How Committed Are Terrorists?

March 10th, 2010

Richard Reid, the notorious “shoe bomber,” was charged with eight criminal counts related to his acts of terrorism including, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, attempted homicide, placing an explosive device on an aircraft, attempted murder, interference with flight crew members and attendants, attempted destruction of an aircraft, using a destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence and attempted wrecking of a mass transportation vehicle. Reid pled guilty to all eight counts on October 4, 2002.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the September 11 attacks, called himself a “jackal” and was quoted by American interrogators as saying that “the language of war is victims.” On Dec. 8, 2008, Mohammed, along with four co-defendants, sent a note to a military judge at Guantánamo asking to confess and to plead guilty.

Now suppose you are a young Afghani born Muslim who grew up in Pakistan but moved with your parents to the States to attend high school in New York City. Later, you decide to join Al-Qaida and seek revenge against the U.S. because of what the U.S. military is doing to civilians in Afghanistan. You receive weapons training at a camp in Pakistan where you learn about explosives and how to detonate a bomb. When you return to the U.S., you build a powerful explosive while living in Denver and then drive to New York City where you plan a martyrdom operation to detonate the bomb in the subway system. However, good police work eventually results in your arrest and charges that include conspiracies to use weapons of mass destruction and to commit murder in a foreign country, and to provide material support for a terrorist organization. You are twenty-five years old and if convicted of the charges, you probably will spend the rest of your life in prison. How do you plead?

Well, if you are Najibullah Zazi, you plead guilty in U.S. District Court, but only because your mother could face criminal immigration charges. Huh???

If he really were a committed terrorist who believed in martyrdom and a cause like Reid or Mohammed, why wouldn’t he plead guilty? Maybe, like Oklahoma City bomber and terrorist Timothy McVeigh, who instructed his lawyers to use a necessity defense when he was charged with eleven federal offenses and faced the death penalty, Zazi only believed in the act and not the cause.

With wealthy parents and lawyers swarming to represent him, it seems unlikely that 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “underpants bomber,” will remain committed to his cause and plead guilty. But why should taxpayers have to pay for the costly trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants when they have asked to plead guilty to all the charges?

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Drug-Dealing Doctors

February 8th, 2010

By officially charging Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s cardiologist, with involuntary manslaughter today, Los Angeles will again be home to a show trial reminiscent of the media circus surrounding the celebrity trials of Robert Blake and O.J. Simpson, both of whom were acquitted of murder, mostly because of prosecutorial missteps. One hopes that the D.A.’s office is better prepared to deal with Murray and a charge of manslaughter.

Of course doctors dealing drugs for celebrities is nothing new. Dr. George Nichopoulos, Elvis Presley’s private physician, literally wrote thousands of prescriptions for Elvis at a time when it was obvious that the entertainer was abusing them. Many believe that prescription drug abuse severely compromised Presley’s health, and led to his sudden death in 1977 at the age of 42. Nichopoulos was eventually charged with 14 counts of abusing his license to prescribe in May of 1980, but was acquitted in November. The case was reopened in 1992, and in 1995, his medical license was revoked.

Conrad Murray gave Jackson propofol, also called “milk of amnesia,” a powerful anesthetic, which depresses breathing and heart rate while lowering blood pressure. It is only supposed to be administered by an anesthesia professional in a medical setting.

According to court documents, Murray told police he administered propofol just before 11 a.m. then stepped out of the room to go to the bathroom. Murray told police that when he returned to the bedroom, he saw that Jackson was not breathing and began trying to revive him. But an ambulance was not called until 12:21 p.m. Curiously, Murray spent much of the intervening time making non-emergency cell phone calls.

Last year, psychiatrists Khristine Eroshevich and Dr. Sandeep Kapoor were charged with felony conspiracy to furnish drugs to Anna Nicole Smith. They were also charged with prescribing, administering or dispensing a controlled substance to an addict.

28-year-old actor Heath Ledger died just over a year ago as the result of acute intoxication from the combined effects of an accidental dose of oxycodone, Vicodin, Valium, Temazepam, Xanax, and doxylamine. This past December actress Brittany Murphy died at 32 from pneumonia, aided by anemia and drug intoxication. Doctors may not have directly administered the drugs to Smith, Ledger, and Murphy, but they certainly contributed to their deaths.

Drug deaths in Hollywood are nothing new. Celebrity worshipers have been watching actors and musicians unintentionally kill themselves for years. And for many years, going as far back as Marilyn Monroe, the law enforcement community often looked the other way. More recently, they have gone after the doctor suppliers. Eventually, prosecutions and convictions may convince these drug-dealing doctors to focus on their Hippocratic Oaths rather than on padding their bank accounts. The recent string of celebrity drug deaths may also change some behaviors in Hollywood.

As Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, “Isn’t it pretty to think so.”

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Cover-Up at Guantánamo

January 22nd, 2010

Late in the evening on June 9, 2006, three prisoners at Guantánamo Bay reportedly committed suicide. A fascinating article written by Scott Horton that will appear in the March 2009 edition of Harper’s Magazine, questions the government’s account of what actually occurred that night, and has the makings of a blockbuster Hollywood movie similar to “A Few Good Men.”

According to Horton, the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which has primary investigative jurisdiction within the naval base, issued a report two years after the three deaths claiming that the prisoners made a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high wall. Each prisoner then stuffed rags deep into his own throat, tied their own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet. While bound and choking on the rags, each prisoner climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin. At least two of the prisoners also had cloth masks affixed to their faces, presumably to prevent the expulsion of the rags from their mouths. The NCIS report proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out these actions almost simultaneously.

The NCIS report also claimed that the prisoners hung sheets or blankets to hide their activities and shaped additional sheets and pillows to look like bodies sleeping in their beds. No explanation is given as to where the prisoners acquired the extra fabric, or why the Navy guards allowed this behavior to occur. Nor does the report explain how the dead men managed to hang undetected for more than two hours since standard operating procedure at Camp Delta requires the Navy guards on duty after midnight to “conduct a visual search” of each cell and detainee every ten minutes. No one was ever disciplined for this obvious failure of duty.

Still more troubling is that the three deaths occurred in a secret area called “Camp No” because anyone who asked if it existed was told, “No, it doesn’t.” According to the report, the bodies of the three men showed signs of torture, including hemorrhages, needle marks, and significant bruising. Also, the removal of their throats during the autopsy made it difficult to determine whether they were already dead before they supposedly hung themselves. The existence of “Camp No” appears to confirm that a black site run by the CIA existed at Guantánamo.

Four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night the three men died, have come forward with accounts dramatically different than the NCIS report—a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached. All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners’ deaths.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this whole situation is that even with the new Obama administration in office, the Justice Department continues to stand by the NCIS report. More evidence of change we can believe in. Where is Mark Harmon when we need him?

You can read the entire article at:

http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368

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Mexico’s Civil War

January 13th, 2010

During the 1980s, Pablo Escobar and his ruthless Medellín Cartel became synonymous with violence and death in Colombia. His policy in dealing with law enforcement and government officials was known as plata o plomo, silver or lead. Those that couldn’t be bribed were killed. This resulted in the deaths of hundreds, including civilians, policemen and state officials. Escobar was also responsible for the murder of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán as well as the bombing of Avianca Flight 203 and the DAS building bombing in Bogotá in 1989. That year, Forbes magazine estimated he had a personal fortune of $25 billion, making him the seventh-richest man in the world. His Medellín cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market. The Colombian government finally went on the offensive and Escobar was eventually hunted down and killed in 1993. While the majority of cocaine is still produced in Colombia and cartels still exist, Mexican cartels have grown increasingly more powerful. The State Department estimates that 90% of cocaine entering the United States transits Mexico.

Facing a situation similar to Colombia’s in the 1980s and 1990s, Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug traffickers after his election in 2006 by deploying nearly 45,000 troops and 5,000 federal police to 18 states. As in Colombia, there has been an alarming increase in deaths. Estimates are that 9900 people have died in drug-related incidents since January 2007. Cities such as Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo have become armed camps. But Calderón’s war on the drug cartels has had an effect beyond the increased levels of violence and deaths. The U.S. government estimates that the amount of cocaine seized on U.S. soil dropped by 41 percent between early 2007 and mid-2008. And yesterday, Mexico captured Teodoro Garcia Simental, known as El Teo, one of Mexico’s major drug kingpins. His capture follows the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Felix and the death of his brother Raul, the leaders of the Arellano Felix gang.

Still, the U.S. Justice Department now considers the Mexican drug cartels the greatest organized crime threat to the United States as violence spills across the Mexican border. Officials in cities such as Phoenix have reported an alarming increase in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico’s cartels. Also, more than 200 Americans have been killed in Mexico since 2004. The governors of Arizona and Texas have asked the federal government to send additional National Guard troops to help those already there supporting local law enforcement efforts against drug trafficking.

While Colombia has experienced a continuing decrease in levels of violence as current President Alvaro Uribe continues the country’s war against drug traffickers and military groups like the FARC, it’s anyone’s guess whether Calderón and Mexico will succeed. The level of corruption runs deep.

Along with continued military and financial support to Colombia and Mexico, the U.S. could help reduce drug usage and violence by decriminalizing marijuana usage and treating it as a public health problem rather than a security problem. Studies have found that using drug user treatment to reduce drug consumption in the United States is seven times more cost effective than law enforcement efforts alone, and it could potentially cut consumption by a third. Decriminalization, particularly of small quantities of marijuana, might also save money and countless lives in Mexico and in the U.S.

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Good News and Bad News in 2009

December 31st, 2009

2009 was both a good year and a bad year for law enforcement.

Nationwide, law enforcement deaths dropped to a 50-year low, with 124 officers killed in 2009. The homicide rate also dropped in cities across the U.S. Here in the Twin Cities, the rate in Minneapolis fell 50% from 38 homicides in 2008 to 19 this past year. That was the lowest number of homicides in a quarter century. Minneapolis was known as “Murderapolis” back in 1995 when the city reported a record 97 homicides. Homicides in St. Paul also fell from 18 in 2008 to 12 in 2009.

The decline in homicides bucks the conventional wisdom that murders and crime in general both increase in times of recession and economic hardship. No one is exactly sure why homicides are declining here and across the country, but some in Minneapolis attribute the decline to better police work, improved security technology, clearing alleys of garbage and graffiti, and working with rather than locking up juvenile offenders who show an interest in getting out of gangs and crime. St. Paul attributes the decline in part to targeting domestic disputes and helping gang members get driver’s licenses and find jobs if they pledged to go crime free.

Despite the nationwide drop in homicides, last week’s arrest of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab demonstrates that our national security system has improved little since the 9/11 attacks. Part of that failure could be the result of our continued focus on “war” rather than on police work. I’ve always questioned the use of the term “war on terror”. Though we are certainly engaged in a battle with terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and now Yemen, the best way to prevent terrorists from striking the country again is through improved police work and intelligence gathering and sharing. The right question many are asking is why someone who is listed on the Terrorist Watch List was allowed to purchase an airline ticket?

No matter how many scanners we place in airports, terrorists will find a way around them. And how is preventing passengers from using the restroom the last hour of the flight, and restricting the use of blankets and carry on luggage going to stop a similar incident? Obviously, a terrorist could set off an explosive device well before the last hour of the flight. Instead of focusing our money and efforts on improving intelligence and communication between government agencies, it appears that we’re going to spend a fortune on scanners and new rules that will only inconvenience passengers and provide the illusion of safety.

In other words, pretty much what we have in airports now.

Happy New Year!

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Top Ten Crimes of 2009

December 21st, 2009

Time Magazine has released its annual Top Ten Crime stories of 2009. While I agree with most of their choices, I have two notable exceptions on my list. All of the crimes listed garnered national attention, but many had implications that reached beyond the victims and their families.

Number Ten: The death of William Sparkman, whose nude body was found hanging from a tree in the Daniel Boone National Forest in Clay County, Kentucky with the word “Fed” scrawled on his chest. While Sparkman’s death was later ruled a suicide, it was initially linked to the rising tide of anti-government sentiment.

Number Nine: The murder of Annie Le, the Yale pharmacology graduate student who was found dead in a research lab on the day she was supposed to be married. Lab technician Raymond Clark was arrested and charged with her murder.

Number Eight: The murders of Melanie and Byrd Billings, the wealthy and caring parents of 17 children, 13 of them adopted and most with disabilities, in their Pensacola, Florida home. Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr. and six others have been charged with the murders.

Number Seven: Eleven bodies found in the back yard of Anthony Sowell, the rapist and serial killer living in Cleveland. Nearly every year a serial killer makes the list and nearly every year friends and neighbors ignore overt signs (such as the horrible smell emanating from Sowell’s house), which allow the killings to continue.

Number Six: The murder of Julissa Brisman by Philip Markoff, the Boston University medical student. Brisman’s murder was responsible for permanently shutting-down the erotic advertisements on Craigslist.

Number Five: The conviction of American student Amanda Knox for the murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. Questions surrounding the prosecutor and the mishandling of evidence have strained relations between Italy and the U.S., and led to doubts about Knox’s guilt. Time Magazine should have included this crime on its list.

Number Four: The murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, who was gunned down by Scott Roeder while attending church services in Wichita, Kansas, re-ignited the contentious and increasingly violent abortion debate.

Number Three: The murder of four Tacoma police officers. Maurice Clemmons, the man responsible for the murders, made national headlines not only because of the crime, but because Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a Republican presidential candidate in the last election, commuted Clemmons thirty year prison sentence for burglary and armed purse snatching after he had served only eleven years. Clemmons spent the next nine years demonstrating to authorities why he should have stayed in prison. He was later killed, fittingly enough, by a police officer.

Number Two: Finding Jaycee Dugard alive after she was kidnapped and missing for eighteen years was truly an unbelievable story. Incredibly, Dugard had been held captive by Nancy and Phillip Garrido, a registered sex offender, and had born Garrido two daughters. Her case raised hopes that other missing kidnapped victims could be alive as well.

Number One: Why Time Magazine left Bernie Madoff off the list, I don’t know? Madoff pled guilty to eleven felonies in March of 2009 after running the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history and bilking thousands of investors out of billions of dollars. His crime mirrored the shenanigans taking place on Wall Street for the past decade due to government deregulation and lax oversight, which essentially led to the current economic collapse. I’m still waiting for the trials and convictions of other Wall Street brokers and fund managers, but I’m not holding my breath.

Happy Holidays!

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A Question of Guilt

December 9th, 2009

While the circus known as the Amanda Knox trial has ended, the accusations of bias, circumstantial evidence, and a botched investigation continue. A jury in Italy convicted Knox of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, and sentenced her to 26 years in prison. Knox’s Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, was also convicted and sentenced to 25 years. Kercher’s body was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit two years ago in the bedroom of the house she shared with Knox.

Prosecutors contend that on the night of the murder, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment where Kercher and Knox lived. Knox and Kercher started arguing, and Knox joined Sollecito and a fourth person, Rudy Hermann Guede, in attacking and sexually assaulting Kercher under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Kercher’s DNA was found on the blade and Knox’s DNA on the handle of a 6 1/2-inch knife found at Sollecito’s house. Guede, a local thief, who is appealing his conviction and 30-year prison sentence, admitted that he was in the house the night of the murder but did not kill Kercher, though he was known to carry a knife.

The defense maintained that there wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction and no clear motive. They argued that the knife was too big to match Kercher’s wounds, and that the amount of DNA collected was too small to determine with certainty whose it was. All the DNA evidence (except a possibly contaminated speck of Sollecito’s DNA on Meredith’s bra clasp) belonged to Rudy Guede and the victim. Videotape taken at the crime scene shows that investigators found the bra fastener six weeks after their initial investigation. After noticing it, two investigators handled it extensively before dropping it into a plastic evidence bag.

Amanda Knox may not be guilty of murder and the Italian police investigators most certainly were guilty of mishandling key evidence. Also, the jury was never sequestered during the trial and could easily have been influenced by all the negative press directed at Knox. But if Amanda Knox is not guilty of murder, she certainly is guilty of poor judgment.

Initially, she gave police contradictory versions of the night of the slaying, saying at one point she was home and had to cover her ears to block out Kercher’s screams. Later, she accused a Congolese man named Patrick Diya Lumumba of the killing. Lumumba, who owns a pub where Knox worked, was jailed briefly but was eventually cleared and is seeking defamation damages from Knox. Then Knox contended that police pressure led her to accuse an innocent man. She claimed a policewoman hit her in the back of the head during questioning, but Knox could never identify the woman. The day Kercher’s body was discovered, Knox was videotaped outside the murder scene kissing Sollecito. Later, at the police station when the couple were brought in for questioning, witnesses testified that Knox did cartwheels and the splits and was winking, kissing and cuddling with Sollecito. This behavior only fed the prosecutions depiction of Knox as a promiscuous and manipulative, and reinforced their contention that Knox had grown to hate Kercher and felt no shock or remorse over the murder.

Poor judgment and inappropriate behavior should never be viewed as proof of guilt. But Amanda Knox’s actions after the murder most certainly contributed to her conviction.

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Hate Crimes

November 26th, 2009

The FBI reported earlier this week that hate crimes jumped in 2008. Overall, hate crimes rose to their highest levels since 2001, when anti-Islamic incidents following the 9/11 attacks increased the annual total to over 9,000. For 2008, the total number of bias crimes was 7,783, a two percent rise from 2007.

Attacks based on the religion of the victim in 2008 rose nearly 9 percent over the previous year. Jews and Jewish institutions continue to account for two-thirds of religiously motivated attacks, even though Jews make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population.

Racially motivated attacks against African-Americans rose more that 8 percent in 2008. While crimes against blacks rose, attacks against whites declined during the same time period. Racially motivated attacks continued to account for about half of all bias crimes.

Now that we have our first African-American president whose place of birth and presidential legitimacy are still being questioned by extremists, the number of hate crimes against blacks has undoubtedly increased in 2009.

Religiously motivated attacks were second in 2008 at 19.5 percent, followed by crimes involving sexual orientation at 16.7 percent. The number of incidents based on sexual orientation increased slightly in 2008, but the number of lesbian, gay or transgender victims rose by 11 percent, the third consecutive year that figure has risen. The hateful rhetoric directed toward gays and lesbians and against gay marriage likely means that hate crimes against those individuals have continued to increase in 2009. Doctors and clinics that perform abortions will also continue to be targets.

The FBI reported that 11.5 percent of hate crimes were motivated by ethnicity or national origin, with about two-thirds of those against Hispanic targets. Interestingly, this number was down significantly from 2007.

The majority of the 5,542 offenses were classified as crimes against persons. Acts of intimidation, which includes such offenses as harassment, accounted for 48.8 percent of crimes against persons. Simple assaults accounted for 32.1 percent of the crimes, and aggravated assaults for 18.5 percent. Seven individuals were murdered. The rest of the incidents were classified as offenses against property, such as arson and vandalism.

Unfortunately, given the increasingly vitriolic climate and race baiting in the country, 2009 hate crime statistics are likely to be much worse.

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The Age of the Con

November 13th, 2009

If you have email, then you’ve undoubtedly received spam notifying you that you’ve won a lottery you never entered, or requesting your help in transferring a fortune in funds trapped in a foreign bank. The scam is known as the Advance Fee Fraud con. The following email from someone calling himself FBI Special Agent John Edward illustrates the latest version of the con. No corrections have been made in the text.

Attn: Dear Sir/Madam,

We are writing in response to our track light monitoring device which we received today in our office about the illegal transactions that you have been involve in for a long time now. From our general investigations some con men from Africa has been ripping you off your hard earned money with the pretence of dealing with non-existent fortunes, inheritances, cases of money, business partnerships, lottery winnings, etc. as stated in our record here. We also got a complain from our South African counterpart stating that your identity/information’s was used to dupe a South African business man to the tune of U.S.$850 Million United States Dollars by some Nigerian Fraudsters which you have been in contact with for some time now.

The South African Government has ordered for your urgent arrest regarding the crimes that was committed with your identity and names after all the series of investigations conducted here in our office we tracked your record and we found out that you have never been jailed or had any fraudulent case that may jeopardize your image and personality. All this information’s are on record and we are going to use it against you in the world court when this case will be brought before it and we called the Nigerian High Commission for an urgent compensation for the bad deed that has been committed with your name.

So all you need to do right now in other to clear your name from the scammer list which has already been forwarded to our office is to secure the CLEAN BILL CERTIFICATE immediately. This Certificate will then clear your name from the scammers list and also after the Certificate has been issued to you, you will then forward it to the payment officer for the urgent transfer of your compensation funds of U.S. $5 Million Usd.

The email continues for a few more hilarious paragraphs, but you get the picture. Given the numerous errors, one would be hard pressed to understand how anyone could fall for this obvious con. Yet, over the last two decades, billions of dollars have been stolen from the bank accounts of easily duped Americans.

Just yesterday, an Eau Claire, Wisconsin woman named Lori Jo Melville was arrested for forging two checks worth $2,000 from her place of employment. Owners of the business told investigators that Melville had become hooked on a Nigerian con.

More than ever, we seem to be living in an age when Americans will believe anything. Given how many of them have been conned out of their money, no one should ever again be surprised by their continued gullibility and lack of common sense. There truly is “a sucker born every minute,” and con men are taking full advantage of it.

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Magic Wands and Bullets

November 5th, 2009

A story that appeared in yesterday’s New York Times reported that the “Magic Wands” used by the Iraqi police to detect bombs were about as effective as a Ouija board. The small hand-held devices with telescopic antennas are being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq at a cost of $16,500 to $60,000. Despite solid research to the contrary, the Iraqis are willing to spend thousands of dollars on a worthless device because they “believe” it is working.

A second story appearing yesterday in the Washington Post reported that American gun owners have spent record-breaking amounts of money on ammunition, despite the deep recession and huge job losses. American gun owners are willing to spend more of their decreasing dollars on 12 billion rounds of ammunition because they “believe” it will make them safer and prevent an Obama government led (choose one of the current buzz words) communist, fascist or socialist takeover.

Although these stories appear unrelated, I believe they both share a common thread.

You may remember the 1984 film, “Red Dawn”, which depicted the invasion of the United States from the north and south by communist forces from Cuba and Russia at the beginning of WWIII. The film tells the story of a group of midwestern high school students who organize themselves into an effective guerilla force to repel the tide of Soviet invaders. If you didn’t see the original, don’t worry. “Red Dawn 2010” is slated to be released a year from now. The Russians are still the bad guys, but the film substitutes the Chinese for the lowly Cubans.

The movie and the theory of the New World Order proposed by the ever-increasing numbers of militias and patriot groups are similar. For decades, we’ve heard their fears about the takeover of the U.S. either through an invasion by a foreign force or by our own government, particularly when a Democrat is elected president. Apparently, those same groups were not at all concerned about the previous administrations concentration of executive power, illegal wiretapping, torture, renditions, and lies that violated our civil rights and led us into a disastrous and costly war in Iraq.

The scenario depicted in the “Red Dawn” movies and by right-wing militia groups is the same. First, all guns are confiscated and gun owners are arrested. Military equipment is moved on railroad tracks and helicopters flood the skies.  Re-education facilities or concentration camps are established and militias strike back. “Red Dawn 2010″ will no doubt further stoke the flames of paranoia lit by Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Michele Bachmann, and the other right-wing extremists.

But think (and I know that’s asking a lot) for just a moment how ridiculous and absolutely mindless this scenario is. The best military in the world would have to be soundly defeated or, worse yet, a willing participant. And the huge nuclear arsenal designed to protect our country from a foreign invasion would never be used.

The reality is that neither “Magic Wands” in Iraq nor billions of rounds of ammunition in the U.S. can protect us from abject paranoia and the belief in the absurd.

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