Terrorism

Post 9/11 Strategy: Invent Terrorists In The US

June 13, 2014 Stephen Downs and Kathy Manley, www.projectsalam.org Educate! 9/11, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Police abuse, Terrorism

This study focuses on post-9/11 claims by the U.S. government that it keeps the county safe from terrorism by arresting hundreds of so-called “terrorists” who were about to strike the U.S. until the FBI foiled their plots. In fact, this study shows that there have been remarkably few actual terrorism threats to this country in the last decade. The study shows that the war on terror has been largely a charade designed to make the American public believe that a terrorist army is loose in the U.S., when the truth is that most of the people convicted of terrorismrelated crimes posed no danger to the U.S. and were entrapped by a preventive strategy known as preemptive prosecution. The theme of the study links preemptive prosecution to the metaphor of “lawfare,” the use of the law as a weapon of war, in this case the war on terror.

Activists Oppose Separate Justice For Muslims

June 4, 2014 Aviva Stahl, www.thenation.com Resist! Civil Rights, Criminal Justice and Prisons, LGBTQ, Muslim, Terrorism

On a miserable Monday evening in early April, when most people were scuttling for the nearest subway, a motley group was huddled before an unremarkable grey building in lower Manhattan, declaiming into the rain. “[In 2006] we fought for Shifa’s safety, we fought for the Sadequee family’s safety, we fought for all of our safety,” said a woman standing in front of the crowd. “[Today] we must still come together across religious and spiritual traditions, across race and nations, across sexuality, across our beliefs, for our collective safety and livelihood.” The woman was Cara Page, executive director of the Audre Lorde Project and a prominent black queer activist; “Shifa” was Ehsanul “Shifa” Sadequee, a young man convicted of terrorism-related charges five years ago. The two had little obvious in common, but Page had been in Atlanta at the time of his trial and a member of the Free Shifa campaign, a coalition of supporters who argued that his prosecution and detention were unjust. It was proof, they said, that the inhumane detention of “War on Terror” suspects has occurred on American soil, too. Years later, most of the world had moved on from Sadequee’s story, but Page, like the others bundled around her, had not.

Covert US Military Training Goes To Africa

June 3, 2014 William R. Polk, www.truth-out.org Educate! Africa, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism

New US plans for training security forces in four African countries recall similar programs around the world, which often ended in the hand-picked trainees slaughtering civilians or staging military coups. With everyone’s attention focused on the European elections or President Barack Obama’s speech at West Point or the Ukraine, a story by Eric Schmitt in The New York Times on Tuesday may not have caught your attention. I believe, however, that it provides an insight into some of the major problems of American foreign policy. What Mr. Schmitt reports is that the U.S. has set up covert programs to train and equip native teams patterned on their instructors, the U.S. Army Delta Force, in several African countries. The program was advocated by Michael A. Sheehan who formerly was in charge of special operations planning in the Department of Defense and is now, according to Mr. Schmitt, holder of the “distinguished chair at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.”

Pentagon Bracing For Public Dissent Over Climate And Energy Shocks

May 29, 2014 Nafeez Ahmed, www.theguardian.com Resist! Activism, Climate Change, Pentagon, PRISM, Surveillance, Terrorism

Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis - or all three. Just last month, unilateral changes to US military laws formally granted the Pentagon extraordinary powers to intervene in a domestic "emergency" or "civil disturbance": "Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances." Other documents show that the "extraordinary emergencies" the Pentagon is worried about include a range of environmental and related disasters.

Did Government And Corporations Plan Sniper Fire On Houston Occupy?

May 6, 2014 David Lindorff, www.thiscantbehappening.net Resist! Occupy, police brutality, Terrorism

Listen to Dave Lindorff explain on Santa Barbara radio KCSB's Radio Occupy program how the federal government, in collusion with state and local police, and possibly with private bank and oil company security firms, planned to use "suppressed sniper fire" to assassinate the leaders of Occupy Houston, and perhaps also the leaders of other Occupy Movement actions around the country. Drawing on classified FBI and Homeland Security documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice through the Freedom of Information Act, Lindorff tells Radio Occupy host Kathy Swift how the Homeland Security Department under the Obama administration coordinated the national crackdown that crushed the Occupy Movement, and how it nearly led to a campaign of assassination against this peaceful movement that in 2011 swept the nation. He also notes that the FBI, so quick to boast about the 40-plus alleged "terror" plots it has disrupted since 9-11, has never made a prosecution or arrest in this Houston terror plot to kill Occupy leaders, about which its Houston office wrote in a memo to FBI national headquarters. To listen to part I of this interview, got to Radio Occupy. (Part II will be available next week on this site.)

Full Show: Disband The NSA

April 24, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Kevin Zeese, NSA, Terrorism, Torture

The Pulitzer Prize for public service, among the most prestigious awards in journalism, was awarded to The Washington Post and Guardian U.S. for their articles based on National Security Agency documents leaked by the former government contractor Edward Snowden. Snowden released astatement, which read in part: (The Pulitzer decision) “is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government. We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop what the world now recognizes was work of vital public importance.” In stark contrast to the work of vital public important is the overwhelming majority of content produced by the main stream media; one that demonizes anyone who questions the right and might of the American Empire to do whatever it deems necessary to expand its imperial reach by any means necessary.

White-Washing White Terrorism

April 21, 2014 Ajamu Baraka, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Terrorism

Overland Park, a city of fewer than 200,000 in the heartland of the U.S. just south of Kansas City, is an unlikely setting for a terrorist attack. But on April 13, Frazier Glenn Cross, aka Frazier Glenn Miller, brought terror to Overland Park. With the intention to “kill him some Jews,” Miller, former Grand Dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and FBI informant showed up with weapons in hand at a Jewish community center and a retirement home and murdered three Christians whom he mistook as Jewish. While the authorities needed “more investigation” regarding Miller’s motive, the national media made the obvious connection characterizing the attack as a hate crime. But neither the media nor the authorities dared to call it what it was – a terrorist attack. For Miller, there was no ambiguity. Shouting “Heil Hitler” from the back of a police car, his intentions, and motivations were made clear. His was a political act with a political meaning that at its core was meant to not just intimidate, but terrorize a whole community. Strangely, however, when it comes to acts carried out by the racist, radical right, the media and state authorities seem loath to characterize them as acts of terror.

A Shadow Government Controls America

February 24, 2014 Mike Lofgren, Moyers & Company readersupportednews.org Educate! Terrorism

Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called "groupthink," the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town-s cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

British Government Interferes With Press Freedom to Detain David Miranda

February 19, 2014 Ryan Devereaux www.firstlook.org Educate! Glenn Greenwald, Government, NSA, Terrorism

The government argued that it had to intercept the material Miranda was suspected of carrying, lest it fall into the wrong hands. Miranda’s attorneys, meanwhile, said that if the government wanted the Snowden documents, it should have put in an application to a judge prior to the stop. Attorney Mathew Ryder said the government was appealing to “doomsday scenarios” rather than responsibly considering whether the terrorism act had been proportionately applied. Tuesday’s decision found the judges on the side of the government. Lord Justice Laws, with whom the two other judges concurred, wrote that it was clear the authorities stopped Miranda to “ascertain the nature of the material he was carrying.” He added that schedule 7 was “capable of covering the publication or threatened publication … of stolen classified information which, if published, would reveal personal details of members of the armed forces or security and intelligence agencies, thereby endangering their lives.”

Obama DOJ’s New Abuse of State-Secrets Privilege Revealed

February 17, 2014 Murtaza Hussain, www.firstlook.org Educate! FBI, Terrorism

For nine years, the U.S. government refused to let a Stanford PhD student named Rahinah Ibrahim back in the country after putting her on the no-fly list for no apparent reason. For eight years, U.S. government lawyers fought Ibrahim’s request that she be told why. Last April, despite his promise in 2009 to do so only in only the most extreme cases, Attorney General Eric Holder tried to block Ibrahim’s case by asserting the state secrets privilege, declaring under penalty of perjury that the information she wanted “could reasonably be expected to cause significant harm to national security.” Last week, a federal judge publicly revealed the government’s explanation for Ibrahim’s long ordeal: an FBI agent had “checked the wrong box,” resulting in her falling under suspicion as a terrorist. Even when the government found and corrected the error years later, they still refused to allow Ibrahim to return to the country or learn on what grounds she had been banned in the first place

Now, The War On . . .

November 21, 2013 Jodie Gummow, www.alternet.org Educate! Arts, Humor, Terrorism

A new campaign entitled, ‘ War on Irrational Fear’, launched by progressive ad agency, Incitement Design, aims to show Americans that our ongoing obsession with domestic terrorism is a costly and harmful distraction, which has been greatly exaggerated. According to its creators, the American media and elected officials talk about terrorism on a daily basis. However, when scrutinized, the actual death toll from terrorism in the United States is surprisingly small with an average of 4.6 American deaths per year from domestic terrorism in the last five years. The campaign puts a satirical spin on the “war on terror” through fact-based research and web video graphics which, according to Robert Arnow, campaign founder and director at Incitement Design, was inspired by Edward Snowden’s NSA mass surveillance revelations: “Snowden risked his liberty to inform the public about the illegal and immoral spying that was, and still is, being directed against innocent Americans. But almost no one in the media or government has addressed the elephant in the room: the data shows that domestic terrorism is simply not a big enough threat to justify the enormous sacrifice of public resources and liberty we’re making in its name"

Government’s Definition Of ‘Terrorist’ Encompasses Practically Everybody

September 28, 2013 Staff RT, www.youtube.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, NDAA, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism

According to the United States Department of State, "no one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance" within the U.S. government. And what constitutes a terrorist is rather expansive, as Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) explains. The NDAA gives the government power to indefinitely detain someone who has an "association" with terrorism. Is a terrorist just someone who is dangerous? Rand Paul says some of the criteria for defining a terrorist include having seven days more of food, owns multiple weapons, pays in cashm has changed the color of hair. The Department of Justice includes items like keeping records on computers, carries video cameras, maps, hair dyes in your combs. Even former White House Chief of Staff Rham Emanuel meets the criteria.

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