Cathering Grant: Establishing Split in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream

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Tom Engelhardt: The United States of Fear

The United States of Fear
by Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch

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You Wanna Be Safer? Really?

You must have a friend who’s extremely critical of everyone else but utterly opaque when it comes to himself. Well, that’s this country, too.

Here’s a singular fact to absorb: we now know that a bunch of Yemeni al-Qaeda adherents have a far better hit on just who we are, psychologically speaking, and what makes us tick than we do. Imagine that. They have a more accurate profile of us than our leading intelligence profilers undoubtedly do of them.

Recently, they released an online magazine laying out just how much the two U.S.-bound cargo-bay bombs that caused panic cost them: a mere $4,200 and the efforts of “less than six brothers” over three months. They even gave their plot a name, Operation Hemorrhage (and what they imagined hemorrhaging, it seems, was not American blood, but treasure).

Now, they're laughing at us for claiming the operation failed because -- thanks reportedly to a tip from Saudi intelligence -- those bombs didn’t go off. “This supposedly ‘foiled plot,’” they wrote, “will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. That is what we call leverage.”

They are, they claim, planning to use the "security phobia that is sweeping America” not to cause major casualties, but to blow a hole in the U.S. economy. "We knew that cargo planes are staffed by only a pilot and a co-pilot, so our objective was not to cause maximum casualties but to cause maximum losses to the American economy" via the multi-billion-dollar U.S. freight industry.

This is a new definition of asymmetrical warfare. The terrorists never have to strike an actual target. It’s not even incumbent upon them to build a bomb that works. Just about anything will do. To be successful, they just have to repeatedly send things in our direction, inciting the expectable Pavlovian reaction from the U.S. national security state, causing it to further tighten its grip (grope?) at yet greater taxpayer expense.

In a sense, both the American national security state and al-Qaeda are building their strength and prestige as our lives grow more constrained and our treasure vanishes.

So you wanna be safer? I mean, actually safer? Here’s a simple formula for beginning to improve American safety and security at every level. End our trillion dollar wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; set our military to defending our own borders (and no, projecting power abroad does not normally qualify as a defense of the United States); begin to shut down our global empire of bases; stop building grotesque embassy-citadels abroad (one even has a decorative moat, for god’s sake!); end our overseas war stimulus packages and bring some of that money home. In short, stop going out of our way to tick off foreigners and then pouring our treasure into an American war machine intent on pursuing a generational global war against them.

Of course, the U.S. national security state has quite a different formula for engendering safety in America: fight the Afghan War until hell freezes over; keep the odd base or two in Iraq; dig into the Persian Gulf region; send U.S. Special Operations troops into any country where a terrorist might possibly lurk; and make sure the drones aren’t far behind. In other words, reinforce our war state by ensuring that we’re eternally in a state of war, and then scare the hell out of Americans by repeatedly insisting that we’re in imminent danger, that shoe, underwear, and someday butt bombers will destroy our country, our lives, and our civilization. Insist that a single percent of risk is 1% too much when it comes to terror and American lives, and then demand that those who feel otherwise be dealt with punitively, if they won’t shut up.

It’s a formula for leaving you naked in airports, while increasing the oppressive power of the state. And here’s the dirty, little, distinctly Orwellian secret: the national security state can’t do without those Yemeni terrorists (and vice versa), as well as our homegrown variety. All of them profit from a world of war. You don’t -- and on that score, what happens in an airport line should be the least of your worries.

The national security state is eager to cop a feel. As long as Americans don’t grasp the connections between our war state and our “safety,” things will only get worse and, in the end, our world will genuinely be in danger.

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Paul Craig Roberts: TSA Gestapo Empire

TSA officials say that anyone refusing both the full body scanners and the enhanced pat down procedures will be taken into custody. Once there the detainees will not only be barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as suspected terrorists . . . One sheriff’s office said they were already preparing to handle a large number of detainees and plan to treat them as terror suspects.

(Anti-War)

TSA Gestapo Empire
by Paul Craig Roberts
Foreign Policy Journal

It doesn’t take a bureaucrat long to create an empire. John Pistole, the FBI agent who took over the Transportation Security Administration on July 1 told USA Today 16 days later that protecting trains and subways from terrorist attacks will be as high a priority for him as air travel.

It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowed subway platforms or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance for a 15 minute subway ride, but once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. Buses will be next, although it is even more difficult to imagine open air bus stops turned into security zones with screeners and gropers inspecting passengers before they board.

Will taxi passengers be next? In those Muslim lands whose citizens the US government has been slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for retaliating against the Americans are car and truck bombs. How long before Pistole announces that the TSA Gestapo is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and interstates to check cars for bombs?

That 15 minute trip to the grocery store then becomes an all day affair.

Indeed, it has already begun. Last September agents from Homeland Security, TSA, and the US Department of Transportation, assisted by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, conducted a counter-terrorism operation on busy Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta, Georgia. Designated VIPER (Visible Inter-mobile Prevention and Response), the operation required all trucks to stop to be screened for bombs. Federal agents used dogs, screening devices, and a large drive-through bomb detection machine. Imagine what the delays did to delivery schedules and truckers’ bottom lines.

There are also news reports of federal trucks equipped with backscatter X-ray devices that secretly scan cars and pedestrians.

With such expensive counter-terrorism activities, both in terms of the hard-pressed taxpayers’ money and civil liberties, one would think that bombs were going off all over America. But, of course, they aren’t. There has not been a successful terrorist act since 9/11, and thousands of independent experts doubt the government’s explanation of that event.

Subsequent domestic terrorist events have turned out to be FBI sting operations in which FBI agents organize not-so-bright disaffected members of society and lead them into displaying interest in participating in a terrorist act. Once the FBI agent, pretending to be a terrorist, succeeds in prompting all the right words to be said and captured on his hidden recorder, the “terrorists” are arrested and the “plot” exposed.

The very fact that the FBI has to orchestrate fake terrorism proves the absence of real terrorists.

If Americans were more thoughtful and less gullible, they might wonder why all the emphasis on transportation when there are so many soft targets. Shopping centers, for example. If there were enough terrorists in America to justify the existence of Homeland Security, bombs would be going off round the clock in shopping malls in every state. The effect would be far more terrifying than blowing up an airliner.

Indeed, if terrorists want to attack air travelers, they never need to board an airplane.

All they need to do is to join the throngs of passengers waiting to go through the TSA scanners and set off their bombs. The TSA has conveniently assembled the targets.

The final proof that there are no terrorists is that not a single neoconservative or government official responsible for the Bush regime’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Obama regime’s slaughters of Pakistanis, Yemenis, and Somalians has been assassinated. None of these Americans who are responsible for lies, deceptions, and invasions that have destroyed the lives of countless numbers of Muslims have any security protection. If Muslims were capable of pulling off 9/11, they are certainly capable of assassinating Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Condi Rice, Kristol, Bolton, Goldberg, and scores of others during the same hour of the same day.

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Keith Halladay: The Present Ammunition Shortage -- An Observation

The present ammunition shortage: an observation
By Keith Halladay
North of Center

The CCI 22 Long Rifle “Stinger” round leaves a rifle muzzle, according to the manufacturer, at 1640 feet per second, making it one of the fastest 22-caliber bullets available. Since a good part of the fun of shooting is trying new loads, in early January I took a bit of Christmas money, logged into my account at the Cabela’s online store, and began to place an order for 500 rounds of the stuff.

As I clicked through the checkout screens a message appeared to inform me that the Stingers were on backorder, and that Cabela’s was expecting a fresh shipment on March 15. “Eh,” I thought, “don’t need it now,” and I placed the order anyway.

The appointed day arrived, and while slogging through the morning email I logged back in to Cabela’s to see if my ammo had been shipped. It had not. In fact, a new message had replaced the old one: “This item is backordered. Estimate 8-9 weeks for delivery.” Confused, I called the company and spoke to a representative who told me that indeed the new shipment had arrived, but that it was of insufficient quantity to satisfy all the outstanding orders.

Now, this is 22 ammo. It’s fancy and comes in a hard plastic box instead of the mini-milk jug of bulk plinking rounds, but it’s still 22 ammo. Some rifle cartridges are tough to find, sure, but these rounds are produced by the billions, and yet were subject to multiple backorders at not only Cabela’s but all the major online retailers.

So the next day I called my gun-nut friend, who stays current with paramilitary-oriented web sites and those sorts of things, and asked, exasperated, “who in Great Caesar’s ghost is buying up all the 22 ammo?”

He chortled. “It’s Obama, man! The rednecks are buying up all the ammunition because they think he’s gonna take their guns!”

“But it’s 22 ammo,” I cried. “What do they think they’re gonna do with a bleeping 22 if they come in with tanks and helicopters?”

“I think they think that they have to get it while they still can,” he replied. “It happens every time a Democrat is elected—the rednecks buy up all the ammo and there are massive shortages. That’s why prices are so high too.”

Now, it should be noted that there are competing theories about the real cause of the present shortage. One might think, for instance, that the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have hampered some manufacturers’ abilities to provide for both military and retail consumers. Yet this cannot be the case, for the two rifle calibers most used by the U.S. armed forces, the 5.56 and 7.62 NATO cartridges, are among the easiest to find both online and in brick-and-mortar outlets. Another possibility, one especially popular among weapon hoarders, is that the government is deliberately restricting the manufacture and sale of ammunition and cartridge primers (the cap-like thing on the end of a cartridge that, when struck by the gun’s hammer, detonates the gunpowder). The idea here is that Obama (and the United Nations, in most versions), knowing outright firearms confiscation would be a tough go, figure that if there’s no ammo, then mission accomplished.

An intriguing argument to be sure, but one that, like most nutty right-wing conspiracy theories, doesn’t hold water. That we’ve been in the midst of a nationwide shortage of most types of ammunition is clear; for months the shelves at the local Wal-Marts have been nearly barren of anything but a few scattered boxes of the less-popular calibers. But it’s no conspiracy—just a whole bunch of folks buying a whole bunch of bullets, and manufacturers are struggling to keep pace. The latest Cabela’s catalog carries a bold-print notice about “unprecedented demand” and “limited availability.” And Hornady, another ammunition manufacturer, on its web site claims that they are “breaking their own production records in an attempt to keep up with customer demand.”

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