Can Zombies Join the Priesthood?

London calling to the imitation zone
Forget it, brother, you can go it alone
London calling to the zombies of death
Quit holding out, and draw another breath
--London Calling, The Clash

If you think that I don't know
about the little tricks you play
And never see you when deliberately
you put things in my way
--I Can See For Miles, The Who
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Does the entertainment industry have a responsibility to the public to portray terrorism in a realistic, unemotional manner? Are the concepts entertainment and responsibility mutually-exclusive? Should they be?

The latest episode of New York City police drama is a case in point.

Three sleeper al Qaeda agents awoke one day and decided to conduct a biological attack on the NYC subway system using a mutated virus. How they got it, moved it, etc. is not addressed. Probably the missing mobile germ units that Saddam hid so cleverly re-surfaced in Schenectaday. Probably, they were in front of our very eyes operating as Mexican burrito trucks on Broadway!

Who knows, but the story line was pure fantasy, with a Churchillian subplot (Japan's 1995 Sarin attack scabbed onto haji?)

Churchill posed the question: Do we warn the people and compromise the element of surprise, or do we hold a tight grip on the intelligence? He made the decision to allow the German air attacks on London, thereby securing the Enigma machine from German knowledge.

This program was a nice rehash of the old argument (with the fictional twist that it saved the lives of 2 1/2 million people.) The point is, there are a lot of people in never-never land who believe these serials reflect reality, and should there be any balance in the portrayals?

There is no credible way that a group could make, transport and disseminate a biological agent purported to have no antidote or immunization; it was a scenario as fantastic as zombies joining the priesthood. After the terrorists were arrested -- not "captured" -- the NYPD released a cover story reporting that the event was actually a training incident.

In today's world, every self-important government security type would be crawling out of the woodwork trying to grab some credit for thwarting such an attack, no matter how non-viable. The days of discretion and modesty are gone.

Home Invasion

Do you think if you get General Aidid,
we will simply put down our weapons
and adopt American democracy?
--Black Hawk Down (2001)

Vengeance is mine, saith the lord
Romans 12:19

So you kids are, what?
Some kind of mod squad or something?
--Mod Squad (1968)
__________________

On the news program "60 Minutes" this past weekend, President Obama said of the Osama bin Laden assassination,

"Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined"

The words were flip and unpresidential, the sort one would expect from a Right-wing cheerleader or George Bush himself. The president is not a mental health professional and knows little or nothing about examining heads, nor does he have a grasp of what two shots to the head does to a person's head.

America was founded on the principals of free speech and thought. Last we checked, those rights are still intact, and we don't need a president shaming those of us who would dare to question his oh-so-brave decision.

Yes, Osama bin Laden was a bad actor, but he was never adjudicated guilty, nor can we prove that his fingerprints were on the attacks of 9-11-01. Sure, he claimed responsibility, but it is the nature of a terrorist organization to take credit wherever and whenever it can. However, the claims are not credible until proven in a court of law.

Self-aggrandizement is not evidence, nor should any man be judged guilty by the president without a judicial stamp of approval which = a court finding of guilt. If OBL was such a bad actor, why wasn't he tried in absentia and appropriately sentenced?

We are not comfortable with the adulation bestowed upon professional killers like Seal Team 6. Having professional hit men wearing our national uniform is more discomfiting than having OBL hiding out in some shit hole, backwater town somewhere west of bum fuck China. Our soldiers must kill on the battlefield, but this does not make them murderers; it makes them soldiers.

When soldiers must shoot people in their bedrooms this makes them as bad as home invasion criminals. Ranger will be called soft in the head, but he thinks anyone favoring murder and mafia-style hit squads is more in need of a psychiatrist than he.

One must be vigilant to rise above the seduction of mass hysteria and maintain the basic values of a humanistic society. The simplistic mantra that OBL was a "bad man" does not make his murder any more palatable.

On this same 60 minutes episode, Andy Rooney equated the death of OBL with that of Adolf Hitler -- a strained analogy if ever there was one. Hitler's wars, with our contributions, killed at least 50 million people; the atrocities of 9-11-01 are not comparable. Thousands were murdered daily in German death camps -- OBL's claimed acts, despicable as they were, pale to insignificance in the analogy.

The average U.S. citizen lacks for perspective. There was a time when advocating for the protection of Jewish lives was considered anathema in Nazi Germany. The approximately 3,000 killed in the 9-11 attacks are small potatoes compared with the number of people who starve to death each day worldwide. Are American lives more sacred than those of others?

In its most basic sense, justice is defined as the administration and procedure of law. If we are dispensing Old Testament "eye-for-an-eye", law of the jungle justice, then yes, the president applied justice.

However, if we take our Constitution literally, Seal Team 6 was used as nothing but an instrument of vengeance.

Soccer World Cup 2010

Keep Calm and
Carry On
--British Ministry of Information poster
(1939, unused)

Don’t get trouble in your mind, your mind,
don’t get trouble in your mind
--Don't Get Trouble in Your Mind,
Carolina Chocolate Drops
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This entry is not about soccer, per se.

The U.S. and its NATO allies are tied up fighting what they call Terrorism, while the rest of the world is transfixed by men kicking a little ball around a field. If terrorism were the monstrous threat it is being sold as, then why hasn't it been mentioned in the South African-sponsored games?

The reason is, terrorism is not aimed at the games, nor is it a world threat. Terrorism is a localized event. However, that doesn't stop the U.S. leadership from trying to peddle it as if it were the New Red Scare.

The fact is, terrorism is predictable and manageable with proper national planning. The terrorism the U.S. et al is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan lacks the assets to make a spectacular showing at the World Cup -- they have neither the capability nor the intent.

The World Cup is a venue for the Little Guy to triumph over the Big One, paralleling the philosophy of the terrorist; even the referees favor the underdog at the expense of the Western nations. Therefore, the games are safe. Terrorists are not going to set off a bomb in a stadium filled with Africans and other members of the Third World. Not gonna happen, G.I.

In comparison, The Olympics can be a target as the rich Western nations usually dominate the winner's circle.

The relative freedom of the World Cup events provides an example showing that terrorism risk can be calculated, and not every venue need be a site of panic.

Park the Car

It's not a question
but a lesson learned in time.
It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right
--Good Riddance, Green day

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Who is this guy? Speaking about terrorist suspects "seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan,

"[A] senior American military official said, “They’re both bad dudes. The issue is: where do they get parked so they stay parked?” (U.S. Relies More on Aid of Allies in Terror Cases.)

The U.S. does not "park" people without charging them and trying them in a court of law.

The question is not whether torture works, as former VP Dick Cheney asserts. The allies extracted sensitive data in WW II from some very bad dudes using methods other than torture (Ft. Hunt's 'Quiet Men' Break Silence on WW II).

The detainee issue boils down to one question: Is the U.S. willing to indefinitely imprison anyone who has not been convicted of a crime?

Torture is now branded "patriotic". If one demurs on torture, one is weak -- soft on terror; worse, a traitor. If one is against torture, one is de facto adjudicated pro-terrorist.

Ranger is not a weak-kneed liberal. If a federal court legally convicts and sentences a terrorist to death, he would volunteer to administer the sentence.

The only question is, does torture comport with our legal system.

The answer is, "No".