terrorist
GRITtv: Lawrence Wright: Mismatched Narratives on the War
"We're pressed, but we're not going to be destroyed by Al-Qaeda. Only we can do that," says Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. The longtime journalist, screenwriter, playwright, and New Yorker staff writer has been combining his reporting with theater and film for some time now, and his most recent project, My Trip to Al-Qaeda, premieres on HBO September 11. This documentary, made with former GRITtv guest Alex Gibney, traces his journey in researching the terrorist group. Wright joins Laura in studio for a conversation about his process from journalism to theater and screenwriting (including The Siege, with Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis), objectivity in reporting, the U.S.'s rising Islamophobia and his newest project, a one-man show about his experiences reporting in Gaza.
Email this pageGRITtv: The F Word: Looking Closer at Joseph Stack
Joseph Stack -- remember him? He's the guy who crashed his plane into an Internal Revenue Service building in Austin last week. Fifty-three years old, a Vietnam veteran, Stack killed one IRS manager, Vernon Hunter, and wounded 13 more before killing himself, but you'd be forgiven for forgetting his name, because he largely fell out of the news in the days afterward. That's not so say there hasn't been howling. When Stack's daughter told ABC's Good Morning America that she considered her father a hero there was outrage, and reasonably so. Facebook fan pages praising Stack have shown up with links to right-wing, so-called patriot groups and at the CPAC conservative organizing meeting in DC more than one GOP member referred sympathetically to Stack's anti-government views ... Most of what Stack has to say's not mad. Or incoherent. Does is justify killing? Not at all, but should the extreme right be the only ones responding? I'd say not. Stack's was a lone act -- and let's hope it stays that way, but - as after 9-11- asking why is again worth doing... We have choices about how to respond. Denial's only one of them. -- Laura Flanders
GRITtv: Can We Scan Ourselves to Safety?
"There's money to be made and there are people out there who are going to say it can be done. And, yeah, it's techie and sexy and sounds good." That's Bruce Schneier quoted in a piece by Liliana Segura at AlterNet, talking about new airport security technology. In the wake of the failed underpants bombing attempt, new rules have been added, and discussion has ramped up of the use of full-body scanners and other invasive technologies. We ask Segura and Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent if we can scan ourselves to safety, or if this is just more security theater designed to get us to give up our civil liberties.
GRITtv: Got Docs: Behind The Mask
As the federal government ratchets up various terrorist enforcement statutes, environmental and animal rights activists have quickly complained that laws originally intended for cartoon villains with weapons of mass destruction are being applied to treesitters working to prevent the wholesale logging of old growth woods or, in the case of this week's Got Docs, the nighttime activists freeing animals from science labs. "Behind the Mask" sells itself as "The story of the people who risk everything to save animals." Check out the story.
