Peres’ gloomy prophecy came true on Jan. 25, when Hamas won a landslide victory in the Palestinian legislative election, ending four decades of exclusive rule by Fatah. Despite the fact that it is only a quasi state, with most of its putative territory under Israeli control, the Palestinian Authority put on a show of democracy unprecedented in the Arab world. For the first time ever in the region, the masses voted down the ruling party.

Several factors led to the electoral victory, which surprised Jerusalem, Washington and capitals in Europe, as well as the Hamas leadership itself. Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen), who succeeded Arafat after his death in November 2004, proved ineffective for a number of reasons. Lacking his predecessor’s charisma and status, the soft-spoken Abbas failed to win the hearts of his fellow Palestinians. A determined opponent of terror, Abbas won the admiration of President George W. Bush, but little tangible support from either the Americans or the Israelis. The Israeli government, which had previously hoped for Arafat’s demise, treated Abbas with indifference that verged on contempt. And last, but not least, Hamas ran a more successful campaign, built upon its proven record of delivering social services more effectively than the corrupt P.A. and taking credit for Israel’s decision to evacuate the Gaza Strip last summer.

Ignoring warnings from Israel, the Bush administration decided to push its Arab democratization doctrine, and pressured both Abbas and the Israelis to hold the Jan. 25 election regardless of its outcome.

The declared goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel, whose existence it sees as a desecration of holy Muslim land. The group has murdered hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings since 1994. It led the militant Palestinian opposition to the Oslo accords in the 1990s and the terror offensive during the recent intifada. The United States and the European Union consider it a terrorist group, boycotting its operatives and banning fundraising for its projects. When the Islamic party won the Palestinian municipal elections several months ago, in a forerunner to its current victory, its elected mayors faced an incommunicado policy from Israeli and foreign officials.

Given this record, the initial reaction to the Hamas legislative victory was hardly surprising. The election raised a wave of fear, in Israel and abroad, that whatever remained of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process was all but doomed. What is undeniable is that it created severe political uncertainty in the Palestinian Authority. Abbas, elected directly by a popular vote last year, is still the president and chief executive. He remains committed to peace and reconciliation with Israel, and is demanding full control over the P.A. security organs in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas will control the Parliament and therefore the vote of confidence for the next Palestinian cabinet, but it remains unclear whether the group will hold ministerial portfolios. Either way, the cabinet-forming process will take several weeks.

Clearly, Hamas’ decision to enter the political process — which it had rejected before — has been the most important development of the post-Arafat era. It broadens the basis of Palestinian political participation, which gives a better representation of the public will. And it raises a big question: Will Hamas’ new responsibility make it tamer and more moderate, or will the P.A. become more extreme — or will it be a combination of both? It is too early to tell, as all the relevant players are adjusting themselves to the new reality, and Hamas leaders are hinting at a de facto acceptance of Israel. Domestically, they must decide whether to pursue their religious agenda, aiming to create an Iran-style theocracy, or let go, allowing boys and girls to study in the same classrooms and young Ramallah women to wear their jeans.

Following the initial shock, the main effort of Israel, Western governments and Egypt has been to contain the problem. Israel’s acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, successfully lobbied the international community for presenting benchmarks to Hamas as preconditions for its acceptance. The three demands are disarming and renouncing violence, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and accepting all past Palestinian agreements with Israel, including the American-sponsored “road map” plan for Palestinian statehood. It remains unclear if Hamas would agree to change itself so dramatically, trading its ideology for international legitimacy and a de facto pardon for its past atrocities.

The P.A. election caught Israelis in the midst of their own campaign for the March 28 election. It has already become the most dramatic electoral campaign in the country’s history, following the hospitalization of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has remained unconscious since his Jan. 4 stroke. During his last months in office, Sharon revolutionized Israeli politics, first by pushing through the Gaza withdrawal, and later by leaving the ruling Likud Party and forming his new centrist party, Kadima. Sharon turned his back on his lifetime creations — he had been the architect of both the settlements and Likud back in the 1970s — and his sudden departure has left Israel with new borders and a new, untested political map. Kadima was initially seen as a fad, built around Sharon’s immense popularity and lacking a coherent vision. Nevertheless, his successor Olmert has succeeded in maintaining the new party’s considerable edge in the polls.

Olmert wanted to run a low-profile campaign, adhering to Sharon’s legacy and taking few risks. The Hamas victory, however, presented him with a first leadership test. To avoid domestic criticism, he had to respond without appearing weak, while being careful not to overreact and offend the international community, which has been supportive of Israel since Sharon’s Gaza pullout.

Predictably, Olmert’s personal and political rival, Likud chairman Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, was quick to exploit the upheaval on the other side. Warning that a “Hamastan,” a terrorist satellite of Iran, had been created near Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Netanyahu revised his campaign strategy to paint Olmert and Kadima as foolishly exposing the country to terrorists. The new Likud posters scream “Strong Against Hamas” with Netanyahu’s picture. The right-wing opposition blamed Olmert for the Hamas victory, because of his decision — under American pressure — to allow Palestinian voting in East Jerusalem, which Israel conquered in the 1967 war and considers its sovereign territory. Refusing the Jerusalem vote, argued the Likud, could have given Abbas an excuse to hold off the election.

Olmert chose a dual approach: using tough rhetoric (“Hamas will not be a partner,” not releasing tax revenues owed to the P.A.) for domestic consumption, while taking a more conciliatory tone (we must test Hamas’ behavior) in discussions with Washington, Brussels and Cairo. More than anything, this reaction was meant to buy time, and it paid off. A Channel 10/Haaretz poll, published Feb. 1, indicated that Kadima has maintained its leading position and that Likud did benefit from the Hamas victory.

Only one thing may tilt the balance: resumption of terror attacks in Israeli cities. People who board buses want to know they won’t be blown up by suicide bombers. Most Israeli analysts and security and intelligence officials believe that Hamas will try to show maturity, preparing for its new political role, rather than break the fragile cease-fire of the past year. Terror attacks are still carried out by smaller groups, notably Islamic Jihad, but Hamas, the strongest of the Palestinian militant groups, has kept quiet. “Hamas is showing more statesmanlike behavior and national responsibility since the election,” Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Cabinet on Sunday.

On Feb. 1, Olmert faced another leadership challenge, this time from West Bank settlers. The settlers were trying to prevent the demolishing of nine houses built on private Palestinian land in Amona, an illegal settlement outpost. The Israeli Supreme Court upheld an appeal by Peace Now, an anti-settlement group, and the government went on to remove the construction. Both Olmert and the settler leaders wanted confrontation, to strengthen their respective political positions. Olmert wanted to demonstrate authority, the settlers to regain popular support after their failure to derail the Gaza pullout. Unfortunately, the event turned out to be more violent than expected, with protesters throwing rocks at the police and being hit in return with heavy clubs. There were scores of wounded. But despite the outcome, the Amona incident is unlikely to affect the Israeli election. Olmert’s rivals are bound to support law enforcement and back the government. Netanyahu, who courts the settlers, kept quiet.

How will the Hamas victory influence post-election Israeli policies? Despite the notoriety of the Islamic group, the international community is not going to waive its demand that Israel end the occupation and evacuate more West Bank settlements. Olmert, the likely winner, supports a deep withdrawal and creation of a Palestinian state, in order to preserve the Jewish majority in Israel. “Setting the border” is Kadima’s top campaign issue. The Hamas victory will further strengthen the already strong Israeli inclination to forgo negotiations and determine the border unilaterally. Hamas is obviously not a partner for a final peace deal, but it may accept an interim arrangement, even if it is only tacit.

Other voices argue that future negotiations with Hamas could result in a partial deal or a prolonged cease-fire. They believe that Hamas represents the Palestinian popular mood and is showing better governance than the figurehead regime of Abu Mazen. The Re’ut Institute, a policy think tank, argues that a “working Hamastan” could be a lesser evil than the chaotic, dysfunctional Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

From a broader perspective, the Palestinian election marks a turning point in Middle East history. It is the beginning of a new era, the era of the masses. From now on, Arab public opinion must be taken into consideration, not just the views of the regional despotic regimes. Since its inception, Israel has favored dealing with Arab dictators who “put their house in order.” Even when less than friendly, they were predictable and easy to deal with. The peace deals with Egypt and Jordan, the Oslo process with Arafat and Abbas, and the delicate balance of power with Syria have all been based upon the power of the centralized regimes. Israel has been far less popular with the “Arab street.”

This reality is over. In all likelihood, and despite urgent efforts to contain the changes, the Palestinian example — and the previous Iraqi one — will be copied elsewhere in the region. From Israel’s, and America’s, viewpoints, the results could bring major headaches: regime changes in Egypt and Jordan, the mainstays of regional stability and pro-Americanism; or in Syria, with its stocks of chemical-tipped Scud missiles. In any case, Israeli policymakers will have to deal with Arab public opinion.

At this point, however, American and Israeli positions differ. The Bush administration is at least officially keen on promoting Arab democracy and public expression, viewing it as offering a long-term way out of the chronic instability and violence in the Middle East. Indeed, the Bush doctrine has been an engine of regional change in the past year, ever since the demonstrating crowds in Beirut pushed the Syrians out of Lebanon. Just how committed the Bush administration really is to its Mideast-democracy doctrine, especially now that the first results have blown up in its face, is debatable. However, Bush remains publicly committed to the policy.

For its part, the Israeli establishment views Bush’s call for democracy as an example of naive American idealism rather than prudent policy. Israelis are disillusioned about Arab democracy, either out of sheer arrogance toward their less developed neighbors or because they fear what it will result in. Since the shah of Iran fell in 1979, succeeded by a hardcore Islamic regime highly hostile to Israel, Israelis have seen regional democracy as a Pandora’s box. They argue that given the choice, the Arab masses will not elect the heirs of Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith, but the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini. The recent success of Islamic parties in Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and the Palestinian Authority supports this argument. Turkey, which is liberalizing to back its E.U. membership bid, offers the only example of a Western-minded Islamic ruling party, but Turkey is culturally and historically distinct from the Arab world.

As the P.A. elections approached and it became clear that Hamas was gaining, Sharon made a last-minute effort to derail the Palestinian vote. The Americans, however, refused to listen and forced Israel to pave the way for the election. Washington even rejected Abbas’ plea to wait. The outcome resembled the old cliché about the successful operation that killed the patient. The Palestinians received high marks from foreign observers for their conduct of the elections, but the results only complicated matters more.

As always in the Middle East, the revolutionary development was immediately followed by another “waiting period” — this time, until after the Israeli election and the forming of new cabinets in Jerusalem and Ramallah. For the time being, business will continue as usual. But the reverberations of the Hamas victory will determine the future direction of policies: toward negotiation or unilateralism, a period of calm or resumed fighting.

The newspaper account of the debate in The Hill just reinforced the Republican spin, highlighting the Democrats’ decision to make people spend more money on the hated TSA and downplaying the actual existing Republican alternative to the proposal, which was not “spend less on the hated TSA” but rather “raise money for the hated TSA by slashing needed aid to states.” The Democrats won, or “won,” and now they will earn the fruits of that victory: well-deserved scorn from everyone. And Ben Nelson (D-Troll Town) voted with the Republicans. (Though surely having users pay the fees for supposedly necessary security measures is perfectly conservative, isn’t it? Am I missing something here? I mean besides the fact that the two sides in this debate weren’t actually “liberal” and “conservative” but rather “people who want to come up with a way of paying for the oppressive and useless national security state” versus “people who want there to be an oppressive national security state but hate government spending on feeding and sheltering impoverished people.”)

I don’t know of anyone not employed by the TSA or some other arm of Homeland Security that believes the TSA does a good job and deserves its massive budget, but everyone in Washington apparently feels differently (and is terrified of being blamed for “voting to cut TSA funding” if there is another terrifying and deadly underwear bomber, of course). This is why everyone hates politics and Congress and Washington. This and Iraq. And the drug war.

The area was evacuated for two hours until a bomb squad determined that the device was not dangerous.

At about 2 a.m. Saturday, a police officer discovered Miyakawa on a ladder not far from where the first contraption was found. Police said he was tying a similar “I Love New York” bag to a public lamp post.

Miyakawa was charged with two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment, two counts of placing a false bomb or hazardous substance in the first degree, two counts of placing a false bomb or hazardous substance in the second degree, two counts of second-degree reckless endangerment and two counts of second-degree criminal nuisance.

A judge ordered him held pending a psychiatric evaluation. His lawyer, Deborah J. Blum, said Monday that she is filing for emergency relief to have Miyakawa released. A court date was set for June 21 to review the results of the evaluation.

“He’s still being held,” Blum said Monday. “I believe that it was a gross misunderstanding and other than that I don’t have any other comment.”

Miyakawa, who was born in Tokyo and is about 50 years old, has worked for a New York-based architect Rafael Vinoly for the last 20 years and also has an independent design practice.

Vinoly’s firm released a statement Monday praising Miyakawa for his “extraordinary brand of professionalism” and said he has been a mentor to generations of young architects.

“Takeshi is a fabulous human being and a person of extraordinary talent,” Vinoly said. “We hope this misunderstanding is cleared up as quickly as possible.”

New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement that the charges sounded “like a wild overreaction.”

“It’s hard to understand why a light-up bag in a tree would be treated as an attempted terrorist act unless there’s more to the story than has been reported in the press thus far,” she said.

In 2007, an artist touched off a terror scare in Boston by placing electronic devices around the city as part of a marketing stunt for Cartoon Network. The city closed bridges, roads and public transit before authorities realized the signs were not bombs.

On an average day, the NYPD receives nearly 100 reports of a suspicious package. Last year, there were more than 4,000 such reports. The number generally rises following any word of terror threats in New York and around the world.

The concourse checkpoint needs to be there.  Just the same, chances are good that once an adversary has made it to the airport, he or she has engineered a way to outwit the system.  And spend as we might, there will always be a way to outwit the system.  ”Even if our technology is good enough to spot it,” said California Rep. Adam Schiff, commenting on the news of the latest underwear plot, “technology is still in human hands and we are inherently fallible.”

That’s one of the smartest things I’ve heard a politician utter in some time.

Getting a handle on this takes us all the way back to Sept. 11, 2001, the day that everything, and yet really nothing, changed.  I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: Conventional wisdom holds that the 19 hijackers exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling box cutters onto four Boeing jetliners. But conventional wisdom is wrong. What the men actually exploited was a weakness in our mind-set — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings and how they were expected to unfold. (In prior years, a hijacking meant a diversion, perhaps to Havana or Beirut, with hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were accordingly trained in the concept of “passive resistance.”) The presence of box cutters on 9/11 was merely incidental. The men could have used almost anything — a deadly sharp can be fashioned from a broken first-class dinner plate or a ballpoint pen — particularly when coupled with the bluff of having a bomb. The success of their plan relied not on hardware but on the element of surprise. It wasn’t a failure of airport security that allowed those men to hatch their takeover scheme. It was a failure of national security — a breakdown of communication and oversight at the FBI and CIA level.

To put it succinctly: The success of the 9/11 attacks had almost nothing to do with airport security at all — a great and painful irony, of course, to any passenger forced to endure the checkpoint rigmarole in 2012.

Not that frontline guards don’t play a deterrent role.  And, in the opinions of some, the plot uncovered in Yemen underscores the value of full-body scanners — those controversial walk-through machines that allow guards to look beneath a passenger’s clothing. It’s a compelling argument, but the way in which these scanners have — and have not — been deployed is apt to make some of us cynical. For instance, the vast majority of body scanners are found at U.S. domestic airports. Overseas, where a bomb is far likelier to originate, they are rare. Is this really about safety, we wonder, or is it about billions of dollars going into the coffers of the companies contracted to build these machines?

And although the scanners are effective, where does the arms race end?  Not long ago, the idea that passengers would be marched through body scanners and photographed naked before being allowed to board an airplane, would have seemed outrageous. Yet here we are. What might be next?  The stubborn truth is, we can turn airports into fortresses if we want (in some respects we’re well along that path), yet we’ll never be entirely safe. Airport screening alone, no matter how thorough, how expensive, and how technologically advanced, will never defeat a relentless enough, resourceful enough adversary intent on downing a plane.

That isn’t capitulation, it’s reality.  And acknowledging this reality would go a long way toward warding off panic and overreaction when the next successful attack occurs.

Regrettably, too, we often forget that commercial air travel has long been a target of terrorist extremists.  The 1970s and 1980s in particular were, as I like to describe them, a Golden Age of Air Crimes, comparatively rife with bombings, hijackings and other deadly assaults against airplanes and airports. Over one five-year span between 1985 and 1989 we can count at least six high-profile terrorist attacks, including the horrific bombings of Pan Am 103 and UTA 772; the bombing of an Air India 747 over the North Atlantic that killed 329 people; and the incredible saga of TWA Flight 847.  And let’s not forget what might have been, such as the so-called “Project Bojinka,” the 1994 scheme masterminded by Ramzi Yousef (nephew of Kalid Sheikh Mohammad), in which impossible-to-detect (at the time) liquid explosives were to be used to simultaneously destroy a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately the plot unraveled and Yousef was arrested.

While we can argue, quite persuasively, that many of the current-day security measures have done little if anything to make us safer, we’ve nevertheless introduced measures that have been useful and effective, from explosives screening of checked luggage to the sorts of trans-border partnerships that broke up the most recent plot from Yemen. Whether in spite of, or because of, the attention we’ve lavished on All Things Terrorism, the past decade has seen fewer attacks against commercial air travel than any since the 1950s.What we need to remember, though, is that our success has had more to do with the security measures we don’t see than those taking place in plain view. And if our luck is to hold, we need to better rationalize and streamline our entire approach to airport security. For instance, if we’re going to have those body scanners, let’s put them where they’re needed. If this requires negotiating with foreign authorities whose airports are beyond TSA’s jurisdiction, so be it. Meanwhile, here at home, TSA’s one-size-fits-all approach, in which every single person who flies is seen as a potential threat, is simply unsustainable in a country where close to 2 million people fly daily. Things like taking snow globes from children, haggling over tiny container sizes, or confiscating a dessert fork from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot (it happened to me) serve no useful purpose whatsoever. On the contrary, they divert valuable time and resources away from the things that could make us safer.  Let’s scale back that concourse Kabuki and retrain guards in the finer points of a more sensible, risk-based assessment of passengers and their belongings.

And lastly, if only as an aside, let’s behold for a moment the term “underwear bomb.”  That was the operative phrase in literally hundreds of articles and broadcasts over the past several days, and nowhere did it raise a snicker.  What does it say about our country, I wonder, that such a preposterous expression is instantly understood and effectively taken for granted?

Strange times indeed.

This should be our Nuremburg, the defining trial of the 9/11 era and a fitting coda to it.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government appears to be on the verge of squandering this opportunity, and with it, the best, and perhaps only, chance for the public to understand not only how the attacks came to be, but why Mohammed waged a relentless war against America and how we might stop the next would-be terrorist mastermind.

The problems lie within the reformed military-tribunal system that the Obama administration put in place after losing its fight for a civilian trial in New York. Political compromises have resulted in a flawed military commissions process that from outward appearances is not only rigged against the defense, but hyper-choreographed, censored and hermetically sealed.

“The process is designed to achieve a conviction, and to do it with as little revelation as humanly possible, but with the veneer of due process and justice,’’ said one participant who said restrictive gag orders prohibited him from talking publicly. “You’re talking about the most heinous crime ever, and we’re going to afford them less due process, less discovery, less of everything than we would the guy who shoplifted a pack of gum from CVS.’’

Obama administration officials say their reformed military commissions system is a vast improvement over the Bush administration’s version, which Obama moved to shut down on his first day in office in 2009.

Defense lawyers disagree, and insist they have been hamstrung in their efforts to mount the kind of aggressive defense needed to do their jobs including full and unfettered access to evidence, witnesses and even the accused themselves.

Four of the five legal teams had so few of their key players in place in recent months that they did not file the “mitigation submissions’’ that the government said it needed to decide which of the five men should face the death penalty and other key issues, such as whether to try them together or individually. They recently filed motions asking that the charges be thrown out because of fatal flaws in the system, which they say make it impossible for them to defend their clients.

“It’s window dressing,’’ Mohammed’s defense lawyer, David Nevin, said of the government’s improvements. “I am not all satisfied that it is a fair process. In fact, it is not a fair process.’’

Many of the defense lawyers have quit out of frustration or for other personal reasons stemming from the many delays in the process. Only a few have been there long enough to even begin to understand their clients’ case, not to mention the convoluted military commission process.

And they say they will be unable to effectively challenge confessions obtained when their clients were coercively interrogated in the CIA’s black site prisons, if they can broach the subject at all. This is important for the four men accused of helping Mohammed with the logistics of the plot. Several claim they have been wrongly accused, tortured into confessing, or both.

It is also important with regard to Mohammed, who confessed to dozens of plots while being waterboarded 183 times, and has said he may plead guilty even before the trial begins. Few U.S. counterterrorism officials believe all of his often boastful confessions, and it is important for the public to hear what, exactly, evidence the government has with regard to what he did and didn’t do, and whom he might have been protecting.

The team of Defense and Justice Department officials overseeing the military commission process, and the presiding judge, should quickly address the defense lawyers’ complaints, or a proceeding that some call “The Trial of the Century’’ will be delayed further by legal wrangling — and forever tainted by accusations of being unfair.

A full, fair and transparent trial, above all, will benefit the public. There is much the public doesn’t know about Mohammed, including the details of how he devised the plot, convinced bin Laden to let him do it and then orchestrated it “from A to Z,’’ to use his own words. It was Mohammed who masterminded dozens of other plots and attacks, some while staying a step ahead of the largest-ever criminal manhunt.

Mohammed, not bin Laden, was the one who traveled the world as a kind of “Johnny Appleseed’’ of terrorism, establishing alliances and creating a network of cells and lieutenants that in some cases remains today. And it was Mohammed who personally recruited young jihadist prospects much like a baseball scout, many of them Westerners, tapping into their grievances to turn them to his cause.

The U.S. government has kept the details of what Mohammed did — and how and why he did it — hidden in its most classified files since his capture in Pakistan nine years ago. The government should set the record straight on that, because there is an important lesson to be learned from the largely untold tale of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: It isn’t some monolithic group like al-Qaida that poses a continuing threat, it’s the one intelligent and energetic person who can emerge from nowhere and orchestrate a 9/11 while the world focuses elsewhere.

To that end, the government should declassify as much evidence as possible, and explain how it obtained it. It should call numerous witnesses to testify, especially since the one who has been publicly identified, Majid Khan, claims he was tortured while in CIA custody overseas.

Instead of limiting access to a few closed-circuit TVs, it should consider televising the proceedings. It should ensure that censorship is minimized, and used only to protect intelligence sources and methods, not to save the government from embarrassment. And it should let Mohammed and the others testify at length on their behalf if they so desire.

By doing so, the Obama administration will be able to say it did its best to put on the kind of civilian trial it has wanted all along, and one with a similar outcome to that of the al Qaida members charged with blowing up two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

Those of us who witnessed that trial in Manhattan in 2001 saw the defendants squirm in their chairs as prosecutors introduced mountains of evidence against them. We saw eyewitnesses point the finger at the accused, and surviving victims glare at them from the pews.

We heard from the terrorists themselves, and learned a lot about why they did it, about how terrorist networks operate and about what might be done to stop people like them. And when the jury convicted them, there was no question that justice was done.

Five young men from Cleveland are now in jail, accused of plotting to “blow up a bridge in the Cleveland area,” according to the FBI’s triumphant press release/criminal complaint. As is always the case with FBI terror stings, the “sting” part involved the bureau’s informant/agent provocateur mostly inventing the plot the accused have now been arrested for. In this case, the five planned to detonate smoke bombs as a distraction as they “topple[d] financial institution signs atop high rise buildings in downtown Cleveland.” But the informant (as usual, a sketchy unnamed character with a checkered past) strongly pushed the group to seriously consider different, more extreme plots. At the end, some or all of them were going to plant C-4 on the Route 82 Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

So what was initially a political action aimed at financial institutions somehow morphed into a supposed attempt to destroy or damage a piece of publicly owned infrastructure in a national park. Anarchists sure do hate bridges, and parks, I guess. (No parliament of men has the authority to designate which spaces are “national parks”! The whole world is the worker’s national park!)

The FBI’s affadavit suggests that there was never actually a serious “plot.” The gang tossed around the idea of “taking out” a bridge in order to stop people from getting to work, but they also thought maybe they could use their (pretend) C4 on a Klan rally, or a neo-Nazi organization, or an oil well, or the Federal Reserve Bank. They eventually decided to maybe sink a ship. All of their many plans were super serious and well-thought out. (“To prevent capture, he suggested getting tacks that they could throw out of the back of a car if they get in a chase.”) Eventually they settled on the bridge thing, sort of, and bought fake IEDs from the guy they already suspected was a cop.

In other words, these are a bunch of dumbasses even by the standards of amateur “black bloc” dumbasses. Do you know how I know these morons weren’t serious? They planned to download the Anarchist Cookbook and follow its notoriously awful instructions. Every experienced anarchist knows that the Feds have a mole in your group house, but these guys were mainly concerned with having someone’s “hacker friend” explain to them how bitcoins work. Without the FBI’s intervention the most damage these idiots would’ve ever caused is a broken Starbucks window. So thank god they’re off the streets, and congrats to the FBI for getting this tale of dangerous, bomb-planting anarchists onto the news broadcasts on the day of Occupy’s big May Day action.

(At least the Feds are branching out from only targeting Muslims in these ridiculous “stings.” Some day all Americans, regardless of creed or color, will have their circle of friends secretly infiltrated by a paid informant.)