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US must deal with domestic radical problem

You need to be a tolerant country, when you have immigrants from around the world, was US perfect no. But they did damn good job compared to any other


This is not the point, it's unfortunate that you are not utilizing your comprehension skills.

Please review the pieces above - the US is connected to the world, it cannot isolate itself, cannot immunize itself against radical thought and behavior - in fact, the US political and government structures have created and used this tension in society as a mask to cover what they are up to - it's not that they are hiding it, it's just that society is busy with other issues that are directly related.

Are you familiar with the notionof the bullwhip/whiplash effect?
 
Keep them scared out of their minds, and they'll ask no questions. Be afraid, and please don't ask WHY after so much money and after so much blood, does the US face an expanded threat??


America faces expanded threat from Qaeda, says Obama

WASHINGTON: American President Barack Obama said the Americans will face an expanded terror threat for years to come from other al Qaeda extremists “willing to die to kill other people”.

Obama, describing the pursuit and pressure on Bin Laden, said, “We have the best minds, the best intelligence officers, the best special forces, who are thinking about this day and night. And they will continue to think about it day and night as long as I’m president.”

“Getting Bin Laden”, said Obama, “though extremely important to the country’s national security, would hardly solve all problems.”

He said homeland security has improved immensely in the past nine years. But, with a nod to the foiled December 25 attempted airliner attack and the botched Times Square car bombing in May, Obama added, “There is always going to be the potential for an individual or a small group of individuals, if they are willing to die, to kill other people. Some of them are going to be very well organised and some of them are going to be random.”

A report issued on Friday by a group led by the two former 9/11 Commission chairmen said the terror threat has become more complex, as al Qaeda and an array of affiliates and allies in countries like Yemen and Somalia take on a stringent broader strategy. ap
 
The scapegoat next door

Talat Farooq



On the eve of this Sept 11, the Bipartisan Policy Center released its report on homegrown terrorism, stating that the greatest threat to US security stems from Islamic fundamentalists living in the United States. The report seems to have discovered America’s “Achilles heel, in that we currently have no strategy to counter the type of threat posed by homegrown terrorists and other radicalised recruits... America is thus vulnerable to a threat that is not only diversifying, but arguably intensifying.”

The fear of growth of indigenous terror in the United States relates to isolated incidents of violence or potential violence. These incidents are an exception, yet they tap into reservoirs of hatred and intolerance. Vandalisation of mosques and the stabbing of a Muslim cabdriver in New York are reflections of this deep-rooted prejudice. Was the call for the burning of the Quran an isolated incident, or did it symbolise a growing anti-Islam sentiment in the US? More importantly, are these fears based on reality or do they serve as a diversion from pressing societal issues?

Estimates available at the internet demonstrate that in the aftermath of the 2007 economic downturn about 1 to 2.5 million people fell to poverty within a year in America and by 2008 nearly 40 million (13.2 per cent) lived below the official poverty line; expected increase in 2010 is a record 15 per cent. The unemployment rate in the United States in August was reported at 9.60 per cent, approaching the 1960s levels when Lyndon Johnson had to declare war on poverty in America. California, traditionally one of the United States’ most affluent states, is $19 billion in the red.

Unemployment translates into diminished consumer spending that normally accounts for two-third of American economic activity. Job loss is therefore a significant contributor towards economic insecurity and it breeds feelings of vulnerability among Americans; the huge nativist movement against immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries substantiates such anxiety.

For all their freedom rhetoric the Americans suffer from periodic paranoia: The Red Scare of the interwar period was provoked by fears of an “imminent” Bolshevik revolution in the United States, post-World War II McCarthyism was based on suspicions of a “genuine” communist threat to American institutions, and the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942 occurred because civilian and military officials in the United States suspected the loyalty of people of Japanese origin.

These are events that demonstrate America’s proclivity for demonisation of the external “other,” rather than its focusing on internal weaknesses.

The American media whipped up xenophobia during the Red Scare and McCarthyism episodes. The post-9/11 media hysteria in the United States, the stereotyping of Muslims, and the treating of the widely diverse Islamic world as a menacing monolith have not been helpful in forging interfaith harmony. The controversy over the “Ground Zero Islamic centre” has been politicised by the Christian right and the Republicans in the run-up to the mid-term elections in November.

A political system driven by corporate interests is ready to indulge in irresponsible behaviour where short-term gain blinds the politicians to future societal disharmony as a consequence of exploitation of existing divisions; it is a disservice to their nation.

The fears of American Muslims is highlighted in recent a article in The New York Times, “American Muslims Ask: Will We Ever Belong?” A vast majority of them are law abiding “regular folks” who abhor violence and bloodshed like all civilised human beings.

American Muslims, the article says, are “scared not as much for their safety as to learn that the suspicion, ignorance and even hatred of Muslims is so widespread. They liken their situation to that of other scapegoats in American history: Irish Roman Catholics before the nativist riots in the 1800s, the Japanese before they were put in internment camps during World War II.”

Scapegoating of a group is defined by psychologists as a social phenomenon in which people may become prejudiced towards a section of their society to give vent to their anger at unresolved problems not directly related to the target group. According to the scapegoat theory, Germans used the Jews as scapegoats for all their national problems, including their country’s economic woes.

The United States needs to focus on its internal economic and socio-political problems to avoid falling into the trap repeatedly. If the melting-pot phenomenon is not working at a certain level of American society, then US domestic and foreign policies require some serious scrutiny.

In their supposed moment of unipolarity in the 1990s, Americans were too engrossed in triumphalism to listen to voices of reason, such as that of Charley Reese a columnist for The Orlando Sentinel. “Terrorism is a political act, a response to US foreign policy,” he wrote in 1998. “It is an act of war waged by people too weak to have a conventional army, or one large enough to take on the United States.”

Unfortunately, such voices are often neglected in the heat of the moment. Today, post-9/11 American foreign policy is perceived by the Muslims as demonisation of the Islamic world and America is rightly seen as occupier of Muslim lands. Trillions of dollars have been spent on wars which the massive American military has not even been able to win. And the returning “boys” from the battlefields are sure to add to social and psychological problems back home. So the scapegoating of Muslims may become an attractive national pastime.
In 1988, the Reagan administration issued an apology for the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942. The action was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership,” it admitted. Will a US government offer a similar apology to American Muslims 46 years down the road? That is a question that the American public and politicians need to consider now.



The writer is a PhD student at Leicester, UK.

Email: talatfarooq11@gmail.com
 
Is this really the US? Why this betrayal of it's own values, after all, is Osama doing this to the US or are such betrayals necessary to transform the US into something that can still be be referred to as US but is very different in substance:


September 27, 2010
U.S. Is Working to Ease Wiretaps on the Internet
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally
.

James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function

But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.

“We’re talking about lawfully authorized intercepts,” said Valerie E. Caproni, general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “We’re not talking expanding authority. We’re talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security

Investigators have been concerned for years that changing communications technology could damage their ability to conduct surveillance. In recent months, officials from the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, the White House and other agencies have been meeting to develop a proposed solution.

There is not yet agreement on important elements, like how to word statutory language defining who counts as a communications service provider, according to several officials familiar with the deliberations.

But they want it to apply broadly, including to companies that operate from servers abroad, like Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry devices. In recent months, that company has come into conflict with the governments of Dubai and India over their inability to conduct surveillance of messages sent via its encrypted service.

In the United States, phone and broadband networks are already required to have interception capabilities, under a 1994 law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. It aimed to ensure that government surveillance abilities would remain intact during the evolution from a copper-wire phone system to digital networks and cellphones.

Often, investigators can intercept communications at a switch operated by the network company. But sometimes — like when the target uses a service that encrypts messages between his computer and its servers — they must instead serve the order on a service provider to get unscrambled versions.

Like phone companies, communication service providers are subject to wiretap orders. But the 1994 law does not apply to them. While some maintain interception capacities, others wait until they are served with orders to try to develop them.


The F.B.I.’s operational technologies division spent $9.75 million last year helping communication companies — including some subject to the 1994 law that had difficulties — do so. And its 2010 budget included $9 million for a “Going Dark Program” to bolster its electronic surveillance capabilities.

Beyond such costs, Ms. Caproni said, F.B.I. efforts to help retrofit services have a major shortcoming: the process can delay their ability to wiretap a suspect for months.

Moreover, some services encrypt messages between users, so that even the provider cannot unscramble them.

There is no public data about how often court-approved surveillance is frustrated because of a service’s technical design.

But as an example, one official said, an investigation into a drug cartel earlier this year was stymied because smugglers used peer-to-peer software, which is difficult to intercept because it is not routed through a central hub. Agents eventually installed surveillance equipment in a suspect’s office, but that tactic was “risky,” the official said, and the delay “prevented the interception of pertinent communications.”

Moreover, according to several other officials, after the failed Times Square bombing in May, investigators discovered that the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, had been communicating with a service that lacked prebuilt interception capacity. If he had aroused suspicion beforehand, there would have been a delay before he could have been wiretapped.

To counter such problems, officials are coalescing around several of the proposal’s likely requirements:

Communications services that encrypt messages must have a way to unscramble them.

Foreign-based providers that do business inside the United States must install a domestic office capable of performing intercepts.

Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication must redesign their service to allow interception.

Providers that failed to comply would face fines or some other penalty. But the proposal is likely to direct companies to come up with their own way to meet the mandates. Writing any statute in “technologically neutral” terms would also help prevent it from becoming obsolete, officials said.

Even with such a law, some gaps could remain. It is not clear how it could compel compliance by overseas services that do no domestic business, or from a “freeware” application developed by volunteers.

In their battle with Research in Motion, countries like Dubai have sought leverage by threatening to block BlackBerry data from their networks. But Ms. Caproni said the F.B.I. did not support filtering the Internet in the United States.

Still, even a proposal that consists only of a legal mandate is likely to be controversial, said Michael A. Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who advises communications providers
.

“It would be an enormous change for newly covered companies,” he said. “Implementation would be a huge technology and security headache, and the investigative burden and costs will shift to providers

Several privacy and technology advocates argued that requiring interception capabilities would create holes that would inevitably be exploited by hackers.

Steven M. Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor, pointed to an episode in Greece: In 2005, it was discovered that hackers had taken advantage of a legally mandated wiretap function to spy on top officials’ phones, including the prime minister’s.

“I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he said. “If they start building in all these back doors, they will be exploited.”

Susan Landau, a Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study fellow and former Sun Microsystems engineer, argued that the proposal would raise costly impediments to innovation by small startups.

“Every engineer who is developing the wiretap system is an engineer who is not building in greater security, more features, or getting the product out faster,” she said.

Moreover, providers of services featuring user-to-user encryption are likely to object to watering it down. Similarly, in the late 1990s, encryption makers fought off a proposal to require them to include a back door enabling wiretapping, arguing it would cripple their products in the global market.

But law enforcement officials rejected such arguments. They said including an interception capability from the start was less likely to inadvertently create security holes than retrofitting it after receiving a wiretap order.

They also noted that critics predicted that the 1994 law would impede cellphone innovation, but that technology continued to improve. And their envisioned decryption mandate is modest, they contended, because service providers — not the government — would hold the key.

“No one should be promising their customers that they will thumb their nose at a U.S. court order,” Ms. Caproni said. “They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text.”
 
For all their freedom rhetoric the Americans suffer from periodic paranoia: The Red Scare of the interwar period was provoked by fears of an “imminent” Bolshevik revolution in the United States, post-World War II McCarthyism was based on suspicions of a “genuine” communist threat to American institutions, and the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942 occurred because civilian and military officials in the United States suspected the loyalty of people of Japanese origin.

bingo!
 
In 1988, the Reagan administration issued an apology for the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942. The action was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership,” it admitted. Will a US government offer a similar apology to American Muslims 46 years down the road? That is a question that the American public and politicians need to consider now.

cold day in hell when this happens!!!
 
Originally Posted by fatman17 View Post
"the other day i saw a wonderful movie called 'good nite and good luck'. its abt edward r murrow's encounters with the junior senator from wisconsin - mccarthy during the 50's when american 'liberties' were being threatened by mr.mccarthy and his anti-commie or 'pinko' agenda."

@ fatman17
Indeed; the theme from 'good nite and good luck' does assume quite a bit of relevance in the present context.
 
Its not americans that is responsible for the attitude of Americans toward Muslims, its Muslims that is responsible for Americans attitude toward Muslims.
A Islamic Ground Zero victory Mosque at the world trade center is not going to help.

I expect I am a pretty average american, why would I listen to some one say from Pakistan or say China which is considered one of the twenty worse countries in the world in the terms of human rights violations lecture americans on their treatments of other people.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/rightsindex/

The top twenty worst offenders: Amnesty reports
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Congo
Rwanda
Burundi
Algeria
Sierra Leone
Egypt
North Korea
Sudan
Indonesia
Yugoslavia
Pakistan
China
Libya
Burma
Iraq
Afghanistan
Iran
Yemen
Chad
Congo (Republic)
 
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