WTF? Over
The courts of the United States have lost their connection to reality.
Digby has a a post on a WaPo article reporting a decision of a panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in which it is stated: “Terrorism is the modern-day equivalent of the bubonic plague: It is an existential threat…”
The defendant, Tarek Mehanna, was convicted of providing material support for Al Qaeda by posting articles on a web site, and making pro-al Qaeda speeches.
Calling terrorism “an existential threat” blows the doors off exaggeration, blasts by hyperbole, and vanishes into the abyss of absurdity. The bubonic plague killed tens of millions of people, but in the last fifty years all of the ‘terrorists’ in the world haven’t accounted for a year of US traffic deaths. Israel loses more people in cars than from terrorists.
Global climate change is an existential threat, it actually is capable of wiping nations off the map. Terrorism is annoying, and nowhere near the danger that people face from severe weather. Paranoia in judges on the US appellate courts is not comforting.
4 comments
Once a military tactic is declared a threat to the space/time continum then all responses are acceptable; torture, targeting civilians, overthrowing government, extraordinary rendition.
When I was stationed at Rhein-Main AB in the early 1970s we got rousted out of the barracks once a month by EOD looking for bombs, and occasionally hauling something out in their big bucket. An Army general was killed in an explosion just down the road in Frankfurt. I’ve lived with terrorism a long time, but it wasn’t nearly as scary as knowing that just northeast of R-M was the Fulda Gap through which multiple Soviet and Eastern Bloc mechanized armies would spew if things went wrong.
Nuclear war with the Eastern Bloc was existential, the terrorists were annoying. The autobahns were a bigger threat than all of the dozens of groups who were operating at the time.
Terrorism was a police problem and it was kept in check by the police.
These days everyone seems to be looking for a ‘silver bullet’, some magic that will solve all of the problems. They can’t accept that there is no magic, there is only good police work that builds solid cases and really finds the guilty.
During my time in MilInt, terrorist activity was low down on our threat list. I’m certain that if I was still active, the USA would be higher on our threat list than any terrorist organisation.
The weather is due to get much worse for the Northern hemisphere (and possibly globally) soon. One of Iceland’s big volcano’s (Katla) is overdue to erupt. It’s much bigger than Eyjafjallajokull which erupted in 2010 and shut down air traffic in the Northern hemisphere. Historically, Katla erupts on average once every 50 years, the last eruption was 1918. Katla’s ice sheet is about the size of Chicago and is twice the hight of the Empire State Building. When it erupts, that ice will melt rapidly causing massive steam explosions that will pulverize the ash into an extremely fine dust and the wind and air current’s will do the rest. Because of global warming, activity from Iceland’s 30 active volcano’s has increased from an average of once every 6 years to once every 4 since 1900 due to increased melting of the glaciers which reduces the weight and pressure on the crust, which in turn causes more of the hot rocks to melt causing more magma, more eruptions, more ash clouds. Testing of one of the major Glaciers shows that it took 140 years to melt halfway (from 1850 to 1990), then only 20 years to melt the rest of the way! As well as fine ash, which will ground all air traffic, and cover just about everything, Katla could release millions of ton’s of fluorine and sulfuric gas as happened between 1783 to 1785 when the Grímsfjall volcano erupted spewing magma, ash and gas out at over 150,000 cubic ft per second, killing all livestock and an estimated 1 million people. The Florine and sulfur gas haze caused drought and famine in the Northers hemisphere for years.
It’s expected that 8 of Iceland’s sub-glacial volcano’s will erupt within this decade because the glaciers are melting rapidly, and they are right in the center of the Mid-Atlantic ridge which is separating at about 1″ per year, and will erupt more often than usual after that.
If that weren’t enough, you also have the active Volcano’s in Hawaii to worry about as their activity is also increasing. And you have increased activity within the USA and other places in the Northern hemisphere, according to the Smithsonian/USGS Volcanic Activity Report
Acid rain over Nth America would most definitely be a bigger problem than *Terrorists*. Better stock up on non-perishable food and lot’s of water. You’re gonna need them.
Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program
Those tennis-ball-sized hailstones down your way don’t look exactly normal for weather.
Yes, Iceland has been seeing elevated seismic activity, as has Hawaii, which usually proceeds an eruption. Of course a really massive eruption could cool things down a bit, which will be used as another excuse not to do anything.
Unless we can elect some honest politicians who aren’t on the take from the polluters, nothing is going to get done.