Via Mark Lisanti and FilmDrunk, if you guessed "terrorists," than you guessed right. Also, you're boring.

Couldn't they have saved this one for someone better? I mean, yes, listen, people who kill other people are shitty and suck, but this is just great, like, artful-great. Like, okay, if NYDN publisher Mort Zuckerman were on his deathbed, this would've been awesome. If their Boris and Natahsa-esque gossip columnist Rush & Molloy were put on trial for being communists, again: incredible. But to waste this one on terrorists just seems a little, I don't know, blase?

Anyway. We can't help but see potential in you, Post. To whoever guessed correctly, take a bow, you get nothing except the knowledge that you're an expert of New York Post headlines and/or you still have a job at the New York Post. Mazel.

The General Services Administration contracted an expensive architecture firm to design a new border crossing station up in some godforsaken part of far northeastern New York State, as part of their "let's make government buildings look nice again like they did in the '30s" program. The centerpiece of the station design: "glossy yellow, 21-foot-high letters spelling 'United States.'" Sounds neat!

But because of 9/11, we cannot have nice things. Less than a month after the station opened, DHS began removing the fancy sign.

"There were security concerns," said Kelly Ivahnenko, a spokeswoman for the customs agency. "The sign could be a huge target and attract undue attention. Anything that would place our officers at risk we need to avoid."

Yes, right, of course. Terrorists aimlessly driving through rural Ontario may stumble across the border station, see the giant sign advertising what nation lies across the Saint Laurence River, and remember just how much they hate our freedom. Then they will blow up the sign, which is an internationally recognized symbol of American pride, as it is some letters spelling out the name of our country.

As Times architecture writer Nicolai Ouroussoff says:

In fact, the sign itself demands multiple readings. Unlike the Freedom Tower, whose name could be interpreted as a jingoistic expression of America's post-Sept. 11 arrogance, Smith-Miller & Hawkinson's "United States" sign is politically neutral. Its meaning is constantly changing for the viewer. It communicates openness and possibility, not aggression.

It is hard to see how values like those would make any building a target. They may even seem like something worth defending. They certainly put into question the thinking behind Customs and Border Protection's decision. It is as if the government is attuned to architecture's symbolic power, but unable to decipher its meanings.

Or it's as if the national security arm of our government is just kinda dumb?

Vox Pop, described as "a coffee-house, a bookstore and a publishing company" on its website, is a popular hangout for Brooklyn lefties who love free wi-fi, poetry readings and open-mic nights (and what Brooklyn lefty doesn't?) whose financial troubles were detailed in the New York Times back in March. Vox Pop's owner, Debi Ryan, said that the statue was stolen on June 21 and that she, like a typical pansy-ass liberal, is "scared" after seeing the hilariously amateurish video showing the blindfolded statue receiving a beheading as "We Don't Want Your Freedom" and "Death to America" flash across the screen repeatedly in Atari-esque font.

We didn't want to believe it could happen, but it was only a matter of time before the terrorists struck a coffee shop in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope has to be next, because there are few things that terrorists hate more than lesbians and strollers. Bet on it.

via Animal NY

Why would any good, patriotic American say such a thing in a discussion about border protection? Because all of our politicians crave is the approval of Europeans and to hold on to their cushy jobs and it's going to take an attack from Bin Laden to wake America up to the fact that our leaders need to use "as much violence as necessary" to firmly establish our place in the world. Meanwhile Beck just sat there nodding his approval.

Yeah.

The neoconservatives aren't even trying to hide their pulling for such things anymore. And these are the same people who revel in cloaking their deranged beliefs in patriotism, mind you.

Happy 4th of July weekend everybody!

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Reports the LA Times:

Accused Sept. 11 organizer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he gave false information to the CIA even after undergoing punishing bouts of interrogation, according to documents made public Monday.

Mohammed made the assertion during hearings held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the militant leader was transferred in 2006 after being held at secret CIA sites since his capture in 2003.

"I make up stories," Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA that concerned the location of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

"Where is he? I don't know. Then he torture me," Mohammed said. "Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area.' "

We anxiously await Dick Cheney's comments on this as soon as he finishes sipping that glass of puppy's blood.

Detainee Says He Lied to CIA in Harsh Interrogations [LA Times]

His name is Ahmed Ghailani and he's the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner to be shipped out to stand trial here in the US. They brought him to NYC, the only place where all the residents and their elected representatives are not scared to death to have a jail-withered foreigner locked in their maximum-security prison cell, where he might spark another terrorist plot amongst his cellmates, if he had any.

Ghailani is charged with helping to build one of the bombs that blew up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and US officials say he was once Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard. Whether he's convicted or not, he should probably leave New York City as quickly as possible. He'll be okay if he can make it to a Red State, they're terrified of him there.
[Pic: AP]

Dr. Joseph Booker, ladies and gentlemen, and the good Christian men who are protesting his clinic:

Booker, 65, remembers when there were six. He worked at another Mississippi clinic from 1989 to 2003, then moved to this one. Opponents have picketed his home in a nearby town, he said, and knocked on his neighbors' doors to denounce him as a "baby killer."

One of the regular clinic protesters, C. Roy McMillan, was a signer of the Defensive Action Statement, which asserts that killing an abortion doctor is justifiable homicide because it saves the lives of the unborn. Scott Roeder, accused of killing Tiller, told friends he agreed.

Even Planned Parenthood has given up on Mississippi. And next up on the pro-life agenda (besides murdering Dr. Booker, obv) is "a law requiring clinic staff members to report the identities of the sexual partners of pregnant underage girls," because these people are actually seriously monsters.

[Photo: WAPT-TV]

Yes and with cookies. See, because he's diabetic! So it was cruel to force-feed him cookies, right? It got him to talk!

No, not really.

"The most successful interrogation of an al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or ‘walling' and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies."

It's really weird that we even need to have a debate about whether or not torture "works" (while simultaneously denying that we tortured still, right?), as if that was the relevant question, but, you know, Obama wants Guantanamo prisoners to hug your teenagers or something, so whatever. America!

How to Make Terrorists Talk [TIME]

President George W. Bush ducked a shoe thrown at him during a press conference in the Iraqi prime minister’s office.
Bush wasn’t hit by the shoe, which sailed over his head. The president shrugged and said “I’m OK” after the incident in Baghdad today.

The ungrateful Iraqi fanatic who fired the shoe was reportedly "wrestled to the ground and taken away." Professional American freedom-extractors based at Abu Ghraib are doubtless convincing him of the error of his ways even now.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Bush said. He said it showed free speech in a democracy.

That is literally the entire story.

Update: The AP identifies the shoe-thrower as "Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt," while the New York Times reports that he shouted "This is a farewell kiss, dog," before security nabbed him.

And here is a picture of Muntadar in mid-toss. Still waiting for the video to surface.

And here's the video:

Meanwhile, over at the BBC, they've put together a video with multiple angles of the shoe attack.

Ayers told GMA that, yes, he knew Obama from way back, and yes, he was on a board, and all of this is public, and thousands of other Chicagoans knew Obama just as well as he did, and that the entire issue is bullshit, all of which is patently true. Still...

It's now clear that Hussein Obama is little more than a Manchurian Candidate who has squirmed his way into the White House only to take direct orders from radical latte-sipping college professor Ayers! Even more clearly, Ayers is a canny businessman for someone so opposed to the capitalist power structure. Instead of selling 35 copies of his book a year to his own students as required reading, he's now poised to sell thousands to various right wing lunatics who will buy it just to "preserve the evidence" of his Obama ties for use in the coming race war. Good for him.

The move seems more politics than pragmatics. Most Al Qaeda videos are posted outside YouTube. LiveLeak has plenty. Lieberman's been after YouTube since May, but the Google-owned site didn't update its community guidelines until the day before 9/11's seventh anniversary, at a time when Al Qaeda's momentum is fading.

Look, I'm as jingoistic as the next guy. But if Lieberman wants to fight Islamic militants on YouTube, what he needs isn't a ban, but a countercampaign: More clips that show insurgents missing the target and running from U.S. troops. I'll bet there's a lot more such footage out there.

The AP obtained classified government documents detailing mock disasters in the Homeland Security Department's "Cyber Storm" wargame. DHS runs the tests with "with help from the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department, CIA, National Security Agency and others," in order to make sure all the agencies are prepared for the inevitable blogger war.

The scenarios all sound like rejected plots to potential Die Hard sequels—what if everyone on the No Fly List showed up to airports across the nation all at once! Some of them might have German accents! But the villains aren't limited to campy British character actors: threats include lowly web scriveners "and even reporters." We are the enemy! We're all pawns of mysterious "anti-globalization hackers!"

While these foolish bloggers keep revealing the locations of deadly trains (maybe they have reliable info from Sam Lufti that Britney Spears is aboard?), an unnamed "major news network" refuses to reveal its sources to the government. And then the stock market tumbles and people panic!

But don't worry—it was only a game. Our precious series of tubes was not harmed.

The exercise had no impact on the real Internet. Officials said they were careful to simulate attacks using only isolated computers, working from basement offices at the Secret Service's headquarters in downtown Washington.

A sequel to this hit wargame, Cyber Storm 2, is scheduled to launch on an invite-only basis this March. With time and training, the government may soon be able to assure the nation that it has done everything in its power to permanently secure all America's base.

And hopefully, citizen, you'll think twice before you tumblog sensitive information.

Trains, Bloggers Are Threats in Drill [AP]

They're good at it. "When they target children, they do everything any commercial advertiser would do. They use comic books, storytelling, graphics, movies, competitions, prize-winning and so on," Weimann told WebProNews. So the only question here is why your marketing team isn't learning Arabic, logging on, and taking some serious notes. If they don't improve their viral skills soon, the terrorists will ... no, sorry. I just can't type the words.

(Photo by AP)

A concerned reader noticed, leafing through Wired Magazine, that one of the role-playing terrorists in a story on military training camps resembled a local Valley PR figure. Could outspoken blogger Jeremy Pepper be an Iraqi collaborationist?

The evidence seemed damning. Pepper is known for popping up suddenly at gatherings full of self-important Valley figures with a backpack similar to the one the man above sports.

But Pepper's defense comes in the form of a recent self-portrait. Like any good Valley geek, and unlike his lookalike, Pepper never shows up without his iPod headphones securely in place.

The only terror this man's spreading is the tinny leaked sound of his Black Eyed Peas mp3s.

Baghdad, USA [Wired]
Pop! PR Jots [Pepper's blog]

Because if we can't see our garbage — and the occasional sample of homeless-person shit — then we're letting the terrorists win.