dipped-in-liquid-explosives menace came to attention back in August 2013. And of course, just a few months ago, there was speculation about the need for airline passengers to fear an iBomb. The only thing that changed between then and now is that anonymous officials slapped a name on the alleged masterminds behind these absurd plots, and then dropped bombs on them.

Now that the global aviation system has been menaced by a shoe bomber, an underwear bomber, a hypothetical “Frankenbomber” and even ecologically friendly bombers, pretty much any western government could conceivably spout the results of a terror plot-generating algorithm and successfully sell it to the public as casus belli:

Common item + bomb + plot = justified military action and hassle at airports. Deodorant bomb plot? Sure, why the hell not? Sounds scary. Send in the drones, confiscate all the Old Spice.

There have been conflicting reports as to how “imminent” the Khorasan group’s aviation attack really was. But regardless of whether these alleged terrorist masterminds had their favorite sweaters weaponized and ready to blow, or were just sort of thinking about it, exactly what are we supposed to feel when confronted with news of such counter-terror campaigns carried out on our behalf? Relief and fear? Relief that our military may have neutralized a tube of toothpaste, and fear that the next Hollywood-ready plot is still imminently lurking out there?

Having worked for the Transportation Security Administration for six years, I actually think laughter is one appropriate response. It’s hard not to see the funny facets of a never-ending campaign against a nebulous enemy (Axis of Evil a decade ago, Network of Death today) in which you are issued a terror intelligence memorandum detailing the standard operating procedure for the confiscation of cupcakes. (“Cupcakes have got to have a reasonable level of icing to be allowed onto a plane,” one TSA manager advised us.)

My former co-workers and I are not the only ones who found some of this stuff funny. In 2012, the international relations scholar Charlotte Heath-Kelly argued in a paper in the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research that the War on Terror can be viewed as the lovechild of Franz Kafka and Monty Python as much as that of any vice president and foreign minister.

“The War on Terror undermines itself by narrating a liminal space where its claims of security appear ridiculous,” Heath-Kelly writes. “A failure to laugh consolidates the War on Terror discourse and the joke it is playing on us by taking it seriously.”

If we could get Catch 22 out of World War II, and Dr Strangelove out of the Cold War, it should come as no surprise if the more skeptical among us laugh when our governments inform us, with a straight face, that we just launched a unilateral air strike so as to eliminate a guy who maybe had explosives in his dopp kit. Perhaps the best way to show our leaders that we’re no longer buying the chimerical terror threats sold to us as justifications for war is by laughing those claims right out of the room.

As Thomas Jefferson said long before the TSA made you walk around barefoot and beltless with a bunch of strangers, “Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.”

Many would say the plots of the supposedly deadly and ingenious terrorists upon whom we’re dropping bombs would be no laughing matter if brought to fruition. But a few people bearing analogues to these hypothetical threats have actually made it aboard planes in the past, and the results comprised a relative comedy of errors:

• In 2001, Richard Reid attempted to bring down a plane by igniting his shoes, but his foot perspiration rendered his amateur IED’s fuse soggy.

• On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a flight to Detroit with a bomb sewn into his underwear, but managed instead to burn his genitals.

• Security experts still argue whether the liquids plot of 2006 – the reason we’re not allowed to bring a container filled with more than 3.4 ounces of liquid aboard planes in the US – was even plausible: Turns out, mixing hydrogen peroxide, sulfuric acid and acetone is difficult even in the calm of a science lab, let alone an airplane lavatory. 

Real-life, successful terrorist plots tend to be too mundane to fit the narratives of big-budget Hollywood thrillers. Attempts at the movie-level terrorist plot end up playing out more like Benny Hill than Sergeant Brody.

I believe that it’s healthy to openly ridicule politically expedient, overblown terror threats such as this Khorasan group – that known unknowns, fashion menaces, underwear bombers and other political hobgoblins should be feared about as much, if not less, than a cab ride to the airport. But there is at least one deadly serious aspect to odd new turns and mysterious enemies in the War on Terror: real people die when missiles go flying in retaliation for absurd, hypothetical threats, and from the rubble of those missile strikes rise new waves of anti-western sentiment. The aspirations of the terrorists we bomb into existence may be grounded in gritty realism, as opposed to slapstick comedy.

And that may turn out to be no laughing matter.

U.S. intel. director: Earth is (still) a scary place

We're all gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeee!  Aaaaaaaah!

Aw Lawdy, please save us CIA and NSA, save us!  

Let me quote Michael Cohen at length [emphasis mine] in his critique of the annual world threat assessment that the National Intelligence Director is obliged to give the Senate:

There is the habitually frightening adjective war front, "an assertive Russia, a competitive China; a dangerous, unpredictable North Korea, a challenging Iran." The sober-minded might look at these countries and conclude that a more accurate set of descriptors would be "an enfeebled and corrupt Russia, an economically slowing and environmentally challenged China, a contained and sort of predictable North Korea and an isolated and diplomatically-engaged Iran". But that would be a pretty lame threat assessment, wouldn't it?

Then there are the really scary sounding threats that aren't actually threats to Americans. Things like, "lingering ethnic divisions in the Balkans, perpetual conflict and extremism in Africa; violent political struggles in … the Ukraine, Burma, Thailand and Bangladesh." [...]  [B]ut the idea that any of these are serious "crises" or "threats" to America and its citizens is ludicrous.

This is what makes Clapper's argument – and indeed the entire process of writing a "worldwide threat assessment" so fundamentally unserious and distorting. America doesn't face a single truly serious security threat. We are a remarkably safe and secure nation, protected by two oceans, an enormous and highly effective military and dozens upon dozens of like-minded allies and friends around the world. Truly we have nothing to fear – except perhaps global climate change, which oddly merits a one-paragraph mention (pdf) in this year's threat assessment.

To listen to Clapper and others in the intelligence community one might never know that inter-state war has largely disappeared and that wars in general are in the midst of a multi-decade decline. 

And let's not forget that Clapper is the same guy who lied to Congress about not spying on U.S. citizens!:

The irony of all this is that Clapper has been under fire for months now because he allegedly lied to Congress over the extent to which the National Security Agency was collecting phone and e-mail records of individual Americans.

Yet, the yarn he spun on Capitol Hill last week was far worse than that: deceiving Americans about the nature of the world today and the threats facing the country. But in a political environment in which threat mongering and exaggeration is the norm rather than the exception, Clapper not only gets a pass – hardly anyone even noticed.

I've had enough of these obvious lies from "serious" spies protecting their administrative turf and bloated billion-dollar budgets.  There is no way that the U.S. is in more danger now than during the Cold War.  We have no enemies who can attack us, save Russia with its ICBMs. Terrorism is a mosquito on the list of actual threats to American citizens.

The James Clappers of the U.S. military-intelligence community might bamboozle and intimidate our Congressmen and journalists with their doomsday speeches, but not me.  What about you?

James Clapper might as well be called director of US fearmongering

By Michael Cohen

February 6, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3mgk3

NSA's domestic spying is legal, that's what's scary

It's funny how America's Left and Right are shaking out over the whole NSA-FBI-Google-Verizon spying thing, and how some politicians and talking heads are completely changing their tune now that a black Democrat is overseeing the spying on us.

Yet many folks on the right like David Brooks or Lindsey Graham who distrust Big Government still trust our military and spy agencies to spy responsibly, because such people feel a "spirit of solidarity with the state," as Woodhouse puts it.  Granted, they feel solidarity with only parts of the state.

I would have lot more faith in the good intentions of those who feel solidarity with America's state security apparatus if they were able to demonstrate a more realistic perspective about the threats to American citizens. 

I mean, we have 11,000 gun deaths a year in America and yet our government, from the local to the national level, is OK with that.  Certainly conservatives are OK with that.  It's "the price of liberty," they say.

But when it comes to Islamic terrorism, all bets are off, no price in tax dollars or privacy is too high to prevent every single attack.  It's nuts.  Even if we flung open America's doors to terrorists, 99% of us would never be touched. 

I'll say it again: we need to suck it up and stop being so scared.  Yeah, sure, some attacks will get through.  So what?  That's the price of us flexing our military muscles all over the world.  That's the "price of liberty," or something.  

Personally, I'd rather take that 1 in 20,000,000 chance of being killed by a terrorist than accept a 100% chance that my own government is spying on me constantly for no good reason!

NSA Surveillance Is Legal, and That's the Worst Thing About It

By Leighton Woodhouse

June 12, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1bxIfeo

America's dying gun culture

Consider these firearms stats, courtesy of Mary Sanchez:

In 1977, 54 percent of American households reported owning guns. In 2010, the last time the General Social Survey data was compiled, the percentage had shrunk to 32.

Gun manufacturing increased dramatically between 2007 and 2011, from 3.7 million weapons to 6.1 million being produced.

And here is Sanchez's (nearly) correct conclusion from these stats:

A declining proportion of the American public is getting involved in gun culture — that is, the gun industry’s customer base is not growing — and yet business is booming. This should lead us to an alarming conclusion. The marketing of more lethal forms of weaponry and ammunition is how the gun industry has decided to shore up profits. The fierce resistance to bans on assault weapons and large ammo clips, as well as to background checks and any other hurdle put in the way of those who want to arm themselves, is not about defending the Second Amendment. It is about defending a business model — a sick, cynical business model.

I admit it, I didn't catch on right away. For many years I thought that the NRA was run by a bunch of loons. But the NRA is crazy like a fox: it knows threats of government gun bans, gun registries, and gun confiscation are the best stimulus for selling more guns. And most of the NRA's financial contributions come directly from gun & ammo manufacturers, not from the NRA's 3.1 million members. 

So, with fewer gun owners, the only way to increase sales is through fear and hysteria. That's what the gun industry needs, so that's what the NRA provides.

UPDATE (03.24.2013): McClatchy came out with more commentary on America's shrinking gun culture based on statistics from the same General Social Survey conducted every two years by the University of Chicago: "Surprising results from gun survey."

More guns but fewer gun owners in America

By Mary Sanchez

March 1, 2013 | Kansas City Star

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/01/184074/commentary-more-guns-but-fewer.html

Michael Moore: It's not really the guns

It's the Guns – But We All Know, It's Not Really the Guns

By Michael Moore

July 24, 2012 | MichaelMoore.com

Since Cain went nuts and whacked Abel, there have always been those humans who, for one reason or another, go temporarily or permanently insane and commit unspeakable acts of violence. There was the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who during the first century A.D. enjoyed throwing victims off a cliff on the Mediterranean island of Capri. Gilles de Rais, a French knight and ally of Joan of Arc during the middle ages, went cuckoo-for-Cocoa Puffs one day and ended up murdering hundreds of children. Just a few decades later Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula, was killing people in Transylvania in numberless horrifying ways. 

In modern times, nearly every nation has had a psychopath or two commit a mass murder, regardless of how strict their gun laws are – the crazed white supremacist in Norway one year ago Sunday, the schoolyard butcher in Dunblane, Scotland, the École Polytechnique killer in Montreal, the mass murderer in Erfurt, Germany … the list seems endless. 

And now the Aurora shooter last Friday. There have always been insane people, and there always will be. 

But here's the difference between the rest of the world and us: We have TWO Auroras that take place every single day of every single year! At least 24 Americans every day (8-9,000 a year) are killed by people with guns – and that doesn't count the ones accidentally killed by guns or who commit suicide with a gun. Count them and you can triple that number to over 25,000. 

That means the United States is responsible for over 80% of all the gun deaths in the 23 richest countries combined. Considering that the people of those countries, as human beings, are no better or worse than any of us, well, then, why us? 

Both conservatives and liberals in America operate with firmly held beliefs as to "the why" of this problem. And the reason neither can find their way out of the box toward a real solution is because, in fact, they're both half right. 

The right believes that the Founding Fathers, through some sort of divine decree, have guaranteed them the absolute right to own as many guns as they desire. And they will ceaselessly remind you that a gun cannot fire itself – that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." 

Of course, they know they're being intellectually dishonest (if I can use that word) when they say that about the Second Amendment because they know the men who wrote the constitution just wanted to make sure a militia could be quickly called up from amongst the farmers and merchants should the Brits decide to return and wreak some havoc. 

But they are half right when they say "Guns don't kill people." I would just alter that slogan slightly to speak the real truth: "Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people." 

Because we're the only ones in the first world who do this en masse. And you'll hear all stripes of Americans come up with a host of reasons so that they don't have to deal with what's really behind all this murder and mayhem. 

They'll say it's the violent movies and video games that are responsible. Last time I checked, the movies and video games in Japan are more violent than ours – and yet usually fewer than 20 people a year are killed there with guns – and in 2006 the number was two! 

Others will say it's the number of broken homes that lead to all this killing. I hate to break this to you, but there are almost as many single-parent homes in the U.K. as there are here – and yet, in Great Britain, there are usually fewer than 40 gun murders a year. 

People like me will say this is all the result of the U.S. having a history and a culture of men with guns, "cowboys and Indians," "shoot first and ask questions later." And while it is true that the mass genocide of the Native Americans set a pretty ugly model to found a country on, I think it's safe to say we're not the only ones with a violent past or a penchant for genocide. Hello, Germany! That's right I'm talking about you and your history, from the Huns to the Nazis, just loving a good slaughter (as did the Japanese, and the British who ruled the world for hundreds of years – and they didn't achieve that through planting daisies). And yet in Germany, a nation of 80 million people, there are only around 200 gun murders a year. 

So those countries (and many others) are just like us – except for the fact that more people here believe in God and go to church than any other Western nation. 

My liberal compatriots will tell you if we just had less guns, there would be less gun deaths. And, mathematically, that would be true. If you have less arsenic in the water supply, it will kill less people. Less of anything bad – calories, smoking, reality TV – will kill far fewer people. And if we had strong gun laws that prohibited automatic and semi-automatic weapons and banned the sale of large magazines that can hold a gazillion bullets, well, then shooters like the man in Aurora would not be able to shoot so many people in just a few minutes. 

But this, too, has a problem. There are plenty of guns in Canada (mostly hunting rifles) – and yet the annual gun murder count in Canada is around 200 deaths. In fact, because of its proximity, Canada's culture is very similar to ours – the kids play the same violent video games, watch the same movies and TV shows, and yet they don't grow up wanting to kill each other. Switzerland has the third-highest number of guns per capita on earth, but still a low murder rate. 

So – why us? 

I posed this question a decade ago in my film 'Bowling for Columbine,' and this week, I have had little to say because I feel I said what I had to say ten years ago – and it doesn't seem to have done a whole lot of good other than to now look like it was actually a crystal ball posing as a movie. 

This is what I said then, and it is what I will say again today: 

1. We Americans are incredibly good killers. We believe in killing as a way of accomplishing our goals. Three-quarters of our states execute criminals, even though the states with the lower murder rates are generally the states with no death penalty. 

Our killing is not just historical (the slaughter of Indians and slaves and each other in a "civil" war). It is our current way of resolving whatever it is we're afraid of. It's invasion as foreign policy. Sure there's Iraq and Afghanistan – but we've been invaders since we "conquered the wild west" and now we're hooked so bad we don't even know where to invade (bin Laden wasn't hiding in Afghanistan, he was in Pakistan) or what to invade for (Saddam had zero weapons of mass destruction and nothing to do with 9/11). We send our lower classes off to do the killing, and the rest of us who don't have a loved one over there don't spend a single minute of any given day thinking about the carnage. And now we send in remote pilotless planes to kill, planes that are being controlled by faceless men in a lush, air conditioned studio in suburban Las Vegas. It is madness. 

2. We are an easily frightened people and it is easy to manipulate us with fear. What are we so afraid of that we need to have 300 million guns in our homes? Who do we think is going to hurt us? Why are most of these guns in white suburban and rural homes? Maybe we should fix our race problem and our poverty problem (again, #1 in the industrialized world) and then maybe there would be fewer frustrated, frightened, angry people reaching for the gun in the drawer. Maybe we would take better care of each other (here's a good example of what I mean). 

Those are my thoughts about Aurora and the violent country I am a citizen of. Like I said, I spelled it all out here if you'd like to watch it or share it for free with others. All we're lacking here, my friends, is the courage and the resolve. I'm in if you are.

Ames: Jaded Russians hardly shaken by terror act

Compared to most of Russia's bloody and brutal 20th century, the last decade of so of Chechen terrorism in Russia has been a relatively peaceful period! Meanwhile, 10 years on, 9/11 still has us Americans frightened and on edge. Everything is relative, sure.

Nevertheless, a revival of our old-fashioned Western frontier stoicism might not be a bad thing.

Dead Souls: How Russians React to Terror

By Mark Ames
January 24, 2011 | Vanity Fair

It takes a lot to terrorize a Russian. Compared to the truly spectacular acts of terrorism and violence that Russians have suffered over the past two decades, today's suicide bombing at Moscow's busiest airport, Domodedovo, is too small-time to have much of an effect besides pissing off an already-pissed-off population.

Back in 2004, two passenger jets that took off from this same airport were blown out of the sky by Chechen "black widows"—Chechen women widowed by the brutal war with Russia, and turned into suicide bombers. Shortly after that double-Lockerbie airplane bombing, opposition leader Eduard Limonov explained to me what he thought was behind the logic: "They understood that Russians wouldn't be moved if only one plane was blown up, so they blew up two planes simultaneously, just to get our attention," he said. Limonov used to write about Russian hard-heartedness, the result of their brutal experience with Communism, followed by the nihilistic Yeltsin Era, when the average male's life expectancy plunged from 68 years to just 56, in a free-market Babylon of corruption, plunder, and violence.

At a Moscow rock festival in 2003, two Chechen suicide bombers blew themselves up at the gated entrance, killing more than a dozen people and wounding scores more. Nevertheless, the 40,000 concert-goers were neither frightened nor particularly bothered; the festival went on for another six hours of vodka-and-beer-soaked revelry. Previous bombings of the Moscow metro, buses, and airlines have had no effect on public transport usage or travel. When suicide bombers attacked the popular Egyptian resort at Sharm-el-Sheikh in the summer of 2005, killing 88, most Europeans panicked and canceled their trips to the resort area—but not Russians.

Several years ago, Limonov—Russia's most famous living writer and leader of the anti-Putin opposition with Garry Kasparov—wrote a column for my defunct Moscow newspaper, The eXile, about how desensitized Russians have become:

Russians have a healthy attitude towards literature. As barbarians they expect it to shake them, to shock them, to thrill them. As Lolita didn't shock them, they throw it away with a deep contempt. The fact is that Russians are very insensitive people, with a low level of sensitivity. In order to move, to touch them, one must hurt their sensitivity, to wound their stone-made Russian souls. That is the task not for literature, but for mass-murderers, for the rapists of children, for the civil war, for the Hitler's invasion. Russians were not moved by "White House" massacre of 1993, they were not touched by [Chechen guerrilla leader] Basayev's assault on Budyonnovsk in 1995. Mass-murderer Andrei Chikatilo have winned their interest, yes, indeed Russian punk band call itself "Chikatilo Blues." But Russians were not moved at all by old-fashioned seduction of intellectual Humbert Humbert by teenager Lolita, as it is no shock for them, no big deal.

Russian news sites are already reporting stories about how the notorious taxi mafia at Domodedovo is taking advantage of the chaos by charging as much as 20,000 rubles, or nearly $700, for the ride into the city center. In the immediate aftermath, the airport's incoming passengers weren't told about the bombing, and were led to another part of the airport to get their bags, unaware that they were walking through the scene of a gruesome terror act. Online bloggers and commentators are already complaining about airport corruption and lack of security, how the suicide bomber was allowed to walk into the "green zone" in the baggage claim area to maximize his kill count.

In 2004 at the same airport, it took only $200 in bribes to get the two Chechen suicide bombers onto the two airlines which they destroyed in mid-air.

As appalling as it might seem, let's remember what America's far more sentimental reaction to 9/11 got us: two disastrous wars, tens of thousands of deaths, and the sorts of police-state measures once thought unimaginable. The difference may be more in our sentimentality than in our brutality.

Mark Ames is a founding editor at eXiled Online, the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan's Workplace to Clinton's Columbine, and a co-author of The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia.

Without color-coding, how can we regulate fear?

I disagree with this change by Obama. First of all, color-coding is easy to understand. Duh. Secondly, how am I to know how scared I should be from day to day?

I need Big Guvmint to tell me! I miss Dubya-Cheney!! I can't hack it in this new uncertain terror-stricken world!

Color-Coded Terror Alerts To Be Dropped By Department Of Homeland Security

By Eileen Sullivan

November 24, 2010 | AP

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/25/color-coded-terror-alerts-dhs_n_788450.html

Al Qaeda's skidmarks contain PETN; ours just have poop

I hesitate a bit to criticize Tantillo because I see what he's getting at and I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments: we mustn't be crying, hysterical little girls soiling our panties over possible terror threats that are more remote than a lightning strike.

But damnit, he had to phrase his argument in marketing-speak, i.e. talk bullshit: "Brand America." What the hell is that?! What the hell, are we selling our courage to somebody? Who cares?! Who needs it? Look, there's a big difference between advertising that you're not afraid, and actually not being afraid.

And anyway, for whom do we need to put on a brave face? Do we Americans really think al Qaeda has a giant telescope watching us from outer space, al la Dr. Evil, to see if we are quivering or looking over our shoulder? 

What's the purpose of this op-ed? If he had simply written, "Stop being a bunch of whiny little pu**ies crying for the military, CIA, and NSA to protect you from every Nigerian teenager with dirty underpants," that would have been fine. That's 100% appropriate. But what the hell is this -- a pep talk, for goodness sake?!

Since when did Americans become a Damon Wayans spoof of the late Richard Pryor: "Scared for no reason"? I've been ashamed of my country for its actions abroad, but I'm starting to be ashamed for my country at home, for its shriveling testicular fortitude. 

Seriously, folks, we can't expect "Our Troops," our professional soldiers, to fight all our quixotic battles for us thousands of miles away and at the same time protect us from every disgruntled African kid with sparky whitey-tighties. Sorry. Suck it up. Get ahold of yourselves.


We Can't Let Fear Define Brand America
By John Tantillo
January 8, 2009 | Fox News

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/01/08/john-tantillo-america-terror-fear-christmas-day-attack/

Re: Obama's failure to lead

What hypocrisy! Obama reacted almost identically to how Bush did after Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber": 6 days of silence, preceded by casual statements from his press sec. that Bush was monitoring the situation. Only, with Dubya it happened 4 months after 9/11, not 8 years after.

Gimme a break! "Leadership"?! Your side wanted "leadership" from Obama after the attempted Detroit bombing?! Don't tell me that you were cowering in fear in your home, just waiting for Pres. Obama to reassure you and the nation that everything was gonna be OK. You think he's a crypto-Marxist who hates America and wants to destroy it; and yet you wanted him to go on TV and reassure you?! Makes no sense! This is just a partisan swipe at Obama. It shows that politics trump national security, contrary to Republicans' assertions.

BTW, have all Americans turned into cowardly pu**ies, or just Republicans? Yeah, there are a few hundred nutjobs in the world who want to kill us and are willing to die trying. So what? We're the most powerful nation on Earth. We'll sweep up their charred remains and carry on. This is the price we pay for being the biggest guy on the block, and exerting our influence all over the globe, often clumsily so. Stop crying about it, stop cowering in fear, and reconcile with the fact that we're gonna take casualties at home, not just "over there." But those casualties will be relatively small and infrequent, hence there's no reason these one-off attacks should alter our way of life, as long as we don't collectively wet our pants and cry like hysterical little girls. Jeez.

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 3:38 AM, ____ wrote:

Message from ____ : Obama displays less leadership than Bush. He can't spend his entire term saying everything is Bush's fault

Failure to Lead

By Salena Zito

January 3, 2010 | Townhall.com

URL: http://townhall.com/content/0e78c22d-b26f-4d99-9d1f-95c740fc6726

Hungry to know what to eat

Cute, but spot on. It is ironic that we "orthorexic" Americans are the most concerned with detailed nutritional labeling and all the latest food research, and yet we are the flabbiest, most diabetic, hypertensive and infarcted people in the developed world. Forget the health jargon; bring back the "Great-Granny Diet!"

I'm hungry for some certainty
By Ellen Goodman
February 15, 2008 | Washington Post 

I am sitting at the breakfast table taking my medicine. This drug is a cup of coffee formerly identified by its native and urban origins: Sumatra and Peet's. But now it has been declared good for what might eventually ail me, if what might ail me is Parkinson's disease or colon cancer. Coffee has also been praised as a prevention for diabetes in Minnesota and cursed as a risk for diabetics in North Carolina, but I am in Massachusetts.

On my place mat is a bowl of antioxidants formerly known as blueberries. These round little health capsules have been scientifically evaluated as a barrier against mental decline and cancer. Alas, they come from Chile, which is not good for my carbon footprint.

I am pondering an egg, which was once considered a suicidal act, death by cholesterol. Now it is praised for its carotenoids - lutein and zeaxanthin - essential for healthy eyes.

These healthy eyes are needed to read the newspaper stories in front of me full of the latest food health bulletins. The first dateline is New York, which has joined the crowd in banning those evil trans fats that were once our salvation against those devilish animal fats. Now the city has also decided that calories of every dish should be posted in chain restaurants.

The second dateline is Seattle, which has one-upped the East Coast. Its new law will not only list the calories but the carbohydrates, fats, and sodium lurking in the beurre blanc, crème fraîche, and Big Mac.

How did it come to this? How did eating become a science rather than an art? How did food become conflated with medicine? We now have shelves full of boxes with bragging rights promising better eating through chemistry. Meanwhile, our uncertainty is growing as quickly as our waistlines.

Imagine what our ancestors would have made of a book titled "In Defense of Food." They would never have believed that food needed a defense lawyer. But one of the leading indicators of the fix we are in is how quickly Michael Pollan's manifesto vaulted to the top of the best-seller list. There it sits, proof of the transformation of the land of plenty into the land of plenty of anxieties.

Pollan's previous book raised "The Omnivore's Dilemma" - what to eat. He masticated the meaning of four meals for people, the earth, and the agricultural industry. He single-handedly made "locavore" the word of the year for the New Oxford American Dictionary. Think global, eat local.

Now he solves the omnivore's dilemma with seven little words wrapped around a head of lettuce on the new book cover: "Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants." (Not including the philodendron.) And the word that he's launching this year is "orthorexia," an unhealthy fixation with healthy eating.

"What other animal needs professional help in deciding what it should eat?" he asks, recognizing the absurdity of the need for his own advice. Two different forces got us here. The first is "nutritionism," the idea fostered by science that food is nothing more than the sum of its nutrients. The second and more pernicious force is the $36 billion food-marketing industry that turns food into "food-like substances."

Remember the French paradox: wine, cheese, and low weight? Well, the American paradox, Pollan writes, is "a notably unhealthy population preoccupied with nutrition and diet and the idea of eating healthily."

His tips for the land of the overweight orthorexics are rather charmingly simple. Among them:

> Avoid products made with ingredients you can't read or pronounce.

> Avoid products making health claims on the package.

> Yes, eat plants. (But not the sansevieria.)

> But the best of them is: don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

Frankly, I'm pretty sure my great-grandmother never saw an avocado. But I am all for moving from what conservatives grudgingly call the nanny state to the great-granny state.

Even as we speak, someone working to combine the eating disorder with the great American paradox must be writing the next best-seller: The Great-Granny Diet. [Molasses! Lots and lots of molasses! And butter. And lard. And cream. And bacon. Yum! – J] You read it hear first. Meanwhile, the moguls of the agricultural-industrial complex will work up a great-granny product line. And we will soon see great-granny stickers on all the beleaguered fruit and vegetables that line the market walls.

In the meantime, I plan to begin eating at least one plant that my great-granny knew so well: the good old Theobroma cacao. Rich in flavanols, not to mention polyphenols, this is a known treatment for fatigue, coughs and anxieties - and maybe even orthorexia. What was it my great-granny called this plant? Oh yeah, chocolate.

'Yellow-bellied cowards'

Addicted to Fear - Cowardice Has Become the Source of Republican Power

By "Super Macho Man" Jon Ponder
October 30, 2007 | The Pensito Review

The Republican Party's macho bluster and apparently endless appetite for war makes it seem counter-intuitive to think of them as cowards. And yet, seven years into the Bush regime, it is clear that the GOP has become dependent on fear to keep itself in power — and to support this addiction the party leadership has converted its rank and file members into America's first generation of bona fide yellow-bellied cowards.

After the GOP took over the government in 2000 and ran all three branches for six years, the truth about the conservative movement was finally revealed. After years of unctuous claims that they were for family values and lower spending and against corruption, Republicans demonstrated that the exact opposite is true. They were caught engaging in a wide range of sleazy activities, both personal and financial, and Bush and the GOP Congress ran the Treasury into the ground, racking up more debt than all the presidents since Washington, combined. Now, with that record fresh in voters' minds, all they have left to run on is the politics of fear.

Nearly every day, a subtle or not-so-subtle message of fear — about terrorists, Moslems, Iran, whatever works — is transmitted from the bully pulpit of the White House press room podium out to the public via the seemingly unwitting mainstream media, Fox News and rightwing talk radio. The government's fear propaganda is mostly just noise in the background to normal people, but rank and file conservatives gobble it up like ravenous dogs.

9/11 Did Not "Change Everything"

The Republican culture of fear was born out of the 9/11 attacks — which we are told "changed everything" because they were an "attack on America." But when the World Trade Center was bombed in February 1993 by rightwing Islamic terrorists very like the ones who would take the towers down eight years years later, no one suggested that our response to this "attack on America" should be invading and occupying Iraq.

The Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta July 1996 was an "attack on America" — albeit by an American rightwing Christian fundamentalist terrorist. But no one suggested that we should eavesdrop on Americans and torture prisoners as a result.

The Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, this time by another group of homegrown rightwing terrorists, was certainly an "attack on America" — in particular on a federal building and specifically targeting agents of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. No one suggested shredding the Constitution as a result.

For most of the century after the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan, a rightwing, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant terrorist group, attacked and killed Americans with guns, bombs and nooses. But during the first nine decades or so of this unrelenting reign of terror, hardly anyone seemed to mind very much, except of course for those who were the targets of the hatred and violence.

Around the globe, millions of people endure terror attacks without cowering under their beds. The Israelis have lived with terrorism since at least the 1970s — as have the Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis and others in the Middle East. The British stood stalwart against attacks by Irish separatists for generations. In just the past decade, terrorists have attacked in Colombia, Russia, China, Egypt, Mexico, Cuba, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Pakistan, Latvia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Chechnya, Spain, Finland and on and on.

Only in the Bush era has it become acceptable for Americans to cower in fear at the same threat that others in the world face with courage or at least equanimity. Among democracies, only does the United States government deliberately encourage and inflame cowardice among its citizens.

The Soviets' A-Bombs - Now That Was Scary

Up until about a decade and a half ago, Americans bravely shouldered on every day in the shadow of a much greater national threat than Islamic terrorists will ever pose. Here's how Gen. Wesley Clark described it on Bill Maher's HBO show last Friday:

This nation lived for 40 years under the threat of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. Six thousand nuclear warheads [aimed at] every American city — would have destroyed … life in America.

Osama bin Ladin and these people — they're crazy and they're nuts. Maybe they want to kill Americans but they are not an existential threat to America. And they are no reason for Americans to give up their freedom and their liberty.

Other than fear so intense it has shut down rational thought — which can be described as cowardice — what could explain the Republicans' willingness to be duped by Bush's lies in the run-up to war: that Saddam, the secularist who was on Al Qaeda's kill list, was part of the 9/11 conspiracy; that he had nuclear capabilities; that he might load drones onto ships and launch them at the U.S. off the Atlantic coast?

Other than having their brains dulled by terror, what could cause so many Americans to take at face value Bush's facile construct that "we have to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here?" It should be abundantly obvious that nothing about our being in Iraq prevents terrorists from coming here. They have maps. They can get plane tickets. They can cross the border on foot. And they can do this while American occupation forces are strapped down in Iraq, dodging bullets in a sectarian civil war between opposing followers of Muslim leaders who died 14 centuries ago.

The whole thing would be laughable if the price in American blood and treasure was not so steep.

Normal People Put Their Fears in Perspective

Those of us who live in areas that are vulnerable to natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, blizzards and floods have to learn to cope with fear. Our mantra, in so many words, is "be prepared and hope for the best."

Most of us don't consider this rationalization of risk as "bravery" — and, to be sure, our day-to-day moxie is nothing compared to the courage required of troops facing IEDs and insurgents' bombs in Iraq or cops dodging bullets in American streets.

But, really, our sort of courage is no harder to come by than the courage it took to get up every day and go about life with the knowledge that this could be the day the Soviets will bomb us into oblivion.

This mildest form of bravery — the ability to put exposure to risk in perspective and go about life in peace and contentment — is what every American, even Republicans, must learn to muster if, gods forbid, terrorism continues to be a part of life in the States.

Unfortunately, because of the policies and actions of George W. Bush — enabled and supported by his fear-addicted supporters — the likelihood that terrorism will remain a fact of life in America is greater now than it would have been if Bush had not been president on September 11, 2001.

GOP presidential nominee: Don Knotts (R-NC)

Too bad Don Knotts is dead. He would be a great GOP presidential nominee: a real cowboy sheriff when his gun belt is on and the bad guy is behind bars, but Mr. Chicken whenever he's faced with a real threat.

The following op-ed says it all: Republicans can only offer us heaping helpings of FEAR . Leading contender Rudy Giuliani's campaign message is likely to be, "U-S-A! U-S-A! We're all s-s-cared sh-sh-shitless! But don't you w-worry, I'll sh-shoot that m-monster in the c-c-closet for you."

And as soon as we stop fearing for our lives, Republicans like Siegel chastise us for our, er, bravery (?). The "perceptions that give rise to fear in the first place" should not be eliminated, he writes. We shouldn't let our fear become dull and complacent; we should keep our fear razor sharp and ever-vigilant, in the scary face of all kinds of Islamic bogey man and nasty people.

Wow, what a message of hope. What a reason to live. Whoopee.

So, with that in mind….

BOO!

Get scared, damnit! They're all out to kill you in your back yards and suburbs, every last one of you! Ahhhhhh!!!

(But seriously, here's the real deal: Your chances in America of being killed by a terrorist are less than dying in a car accident or being hit by lightning. And if you don't live in NYC, DC, LA, or another big U.S. city, your chances of perishing at the hands of Islamic terrorists are similar to being hit by falling cosmic debris. So, if Siegel is arguing that we should maintain a fear of terrorists that is slightly less acute than our paralyzing fear of automobiles, thunderstorms, and shooting stars, then I agree with him 100%. We've got to keep things in perspective, after all.)

Loss of Fear Itself

by Bill Siegel
06/27/2007 | HumanEvents.com

As the presidential campaign heats up, the allegations of fear-mongering are also picking up steam. While it was utilized frequently in the last Congressional elections, it is now appearing in a variety of non-candidate voices. In a recent cover story, Newsweek's Fareed Zacharia stressed that the new post-Bush era must see the American public get out from under the fear that had been created by the administration to justify its global war against terrorism. He also often attacks the Giuliani campaign for trumpeting fear to sell him as the candidate best suited to respond to our frightening situation. In "Sicko", Michael Moore describes the use of fear as a critical tool in the government's arsenal keeping us unwilling and unable to stand up and demand that to which we are presumably entitled. Paradoxically, in warning us against the fear tactics supposedly utilized by the administration, these voices have, in fact, merely asked us to replace the fear of the enemy with the fear of Bush. We must guard against them being guilty of the very same political gamesmanship they seek to expose.

When we react to something overzealously, it is not uncommon to overcompensate by retracting or withdrawing from it. Whether it be a new technology (automobiles, the internet), a new political system (democracy in the Middle East), or even a new love interest, initial enthusiasm is often exaggerated and then followed by a contraction in the other direction which is almost equally guilty of excess. The internet "bubble" of the 90's, which became so irrationally funded, was met with a collapse that virtually blacklisted most internet investments in the early 2000s. As a result, many opportunities were missed which later became great success stories. Many were just as blind to opportunities during the collapse as those who missed the initial bubble.

We must be vigilant that such an overreaction does not take place with respect to the fear of our terrorist enemies. Following 9/11, Americans not only felt massive fear; they began to perceive their enemies in new ways based upon that fear. As they learned more about the Islamic world, they rearranged their priorities to fit those perceptions. This allowed most Americans to support aggressive military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and the more aggressive pursuit of terrorists around the world. As the threat became clearer, fear seemed not only appropriate but a critical motivating force. To various degrees, we have gotten used to fear as part of the fabric of the war we fight.

Faced with the frustrations not only of the Iraq war but of the broader terrorist threat many today are seeking a relief from the debilitating consequences fear can have on us.

Precisely because fear is so difficult to maintain and manage, we seek to find ways to eliminate it. The most effective tool for doing so is to reorder our perceptions to eliminate the need for fear. We are prone, therefore, to candidates' descriptions of the current situation as one that can be easily handled. We can be coaxed to believe that the enemy cannot easily hit us at home, that it can be tamed through proper respect, statecraft, and skilled negotiation, that it has little to do with Islam itself and thus represents only a small fraction of the 1.2 or greater population of Muslims worldwide, that state sponsors such as Iran and Syria can be dealt with and really want the same things we want, etc. Mostly, we are easily assuaged by the image of an upbeat, attractive, articulate presidential figure regaining our lost respect in the world, winning back our friends and allies, and demonstrating to the enemy that we are ready to acknowledge their place in the world we share.

The allegation of fear mongering greatly adds to these perceptions as it simply tells us that we did not need to be afraid as we have been. To some degree, perhaps, that is true. There is, arguably, a great tendency to overreact. In great part, however, that is the goal of the enemy: to wear us down so that we defeat ourselves. The path of this defeat is not military. Rather, it is to get us to change our perceptions that give rise to the fear in the first place. Once we so change our description of the enemy, the problem, the value of what we are fighting for, we become vulnerable to all this enemy seeks to do.

Unfortunately, the nature of this war does not tolerate our wishes for emotional peace. Nor does this escape our notice. Rather, at least unconsciously if not consciously, we seem to realize on some level that we are confronted with an enemy that simply will not just go away and desires only our destruction. There is no negotiation with this type of foe despite our wish to presume that it is just like us and, ultimately, desires peace. There is no response to this type of threat other than fear. And fear, while distressing, is a guide which can help us to navigate this new threat properly. Therefore, we should not be in a rush to eliminate fear.

As Democrats seek the White House, relief from fear is one of their most powerful promises. [Those liberal bastards! How dare they!? -- J] Oddly, the same candidates who claim that Bush never asked the citizenry for a sacrifice fail to see that the emotional beatings this war has and will continue to create for us all are part of the sacrifice asked and made.

Bush has repeatedly made clear that fighting this enemy will take many years if not generations. Fighting is itself a learning process. We must continue to learn, adjust, and press forward. Part of what we will learn better is how to use and maintain our fear in a more positive way while simultaneously remaining acutely vigilant over the enemy. All the while, we must be careful to not pull back excessively from our fear into the delusion that we are not really in a war for our existence. That is precisely what the enemy is trying to sell us.

[Ummm… excuse me, but if al Qaeda were doing its devious best to continue killing us without scaring us, why do they make videos of cutting people's heads off? This guy Siegel is an ass. -- J]

Mr. Siegel lives in New York.