@bcglorf
you left out that anwar had worked for the CIA and NSC as a consultant,and that in his earlier days as an imam was critical of al qeada and was very pro-american.

look,i am not arguing the fact that anwar did become radicalized,nor am i denying that his shift in attitudes (which was mainly due to americas handling of the iraqi war) had become not only critical,but had gone from condemnation to calls for violence,and praise for violence.

which brings us to the fort hood shooter nidel hasan who was an avid fan of anwar al awlaki,and DID have a correspondence with awlaki.which when examined,was pretty fucking one sided.it was apparent that hasan was attempting to get in the good graces of awlaki who,evidenced by the email correspondence,had no real relationship with hasan.though awlaki did praise hasan,and his violent actions.

so i do not get where 'the emails are closed".just google nidal hasan and anwar al awlaki emails,and you can go read for yourself.

and as for these emails as justification..i really do not see your logic in this respect.

so if someone becomes a huge fan of mine,and emails me constantly because we met ONCE and now they think we are buddies and share common interests (which,maybe we do),and that person perpetrates a violent act.

am i responsible for that act?

and here is where the crux of the discussion REALLY is:
maybe i AM responsible.
maybe i am guilty of inciting violence.
maybe i should be held accountable,because not only did i keep this mans violent intentions to myself,which resulted in death,but then praised his actions afterwards as being the will of god.

there are ALL possibilities,and they are valid questions.
they are legal questions,and maybe there should be a legal accountability.

should the proper pathway to a legal conclusion be:
a.a remotely piloted drone that targets my phone and launches a missile murdering (assasinating0 me,along with innocent by-standers?

or.

b.working with the yemeni government to bring me into a secure facility to be questioned,and possibly charged with inciting violence and prosecuted in an international court of law?

do you see what i'm saying?

the question isn't if anwar al awlaki,as a prominent imam,was vocally against american foreign policy,or that he openly supported violence in the form of terrorism.

the question is:
how do you address that situation,and prosecute the legalities?

because as scahill posited:how do you surrender to a drone?

could anwar al awlaki be guilty of EVERY charge the US accused him of?
quite possibly.
but we will never know because he was assassinated,as was his 16yr old son.

even your counter argument is speculation based on loose affiliations,and tenuous connections.

you will NEVER be able to supply a concrete,and verifiable accounting of anwar al awlaki's guilt,because you CAN'T..he was assassinated.

and THAT is the point.

now let us take this a step further.
let us examine how this can be abused,and watching trump consolidate executive power by surrounding himself with departmental loyalist,loyal only to him,we can begin to see the beginnings of trumps "soft fascism".

now lets take how you made your argument,and supplant a different scenario,but using the same parameters.

do you SEE how easily the drone program could be used to quickly,and efficiently remove opposing political players from the board? dissenting and opposing voices simply painted as violent enemies of the state that were in need of removal,because of the "possibility" that they may one day actually incite or cause violence?

the state can now murder a person for simply what they say,or write but NOT what they actually DO.

anwar al awlaki didn't actually kill anyone,didn't perpetrate any acts of violence.he simply talked about the evils of american empire,the mishandling of the iraq war (which he was originally in support of) and praised those who DID engage in violent acts of terror as doing the work of god.

should he have been held accountable in some fashion?
i think there is case to be made in that regard,but instead of going through proper channels,and adhering to the protocols of international law,he was outright assassinated.

and just how easily this can be abused is incredibly frightening.

again,i understand we approach things from different angles,but you have to see the danger in this practice,and how easily it can be misused to much darker and sinister purposes.

"well,he said nasty things about us and had a lot of friends who were on the terror watch list"

is simply NOT a valid enough excuse to simply murder someone.

there are protocols and legal procedure for a REASON,and anwar al awlaki may certainly have been in breach of international law and therefor possibly SHOULD have been prosecuted under those terms.

but we will NEVER know,because he was killed.
by an american president.
a nobel peace prize winner and constitutional law professor.

anwar al awlaki was an american citizen,his SON was an american citizen,but due to those abominations:MCA of 2006 and the NDAA of 2012.obama had the power and authority to assassinate them both.

where was there right to face their accuser?
habeas corpus..gone...a legal right that dates back to 1205 a.d by the BRITISH..gone.
innocent until proven guilty....gone.
the right to provide evidence in your defense...gone.

all the president has to do..and DID in this case,is deem you an "enemy combatant" and BOOM..dead.

i really hope you reconsider your attitude in this case my friend,because this shit is fascism incarnate,and now trump has his chubby little fingers on the "fire" button.

god help us all......

1 in every 300 Americans is on the terror watch list.

Dems cried about how bad the watch list is, how it's unfair that innocent people are flagged and have practically zero ability to get their name off the list (unless they're some big wig).

...

But now it's not a retarded broken list that unjustly punishes innocent people without due process. Now it's good to go.

-scheherazade

"You know things are bad when someone on the terror watch list...." Please Xiaelao, spare us the insulting terminology, no such fucking thing as terror.

No, you know things are bad when you have such a completely bullshit phraseology as "Terror Watch List", "terror alert level (insert color here), "no fly list", etc. The term "gun control" is being replaced in the U.S. media with the psycho-cyberdine phraseology, "gun safety", because these cunts are helpless to conceal their own fuck-ups.

...a few more that have become entrenched in the lexicon of acceptable terminology for verbal camouflage, friendly fire, collateral damage, and other euphemistic language designed to conceal reality....
It killed Carlin to watch it-"Poor people used to live in slums, now the economically disadvantaged occupy sub-standard housing in the inner cities."

Wool + Eyes = Pull

Harlequinn I would say you are correct. Only metal spoons aren't harmful to anyone (accept those like myself with a metal allergy..) and the guns that will eventually be unavailable can mow down a dozen people in about 30 seconds, blasting them into bits. So, it's a bit different.

I personally feel the solution to 'assault weapons' is to make them available at gun ranges. That way folks who want to be able to fire them, can still have access to them, but they are still restricted to have in ones home and thus cannot be used in violence. Just the way some shooting ranges offer military weapons a civilian cannot get access to any other way.

And for the record I'm relatively pro-gun. I don't own any but I grew up with them, received my first as a birthday present when I was 10 and my mother owns two and her boyfriend makes his own rifles for use in competition.

If congress manages to only do one thing about the gun violence in this nation, I'd personally rather see it be a national gun registry that would allow instant background checks at gun shows/etc. You know things are bad when someone on the terror watch list can buy an AR-15 with a 100 round magazine, armor piercing bullets and a flack jacket out of the back of a van and it's perfectly legal in some states. That's an extreme example I grant, but not unrealistic.

Upvote this.. and get on the terror watch list. LOL

@cybrbeast, we have proportional representation here too, and it doesn't help 3rd parties in the least.

I'm of two minds about the "not much difference between the parties" thing. On the one hand, I find there to be horrendously extreme differences between the parties. One wants to try to deal with health care costs and the environment, the other doesn't want to change anything. One wants to try to get our budget balanced, one wants to just cut taxes without doing anything to spending. One wants to make sure everyone -- including people on the terror watch list -- can buy untraceable guns, the other thinks maybe we should make sure that there's a good way to trace guns to their owners.

On the other hand, there's a lot of bipartisan submission to corporate influence, and an abject refusal to ever say things as left wing as you'd hear coming from the mouths of right-wing European parties on topics like jobs, health care, environment, etc. It's still newsworthy when a politician just says "government can do good things for people".

Mostly though, I don't think there's some simple electoral fix that would break the sway corporations hold in this country. We've essentially set up some deep legal precedent that what in normal circumstances would be called bribery, is instead classified as protected political speech (i.e. campaign contributions, lobbying, revolving door job offers).

I think some tweaks could be done to help 3rd parties get into the mix, namely lowering the barriers that have been erected around getting on the ballot, plus mandatory instant runoff voting. That could pretty quickly turn us to a multi-party system. I just doubt it'd make any difference since you still need 3/5ths majority to overcome minority obstruction in the Senate, and it does nothing to keep the new parties from being subverted by corporate influence, which is really what's driving the similarity between the parties here.

What I want to know is: Where's the money? The art of taxation (and gouvernment) as Terry Pratchett so eloquently describes it, is to get the largest amount of milk for the smallest amount of moo. These terror watch lists are rediculous, do nothing for security and are at best an exercise in burocratic masturbation. Somebody has to profit, or it would have been thrown out long ago. So who?

>> ^quantumushroom:
If you ever wonder why no one takes you seriously, it's this. This is why.
You got a 'P' next to your handle. I was annoying libs 'round here when you were in your crib shitting yellow mustard.
Raz me over pointing out a rather blatant "subliminal" sticker, which could just as easily have been out of the shot? Go back and count the number of anti-Fox sifts--no matter the content--and tell me with a straight face how I'm being nitpicky. HA.
ACLU? With its anti-religion agenda based on a fraudulent interpretation of the 1st Amendment, it's been making many people's lives miserable over nothing for decades. What do I care that this doof has been inconvenienced by the Big Government he craves? So has the "reporter"! Imagine a reporter with terminal cancer reporting on terminal cancer victims.
BTW, the misleading title of this sift makes one believe the TSA deliberately singled out the CNN reporter because he described them in an unflattering light, yet he has NO evidence, only an implication, kind of like "Bush lied." No evidence of a crime, therefore no impeachment.
Since over one milion people are also on the list "by accident", we can conclude they're all liberals working for the ACLU and/or CNN.


Wow! QM, I'm impressed. Reading that, you actually sounded reasonable and unprovocative. I think that's the first time I've actually seen some logic showing through in your arguments. Not that it hasn't been there all along, just nice to see it. Cheers! (no snark intended)

>> ^quantumushroom:
00:55 "Make sure you get the Obama '08 sticker and anti-W stickers in focus."
Yeah. What liberal media bias?


If you ever wonder why no one takes you seriously, it's this. This is why.

Never ever report on someone's political leaning unless they're a Republican, else you are a liberal media!

Brilliant.

In reply to this comment by EnemyCombatant:
The TSA does NOT retaliate. Any allegations to that effect will be met with swift and brutal non-retaliation.

>> ^quantumushroom:
00:55 "Make sure you get the Obama '08 sticker and anti-W stickers in focus."
Yeah. What liberal media bias?


How is this evidence of liberal media bias in any way? Even if it was a conscious choice to get this guy's political stickers in the shot, it doesn't reflect on the reporter. The guy being interviewed was ASG under Clinton and works with the ACLU, so it shouldn't be a shock that he supports Obama or dislikes Bush. In fact, it was the provision of that information that allowed you to dismiss the man's complaint as some soft, liberal whiner. The story was never about the reporter's political views, you just wanted it to be.

In reply to this comment by ElJardinero:
Oceania is taking it's first steps.

Ain't that the truth.

Terror watch list...scary. Imagine pissing off the wrong bureaucrat and getting yourself on the list.