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Thom's blog
FBI agents claim they prevented a potential terrorist attack in Oregon. Right? Well, Not Really.
FBI agents claim they prevented a potential terrorist attack in downtown Portland on Friday. A Somali-born teenager – Mohamad Osman Mohamud – parked a van packed with explosives near a large crowd gathering to watch a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony. When he then tried to detonate the explosives with a cell phone – FBI agents swooped in and arrested him. Job well done, right? Well- not exactly. In reality – the FBI had been monitoring Mohamud for years when they discovered he had been emailing a friend in Northwest Pakistan – a known terrorist safe haven – back in 2008...when his concerned father provided the FBI with the tip about the people his son was visiting in cyberspace. Instead of talking to or helping Mohamud, the FBI agents decided to conduct a sting mission on him – reaching out to him – proposing the terrorist attack – assembling a fake bomb – providing the van – and setting Mohamud up to carry out the task. When he did – he was arrested. So is this really a success story? Or did Federal agents find a lonely, disaffected teenager – successfully radicalize him - and then arrest him to tout the Federal government’s counter-terrorism expertise. There are still a lot of questions left to be answered in this case. One in particular – in order for the sting to not be considered entrapment – it must be proven that the individual - "was independently predisposed to commit the crime for which he was arrested." In other words – agents must have presented Mohamud with choices that did not involve violent crimes and see if he would choose to commit terrorism. However – of the multitude of recorded meetings and documents the FBI has released – the crucial meeting in which Mohamud is given these choices was not documented – apparently due to a technical error with the recording device. Seems pretty convenient. So what has been the result of the FBI saving the lives of hundreds of people in downtown Portland who were never in danger and also arresting a teenager trying to commit a crime that they completely set up? More terrorism. In a backlash against Mohamud and Islam – the mosque he frequently attended in Oregon was a victimized by arson. On top of that – DC metro police announced a new policy to start randomly searching metro riders’ bags. So a religious building is actually burned down – and an important civil liberty is struck down by police here in DC. Is this really a responsible approach to stopping terrorism?
-Thom
(What do you think the FBI should have done? Tell us here.) |
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Today on the Big Picture... The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot On RT TV at 9pm and 11pm... (check your local listings for stations or stream at RT, and catch past shows on Youtube)
Need to Know: The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot, with Zaid Jilani, reporter/blogger with Think Progress.org
Screwed: Is America destined for the same fate as the old Soviet Union?. Dmitry Orlov, engineer/writer who focuses on "potential economic, ecological and political decline and collapse in the United States," something he has called “permanent crisis”.
The 10 most important WikiLeaks revelations, with Pratap Chatterjee, investigative Journalist for the Guardian UK, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Best of the Rest:
Atheists vs Catholics...happy holidays: the war begins! with David Silverman, President - American Atheists, Inc.
Day of Action or Raising Retirement Age and 'Death Panels', with National Director of Progressive Democrats of America Tim Carpenter.
Green Report: Cancun climate summit...last chance? with environmental author/activist Bill McKibben, founder of the 350 campaign.
Crazy Alert: A Tea Party…or a Tequila Party?
Daily Take: Ireland...Protesting in the Streets
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 "Mass Deception" exposes the new George W. Bush memoirMass Deception, the bold and critically acclaimed new book by criminologist Scott Bonn, reveals that the Bush administration lied about the threat from Iraq and committed war crimes throughout the invasion and occupation. Order it today on amazon.com. Visit and "like" the Mass Deception fan page on facebook. |
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Read Thom's Book for Free!
Now you can read all of Thom Hartmann's " Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country" for free online. Truthout is publishing weekly installments over 12 weeks. Read Chapter Two: Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts today. |
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The Daily Stack 
Quote: "We need a new environmental consciousness on a global basis. To do this, we need to educate people." -- Mikhail Gorbachev.
Climate Summit begins today in Cancun, Mexico.
Hour One: What do we need to learn from Ireland and Putin today? With Eamonn Fingleton, author, former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times; most recent book "In The Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony".
WikiLeaks - Why are journalists doing the Pentagon's bidding and is it national security crisis? With Pratap Chatterjee, investigative Journalist for the Guardian UK, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Hour Two: Can you get an STD from the TSA?! With Bob Unruh, News Editor at World Net Daily.
Experience with TSA at Phoenix airport and what's happened since With Stacey Armato, Pregnant mom harassed by TSA over transporting breast milk.
Hour Three: Is Cancun the Last Chance for a Post-Kyoto Climate Deal? With Bill McKibben, Environmental author/activist, founder of 350 campaign, latest book is "Eaarth".
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Coming up Tuesday on The Thom Hartmann Program
Hour One: The new START treaty has been sitting untouched waiting for ratification since April...what's the hold-up? Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart (D-CO), Chairman of the American Security Project, will be here...
Hour Three: it's a national day of action to help save Medicare and Social Security... Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America will be here...
And, the best of the rest of the news and your calls right here on...
The Thom Hartmann Program... your media support group for we the people.
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Watch & Listen to Thom
Government outsourced liver transplant to private insurers led to death
Reverend Billy's Church of Stop Shopping performs a credit card exorcism
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Cut back on the military
Abraham Maslow, the founder of Humanistic Psychology, often said words to the effect that, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” We’ve been using the hammer of military power to solve problems that, arguably, began because of our use of military power to defend despots in natural-resource-rich (principally oil) region. As we saw in the previous chapter, we need to kick our addiction to oil, which in itself will reduce our need for military operations worldwide.
Many of the Founders of America argued strongly against a standing army during times of peace. They believed that an army had too much potential for mischief, to oppress people, or even stage a military coup and take over an elected government, something that happened three times in Pakistan’s 63-year history as a nation, and has happened in numerous other nations over the past few centuries.
But while many Founders saw a standing army as a threat to democracy, others pointed to threats ranging from hostile Indians to French Canadians and Spanish Floridians as reasons to keep it. The debates led to a clumsy compromise, with the ban on a standing army and universal requirement for membership in a militia chopped away, to be revisited at a future date. The tattered and compromised remnant of that discussion is today known as our Second Amendment, which reads, in its entirety: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Jefferson was also morally offended by the idea of an army that people would join only because they were too poor to afford an education and a job. For such people, he wanted universal free public education, including free college tuition, which he brought into being when he founded the University of Virginia.
The idea of avoiding “pauper hirelings” by instituting a system of citizen-soldiers is what we would now call a military draft. We should institute a universal draft, with a strong public service option - from planting trees to assisting in schools to helping in hospitals - easily and readily available for those young people who don't want to go into the military.
The result will be a generation of citizens who feel more bonded with and committed to their nation, who have experienced the critical developmental stage of a "rite of passage" into adulthood, and who have experienced more of America and the world than just their own neighborhood.
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Thom and Louise Hartmann founded the New England Salem Children's Village in New Hampshire in 1979. With states delaying payment for the children they entrust to the village, they need help with cash flow urgently. Please help if you can. |
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