I haven’t seen this news splashed across the front and home pages of America’s media as much as I would say, if the bad guys were Muslims, but I was happy to see it here. Seems America’s real terrorists are at it again out to wreck mayhem and sew dissension and chaos as far and wide as they can. In the case of the terrorists mentioned below, targeted Muslims and anyone who was against Israel (?) and I’ve got to wonder were they able to make contact with members of the Jewish community as the article below implies and what was the result of that contact?
2 accused of plot to kill Muslims with X-ray weapon
A Ku Klux Klansman working for General Electric and an accomplice are facing terrorism charges in Upstate New York for allegedly planning to build a mobile X-ray weapon to kill Muslims and other “enemies of Israel,” federal authorities announced Wednesday.
Eric J. Feight
Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, of Galway, N.Y., and Eric J. Feight, 54, of Hudson, N.Y., were charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, which carries a maximum prison term of 15 years, U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian said. They were due in federal court in Albany on Wednesday.
Crawford, an industrial mechanic with GE, claimed the “Hiroshima on a light switch” device could fit in a van, be triggered remotely and deliver lethal doses of ionizing radiation that would kill its targets as they slept, the complaint stated. Feight allegedly agreed to build the electronic controls.
Glendon Scott Crawford
Their target was the Muslim community, the complaint stated, and they had successfully tested the remote trigger from about a half-mile away.
Crawford, a married father of three, is a member of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the criminal complaint said. In disrupting the alleged plot, undercover agents posed as Klansmen in North Carolina who offered to finance and buy the device, which the FBI said was constructed but never operable or a public danger.
Feight works for a GE contractor in Columbia County, authorities said. He formerly was employed as a computer software expert and project engineer for Smith Control Systems, in Hudson, the Albany Times-Union reported in its detailed account.
Up to six unidentified people, including another GE employee, were assisting Crawford, and some may have known his intentions, according to an FBI affidavit.
GE said in a statement that the company has “no reason to believe the act took place on GE property nor is there any information indicating that our employees’ safety was ever compromised. Since this incident, Mr. Crawford has been suspended. We are cooperating fully with the authorities on their investigation.”
In April 2012, authorities were notified that Crawford had gone to an Albany-area synagogue and and(sic) contacted a local Jewish organizations(sic)”seeking out individuals who might offer assistance in helping him with a type of technology that could be used against people he perceived as enemies of Israel” and the United States. He called these perceived enemies and Muslims “medical waste” and “scumbags.”
Crawford told an informant he planned to buy or build a battery-powered, industrial-strength X-ray device and hoped to land a part-time job in a metal shop with X-ray tubes, according to the complaint.
A year later — April 15, the day of the Boston Marathon bombings — Crawford said in an e-mail exchange monitored by the FBI that he had found a power supply. He railed against President Obama, whom he derided as “your treasoness bedwetting maggot in chief,” for “bringing the muzzies here without background checks.”
Crawford was aware that authorities might monitor his cellphone, e-mail and text messages — which they did with search warrants — so he used pseudonyms and code words.
Hartunian, the U.S. attorney, said the case “demonstrates how we must remain vigilant to detect and stop potential terrorists, who so often harbor hatred toward people they deem undesirable.”
President Obama has repeatedly claimed that the Boston Marathon bombing was an “act of terror” and that its alleged perpetrators are “terrorists.”
It may seem pointless to quibble with this description: after all what could be more “terroristic” than setting off bombs at a peaceful sporting event killing three persons, one a child, and injuring or horrifically maiming dozens more?
But in fact how the act is described is very important in determining government, media and wider societal responses, including ramping up racism and bigotry against Muslims, Arabs or people of color.
There can be no doubt that the Boston Marathon bombing was a murderous act, but does it –– based on what is known –– fit the US government’s own definitions of “terrorism”?
It is important to recall that other, far more lethal recent events, including the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado and the school massacre at Sandy Hook, Connecticut have not been termed “terrorism,” nor their perpetrators labeled “terrorist” by the government. Why?
Obama’s changing descriptions
In his first statement shortly after news emerged of the bombing in Boston on 15 April 2013, Obama pointedly did not describe the attack as “terrorism.” The term is totally absent from his statement. He does say, “We still do not know who did this or why. And people shouldn’t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts.”
Last night, after 19-year-old suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured by police, Obama made a statement declaring: “We will investigate any associations that theseterrorists may have had. And we’ll continue to do whatever we have to do to keep our people safe.”
In his weekly video address today, Obama reaffirmed, “on Monday an act of terrorwounded dozens and killed three people at the Boston Marathon.”
Official definitions of “terrorism”
The US government has no single definition of “terrorism” but the National Institute of Justice at the US Department of Justice points to two influential standards that are in use, one enshrined in law and the other provided by the FBI:
Title 22 of the U.S. Code, Section 2656f(d) defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
Both definitions of terrorism share a common theme: the use of force intended to influence or instigate a course of action that furthers a political or social goal. In most cases, NIJ researchers adopt the FBI definition, which stresses methods over motivations and is generally accepted by law enforcement communities.
What was the “political” or “social” goal of the Boston bombing?
Based on these definitions, what distinguishes a “mass shooting” such as Aurora or Sandy Hook on the one hand, from an act of “terrorism” on the other, is that the mass shooters have no political goals. Their act is nihilistic and is not carried out in furtherance of any particular cause.
So far, however, absolutely no evidence has emerged that the Boston bombing suspects acted “in furtherance of political or social objectives” or that their alleged act was “intended to influence or instigate a course of action that furthers a political or social goal.”
Neither of the suspects is known to have made any statement of a political or other goal for their alleged action and there has been no claim of responsibility. Obama, in his statement last night, admitted as much:
Obviously, tonight there are still many unanswered questions. Among them, why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks, and did they receive any help?
So why is Obama calling them “terrorists?
Since Obama has no idea why the alleged suspects may have resorted to violence and no one else has offered an evidence-based explanation, why is Obama already labeling them “terrorists” when he himself warned against a “rush to judgment?”
The only explanation I can think of is the suspects’ identification as ethnic Chechens and Muslims, even though there is no evidence that they acted either in relation to events in their ancestral homeland or were motivated by any Islamist ideology.
True, Obama did switch to calling the Boston attack “terrorism” before any facts were known about the identities or backgrounds of the suspects, but it was also before anynew relevant facts were known. Once those identities became known, Obama’s statements have only fed careless, prejudiced assumption so common on cable television: they’re Muslims, so they must be “terrorists.”
This may be the easy and populist way of looking at it, pandering to prejudice as Obama so often does, but it is irresponsible and violates official US policy that Obama seemed, at least on the first day, willing to observe.
How acts are labeled is highly political: recall the controversy over whether Obama was quick enough to label the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last September as “terrorism,” and the continuing demands that the government designate the November 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, allegedly perpetrated by Major Nidal Hasan, as “terrorism.”
All of these cases reinforce the widely noted observation that acts of violence, especially mass shootings, carried out typically by white males are immediately labeled as the acts of “disturbed individuals” while the acts of a person identified as “Muslim” are to be labeled “terrorism” regardless of the facts.
These are unsafe assumptions and foreclose the possibility of full understanding. Moreover, by reinforcing popular stereotypes, they give new force to the anti-Muslim backlash that seems only to be growing stronger and more poisonous as the 11 September 2001 attacks recede into the past.
It is also important to note the contrast between Obama’s eagerness to label the Boston attack as “terror” and its alleged perpetrators as “terrorists” – without evidence – and his reluctance to label last August’s mass murder at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin as “terrorism” despite the identification of the shooter as having a history of white nationalist and supremacist activism.
Let’s consider another possibility. Exactly 14 years ago today, 20 April 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold executed a carefully-planned attack on Columbine High School in Colorado, using guns and bombs.
The two seniors murdered 12 fellow students and one teacher before shooting themselves.
Like the Boston Marathon bombing allegedly was, the Columbine attack was carried out by two persons, and it involved some of the same methods: homemade explosives.
But the Columbine attack is remembered as a “school shooting” or a “mass shooting” – perhaps the most iconic of a sad litany of such events – but not a “terrorist” attack.
In his essential 2009 book Columbine, Dave Cullen tells the story of the attack in meticulous detail, debunking many of the popular stereotypes that persist to this day that the attack was meant to avenge bullying by “jocks.”
The evidence that emerged is that Harris was a clinically sadistic sociopath who had no ability to empathize with other human beings. Klebold was a depressive whom Harris was able to manipulate. These facts lay at the heart of what happened.
It is definitely not any more desirable in the wake of such atrocities to have a media frenzy stigmatizing all people with mental illness as potential killers any more than we want them to stigmatize all Muslims as potential terrorists – in fact people with mental illness are no more likely to be violent than anyone else, and are indeed more likely to be victims of violence. And contrary to popular stereotypes fed by the media it is exceptionally rare for Muslims to become “terrorists.”
What we do need is patient, serious and informed analysis: could the relationship between the Boston suspects be similar to those of the Columbine killers? What other factors are at at play? I don’t know, but I cannot rule anything out.
Just like President Obama, I do not know what drove the alleged Boston bombers. What I do know is that when the media and the government, egging each other on, rush to judgment, the possibility of alternative scenarios is ruled out and getting to the truth is harder.
If Boston was “terrorism” based on the little that is known, then we must be able to answer these questions: can only white or Christian males be sociopaths, or suffer from other mental illnesses that under certain conditions lead to violence?
Can only two white Colorado high school students act as a pair without “terrorist” motives? Can “Muslims” or ethnic Chechens, or Arabs never be subject to the same kind of conditions or analysis?
Surely the survivors and families of the Boston bombing deserve no less of an accounting of what happened than the victims of Columbine?
We cannot and should not rule out that evidence will emerge that the alleged Boston bombers had a political motive. But it hasn’t so far.
What we have seen is the usual rush to judgment that has left Muslims and many people of color once again fearing collective blame and the governmental and societal retribution that comes with it.
Update, 21 April: Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz on Boston Marathon bomb and “terrorism” definition
A few hours after I published this post on 20 April, I heard Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz on the 20:05 GMT edition of the BBC World Service Newshour making some of the exact same points I made in this post, a jarring experience since I usually strongly disagree with his advocacy on Israel.
Dershowitz was responding to members of Congress who called for the government to treat surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an “enemy combatant” and to deprive him of his constitutional rights. Already, the Obama administration has deprived Tsarnaev of his Miranda rights. I have transcribed Dershowitz’s key comments:
Dershowitz: Well if they [the members of Congress] were in my class they would flunk out of law school … It shows a complete and total ignorance of the United States constitution. This is an American citizen being charged with committing a crime on American soil against Americans.
It’s not even clear under the federal terrorism statute that this qualifies as an act of terrorism. In order to prove it’s an act of terrorism they have to prove that they had certain kinds of intentions and motivations. But it’s a perfect trial to try in the civilian courts. There’s no plausible argument that would take this case out of the civilian courts and would put it into any kind of a military tribunal.
BBC: They’ve referred to the US Supreme Court decision Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld which said that there is no bar to the US holding one of its citizens as an enemy combatant. That part they say is certainly established in law.
Dershowitz: Well yeah, an enemy combatant but who’s the enemy here? These are two young men, we have no idea what their motivation was, particularly the young man who was captured alive. As far as we know he has never been in direct contact with anybody from any foreign country. They’re just making it up. And they’re allowing their perception of bias to influence the facts of the case. This case, this will be tried in a civilian court in front of a jury…
Remember this guy? He was denied entry into his own country for several long, excruciating months due to the appearance of his name on the mysterious, unfathomable no fly list or whatever it’s designation really is. Finally he was allowed to fly to his home state of Oklahoma and his return was uneventful, if you don’t count this rather intimidating run in he had with the FBI back in November. Well he’s back in the news again and here’s why
In early November, I wrote about the infuriating story of Saadiq Long, the 43-year-old African-American Muslim who – despite having never been charged with any crime – was secretly placed on a no-fly list and thus barred from flying to the US to visit his seriously ill mother. When I met with Long in early November in Doha, Qatar, where he has lived for several years with his wife and her two children while teaching English, he was in the middle of his futile months-long battle just to find out why he was placed on this list, let alone how he could be removed.
Two weeks after that article was published, Long – without explanation – was finally removed from the no-fly list and he flew from Doha to Oklahoma City to visit his mother and other family members. He took several flights to make the 20-hour journey, all without incident. He has remained in Oklahoma for the last ten weeks, visiting his family in the US for the first time in over a decade.
But now Long – unbeknownst to him – has once again apparently been secretly placed by some unknown National Security State bureaucrat on the no-fly list. On Wednesday night, as Associated Press first reported, he went to the Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City to fly back home to Qatar. In order to ensure there were no problems, his lawyer sent the FBI a letter ahead of time notifying them that Long would be flying home on that date (see the embedded letter below).
But without explanation, Long was denied a boarding pass at the airport by a Delta Airlines agent. Three local police officers then arrived on the scene, followed by a US Transportation Security Administration agent who “told Long he couldn’t board a plane but did not give him a specific reason”.
Long’s lawyer, Adam Soltani of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was with him at the airport and repeatedly asked agents why this was happening and who they should contact. He got no answers, except was told to contact the FBI. But both the FBI and Delta refused to comment to AP, while TSA spokesman David Castelveter would only say this:
“It’s my understanding this individual was denied a boarding pass by the airline because he was on a no-fly list. The TSA does not confirm whether someone is or is not on the no-fly list, as that list is maintained by the FBI.”
Long and his CAIR lawyers have thus far been told nothing about why he is barred once again from flying.
The personal cost to this injustice is obvious and substantial. Long has a job he needs to return to in Doha from which he has been away for more than two months, and his family needs that income for its sustenance. “I was extremely disappointed when I was unable to board the flight this past Wednesday,” Long told me through his lawyer. “My family in Qatar feels crushed that I will not be returning home as expected.”
The sense of humiliation and outrage should not be hard to fathom. Just imagine being a US citizen, denied the right to travel home – first to your own country, then back to your family – by a government that has never charged you with any crime or indicated you have engaged in wrongdoing of any sort. Imagine going to the airport and having local and federal agents arrive to prevent you from boarding a plane, treating you like a criminal – a Terrorist – without any tangible accusations. “I don’t understand how the government can take away my right to travel without even telling me,” he told me back in November. “If the US government wanted me to question or arrest or prosecute me, they could have had me in a minute. But there are no charges, no accusations, nothing.”
But what’s particularly infuriating here is that, if they had evidence that Long has done anything wrong, they easily could have arrested him at any point over the last ten weeks when he was in the US. The reality is that they could have arrested him at any time over the last decade because he has lived in three countries with highly US-loyal autocracies: Egypt, the UAE and Qatar. But he was never arrested, never charged with anything – just denied the basic right to travel.
Here is what CAIR’s Gadeir Abbas told me about all of this on Thursday:
“It is not as if the FBI actually thinks Saadiq is a threat. If it did – and it had actual evidence – the FBI would simply arrest him. As they surely recall, they let him fly just a few months ago. It turns out, though, the only reason for doing so is because it is, in the FBI’s view, slightly more indefensible to prevent an American citizen from flying home than it is to prevent him from flying abroad.
“And because we told the FBI ahead of time when Saadiq would be flying, hardly the behavior of a criminal, they could have stuck an air marshal right next to him. They could have subjected his person and luggage to extra scrutiny. But the FBI does not do these things because the No Fly List is not used to protect aircraft. This watchlist – and the many others like it – is a means by which the FBI metes out extra-judicial punishment.”
How can anyone argue with that? Even leaving aside that he just flew into and around the US less than three months ago without incident, the very idea that he poses a threat to this flight is patently ludicrous given their advance knowledge that he was flying and the multiple precautions they could take if they really were concerned.
Plainly, air travel safety is not what any of this is about. It is about inventing ways to punish US Muslims and deprive them of the most basic rights without so much as providing any notice, let alone any due process that would enable the secret, unknown accusations to be discovered and rebutted. And it is a very common weapon.
Use of this repressive tactic has worsened significantly under the Obama administration. Last February, Associated Press learned that “the Obama administration has more than doubled, to about 21,000 names, its secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the United States, including about 500 Americans.” Moreover, as I detailed last November based on that AP report:
“Worse, the Obama administration ‘lowered the bar for being added to the list’. As a result, reported AP, ‘now a person doesn’t have to be considered only a threat to aviation to be placed on the no-fly list’ but can be included if they ‘are considered a broader threat to domestic or international security’, a vague status determined in the sole and unchecked discretion of unseen DHS bureaucrats.”
There should be no doubt of the FBI’s desire to harass Long. Although they never charged him with any crime or arrested him while he was in Oklahoma, he was, along with his sister, Ava Anderson, handcuffed and put on the ground the day after Thanksgiving after they drove to their local police department in fear when they noticed they were being followed. It turns out that the FBI had falsely told local police that Long and his sister were “fleeing felons”, but when the local police learned that was false, they never arrested Long or his sister. They were simply told to leave without explanation.
As Abbas told me after that incident occurred: “Our sense is that a particular FBI agent, or perhaps a small group of them, in Oklahoma City are looking to inflict some pain on Saadiq and his family – maybe in retaliation for the embarrassment he caused them or the thousands of emails that ended up getting sent to their field office there.”
The worst part of all of this is the complete lack of remedy available to Long. Abbas told me: “unfortunately, because of arcane jurisdictional complications, we don’t think seeking a preliminary injunction is necessarily an expeditious option for getting Saadiq on a plane.” Even worse:
“We’ll likely try again in a couple of weeks, but if there isn’t some change by then, this puts Saadiq in the position of rolling the dice and trying to get to a country by land or sea that will actually let him fly. Even in these situations, however, we’ve seen detentions and interrogations by foreign authorities, such as here and here.”
So now he’s just in a no-man’s land. He can’t contest the accusations against him because there are none. After being blocked for months from visiting his own country and his terminally ill mother, he’s now barred from returning to his home, his job, and his own family. All of this is done by his own government without a shred of due process, transparency or accountability.
When I wrote on Tuesday about the Obama DOJ’s “white paper” justifying due-process-free presidential assassinations, I wrote that “the core distortion of the War on Terror under both Bush and Obama is the Orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt” and that “if the US government simply asserts without evidence or trial that someone is a terrorist, then they are assumed to be, and they can then be punished as such.” This is exactly what I was talking about: I’m sure there will be no shortage of people justifying this by insisting that he must have done something wrong: even though the government has never said what that is, offered evidence for it, or provided any opportunity for the accusations to be independently examined.
This is also a perfect example of what New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal meant when he wrote last March that the US now has “what’s essentially a separate justice system for Muslims”. State punishment without charges and trials is now perfectly normal – for Muslims.
Patch of New York City Police Department (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
That’s what the New York City Police Department’s six year investigation, read spying, on American Muslims (it should be noted this spying took place in places outside of New York city) turned up in terms of terror suspects, indictments, cases, leads, you name it.
In more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloging mosques, the New Yorkpolice department’s secret demographics unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation, the department acknowledged in court testimony unsealed late Monday.
The demographics unit is at the heart of a police spying program, built with help from the CIA, which assembled databases on where Muslims lived, shopped, worked and prayed. Police infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques, monitored sermons and cataloged every Muslim in New York who adopted new, Americanized surnames.
Police hoped the demographics unit would serve as an early warning system for terrorism. And if police ever got a tip about, say, an Afghan terrorist in the city, they’d know where he was likely to rent a room, buy groceries and watch sports.
But in a 28 June deposition as part of a longstanding federal civil rights case, assistant chief Thomas Galati said none of the conversations the officers overheard ever led to a case.
“Related to demographics,” Galati testified that information that has come in “has not commenced an investigation.”
The NYPD is the largest police department in the nation and mayor Michael Bloomberg has held up its counterterrorism tactics as a model for the rest of the country. After the Associated Press began reporting on those tactics last year, supporters argued that the demographics unit was central to keeping the city safe. Galati testified that it was an important tool, but conceded it had not generated any leads.
“I never made a lead from rhetoric that came from a demographics report, and I’m here since 2006,” he said. “I don’t recall other ones prior to my arrival. Again, that’s always a possibility. I am not aware of any.”
Galati, the commanding officer of the NYPD intelligence division, offered the first official look at the demographics unit, which the NYPD denied ever existed when it was revealed by the AP last year. He described how police gather information on people even when there is no evidence of wrongdoing, simply because of their ethnicity and native language.
As a rule, Galati said, a business can be labeled a “location of concern” whenever police can expect to find groups of Middle Easterners there.
Galati testified as part of a lawsuit that began in 1971 over NYPD spying on students, civil rights groups and suspected communist sympathizers during the 1950s and 1960s. The lawsuit, known as the Handschu case, resulted in federal guidelines that prohibit the NYPD from collecting information about political speech unless it is related to potential terrorism.
Civil rights lawyers believe the demographics unit violated those rules. Documents obtained by the AP show the unit conducted operations outside its jurisdiction, including in New Jersey. The FBI there said those operations damaged its partnerships with Muslims and jeopardized national security.
In one instance discussed in the testimony, plainclothes NYPD officers known as “rakers” overheard two Pakistani men complaining about airport security policies that they believed unfairly singled out Muslims. They bemoaned what they saw as the nation’s anti-Muslim sentiment since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Galati said police were allowed to collect that information because the men spoke Urdu, a fact that could help police find potential terrorists in the future.
“I’m seeing Urdu. I’m seeing them identify the individuals involved in that are Pakistani,” Galati explained. “I’m using that information for me to determine that this would be a kind of place that a terrorist would be comfortable in.”
He added, “Most Urdu speakers from that region would be of concern, so that’s why it’s important to me.”
About 15 million Pakistanis and 60 million Indians speak Urdu. Along with English, it is one of the national languages of Pakistan.
In another example, Galati said, eavesdropping on a conversation in a Lebanese cafe could be useful, even if the topic is innocuous. Analysts might be able to determine that the customers were from South Lebanon, he said, adding, “That may be an indicator of possibility that that is a sympathizer to Hezbollah because Southern Lebanon is dominated by Hezbollah.”
After the AP began reporting on the demographics unit, the department’s former senior analyst, Mitchell Siber, said the unit provided the tip that ultimately led to a case against a bookstore clerk who was convicted of plotting to bomb the Herald Square subway station in Manhattan. Galati testified that he could find no evidence of that.
Attorney Jethro Eisenstein, who filed the Handschu case more than 40 years ago and questioned Galati during the deposition, said he will go back to court soon to ask that the demographics unit be shut down. It operates today under a new name, the zone assessment unit. It recently stopped operating out of state, Galati said.
“This is a terribly pernicious set of policies,” Eisenstein said. “No other group since the Japanese Americans in World War II has been subjected to this kind of widespread public policy.”
Dozens of members of Congress have asked the justice department to investigate the NYPD. Attorney general Eric Holder has said he was disturbed by the reports. But John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, has said he is confident the NYPD’s activities are lawful and have kept the city safe.
Is anyone concerned with how much all of this cost the taxpayer? No matter what the investment was the return worth the money it cost? Why hasn’t Congreeman Peter King of NY asked these questions during a Congressional hearing….or better yet, why haven’t any of the hearings he held led to the NYPD questioning or indicting anyone? We have been bamboozled America! It’s time to stop this madness.
Another terrorist plot has been thwarted by the FBI who arrested a NYC man because of his plans to kill a Pennsylvania bank’s employees. First off, this bit of news goes to show you the federal government can monitor threats just fine, without the need of the New York city police department which has, when it comes to Muslims, decided to expand its jurisdiction to everywhere along the east coast of America. This bit of news also underscores the terrorist threat that lies within the shores of this great Nation that has nothing to do with or is not based on Islam and Muslims.
Michael Chung, 52, allegedly faxed a letter to a Pottsville, Pennsylvania branch of Sovereign Bank on Monday in which he cited the second amendment of the Constitution and threatened to kill workers at the bank.
“The 2nd Amendment to the National Constitution authorizes the use of deadly force to protect my interests as a national citizen,” said the fax, according to the criminal complaint. “I believe I have a basis to act in that manner.”
According to a law enforcement official, Chung told investigators he is a “sovereign citizen,” one of a group of people who reject government authority and resist paying taxes. The FBI monitors the “sovereign citizen” movement as a potential domestic terror threat.
Lest anyone forget this is the definition of terrorism from which Miscellany101 works
The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property in order to coerce or intimidate a government or the civilian population in furtherance of political or social objectives.
After the last two examples of domestic terrorism America continues her denial about the contributions she makes towards terrorism which began back in 2009 after the report that shook the world, entitled Right Wing Terrorism. If there is any doubt about the backlash one faces when talking about America’s terrorism and especially terrorism fueled by conservative thought unrelated to Islam look no further than to this brilliant piece in Wired
in April 2009, (Daryl) Johnson warned that the election of the first African-American president, combined with recession-era economic anxieties, could fuel a rise in far-right violence. “DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities,” he wrote. And so began a brief media firestorm. Conservative writers feared that the DHS was demonizing — even, potentially, criminalizing — mainstream right-wing speech.
According to Johnson, his former team now consists of a single analyst tasked with tracking all domestic non-Islamic extremism. His database has been shuttered.
It’s obvious any act of violence that aims to influence public opinion, government policy or otherwise terrorize people is considered terror only if committed by Muslims even though that is NOT the definition crafted by policy makers and law enforcement. In an effort to get people on board with the idea of terrorism, a very broad definition was made, but in practice, even by the federal government headed by the first black president, terrorism is recognized exclusively on the ethnic, racial, and religious characteristics of the one(s) committing the act. That is typical of America’s politicians reaping scorn on one group of Americans or another for political gain, which is why we here at Miscellany101will continue to remind America of what she has committed to in writing and call a terrorist a terrorist even if he’s not Muslim.
The no-fly list is an instrument of state coercion that is selectively used to oppress citizens of America and in reality limit their movements among the national or international community or even force them into exile from their own country. It is a throwback to an antiquated way of a state being heavy handed and oppressive towards its citizens in an attempt to bend them towards what government wants them to do. Many Muslim Americans who when asked why they were not allowed to fly were told if they would become informants for the government their names would be removed from such lists.
We now have the means to know if someone is immediately a threat to the security of public transportation, not just planes, with the invention of this device, Picosecond Programmable Laser scanner.
The latest scanners acquired by the U.S. government will be able detect the most minute traces of molecular discrepancies in both individuals’ bloodstream and carry on luggage from 50 meters away……the new scanners are said to be ten million times faster and one million times more sensitive than the scanners used in airports and border patrols currently.
The company says that the Picosecond Programmable Laser scanner can ‘penetrate clothing and many other organic materials and offers spectroscopic information, especially for materials that impact safety such as explosives and pharmacological substances.’The process of scanning and downloading the information takes only picoseconds- so one-trillionth of a second- which means that security workers would be alerted to any alarming substances as you were approaching them.Because it takes such a short amount of time to use the laser technology and interpret the data, security officials will not have to discriminate among suspicious passengers and will have time to use the technology on everyone.
‘From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you’, that’s how sensitive and extensive this machine is. Now that the government is able to in real time know whether any one is a threat before boarding a plane, they should immediately abolish the no fly lists. Even if a person is a terrorist, the government can know whether he is mission capable at the time he/she gets on the plane, i.e. whether they possess the tools necessary to take down an airplane. Add to this really fancy wizadry, the full body scanners in use in airports around the world, and federal air marshals, those steroid pumped, accurate shooting human machines, there should no longer be any need to prevent American citizens from flying. If the federal government is reluctant to stop using these lists to keep people off planes it could mean only one thing and that is it’s not a security instrument but rather a coercive or punitive one.
Remember this guy? Earlier this year he was caught TWICE trying to board an airplane with some sort of explosive device. However, on his flight from Midland, Texas back to North Carolina he was caught with about 5 pounds of C4 explosive and was detained and charged. The charges have been dropped by the federal prosecutor because it’s said there is no proof he meant to carry 5 pounds of explosive on board a plane, that he merely forgot it was in his carry on bag.
Staff Sergeant Trey Scott Atwater, is a member of the 7th Special Forces Group trained as an unconventional warfare specialist. He’s been in the military for almost 12 years it is claimed and he forgot he carried explosives with him, AFTER he also forgot and was detained at the airport in North Carolina for having a smoke grenade in the same carry on bag? Perhaps he didn’t receive proper training, or has been living in a vacuum for the past 12 years. Post 911 America should not be tolerant of any error the likes of the kind Atwater committed. The US military is not getting their money’s worth out of the training they’ve given him or are they? The blog willyloman does a very good job dissecting who Atwater is and what he does and frankly in today’s world of false flag operations its scary. It is not comforting either when you consider the FBI who conducted the investigation and would no doubt accede to the charges being dropped has a reputation for being the promoter of operations the likes of which are mentioned in this article.
THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.
But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.
One can’t help but wonder was Atwater a part of a bigger plan? Blogger Willylomanasks the question why weren’t all the passengers on the North Carolina bound flight, the one where Atwater was caught with 5 pounds of C4, searched to see if they were carrying detonators to go with the explosives. Why didn’t Atwater who was stopped in North Carolina not think to make sure he didn’t make the same mistake on his return flight and remove the plastic explosives? Had he become that callous that he didn’t think he would be discovered or worse that it didn’t matter he was carrying and inevitably as happened, he would not be held accountable? One may never know why he and those behind him were so sloppy or how many others like him have crisscrossed America with the same dangerous payloads which leads me to give some credibility to the notion that false flag operations, or the government initiating and even carrying out many acts of terror is a real possibility. As one historian succinctly put it
The record of the secret police in fostering rather than preventing revolutionary activities is especially striking in France during the Second Empire and in Czarist Russia after 1880. It seems, for example, that there was not a single anti-government action under Louis Napoleon which had not been, inspired by the police; and the more important terroristic attacks in Russia prior to war and revolution seem all to have been police jobs.
Beware this man. If you ever see him in your community, no matter what faith you are or are not, don’t call the authorities, don’t take any action, simply ignore him. Don’t talk to him, don’t give him your phone number, don’t let him into your home.
I tweeted once earlier that black teens and Muslims cannot run away from trouble…it always seems to follow them. This latest story is an excellent case in point. A Muslim American is approached by someone (because we don’t the identity of the man pictured left we can only provide this photo of him) who he correctly identifies as an agent provocateur and verifies that after finding his picture on the net and reading about his history that includes a murder charge. In fear of his life Khalifah al-Akili calls the FBI to report this person’s presence in the community only to find himself arrested and his reputation maligned and his name associated with the Taliban.
Khalifah Al-Akili, 34, who lives near Pittsburgh, told the Times Union in an interview Sunday that the FBI recently used Shahed Hussain — an informant who was integral in two terrorism-related cases in the upstate New York cities — in an apparent attempt to test Al-Akili’s interest in jihad and anti-American views.
Al-Akili said he was approached by Hussain, who went by the name “Mohammed,” and another man, who used the name “Shareef,” in January when they turned up in his neighborhood and repeatedly made attempts to get close to Al-Akili. But Al-Akili said he quickly figured out Hussain’s identity as an FBI informant. He said the men were “too obvious” and requested receipts even for small items they purchased like coffee and donuts.
Al-Akili said Shareef also asked Al-Akili repeatedly if he could help him purchase a gun. Al-Akili said he told the man he could not help him.
Al-Akili said his suspicions the men were informants were confirmed when he saw a photograph of Hussain on the Internet. In addition, he said, a cell phone number Hussain had given him was the same number used by Hussain during a 2009 counterterrorism investigation against four Newburgh men in the small Orange County city. Al-Akili said he found the number and its connection to that case through a simple Internet search using Google.
Al-Akili was arrested during an FBI raid of his home in Wilkinsburg, a Pittsburgh borough. He was charged in a federal complaint with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. The complaint filed in U.S. District Court said federal agents obtained an email with a 7-second video showing Al-Akili firing a .22-caliber rifle at a shooting range in 2010.Federal agents said Al-Akili was prohibited from possessing a gun because of a 2001 drug conviction.
No terrorism-related charges were filed against him. But at a detention hearing Friday, an FBI agent, Joseph M. Bieshelt, testified the search of Al-Akili’s home uncovered “jihadist literature and books on U.S. military tactics,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said. The newspaper also reported Bieshelt testified at the hearing that Al-Akili told an informant he had plans to go to Pakistan to join the Taliban, and that Al-Akili was recorded in December saying “that he was developing somebody to possibly strap a bomb on himself.” A federal magistrate judge ordered Al-Akili held without bail pending trial.
The FBI’s classic entrapment strategy failed when their operative was exposed, due in large part to the Bureau’s own incompetence, leaving them no other alternative but to charge al-Akili with a weapons charge ( they couldn’t do better than a .22 caliber rifle at a firing range) which they linked to incendiary language that got a judge to keep him in jail without bond until his court date. And while it might be too much to hope for, the recent ruling by a federal judge that language alone is not sufficient to prove sedition or violence against the government in the absence of any concrete action to convict someone might be extended to al-Akili’s case does offer some hope for an American Muslim who says he would never do anything to hurt/harm his country.
The FBI got caught with their pants down; their methods were sloppy but in today’s America sufficient enough to convict others which is why they were resorted to again. Al-Akili’s citizenship is to be applauded….in essence he was a whistle blower pointing to the inefficient and costly workings of bureaucracy, and like most whistle blowers before, he was made to bear the brunt of a humiliated agency out for revenge. That anyone can be locked up for shooting a.22 caliber rifle at a firing range…….there is no proof he owned the weapon, nor were any weapons found in his home, nor was he accused of buying and selling weapons( in fact he rebuffed the FBI informant’s attempt to even find him one) and the only basis for his incarceration besides such flimsy accusations is his religious identity is not only criminal, appalling but certainly unconstitutional. It is a sign of today’s America and it must be changed and abandoned forever. Wake up America…if today it’s al-Akili, who will it be tomorrow?
But untangling the Islamophobic thread woven into the FBI’s counterterrorism training culture won’t be easy. In addition to inflammatory seminars which likened Islam to the Death Star and Mohammed to a “cult leader,” Danger Room has obtained more material showing just how wide the anti-Islam meme has spread throughout the Bureau.
The FBI library at Quantico currently stacks books from authors who claim that “Islam and democracy are totally incompatible.” The Bureau’s private intranet recently featured presentations that claimed to demonstrate the “inherently violent nature of Islam,” according to multiple sources. Earlier this year, the Bureau’s Washington Field Office welcomed a speaker who claimed Islamic law prevents Muslims from being truly loyal Americans. And as recently as last week, the online orientation material for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces included claims that Sunni Islam seeks “domination of the world,” according to a law enforcement source.
“I don’t think anyone with half a brain would paint 1.2 billion people of any ethnic or religious persuasion with a single brushstroke,” Mike Rolince, an FBI counterterrorism veteran who started Boston’s JTTF, tells Danger Room. “Who did they run that curriculum by — either an internal or outside expert — to get some balance?”
The FBI declined to respond directly to such questions from Danger Room. But what’s clear is that the anti-Islam sentiment in the FBI’s training and orientation isn’t the marginal problem that the Bureau portrayed in its previous public statements and press releases. It’s not a historical problem, it’s ongoing. And it will require substantial effort to root out. Not even a July warning from the office of a powerful senator was able to spur the Bureau to purge itself of its anti-Islam material.
One example is found in the mandatory orientation material for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, or JTTFs. Those task forces are a nationwide partnership between the FBI, intelligence analysts and state and local police. As of late last week, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the program, new members or those needing a belated orientation saw this description of Sunnism — the largest branch of Islam — as part of their online training course:
Sunni Muslims have been prolific in spawning numerous and varied fundamentalist extremist terrorist organizations. Sunni core doctrine and end state have remained the same and they continue to strive for Sunni Islamic domination of the world to prove a key Quranic assertion that no system of government or religion on earth can match the Quran’s purity and effectiveness for paving the road to God.
That paragraph is contained in orientation material, known as the Joint Terrorism Task Force Orientation v2 course, distributed online through a secure intranet for every member of the JTTFs. That’s approximately 4,400 officials, according to FBI figures, all charged with stopping terrorism. The orientation course is mandatory for every member of the task force.
The passage is especially odd because most of the orientation consists of practical, mundane information, such as the proper forms to fill out during an inquiry or FBI standards for investigations, according to the source. It consists of five sections, one of which is about Islam, Muslims and Arab culture. The supervisor of each JTTF has to certify that all his or her personnel have completed the online orientation course, and then must pass that certification up to FBI Headquarters’ Counterterrorism Division.
The FBI would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the JTTF orientation material.
The excerpt from the JTTF orientation material was provided to Danger Room by a concerned law enforcement official, who says the material contains 20 paragraphs about Islam in a similar vein. Several Bureau and law enforcement officials who spoke to Danger Room on condition of anonymity believe that such instructions are detrimental to uncovering and thwarting terrorist plots, and that the FBI continues to be less than forthright with the press and the public about the extent of its teaching that Islam is at the root of the menace of terrorism. Evidence for this continuing belief can be found in Quantico, Virginia, at the FBI’s elite training academy.
Michael Migliore an American citizen who was put on the no-fly list by US authorities possibly because he refused to talk to the FBI without a lawyer had to end his way to Italy by train from the West Coast and then by boat to England. The story doesn’t end there however, he was detained by authorities before the boat he was in even made it to port in Suffolk, England.
Migliore was responsible enough to make his way to Europe by 19th century means because of how the US government categorized him, but it seems that “brand” followed him to England as well which underscores the pernicious nature of the no-fly lists. Migliore’s crime seems to be being Muslim, knowing someone who was charged with terrorism and not talking to the FBI about that relationship without a lawyer (something any seasoned lawyer would advise and which he has the right to do). What this says is the federal government wants to rescind the right to have someone present when authorities talk to you AND the government wants to punish you for exercising your right to freedom of religion. That a 21 year old university graduate has to fight this fight against the two greatest powers in the world, the US and the UK, is shameful and disgusting. That no one or very few people in America is up in arms about this violation of Migliore’s inalienable rights is further indication of how close this country is to abandoning the principles of its Founding Fathers.
You’ve gotta wonder how many of the ‘terror threats’ are just as baseless as the two highlighted below are. Indeed, just a week before the 10th anniversary of 911, we the public were regaled with news about an unsubstantiated terror threat that could possibly interrupt the 10th anniversary celebrations. Nothing happened to get in the way of our post 911 angst except our own fears.
Local and federal law enforcement officials had told ABC News Sunday initial reports of “suspicious behavior” by multiple passengers that prompted the emergency call for F-16s was suspected of being a couple “making out” in the plane’s lavatory mid-flight. When the flight landed, the plane was taken to a remote area for security screening and three passengers were briefly taken into custody.
In the course of their investigation, the FBI found that one of the passengers, who felt sick, happened to get up and head to the bathroom at approximately the same time as another passenger. None of the three people taken into custody knew each other, the FBI said.
Of course we’ve been all conditioned to say the response of authorities was appropriate and not comical, which was really the case. We’ve also been conditioned to look the other way when people who disrupt the transportation industry are not our typical view of what a terrorist should look like.
A Long Island woman worried about her mom and brother flying to New York on the eve of 9/11 was busted for trying to ground their flight — by twice phoning in false bomb threats against the Southwest Airlines plane they were taking from Arizona, the feds said today.
The loony Saturday morning stunt by ex-con Mary Purcell, 37, of Lake Ronkonkoma, sparked a massive security response at Tucson Airport — where a horde of police, bomb-experts and explosive-sniffing dogs quickly swarmed around Flight 2475 to re-screen luggage and passengers as a security alert for the entire airport was elevated.
“We felt that it was a credible threat,” said John Ivanoff, chief of the Tuscon Airport Authority Police. “We were already at a heightened state of alert [because of the 9-11 anniversary Al Qaeda threats], but more manpower was needed.”
Purcell, a convicted felon, doesn’t fit our image of a terrorist, but America doesn’t seem to be upset that a lot of resources were wasted on her ‘threat’ or that Americans somewhere in the transportation system of our country were inconvenienced or maybe had their rights as citizens of this Republic abridged because of the actions of a loony and an over responsive federal government.
Finally, there’s the story of the American teenager who was found driving around in his city alone without a drivers license BUT with an AT4 rocket launcher in the back seat of the SUV. It’s clear this boy’s name is not Arabic or his religion Islam, for had it been, he, his father and brother, who are connected to the US military, would be linked to al-Qaida, conspiracies hatched and foiled and headlines proclaim how Islam is trying to take over the country and establish sharia. The young man was not named because he’s underage, but driving around during school hours with blaring music is a sure way to draw attention to ones self. As far as the press is concerned, however, it’s just another teenage prank.
So, while we were informed of security alerts surrounding the 10th anniversary of 911 based on unsubstantiated information that cannot be verified, the two news items above barely scratched the attention of the Nation and were strictly a local event……as they should have been. However, we should not have been frightened with alerts that really had no basis in fact but which served a political purpose for the party(ies) in power. Don’t we deserve better than that?
American based terrorism doesn’t get much mention in mainstream media, maybe because those who are responsible for it in many cases reflect the ethnicity of those who write about terrorism. I mean it’s much easier to call someone who looks different from you and has a funny name a terrorist than it is to call your next door neighbor or the person who attends your church or synagogue one. Janet Napolitano knows a thing or two about what happens to people who take an even handed approach to this issue of homegrown terrorism because she was excoriated in the media by pundits for a 2009 report released by Homeland Security entitled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. Because there’s no mention of Islam in the title, the report was denounced by many across the political spectrum. Media Matters does a pretty nice job of detailing the arguments of some of the people opposed to labelling American terrorism just that, and their analysis can be found here. Needless to say, the 2009 report doesn’t follow the meme so often repeated in public discourse that ‘all terrorists are Muslim’ because such a statement is false on its face, racially charged and bigoted.
Do you know who the people pictured above are? They are members of Hutaree who see law enforcement as the enemy and they planned to kill a police officer, possibly at a traffic stop, and then attack the funeral procession to kill more officers. Sounds much like terrorism to me, but instead these folks were charged with seditious conspiracy against the government, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence. Ever hear of the group The Sovereign Citizen? You can see for yourself the width and breadth of this group across the country here. The FBI has a full page on them which says in essence they do not feel bound to obey the laws of America, do everything to circumvent the law up to and including murder of public officials and the destruction of government institutions. The ubiquitous federal government isn’t the only entity to see the danger Sovereign Citizen members present to the general public. A local Texas sheriff, Chief Smith has issued his own terrorism warning saying in part
Chief Smith wants the Citizens to be aware that these people could be practicing their beliefgs in this area. Chief Smith warns that these persons have the potential to act out in very violent manners with both citizens and law enforcement if the contact with them is negative.
The Chief has every reason to be concerned. Just last week a ‘sovereign citizen’ in Florida, claiming he “did not have to follow the law or obey law enforcement officers” fired an AK-47 weapon at a store after calling them repeatedly to demand a product they did not have. Larry Kelly then led law enforcement officials on a chase through the city of Ensley, Florida before being captured. Again, last week another ‘sovereign citizen’ Matthew O’Neill was arrested after sending a white powder substance to the Colorado Department of Revenue which was dealing with his tax issues. It doesn’t take a genius to understand the significance of that in post 911 America does it? Then it was an act of terrorism, now it’s a disgruntled tax case. But ‘sovereign citizen’ encounters with the law have also been deadly. What’s significant is if one were to replace each of the above linked news stories with someone’s Arabic name or reference to their religious belief it would be a sure indicator of their terrorist inclinations, BUT absent such identifying tags, while still abhorrent and deadly, the acts are crimes which we have all too often been accustomed, absent the accompanying terrorism hysteria. Conservatives have for some time bemoaned the increase in laws on the books to handle what they consider situations already adequately addressed in law, yet many on the right are the first to claim the need for increased laws to save America from ‘sharia law’, for instance to the presence of municipally approved places of worship to articles of clothing to any number of other things associated with Islam and Muslims in America. This is the dilemma America faces today; how to deal with the hypocrisy and demagoguery of politicians and political parties, such as the Republican and Tea Party, while still legitimately addressing the role of the rule of law. What’s good for the goose IS good for the gander as well. It’s either all terrorism or it’s not, but most likely chances are it will not be classified terrorism, especially by the main stream media, as long as people who write about it look like the people above who perpetuate it.
‘Not all Muslims are terrorist but all terrorists are Muslims’, so goes the ‘phobes chant when talking about the dangers of an imagined enemy, the Shariah welding Muslim fanatic. What they don’t say is all non-Muslim terrorists aren’t categorized as such. Rather they are given more inert sounding names like manic depressive and charged not with terrorism, but with ‘placing a bomb’ inside a federal building and thus fall beneath the terrorist radar. Such is the case with this guy, Gary Mikulich. His bomb sat in said federal building for over a month, is that fodder for a conspiracy theory or what, before it was discovered, which goes to show you all the money you can squeeze out of everyday working Americans and give to Homeland Security can’t buy security if people don’t do their jobs. This electrical engineering genius made a bomb and put it in front of a federal building with the intent to kill people, yet he’s not charged with a terrorist related offense. So what good are the terrorism laws if we don’t apply them equally to all? It should be apparent that the law is designed to single out a group of people , not law breakers, in order to effect a blanket condemnation of all members of that group. Shame on you America….you’re still as bigoted as ever.
American based terrorism doesn’t get much mention in mainstream media, maybe because those who are responsible for it in many cases reflect the ethnicity of those who write about terrorism. I mean it’s much easier to call someone who looks different from you and has a funny name a terrorist than it is to call your next door neighbor or the person who attends your church or synagogue one. Janet Napolitano knows a thing or two about what happens to people who take an even handed approach to this issue of homegrown terrorism because she was excoriated in the media by pundits for a 2009 report released by Homeland Security entitled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. Because there’s no mention of Islam in the title, the report was denounced by many across the political spectrum. Media Matters does a pretty nice job of detailing the arguments of some of the people opposed to labelling American terrorism just that, and their analysis can be found 
‘Not all Muslims are terrorist but all terrorists are Muslims’, so goes the ‘phobes chant when talking about the dangers of an imagined enemy, the Shariah welding Muslim fanatic. What they don’t say is all non-Muslim terrorists aren’t categorized as such. Rather they are given more inert sounding names like manic depressive and charged not with terrorism, but with ‘placing a bomb’ inside a federal building and thus fall beneath the terrorist radar. Such is the case with this 
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