How The Terrorists Won and ESPN Lost

Bristol, Connecticut is a small town located 103 miles north of New York City.  It is known mostly for being the home of the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, a.k.a. ESPN.

The popular media outlet is owned by The Walt Disney Company which also controls ABC News.

John Athayde/Flickr

In Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales published the highlights of their five hundred interviews with people at the sports network.*

Chapter six delves into the events at ESPN in the days after the 9/11 attacks in New York and D.C.  One comment here jumps right off the page.

"They Hate Democracy" so said Bill Clinton

After sending 75 tomahawk cruise missiles in the general direction of Afghanistan and Sudan, Mr. Clinton said this about Osama bin Laden and the "terrorists"....

Mr. Clinton neglected to mention the "terrorists" clearly stated reasons for their hatred towards the U.S.  These include quotes from bin Laden himself which outline his 3 major grievances towards America:

1. "The ordinary man knows that [Saudi Arabia] is the largest oil producer in the world, yet at the same time he is suffering from taxes and bad services.  Now the people understand...that our country has become an American colony.  They act decisively with every action to kick the Americans out of Saudi Arabia. 

2. "The evidence overwhelmingly shows America and Israel killing the weaker men, women and children in the Muslim world and elsewhere.  A few examples of this are seen in the recent Qana massacre in Lebanon..."

3. "...and the death of more than 600,000 Iraqi children because of the shortage of food and medicine which resulted from the boycotts and sanctions against the Muslim Iraqi people"

Content and Osama bin Laden quotes from 1996 as reported by PBS Frontline

Humpday Dark Humor: Bill Clinton's Spin on Terrorism

Way back in 1998 Bill Clinton said they hate us because "we act to advance peace and democracy".

By Mr. Clinton's logic if the U.S. were to begin a war or two "the terrorists" will no longer hate us because we aren't peaceful anymore.  

Bombs Away U.S. of A.

How many countries has 'the United States of America' attacked this month?

There Are Two Types of Terrorism

Noam Chomsky explains the two types of terrorism..

Read and hear more from the MIT professor here.

Censored: U.S. Congress Respond to 9/11 Attacks

Two meaningful speeches on the U.S. House floor given three days after the attacks on New York, Washington, D.C. and Shanksville, PA.

First, Why was the U.S. the target?

Second, How can further attacks be prevented?

*Ron Paul video on C-SPAN

Why Many Americans Were Not Surprised by 9/11

C-SPAN's Washington Journal, July 3, 2000

Caller: "How will we protect our borders against terrorist attacks if we decrease the armed forces?"

Harry Browne: "The problem today is...we have a giant national offense....  We have been bombing countries around the world.... Terrorists don't like our foreign policy.  They don't like the idea that we are running their countries."

Take a listen to the full 90-second clip below...

16 Years Ago the U.S. Starting Bombing Afghanistan

Today marks the 16th anniversary of the initial attempts by the U.S. to kill Osama bin Laden.  In 1998 Mr. Clinton ordered 75 cruise missiles to be launched at Afghanistan and Sudan with the hope that one of them would hit bin Laden.

They missed, he escaped.

21 other people were reported killed by the missiles.

Mr. Clinton explains that there was "compelling evidence that bin Laden...was planning further attacks against...freedom loving people"....

Humpday Humor: Al-Qaeda to "take a load off"

From The Onion...

“We have intercepted electronic communication indicating that al-Qaeda members are actively plotting to stay out of the way while America as we know it gradually crumbles under the weight of its own self-inflicted debt and disrepair,” FBI Deputy Director Mark F. Giuliano

Boko Haram's Motives, Only a Partial Story

The news of 29 people murdered in Nigeria over the weekend is simply tragic.  The likely culprit is a group called Boko Haram which Bloomberg tells us means:

“western education is a sin” in the Hausa language

Four paragraphs down in the very same article the authors state:

suspected Boko Haram militants killed a soldier and kidnapped 10 workers from China in a May 16 attack on a camp run by a Chinese engineering company in Cameroon. 

If Boko Haram's enemy is western education why are they targeting people from China?

Are we perhaps not hearing the full spectrum of the groups motives?      

 

U.S. Congress Encourages People to Live in Unsafe Areas

C-SPAN's Washington Journal had David Maurer from Government Accountability Office as a guest yesterday to discuss Department of Homeland Security Grants to States.  Mr. Maurer admits that after a decade of existence there are questions as to the benefit of Dept of Homeland Security and that it's a "work in progress to become a single unified department".  U.S. workers have paid nearly half a Trillion dollars to fund DHS over the past 10 years yet Congress is telling us that they have no idea if that money was spent wisely or not.    

The overall message from Congress (through GAO) to the people of These United States is that you are getting fleeced if you live in a safe area.  If you live in New York or California then you recover a bulk of your stolen property from DHS while the other 250,000,000 people in safe areas are getting hosed.  

DHS grants are given to areas that are at risk of terrorist attacks or natural disasters.  If you live in an area that is not at risk then you get nothing but you still have to pay taxes to fund the areas that are at risk.  People using this information to make rational decisions may move to high risk areas and just wait for the bailout from the people living in low risk regions who are duped by Congress into supporting the unsafe regions.

Of course this is ridiculous but these are the cockeyed incentives that government interference produces.  No matter where you live every U.S. taxpayer provides $6 each week to the Dept of Homeland Security.  The question becomes do you want that money back or not?

Thankfully Mr. Maurer also provides us with the U.S. government's definition of terrorism.  It is "an action designed with a political intent in mind".  My follow-up questions to John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi:

1. Are wars of imperialism in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan defined as terrorism?  
2. If so, should the people living in those places establish their own DHS to protect themselves against the terrorist activities of the U.S. government?  
3. Considering U.S. taxpayers foot the bill for these wars of imperialism should they also foot the bill for Pakistan's DHS?        

We will wait patiently for an answer from our fearless leaders in Washington.