Returning to the Cycle of Violence

Today wasn't a good day. (via Juliette Kayyem at The Atlantic)

The attacks by Hamas against Israel beginning early this morning, some of which are ongoing, will be met by Israel with force. How all of this will unfold, and its impact on domestic and global politics, is not clear, but a simple answer may suffice for now: It will not go well. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already warned his citizens that they are at war; civil reservists have been called up; videos are showing hand battles on the streets. The country is on lockdown, with the potential for future strikes in the south by Hamas and new ones by Hezbollah in the north...

To focus on Israel’s preparedness in no way excuses the Hamas attacks and is not meant to blame the victim. Some on social media are carelessly suggesting that the failures can be explained only as some evil “wag the dog” effort by Netanyahu to unify the country by going to war. Israel has been attacked, and civilians are dead. As in any nation that encounters such a horror, it is essential for the government to determine—without the interference of politics or religion—why. Otherwise, enemies will take advantage of this devastating day for Israel’s counterterrorism strategy...

...Just a few days ago, the Gaza border seemed to have been stabilized after some unrest, and nearly 20,000 workers were able to travel across it again. Today, thousands of rockets, which must have been obtained and hidden, were launched by Hamas. It did not end there. Hamas used drones to strike at Israeli targets. It sent its fighters on foot, by boat, and by air on motorized paragliders. Images have emerged of Hamas attackers on the streets of Israeli towns terrorizing citizens, and worse. This is as much a physical attack as a performative one: Watch us, Hamas seems to be saying. Hamas surely planned for the attack to take place on the Jewish holy day of Simchat Torah and on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War...

How the Hamas group was able to pull this off - and to subvert a lot of the technological advances the Israelis have and to deploy a multi-pronged attack with military precision - points to an even larger effort by other forces opposed to Israel - like Iran - or opposed to Israel's allies - like Russia - in order to escalate instability and violence in the Middle East for their own twisted ends.

Hamas' actions are coming after decades of open conflict between Israelis and Palestinians for control of that tiny corner of the globe, spurred on by political ambitions and policy failures of both the imperial powers of previous centuries and then the failures of post-world war agendas to create equitable and peaceful homelands for both nations. Ever since the end of the Cold War, it's fallen to a dominant Israeli government to govern the region, with what outside observers like the Human Rights Watch compared to an apartheid state. It didn't help that Netanyahu's government refused to stop illegal settlements in areas that should have gone to Palestinian control. And yet Israel needed to maintain that system because nothing had succeeded - not the Oslo Accords, not any attempts to achieve peace with neighboring Arab/Muslim nations, not the underwhelming efforts by western allies to check Hamas' corrupt and violent control of Gaza - to curtail the threats to their own civilians.

This is all coming as Europe (NATO) is trying to refocus their efforts on keeping Ukraine armed and trained to continue fighting against Russia's invasion, with Israel attempting to settle a peace deal with Saudi Arabia that could have undercut the regional extremists, and the United States currently embroiled in a political crisis with the Republican-controlled House - and intentional sabotage by Republican Senators to block needed leadership appointments at State and Defense - that threatens to shut down our funding support - for Ukraine specifically, but it could affect our direct allies like Israel - and military readiness abroad.

For now, the best we know is that hundreds of Israeli civilians are dead and hundreds more held hostage. Further strikes by Hamas are possible, depending on how well-stocked they are (and how the hell did they get so many rockets and drones for their strikes?). The likelihood of Israel's army to go storming into Gaza - and flattening everything including Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages - within the next 48 hours is pretty much a given: This is open war now against Hamas, and Israel has to fight back - in as punishing a method as possible - just to survive.

Whether this escalates into a broader war - bringing in Syria and Iran directly; dragging Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia if they want war or not; depending on whatever benefits Putin sees in the coming fight - depends on wiser diplomacy and any rationality among the regional leaders to avoid their own losses.

Things that have sadly been missing every fucking time we all had a chance to make peace in the Middle East and instead let the crazies blow it all up again. Too many global powers are profiting from all this. Goddamn us all.

Update: I just want to add this Twitter post from friend Emily - a member of the TNC Horde - who's lived in Israel, has written about Israel, and is constantly moved by the violence there that never ends.

I don't even rly know what I feel, a kind of numb horror, the cellular-level awareness that things will only get worse but that I don't even rly know what that means, a shattered, mourning, terrified heart, trying to hold space for my people & the Palestinians. I'm devastated.

— Emily L. Hauser @emilylhauser.bsky.social (@emilylhauser) October 7, 2023

Blood in the Streets of Sri Lanka

This is not good:

At least 207 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in a series of bomb blasts that hit luxury hotels and churches across Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, leaving the entire country in a state of lock-down.

The first wave of attacks struck at the heart of the country's minority Christian community during busy Easter services at churches in the cities of Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa on Sunday morning.

Additional blasts ripped through three high-end hotels, the Shangri La, Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury, all in capital city Colombo.

What I hate about ANY extremism - white supremacists, religious nutjobs, etc. - is how they intentionally go out of their way to make everyone else bloodied and miserable and wounded and dead.

The bombers intentionally went after places of worship, to speak against their hatred of God. They went after tourist locations, to make sure they got the world's attention.

And now, they're gonna revel in their violence and taunt the rest of humanity for "our" weakness in the face of their bullying.

Against such violent empty men we should stick to this response.

We Are Stronger Together. We And Our Loved Ones Are Still Better Than You.

The Racist War Ratchets Up a Notch

I posted just last month how the more violently unhinged of trump's truest believers are ready to pull the trigger in his honor.

Just this weekend, the white supremacist violence went global when an angry White Man from Australia went on a mass shooting rampage across two Muslim mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, killing 50 (so far) and leaving tens more wounded some in critical condition.

I will not name the SOB here because the murdering bastard livestreamed his shooting to social media, submitted his racist manifesto to news outlets before he opened fire, and wants recognition as a goddamned hero to 'his people' hoping to become the spark to start the wingnut riots against The Dreaded Other.

Still, we know what he did. We know about the lives he took. Because he bought into the rhetoric that Muslims and non-Whites are conspiring to "replace" us all. Because he followed in the footsteps of the Norway mass shooter (I am not naming him either).

Because the bastard took his cues from donald trump (link to Yahoo News UK):

The suspected gunman who killed dozens of people in New Zealand is an Australian ‘racist eco-fascist’ who posted a 74-page manifesto online before the shootings and described Donald Trump as a “symbol of white supremacy.”

The man, who identified himself in a livestream of the massacre as (redacted), said he was motivated by far-right extremism he saw in the United States to carry out the attack at Al Noor Mosque...

He also goes on to rail against mass immigration and said he views Donald Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity...”

The manifesto said he carried out the attack “to show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands, our homeland are our own and that, as long as a white man still lives, they will NEVER conquer our lands and they will never replace our people...”

There is no other word for this but terrorism.

And there are no words for how trump responded to the reports... where he dismissed the rise of racist violence and then echoed the exact messages that the goddamned shooter believed in (via The Week):

Hours later, a shockingly similar phrase came from the president. Trump, after vetoing a bill that would've blocked his national emergency declaration to access border wall funding, briefly condemned the shooting before pivoting back to border talk. There are "crimes of all kinds coming through our southern border," Trump said, adding that "people hate the word 'invasion,' but that's what it is..."

trump knows. the hate-filled bastard knows his words are triggering the fearful among his fanbase.

And he knows his fanbase is ready to go on a warpath on his command (via Chait at New York):

...The specifics of the riff don’t vary much. Trump laments that his opponents are treating him unfairly, praises the toughness and strength of his supporters — a category that combines the police, military, and Bikers for Trump, which he apparently views as a Brownshirt-like militia — and a prediction that his supporters will at some point end their restraint.

He does it again in a new interview with Breitbart:

I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? 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...

You can argue just how far into our legal systems trump's corruption has gotten, and you can look at the demographics to see just how many trumpshirts will rise up should he face indictment or impeachment (despite Pelosi's comments, that's still on the table). trump may have gotten 62 million voters, but how many of them are actively armed and ready to go on any warpath?

Most Americans, despite our passions or politics, are not easily stirred into protest or violence. Most Americans just want to do their thing, raise their kids, find a good vacation spot, and not get bothered.

trump may be a sitting President Loser of the Popular Vote, but he still doesn't carry the direct power to control/order State, County or City law enforcement to his whims. He may think he has support of the police (at least their politically biased unions) and the military (at least some bomb-em-all generals) but current reporting suggests the hater White Nationalists types are one out of four among the troops. Yes, that still sounds scary - one-in-four - but there's three-in-four in our military who aren't assholes. If the armed forces split, the non-racists will outnumber (and swarm quickly over) the racists.

The wingnuts always assume their numbers are greater than they really are: When those jerks took over the national park in Oregon they sent out a call for support likely hoping for mass uprisings... and got joke supplies mailed to them instead (about three or four other militias in small numbers ever showed). We're talking about the same White Pride people who keep turning on each other out of greed and stupidity.

If trump does call for an uprising among the White Supremacists, the likely turnout will be mostly the neo-Nazi pro-Confederate militias dotted across the landscape... of about 20-30 wingnuts apiece who'll run into actual police and National Guard deployed by Governors of even Red States who'll realize this Second Civil War will end badly for themselves.

That's the good news if trump ever tries to go this far.

Here's the bad news: Far Right violence has still increased over the last three years, showing the willingness of how destructive the racists can get.

And we've seen how much violence just even one person can commit when dedicated to their cause. One wingnut carrying an AR-15 and enough ammo can wipe out entire city blocks before the cops can respond and stop him.

All it takes is just one gunman to throw a city - a nation - into chaos and pain.

And we're already seeing it here in the U.S. The mass shooter at Squirrel Hill just last year. The would-be mass shooter working at the Coast Guard HQ. The mad bomber of Broward County. There are more. Gods help us, too many more.

And all it takes is one. All it takes is one wingnut hanging on trump's every tweet.

And trump knows it.

I doubt trump will win this fight: he and his have proven they can't win on their own (he needed help from Russia to cheat his way to victory in 2016 damn them). The wingnuts following his every lead can easily turn on each other as much as they'll turn on regular Americans.

But this is going to get bloody. It's too late to say otherwise. The wingnuts have been chomping at the bit for decades waiting for their goddamned race war. And trump's the last one in high enough political office to let them unleash their hell on the rest of us.

Stay safe. Stay alert.

The calls for violence are coming from within the White House.

I Have An Alibi

Today has been totally abuzz about the mass-pipe-bombs-in-the-mail story (via Mary Olmstead at Slate):

A string of suspicious packages addressed to prominent Democratic figures and at least one news outlet have been discovered by the Secret Service in recent days. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been among the intended recipients of the devices, some of which have been identified as pipe bombs. Here is what we know so far:

The first suspicious package was discovered Monday in the mailbox of well-known liberal donor and philanthropist George Soros’ home in Bedford, New York, authorities said. After a caretaker found the device, a bomb squad detonated it. Authorities described the device as a six-inch-long pipe filled with explosive powder and rigged with a detonator. Federal authorities said they believed the device was hand-delivered, according to the New York Times.

On Wednesday morning, news broke that the Secret Service had intercepted an explosive device addressed to Hillary and Bill Clinton in Westchester County, New York, where they have a home. Soon after, the Secret Service also revealed it had found a device addressed to Barack Obama in Washington, D.C, where he lives. The packages were discovered as part of a routine mail screening, according to a statement, and no one was harmed...

CNN got a package just as they were reporting the stories on the earlier packages. Say hello to the madness of 24/7 Instant Terror Strikes. The CNN pipe was addressed to ex-CIA chief John Brennan, who happens to be 1) a major anti-Trump critic and 2) working at MSNBC, so we're definitely dealing with moronic bombers here.

Anyway:

A fourth suspicious package was reportedly found at the Florida office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former Democratic National Committee chairwoman. NBC News has reported that the suspicious packages sent to Soros, the Clintons, and Obama listed Wasserman Schultz for the return address. CNN reported that the package found at Wasserman Schultz’s office might have actually been intended for former Attorney General Eric Holder: According to CNN, a suspicious package was addressed to Holder, but it was addressed incorrectly and rerouted to the return address. NBC has also reported that Secret Service intercepted a package addressed to Holder, but it is unclear if the two reports are about the same package.

Additional targets seem to be Rep. Maxine Waters, a prominent House Democrat, with the likelihood others may be getting these packages due to delivery methods of the USPS (the Postal Service is currently working to find out if any similar packages are still shipping). The reports note that all of the packages had Wasserman Schultz's address as the return address.

So here's what we know:

1) Bomber(s) specifically wanted Debbie Wasserman Schultz to be the scapegoat.

2) He/She/It can't SPELL worth a damn (spelled Florids...? worst misspell of Florida since 2000) and has no idea where people actually work.

3) Targeted all the major names - not just political figures like Obama and Clintons but also the media critics as well as Soros - routinely mentioned by the Far Right as "enemies" that need eliminating.

4) Bomber(s) had the time and ability - and also the money - to build multiple bombs and then ship them all out at the same time (and at least travel in-person to deliver a select few). With a chance there are MORE of these bombs out there.

5) This is more speculative than fact, but: Bomber(s) may not have sent working bombs: it's a bit surprising none of the pipe bombs have gone off, especially the ones that reportedly were hand-delivered (those are the ones you KNOW you want to go off but are afraid of blowing up in shipment and killing an innocent).

The Far Right are running around claiming this is all a "fake news" attempt by Liberals to label Republicans as mad bomber terrorists just as the midterm elections are reaching Election Day (AKA the "October Surprise" period). Problem is, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely: The simplest explanation is that one of trump's raving supporters in a Red MAGA hat has bought into trump's rhetoric against Democrats and media critics and took the next step towards "action".

Using Wasserman Schultz as the "sender" suggests the bomber(s) has/have a personal grudge against her: the only ones on the Far Left who would do that would be the BernieBro crowd who blamed her for "conspiring" with Hillary to stop Sanders from winning the 2016 primaries. But it would make little or no sense for them to send pipe bombs to still-popular figures like Obama or to prominent trump critics like Brennan. Did any Bernie supporters openly blame Soros for their losses? I don't recall. When it comes to Soros, *his* biggest attackers are ALL on the Far Right.

When you look at the list of targets we know of right now - Hillary (and Bill), Soros, Obama, Brennan, Waters, Holder - they are all the major stars of every Far Right conspiracy theory floating out there. That the bomber(s) come from that world is the solution that makes the most sense.

As for myself, I swear I have nothing to do with any of this. My schemes are more complex, I'd never be so stupid as to use the SAME name on an address, and my real plans involve... uh... wait a second... ooooh, you sly dogs, you almost got me monologing!

I was busy today proctoring an exam for a city hire. That's my excuse and I'M STICKING TO IT.

Update: I TOLD YOU I HAVE AN ALIBI. Dammit, STOP SNIFFING AROUND OPA-LOCKA! I mean, um, ahem, I've never been to Opa-Locka I swear...

Blood on the Streets of Charlottesville

So. Charlottesville.

Read through this link to Balloon Juice.

Watch this:

We were supposed to get better at this.

We were supposed to answer to the better angels of our nature.

We were supposed to fight Nazis, and the Klan, and hate.

Instead they flourish in a right-wing stew of fear-mongering and anger.

Instead the worst of us sit in the White House, in Congress, at high seats of power, using that fear and anger to propagate their own and deny everyone else our citizenry and humanity.

These Nazis, Klansmen and White Supremacists marching through Charlottesville this past weekend were ostensibly there to protest the removal of Confederate statues and memorials, claiming right of "heritage". But they were really there to incite mobs to acts of violence. And they got what they wanted.

Look at their turnout. Mostly male, entirely white, carrying guns and wearing body armor, spoiling for a fight.

And now people are dead. The ones who came out in greater numbers to stand against the Nazis and haters were attacked, beaten, and killed.

Heather Heyer died when one of the White Supremacists drove his car - he sped up for impact - into the street march rallying against his side. Remember Heather's name. Consign that murdering driver to the forgotten hellhole he deserves.

This isn't hard, Republicans. This isn't a case of "Both Sides". One side is violent, angry, ill-informed, and dangerous, beholden to failed ideologies of slavery and genocide like the Confederacy and Nazi Germany. The other side are Americans of all colors and faiths working to build America and keep it strong.

We need to turn back to our better angels. We need to cut off the oxygen to the Far Right racist radicals seeking to tear America down.

We need our United States of America back.

Terror Attacks: Everybody Suffers

News is just coming out from Saudi Arabia today about coordinated bombings in three major cities: Qatif, Medina, and Jeddah.

Sunday witnessed two massive bombings in Baghdad, with a death toll currently at 213 victims.

Just last Friday the world was reeling from a violent attack in Bangladesh when gunmen seized a popular restaurant filled with Westerners and were executing hostages when the police had to storm in to save the survivors.

Istanbul was hit last Tuesday with a terror attack at their airport that left 44 dead so far.

This has been a bad week - up to now - for violence and death and sorrow.

There are two things tying all of these attacks together:

• Almost all of these strikes are linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (also known as ISIL or ISIS or Daesh, but I prefer to call them Angry Assholes). 
• Every one of these attacks happened in Muslim nations.

There are reasons for this.

The current war in Iraq/Syria over Daesh-held territories is going pretty poorly for them: they've lost major cities and are getting hammered on all sides. Daesh's survival is now keyed on spreading themselves to under unstable regions such as Libya and Africa, and also Yemen. They're basically down to relying on stirring fear and destruction in the civilian areas of nations they're fighting.

The other reason these attacks are happening in Muslim nations is because these violent jokers aren't really Muslim.

Like all violent jokers, the Daesh assholes simply employ whatever story they want to fulfill their self-serving needs. They may claim some pure Utopian ideal of an Islamic caliphate, but what they really want is to be gods-on-Earth able to dish out pain and sorrow to anyone they don't like. The worst form of bullies, with religion their excuse and other people's blood their currency.

So for all their anger and outrage aimed at Western nations that dominate the globe, these terrorists are just as angry and violent towards every Muslim they view as "unworthy" or "not of the TRUE Faith". They'll be just as happy shooting and bombing other Muslims who make the mistake of acting tolerant and open-minded of other faiths (which the Quran allows), because those Muslims deny these terrorists any claim of a unified cause for violence and hate.

There are a billion Muslims in the world. Not all of them are violent or want to be. We need to recognize that here in the United States, that the peaceful Muslims that are in the majority across the globe are at risk as much as we are.

A Crazy Kind of Tuesday, March 22 2016 Kind Of Day

It's something the Horde picks up on, how Tuesdays as a work day can be.

It's a crazy day around here for certain.

My library has events today to cope with this week being Spring Break for the county schools. So our children's librarian invited in a local farmer who raises Angora Wabbits for their fur, and will display some woven items and let the kids pet a bunny or two.

Meanwhile, our Friends of the Library are hosting a three-day book sale for used children's books to promote our Friends group, their ongoing book sales, and the library in general. I just want to ask the seven readers of this blog to Support Your Local Libraries all the time, please and thank you.

In the rest of the world, the ongoing primary slog travels west to Arizona and Utah I believe, maybe Idaho.

There's tragic news coming out of Brussels and Belgium of a series of terror attacks. Wish this crap would just end, but there's enough bastards out there who want war and who want to hurt others and until we get rid of that hate this violence is not going to end...

There's more hopeful news about Obama's current diplomatic visit to Cuba. No major announcements yet, but usually a trip like this garners some kind of financial or political exchange of promises.

And we're rooting for the Tampa Bay Rays to win today in their game against the National Cuban squad.

So, busy day, scary day, hopeful day.

Update: Rays Win!

Trying to embed video of the game:


Busy day, scary day, hopeful day.

Yet Another Act of Terror In the USA: Home Grown, Targeted Against Women, And Not At All Surprising

I'm personally busy this weekend coping with getting the 50,000 word count to NaNoWriMo, so all apologies I can't really write more than this, but here goes.

Today, there was YET ANOTHER SHOOTING.

This time at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

This time, there were police present and the gunman still went up and shot them, wounding four (or five) of them. Current reports is that one police officer has died. There are two dead out of eleven wounded.

The gunman was taken alive. Photo evidence is that the gunman is a white middle-aged man.

I file this under "Why I Am Not Surprised" category.

I am not surprised the terrorist is a white man over a certain age who is likely failing at anger management.

I am not surprised the target was a Planned Parenthood clinic. There is a literal war on women being waged by the Religious Right in our United States, and the fight over Planned Parenthood is part of it (you might be surprised to learn there's been arson attacks and other threats to clinics the last three months. The major news outlets don't report them as much nor make the direct connections.)

I am not surprised that the arguments and excuses of the NRA about "oh we need more people with guns to keep us safe" are meaningless. There were armed police there and this gun-wielding terrorist showed up and still opened fire and people still got wounded and killed. How many more "good guys with guns" could have stopped this?

I will not be surprised when the Far Right - the media outlets, the political leaders, their Presidential candidates, all who spent all these months and years attacking Planned Parenthood and pretty much calling on acts of violence like this - turns this around and blames Obama for being evil, or blames women for being baby killers, or blames the cops for defending the clinic instead of arresting those baby killers, or blames libruls for "politicizing" all this. At no time will the Far Right actually stop and go "oh crap, we're promoting violence and killing people in violation of our supposed Christian teachings."

I am not surprised anymore. Because this sh-t will keep happening. Because one side of the political aisle - Republicans and their Far Right members - profits from this violence and madness.

Don't be at all surprised we'll have another mass shooting soon, over something that angers some white guy or group of white guys with guns.

After all, we just had a group of angry white guys attempt a mass shooting over something political that pissed them off just three days ago. THREE DAYS AGO.

So set the clocks. In three days, another mass shooting. Another angry white guy with a gun. Another political argument the haters are resolving through bloodshed and death.

Thinking Of Paris, Thinking of the True Words I Read Once

(Update note: Hello to everyone visiting via Crooks And Liars!  Thank you for the link to Mike's Blog Round-Up, and I hope everyone is doing well this new year.  Also to note, the current report about this story is that there's hostages in a grocery store.  This is not good, but here's hoping those hostages get out safe and that the shooters are captured alive so we can get answers...
Update 12:55 PM EST: News is that there were two separate hostage situations, one involving the two original gunmen and then a separate gunman who was allied with them.  It looks like both situations ended in shootouts, there may be hostages killed.  Not good.  Not at all good...).

I had posted this barely more than a year ago.  A quote from a political essayist nicknamed "Junius" as he wrote back in the day of limited speech rights in 1770.  I found it while researching the topic of religious and political intolerance, and it resonated with me on a personal level.

An honest man, like the true religion, appeals to the understanding, or modestly confides in the internal evidence of his conscience. The imposter employs force instead of argument, imposes silence where he cannot convince, and propagates his character by the sword.

I found it relevant whenever I recoiled from the violence employed by anti-abortion shooters and bombers, and it remains particularly relevant today against the terrorists both in France - against a satire paper Charlie Hebdo - and here in the USA - where a man tried to blow up an NAACP office in Colorado.

Every attack of terror is by a group - a rather small minority of haters among millions of honest believers - aimed to impose silence, all because the haters cannot accept or understand.  All because the haters know they cannot appeal or convince with understanding.  All because they have no modesty about their place in the world, preferring to rule and ruin by fear and death than co-exist in hope and life.  And the haters may not actually use swords in this day and age, but the metaphor of being a weapon of death and finality remains apt.

The proper response to all of this?  Well, for starters finding the haters and arresting them so they won't hurt any more people.  The other thing to do is stand up and cast aside the fear they seek to impose on us.  Not to fight back, but to stand and speak your mind and keep the peace.

Victory here is not counted by bullets or bodies.  Victory here is counted by rebuilding, repairing, restoring.  Victory here happens when we move on and stay alive.

There are a billion Muslims in the world, and they are not all at war with us or themselves.  It's just a very few, very violent group of angry guys.  There are a billion Christians in the world, and they are not at war with us or ourselves.  It's just a very few, very violent group of angry guys.  There are millions of Jews, and they are not at war with us or themselves.  It's just a very few, very violent group of angry guys.  There are a billion Hindus in the world, and they are not at war with us or themselves.  Except for the guys messing with us in the Tech Support call center offices, stop it you fiends.  It's just a very few, very violent group of angry guys.  I'm not sure about the numbers on Rastafarians, Pastafarians, and Bronies, but I am certain I can speak to the vast numbers of each being not at war with anyone either.  It's just the haters.

Peace out, peace in, peace be with you.

A Real-Life X-File

(EDIT: as of 3/20, this is the most current finding.  The debris field IS in an area the plane could have reached...)
I have to admit the first few days I read up and chatted online about Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, it balanced between sadness - the most likely fate of a missing plane was an explosion or crash - and snark - making ill-advised comments about "aliens" or "that island from LOST".

The snark came from being a long-time aficionado of conspiracy theories and ghost stories.  Growing up, I read books in the 133 juvenile shelves rather than the standard fiction.  Getting into The X-Files TV show for me was easy, given my childhood interests in UFOs, Bigfoot, the Bell Witch, the Bermuda Triangle.

And here was Flight 370, disappearing off radar without a word.  Early searches for debris or a crash site turn up nothing.  The legendary black box(es), nowhere to be found.  Family and friends noting that their attempts to call their missing loved ones' cell phones were ringing: if the phones had been destroyed or completely cut off from cell signal, calls are known to revert immediately to voicemail.  Early research into the passengers and pilots didn't reveal warning signs outside of two illegal passports... except both passport users - Iranians - had no known terrorist ties, and one of them was following the standard behavior of someone seeking asylum.

But the last few days' revelations about what might have happened - that there was a deliberate switch-off of the plane's transponder and communications, that the plane changed course multiple times, that it avoided waypoints in such a way only a trained knowledgeable pilot could fly - has turned this mystery into a more serious and unsettling affair.  No more jokes.

There are now a ton of questions about Flight 370, above all: What the hell happened?

What was originally considered likely - mid-air explosion, or else mass decompression that froze/suffocated everyone on board - is no longer considered.  To be fair, if that had happened, we would have found wreckage by now.  That mid-flight course corrections were made, and that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and transponder (comm link to air traffic controllers) were turned off before the last contact makes this more deliberate than accidental.

So, if someone - someones - hijacked the plane, this unlocks these questions: Who did it, Why did they do it, and Where the hell did they think they could go?

Those Iranians seeking asylum using stolen passports are suspects again.  But if it's not them, that leaves 230 or so people (I'm subtracting the poor kids who were on-board).  Even the pilot and co-pilot are suspects, considering whoever commandeered the flight knew how to avoid certain waypoints and stuck to radar dead zones.

One thing we do know: whoever did this either could not or did not make the effort to turn off other tracking data coming from the plane.  The engines, for example, gave off signal data of a sort to satellite tracking systems (which is why we've found out there was no crash when and where we thought it would be), and those signals are not accessible from within the plane.  This was rarely reported information, so even the most highly trained hijacker might not have known...

Why did someone hijack this flight?  Usually it's done as a kind of Propaganda of the Deed, a violent act drawing attention to the person(s) committing that deed.  But there haven't been any valid claims or statements from known terror cells, no-one standing up with video evidence or otherwise.  Even if there was a vast conspiracy between nations and media outlets to not broadcast any terrorist demands or claims, there's too many sources that would have leaked by now.

Other reasons to do this would cover:

• someone on the flight was a target, although it begs the question why was the whole plane taken to do that.
• someone wanted a plane, any plane, for a future terror plot.
• there was something valuable on the plane that was needed, and for some reason this was the only way someone could get to it.
• there IS no reason: someone's doing this for kicks or a bizarre rational none of us can comprehend.

The question most confounding is the Where?  Given the location and circumstances, there's not a lot of Where to cover.  I've linked to that map above, showing an orange trail of possible plane paths after the last known satellite report from the plane's engines.

You'd think the northern path over Asia makes the most sense, considering this was a hijack and the hijackers would want a place to land.  There's places in China and central Asia past the Himalayas where that type of plane - even relatively small airports, even flattened desert - could land.  And this hijacking - with a plane full of Chinese citizens - is happening at a time of serious turmoil and mass terror attacks in West China involving Uighur separatists.

The problem with this argument is that China - as well as India and Pakistan - are tightly protected airspaces.  Military radar and alert systems would have spotted the plane even at low altitudes, and those areas are well-populated areas.  People would have reported seeing a low-flying airliner by now.  And neither of these nations - China in particular - would have kept silent on the matter even if they shot down the plane.  They'd argue with good reason that a hijacked airliner is a flying weapon, and they'd have every right to shoot it down to avoid a bigger catastrophe.

The southern path into the Indian Ocean is the other likely direction... except that's mostly water.  There are no known island or landstrip locations that way.  If the plane circled back over Australia, again that's an airspace with a solid radar net protecting it.  And why hijack a plane to fly it out into an ocean when blowing it up is just as easy, if not easier to pull off?

One other question remains: What has happened to the passengers and crew?

This is the most terrifying part.  While it wasn't a comfortable thought if there had been an explosion or crash, the best that could have been said was that the deaths would have most likely been quick.

This as a hijacking is infinitely worse.  Some passengers were families.  Some were kids.  If they're taken as hostages, why aren't we hearing demands from the party responsible (even in a massive media lockdown, someone would have leaked by now)?  If someone on that flight was a target, what is happening to that person (or persons)?  What's happened to the poor victims deemed expendable...

This is a global mystery with a ton of clues and almost no solid leads.  This is scary and wrong and I'm afraid it's not gonna end well for everyone...

What I Wrote Earlier About a Terrorist's Ethnicity Is Still Appropriate

When I wrote this earlier, it might look like I'm saying we should hate Angry White Guys because they're as much a terrorist threat as any foreign ethnic.  Well, that's only half-right.  There are Angry White Guys out there and they should be viewed as terrorists when they strike at the American population, but what I was trying to convey is that there was - still is - a double-standard.  When an Angry White Guy commits a terror act - shooting up a movie theater, shooting up a church, piloting a plane into the IRS building, shooting up a school - they get treated like individual whack-jobs and "oh we must not blame their background or environment or their easy access to guns or etc": when an Angry Ethnic/Religious Guy commits a terror act, they get treated like there's a VAST ARMY OF FANATICS WE'RE AT WAR THEY HATE US FER OUR FREEDOMS BOMB IRAN NOW (especially when it's a Muslim doing it).

I was railing against the Far Right who take terror attacks - and will most likely use this terror attack to do so again - as an excuse to bring out The Hate for The Other.

Now that the identity of the Boston Marathon bombers are known - two brothers born of Chechnya but raised in Kyrgyzstan and actually raised most of their lives here in the U.S. - it's practically expected to watch the Far Right explode in a flurry of "we told you so" and "it's a JIHAD WE'RE AT WAR BOMB EM ALL".

But let me refer to Charles King here about this:

...In fact, any “Chechnya angle” to the story is overshadowed by the American one. The Tsarnaevs look much more like other homegrown terrorists—animal-rights extremists, white supremacists, anarchists, and lone-wolf ideologues—than like religious warriors fighting on a faraway and exotic frontier.
First, there is as yet no evidence that the Tsarnaev brothers were part of a network of insurgents connected with Chechnya or other areas of Russia’s North Caucasus region. That area—a land of rugged valleys and plains lying north of the Caucasus mountain range between the Black and Caspian seas—has long been a source of instability and concern for the Russian government...  But connecting the Tsarnaevs with this past—at least at this stage—is like wondering about Timothy McVeigh’s Scotch-Irishness: a true but ultimately irrelevant part of the background of the Oklahoma City bomber...
Second, it is unclear whether the Tsarnaev brothers were even from Chechnya itself. Their family ties, at least in the lifetimes of the two brothers themselves, seem to have been stronger to another north Caucasus republic, Dagestan...
Third, the Tsarnaevs were reportedly naturalized American citizens. The real question at the moment is how they became radicalized, what motivated them to launch the attack in Boston, and whether they are part of any larger conspiracy in the United States or abroad...

The family itself is reportedly of Sunni Islamic faith, but outside of early reports about the older brother Tamerlan talking more radically over the past year there isn't a lot of evidence pointing that way.  There's stronger evidence of Tamerlan being a domestic abuser - he was charged with a domestic assault, which blocked his attempt at getting the naturalized status his younger brother achieved last year - than an active member of a terror cell.  He's got more in common with Angry Guys in general.

But that won't stop the Far Right from railing about Jihad, will it?

Here's what I'm trying to say: not every Muslim is a Jihadist.  Just because there's a handful of them - and yes there's handfuls, at most 10 at a time, not 10,000 - doesn't mean the entire culture/faith is at war with Western culture.  Here's a stat: as of 2009 there's 1.57 billion Muslims.  If they were ALL at war with the West we'd be seeing 1.57 billion Muslims rampaging across the globe.  BUT WE DON'T.  The vast majority of Muslims are more focused on these things - getting steady work, keeping a roof over their heads, feeding and clothing their kids - than on blowing up a Coca-Cola vending machine.  There's roughly 20,000 members of Al Qaeda, the primary terror group obsessed with jihad.  Divide 20,000 by 1.57 billion.  You're not even getting 1 percent of the Islamic faith there.  So painting the entire Islamic faith as being violent?  It's not only racist, it's STUPID.

When we get an Angry White Guy rampaging or committing a crime based on an obvious Hate or bias forged of their religious and cultural background, do we paint their entire religious/cultural identity with the same "THEY'RE ALL TERRORISTS" brush?  The guy who shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee, he was a Angry White Guy but did we blame the culture or religion he came from?  The guy who shot up a Sikh temple thinking they were Muslims - hint: Sikhs are HINDUS, you morans - was a wingnut supremacist, but did we round up all such supremacists as enemy combatants to be shipped off to Gitmo? 

One of the things the media wingnuts like to do is group all of the feared ethnic group - in this case, Muslims - and lump them all into one stereotype: for example, all Muslims are violent.  Their faith preaches violence.  They're not peace-loving like us Christians...

To that I ask: "How many Muslims were involved in the St. Bartholomew Massacre?"  I also ask "How many legions of Islamic troops marched through the Germanic kingdoms of the Thirty Years War?" Actually, the answer is about 60,000 Ottoman cavalry supporting Bohemia during the Polish-Ottoman War, one of the side-wars of the main war: but this is out of millions of Christian combatants leaving behind about 8 million casualties in a roughly Protestant vs. Catholic war.  And it's not exactly viewed as part of a jihadist movement.  And then let's also look at the religious pogroms of the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada that killed and tortured thousands of Jews and Moors (Muslims).  

As for the Christian faith being peaceful... our first Testament (I don't like calling it the "Old" Testament anymore, I think calling it the "Hebrew" Testament is more appropriate: thusly the "New" Testament should be called the "Christian" Testament) is filled with battles and persecutions and bloodshed aplenty, from which a lot of Christian sermonizing about "just" warfare gets derived.  The Christian Testament itself contains contradictory symbols to where violence in defense of the faith could be justified.  Christianity does NOT come to this argument with clean hands, people.

For every mad zealot of one faith or culture being disparaged I can easily point out a mad zealot of the culture that's disparaging that other faith.  For every extremist of violence claiming to be Muslim or a persecuted nation, there's an extremist of violence claiming to be Christian and persecuted themselves.  Think of the man who killed Yitzhak Rabin: an extremist Israeli killing another Israeli, an Angry Guy killing someone he felt was the source of all his anger.

Screw the ethnicity of the terrorist.  Screw the religion of the terrorist.  The key cause of terrorist action: they're Angry (insert skin color or religion here) Guys, killing to make themselves powerful in their wrath.

Let's rail against that, shall we?  The threat here isn't the skin color or the religion: the threat here is the Angry.  This IS what I'm trying to say.

Is The Skin Color Of Our Terrorists Important?

(UPDATE 4/19: Read below)
Yes.

Because if anything it gives us the right to tell the racist morons - most often the shrieking fear-mongers on the Far Right - jumping to conclusions about the Boston attack and the Ricin Mail attack that they are SO VERY GODDAMN WRONG.

Lessee... in the last 20 years or so, our terror attacks/mass murders have been for the most part - I'd say 92 percent of the time - committed by Angry White Guys lashing out at any the best convenient targets - innocent people who had nothing to do with those Angry White Guys being angry.

I'm with Sirota on this:

...This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.
Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.
“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”
Because of these undeniable and pervasive double standards, the specific identity of the Boston Marathon bomber (or bombers) is not some minor detail — it will almost certainly dictate what kind of governmental, political and societal response we see in the coming weeks. That means regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because only in that case will privilege work to prevent the Boston attack from potentially undermining progress on those other issues.
To know that’s true is to simply consider how America reacts to different kinds of terrorism.
Though FBI data show fewer terrorist plots involving Muslims than terrorist plots involving non-Muslims, America has mobilized a full-on war effort exclusively against the prospect of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, the moniker “War on Terrorism” has come to specifically mean “War on Islamic Terrorism,” involving everything from new laws like the Patriot Act, to a new torture regime, to new federal agencies like the Transportation Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security, to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to mass surveillance of Muslim communities.
By contrast, even though America has seen a consistent barrage of attacks from domestic non-Islamic terrorists, the privilege and double standards baked into our national security ideologies means those attacks have resulted in no systemic action of the scope marshaled against foreign terrorists. In fact, it has been quite the opposite — according to Darryl Johnson, the senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, the conservative movement backlash to merely reporting the rising threat of such domestic terrorism resulted in DHS seriously curtailing its initiatives against that particular threat... 

We have a terrorist organization in the United States.  It's called Angry White Guys.  It is not a rock band.  It's a loose coalition of Anglo-European descended males feeling privileged and authorized to hate and hurt anybody they want.  And they attack sometimes solo, sometimes in teams, using such methods as shooting up malls and schools and movie theaters, or driving armored bulldozers through a town, or piloting planes into the nearest IRS building, or killing corrections supervisors and court prosecutors, or blowing up federal office buildings in Oklahoma City.  And worse of all they tend to blend in, except for when their neighbors and co-workers get interviewed after the rampaging and they all say "Well, there was always something off about that guy..."

And don't worry: I don't fit the profile for Angry White Guy.  Oh, sure, I'm of Anglo-Irish-Germanic descent... and male... and over 40... and sexually frustrated... and occasionally railing against the oligarchy that's killing our jobs market... and... and...  why are you on the phone to the FBI?!  Wait!  Relax!  I'm trying to tell you I'm UNITARIAN!  I don't fit the full profile!  I'm clean, I SWEAR...

Here's the Update: Law enforcement released the photos of the two guys - White Ballcap and Black Ballcap - and within the next 12 hours located them on the MIT campus, they tried robbing a 7-11 gas station, got involved in a shootout with grenades getting thrown about, the Black Ballcap guy got shot and died from the wounds, and right now (6:52 am EDT) White Ballcap is on the loose in one of the outlying towns of Boston (apparently not a "suburb", they hate being called "suburbs" to Boston).  The two suspects were/are apparently brothers and foreigners on student visas - although not sure yet if they were MIT students.  Current report has them as Chechnyans where there's an ongoing insurgency after Russia re-took control after a second civil war there in 2009.  As there's a Islamic influence in the Chechen fighting, we're gonna get hit with the Evil Mooslums crap some more...  I still stand by my Angry White Guy rant, though.  And considering, like I said, that the wingnuts are gonna go crazy about these bombers possibly being Sunni Chechens still proves Sirota's point: when it's foreign ethnics, the entire ethnicity (or their religion) gets blamed, but when it's an Angry White Guy ohhhh it's just an individual the whole group doesn't deserve blame.