In a survey of those regions of Afghanistan where the NATO troops are having the heaviest fighting, a survey finds that 92% of those Afghans don’t know about the events of 9/11.

This has staggering consequences for the battle for hearts and minds of the population. It is one thing for people to see foreign troops as being in their country to ferret out rogue elements among them that attacked other countries, which is the stated mission of the US and NATO, though one has to suspect that there are always covert goals behind the overt ones. Then there is some chance that they will support your endeavors and join with you in eliminating the threat.

But if the local population is oblivious to this history, they will see the foreign troops as simply invaders trying to take over their country and will naturally resist.

But not to worry! We totally know how to deal with the hearts-and-minds thing. As the Washington Post reports:

In another recent operation in the Zhari district, U.S. soldiers fired more than a dozen mine-clearing line charges in a day. Each one creates a clear path that is 100 yards long and wide enough for a truck. Anything that is in the way – trees, crops, huts – is demolished.

“Why do you have to blow up so many of our fields and homes?” a farmer from the Arghandab district asked a top NATO general at a recent community meeting.

Although military officials are apologetic in public, they maintain privately that the tactic has a benefit beyond the elimination of insurgent bombs. By making people travel to the district governor’s office to submit a claim for damaged property, “in effect, you’re connecting the government to the people,” the senior officer said.

Because it is of course well known that nothing inspires warmer feelings towards the government than having your home destroyed by its troops and then making a long trek to a government office to try and get compensation. After all, wasn’t ‘destroying the village in order to save it’ a phenomenally successful strategy for the US in Vietnam?

Country Joe McDonald’s song at Woodstock seems depressingly apropos. (Language advisory)

The AP reports that WikiLeaks may release a new batch of documents this weekend.

Quick, do you know what the official terror alert level color is right now? You should because it hasn’t changed since 2006. The official color scale is on the left and the much more memorable one is on the right.

The system was a joke because it did not tell people anything useful. If the color changed, what implications did it have for the average person? How should their behavior change? No one knew. Furthermore, it quickly became reduced to only two colors, Bert and Ernie, but Ernie has been the sole possessor of the title for four years now, despite the failed Christmas bombing and Times Square plots that occurred during his reign.

The authorities must have been in a quandary because they were never going to lower the threat to Cookie Monster because that would not serve the purpose of keeping people in fear. Oscar was simply out of the question, dangled in front of people purely for window dressing, to give them the illusion that there would come a time when the war on terror was over. They could not also raise the level to Elmo because people might freak out thinking that the Armageddon had arrived.

Well, it looks like that system is on the way out. It not only will not be missed, its disappearance will not even be noticed.

Glenn Greenwald defends John Tyner against the attempt by The Nation to smear him for his protest against the TSA’s porno scanners and groping methods.

What is it with some people that they cannot form a united front with others on civil liberties issues unless the people protesting as well as who are being protested against fit with their broader agenda?

I myself do not care one whit if the protests against methods of the TSA are being fuelled and funded by right-wing ideologues and are meant to embarrass Obama. What has that got to do with whether the methods being used are good or not?

The claims by the government that the scanners deliver harmless amounts of radiation are being challenged by some scientists.

Adam Savage (of the TV show Mythbusters) describes how the TSA put him through the porno scanner but later once on the plane he realized that he had in his jacket two twelve inch long steel razor blades that he had brought home from work and forgotten about. (via Balloon Juice.)

One of the major thinkers on US foreign policy whose pre-9/11 book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire made the concept of ‘blowback’ a key element in understanding why the US is in such a predicament, died on Saturday.

Steve Clemons reflects on his legacy. He says that Johnson started out as an establishment figure and strong supporter of the Vietnam war but later became on of the biggest and most influential critics of the drive towards creating and sustaining the American empire. As Clemons says, “Many of Johnson’s followers and Chal himself think that American democracy is lost, that the republic has been destroyed by an embrace of empire and that the American public is unaware and unconscious of the fix.”

Via Juan Cole, I came across this rap video inspired by John Tyner’s memorable phrase “Don’t touch my junk!”

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Governments use the threats of defending against outside forces (such as terrorists) to pass laws and regulations that are oppressive and the public willingly goes along with them thinking that this will never affect them. But the real goal of governments is to have those laws available to use against its own citizens if they need to. A perfect example of this is the law permitting the government to detain indefinitely without trial any person they merely suspect, without evidence, to be a terrorist. This is an extraordinary power to give the government but people did so because they thought it would only be used against ‘the other’, such as foreigners.

But in the wake of the protests against the TSA’s porno scanners and groping methods, the TSA now says that anyone refusing to submit to either of these two intrusive procedures can be detained indefinitely and questioned until the government decides to release them.

The TSA procedures are not governed by law but are internal polices of the Department of Homeland Security, which has become like the infamous ‘secret police’ in authoritarian countries, given almost unlimited powers to harass its own citizens in the name of national security.

The ACLU has provided information on your rights and what you can do under the law. But it is limited. Only widespread protests and outrage can roll back the national security state.

Of all the absurd things associated with the TSA’s porno scans and groping security measures, the most absurd is that pilots are subjected to the same things. If they wanted to kill everyone on board, why would they even need a bomb or other weapon to hijack a plane? After all, the fact that are given control of the plane, are armed, and are inside the locked cockpit where no one can get at them suggests that they can do whatever damage they want without having to bring anything in from outside.

As a result of the recent outcry, it appears that even the TSA has realized that this is silly and pilots will no longer be subjected to such intrusive screening.