Tag Archives: terror

France deploys 10,000 troops in search for attack accomplices

Associated Press

By LORI HINNANT and SYLVIE CORBET 
1/12/15
news.yahoo.com

 

PARIS (AP) — France ordered 10,000 troops into the streets Monday to protect sensitive sites — nearly half of them to guard Jewish schools — as it hunted for accomplices to the Islamic militants who left 17 people dead as they terrorized the nation.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the search is urgent because “the threat is still present” after the attacks that began Wednesday with a massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and ended when three attackers were killed Friday in two nearly simultaneous clashes with security forces around Paris.

By midday Monday, Paris’ Marais — one of the country’s oldest Jewish neighborhoods — was filled with police and soldiers. Some 4,700 of the security forces would be assigned to protect France’s 717 Jewish schools, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

“A little girl was telling me earlier that she wanted to live in peace and learn in peace in her school,” Cazeneuve as on a visit to a Paris Jewish classroom, where the walls were covered with children’s drawings of smiling faces.

“That’s what the government, that’s what the Republic, owes to all the children in France: security in all schools, especially in the schools that could be threatened,” he added.

The children listened and waved both Israeli and French flags.

France deploys 10K troops

A soldier patrols outside a synagogue in Paris, Monday, Jan. 12, 2015. France on Monday ordered 10,000 troops into the streets to protect sensitive sites after three days of bloodshed and terror, amid the hunt for accomplices to the attacks that left 17 people and the three gunmen dead. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)

Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the nationwide deployment of troops would be completed by Tuesday and would focus on the most sensitive locations.

“The work on these attacks, on these terrorist and barbaric acts continues … because we consider that there are most probably some possible accomplices,” Valls told BFM television.

It was not clear exactly how many accomplices French forces were hunting for in addition to Hayat Boumeddiene, the widow of Amedy Coulibaly, the Islamic State group attacker who killed four hostages Friday at a kosher grocery in Paris before being killed by security forces.

But several others possible suspects appeared on their radar. French police have said the Charlie Hebdo attacks that left 12 dead were carried out by three people, but only two of those attackers — brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi — have been found.

In addition, video emerged Sunday of Coulibaly explaining how the attacks in Paris would unfold. French police want to find the person or persons who shot and posted the video, which was edited after the attacks that ended with Coulibaly being killed Friday.

This photo provided by the Paris Police Prefecture …

This photo provided by the Paris Police Prefecture Friday, Jan. 9, 2015 shows Hayat Boumedienne the suspect in the kosher market attack. Turkey’s foreign minister said Monday Jan.12, 2015 that Boumedienne, wife of Amedy Coulibaly, one of the perpetrators of the terrorist rampage in France last week, crossed into Syria from Turkey on Jan. 8. (AP Photo/Prefecture de Police de Paris, File)

 

Boumeddiene herself was seen traveling through Turkey with a male companion before reportedly arriving in Syria with him on Jan. 8 — the day after the Charlie Hebdo attack and the same day Coulibaly began his murderous spree by shooting dead a Paris policewoman.

Security camera video footage shown Monday by Turkey’s Haberturk Television network showed Boumeddiene arriving at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport on Jan. 2 — five days before the first terror attack in Paris. A high ranking Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the woman on the video was Boumeddiene.

Turkish intelligence then tracked Boumeddiene from her arrival.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the state-run Anadolu Agency that she had stayed at a hotel in Istanbul with another person before crossing into Syria on Thursday. She and her traveling companion, a 23-year-old man, toured Istanbul, then left Jan. 4 for a town near the Turkish border, according to a Turkish intelligence official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Her last phone signal was on Jan. 8 from the border town of Akcakale, where she crossed over apparently into Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria, the official said. Their Jan. 9 return plane tickets to Madrid went unused.

Survivors say the Charlie Hebdo attackers, two brothers from Paris, claimed they were being supported by al-Qaida in Yemen, the group the U.S. considers the most dangerous offshoot of that network. In his video and in comments to French media before he died, Coulibaly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, which has taken over large sections of Iraq and Syria.

Ties among the three attackers date back to at least 2005, when Coulibaly and Charlie Hebdo attacker Cherif Kouachi, 32, were jailed together. It later emerged that Cherif’s older brother, 34-year-old Said, the other Charlie Hebdo gunman, fought with or was trained by al-Qaida in Yemen.

Cherif Kouachi was also convicted in 2008 along with several others of belonging to a network that sent jihadis to fight American forces in Iraq.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday visited the Paris kosher grocery where four of the hostages were killed Friday. Volunteers, meanwhile, recited prayers over the bodies of some hostage victims as they were prepared for burial by the Jewish Burial Society in Paris.

___

Associated Press writers Thomas Adamson and John-Thor Dahlburg in Paris; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; and Desmond O. Butler in Istanbul contributed.

Feds Often Create Terror Threats, Study Finds

 thenewamerican.com

The U.S. government often manufactures and creates the alleged “terrorism threats” it purports to be fighting, in some cases even prodding mentally challenged dupes into bogus “plots” that authorities concocted in the first place, according to a newly released report highlighting the troubling practices. Perhaps the most outrageous finding: Almost every high-profile domestic terror case across America since the September 11 attacks featured the “direct involvement” of government agents or informants. In some cases, virtually the entire “terrorism” plot — from start to finish — was actually led and financed by government operatives.

Also alarming, the investigation found, are routine violations of constitutionally protected rights such as due process and fair treatment amid the never-ending and increasingly domestic-oriented terror war. From the use of “secret evidence” and anonymous juries to schemes that border on “entrapment,” the report suggests that U.S. terror policies are officially out of control. The authors of the report said the controversial tactics may even be putting national security at risk by diverting law enforcement and other resources from real threats.

The 214-page report, dubbed “Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions,” focused specifically on more than two dozen federal terror cases. As part of the probe, the non-profit Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute examined all elements of the 27 cases, from initiation of the federal investigations to eventual sentencing and even the conditions of confinement after conviction. Their findings, unveiled last week, paint a troubling picture of the U.S. “terror” apparatus, its human-rights implications, and the direction in which it is all going.

The human rights-focused investigators found numerous concerns in all aspects of the process, including what they called “overly aggressive” sting operations and “unnecessarily restrictive” conditions in prison. Many of the examples highlighted in the report are truly shocking — even to the judges presiding over the cases. For example, in the “Newburgh Four” case, the judge slammed the government’s tactics, saying it “came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles.” Authorities made a terrorist out of a man “whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope,” the judge added in his stinging rebuke.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. soil, there have been some 500 terrorism-related cases in federal courts. “This is a number that sounds really big, and it makes it sound like Americans are being kept safe from terrorism attacks,” explained Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director for Human Rights Watch. “But we found that in a lot of these cases, people were prosecuted who never would have committed a terrorist attack in the first place, if it weren’t for the involvement of the FBI.”

The New American has also documented more than a few similar cases in recent years. Among the myriad examples: Duping mentally ill Muslims into agreeing to help with fake government-orchestrated terror plots, providing fake “bombs” and convincing a group of young anarchists to plant them on a bridge, and countless more. In press releases announcing arrests and prosecutions, authorities regularly boast about the fact that the “terrorists” it arrests were actually prodded and led into the scheme by government agents and informants. Sometimes the dupes are even offered taxpayer money.

The latest report offers more evidence that the problem has become widespread. “Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the U.S.,” continued Prasow, who also served as one of the authors of the new report. “But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.”

Of the terror-related cases prosecuted since 9/11, the plurality of convictions came from so-called “material support” charges, the report found. Those normally stem from offering any sort of assistance, which can even include advice, to a proscribed organization or individual. Among the more outrageous examples highlighted in the human-rights investigation and subsequent news reports was a man initially accused of providing “military gear” to al-Qaeda. It turned out to be waterproof socks in his luggage.

Especially vulnerable, according to the human-rights report, are Muslims in the United States. The report suggests that the authorities have been burning bridges with the Islamic community in their zeal to uncover or invent terror plots; even employing troubling tactics such as paying mentally ill dupes to engage in fake terrorism schemes concocted by government officials from the start. Despite prohibitions on outright entrapment, the human-rights investigators also found that the legal burden of proving it means U.S. courts are often going along with the dubious tactics.

“The U.S. government should stop treating American Muslims as terrorists-in-waiting,” Prasow continued in a statement about the findings. “The bar on entrapment in U.S. law is so high that it’s almost impossible for a terrorism suspect to prove. Add that to law enforcement preying on the particularly vulnerable, such as those with mental or intellectual disabilities, and the very poor, and you have a recipe for rampant human rights abuses.”

As The New American magazine has documented, Muslims are not the only ones in the crosshairs. In fact, in recent years, the federal government has become increasingly brazen in labeling everyday Americans — veterans, conservatives, libertarians, pro-life activists, and more — as potential terror threats merely for their political views. Under the Obama administration, those trends have accelerated quickly, with numerous departments already exposed for officially painting a target on the backs of tens of millions of innocent Americans. Today, top U.S. officials openly admit to murdering “suspected militants” who have never been charged with a crime.

“Far from protecting Americans, including American Muslims, from the threat of terrorism, the policies documented in this report have diverted law enforcement from pursuing real threats,” Prasow added. “It is possible to protect people’s rights and also prosecute terrorists, which increases the chances of catching genuine criminals.” Other experts, including constitutional scholars, have documented similar problems with terror-war tactics.

The federal government, on the other hand, defended U.S. policies in response to the accusations in the report. “The Department of Justice has been a steadfast ally of our nation’s civil rights groups for decades,” DOJ spokesman Marc Raimondi was quoted as saying by the Washington Post. “The report itself acknowledges that the legal process used in the cases it highlighted is not only lawful but is also specifically approved by federal judges…. We do not and cannot target individuals solely for engaging in activities protected by the First Amendment, which includes free speech and religion.”

Assistant Director Michael Kortan with the FBI Office of Public Affairs claimed the Bureau’s use of informants and undercover agents was legal, important to keeping America “safe,” and already subject to what he called “rigorous oversight.” He also denied suggestions in the new report that the federal government was deploying infiltrators into communities without any evidence of wrongdoing. “The FBI does not target individuals or groups on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion and engages in outreach with diverse communities to combat all criminal activity, including terrorism,” Kortan said.

Among other recommendations, Human Rights Watch said the use of “informants” by the FBI should be restricted and subject to “robust” oversight. Prosecutors should also stop charging people with “material support to terrorism” based on activities “protected under freedom of expression principles,” it added. Finally, in response to troubling findings surrounding prison conditions, the report recommended ensuring “humane” conditions, including an end to subjecting prisoners to prolonged periods of solitary confinement.

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.

Related articles:

FBI Celebrates Duping Another Mentally Ill Man Into Fake Terror Plot

FBI Celebrates Foiling Its Own Terror Plot, Again

FBI Dupes May Day Anarchists into Bogus Terror Plot

“We Kill People Based on Metadata,” Admits Former CIA/NSA Boss

The FBI Imagines Crimes and Then Arrests the Criminals

Manufacturing Monsters to Mash

“Drug Lords” Targeted in Fast & Furious Worked for FBI

Obama’s Terrorist Ties and Radical Roots

Justice Department Trained Police to Link Political Activism With Terror

UN, Obama Fighting Alongside Al-Qaeda in Libya

Al-Qaeda & the West Back Syrian Rebels Against Assad

Bin Laden & Al-Qaeda: U.S. Govt. Creations

Army Considers Christians, Tea Party, a Terror Threat

by // Oct 23 2013 // 5:27pm

foxnewsinsider.com

Soldiers attending a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood say they were told that evangelical Christians and members of the Tea Party were a threat to the nation and that any soldier donating to those groups would be subjected to punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

A soldier who attended the Oct. 17th briefing told me the counter-intelligence agent in charge of the meeting spent nearly a half hour discussing how evangelical Christians and groups like the American Family Association were “tearing the country apart.”

Michael Berry, an attorney with the Liberty Institute, is advising the soldier and has launched an investigation into the incident.

“The American public should be outraged that the U.S. Army is teaching our troops that evangelical Christians and Tea Party members are enemies of America, and that they can be punished for supporting or participating in those groups,” said Berry, a former Marine Corps JAG officer.

“These statements about evangelicals being domestic enemies are a serious charge.”

The soldier told me he fears reprisals and asked not to be identified. He said there was a blanket statement that donating to any groups that were considered a threat to the military and government was punishable under military regulations.

“My first concern was if I was going to be in trouble going to church,” the evangelical Christian soldier told me. “Can I tithe? Can I donate to Christian charities? What if I donate to a politician who is a part of the Tea Party movement?”

Another soldier who attended the briefing alerted the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. That individual’s recollections of the briefing matched the soldier who reached out to me.

“I was very shocked and couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” the soldier said. “I felt like my religious liberties, that I risk my life and sacrifice time away from family to fight for, were being taken away.”

And while a large portion of the briefing dealt with the threat evangelicals and the Tea Party pose to the nation, barely a word was said about Islamic extremism, the soldier said.

“Our community is still healing from the act of terrorism brought on by Nidal Hasan – who really is a terrorist,” the soldier said. “This is a slap in the face. “The military is supposed to defend freedom and to classify the vast majority of the military that claim to be Christian as terrorists is sick.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, tells me the Pentagon is pushing anti-Christian propaganda.

“On the very base that was the site of mass murder carried out by a radicalized Muslim soldier, it is astonishing that it is evangelical groups that are being identified as a ‘threat,’” he said. “Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel must immediately intervene to stop this march against the rights and freedom of our soldiers.”

The soldier said they were also told that the pro-life movement is another example of “radicalization.”

“They said that evangelical Christians protesting abortions are the mobilization stage and that leads to the bombing of abortion clinics,” he said, recalling the discussion.

An Army spokesman at the Pentagon tells me they do not maintain or publish a list of organizations considered extremist.

“None of these slides [shown at the briefing] were produced by the Army, but by soldiers who included information found during an Internet search,” the spokesman said.

He said commanders and other leaders were cautioned that they should not use “lists of extremists, hate groups, radical factions or the like compiled by any outside non-governmental groups or organizations for briefings, command presentations, or as a short cut to determining if a group or activity is considered to be extremist.”

Meanwhile, the public affairs office at Fort Hood is denying the soldiers’ allegations.

“The allegations you are asking about were brought to the attention of the Fort Hood leadership immediately and a (sic) inquiry is occurring,” read a statement from Tom Rheinlander, the public affairs director at Fort Hood. “At this time, initial information gathered about the training and what you claim occurred is not substantiated by unit leadership and soldiers present at this training venue.”

I sent the public affairs officer additional questions about the specific content of the briefing but he declined to respond.

But this is not the first time an Army briefing has labeled evangelicals as extremists. Last April an Army Reserve briefing classified Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as “religious extremism.”

In a letter to Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), Secretary of the Army John McHugh said the briefing in April was an isolated incident and the material used was not sanctioned by the Army.
McHugh said it was a “misguided attempt to explain that extremism is not limited to a single religion.”

Two weeks ago, several dozen active duty troops at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, were told the American Family Association, a well-respected Christian ministry, should be classified as a domestic hate group because it advocates for traditional family values.

Again, the military called it an isolated incident with a trainer using material that was not sanctioned by the military.

That explanation is wearing thin with American Christians.

“How much longer can the Army claim no knowledge or responsibility for these things?” Berry asked.

“These repeated incidents show either that this training was directed from Army leadership at the Pentagon, or else the Army has a real discipline and leadership problem on its hands because a bunch of rogue soldiers are teaching this nonsense.”

The most recent allegations at Fort Hood have drawn sharp rebuke from religious liberty groups around the nation.

“Why is the Army engaged in these anti-Christian training propaganda briefings?” asked Perkins, himself a veteran of the Marine Corps. “The only explanation is that this is a deliberate effort of the Obama administration to intimidate and separate soldiers from Christian groups that they support and that support them.”

Ron Crews, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance, called the military’s behavior dishonorable.

“Far from mere ‘isolated incidents,’ as the Army has dismissed previous occurrences, this latest incident demonstrates a pattern and practice of Army briefings identifying mainstream religions, such as Evangelical Christianity, Judaism, and Catholicism, as examples of ‘religious extremism’ similar to Al Qaeda, Hamas and the Ku Klux Klan,” he told me.

Perkins said it’s time for the Pentagon to “ensure that instructors carry out their role to train our troops to defend our freedom, and not push anti-Christian propaganda.”

The Response of the Government to Terrorism is the Loss of our Liberties

Rocco J. Piserchia

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 the federal government instituted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and passed the Patriot Act.  No one in the military or any of the US intelligence agencies was arrested or even demoted for criminal negligence.  Instead the federal government has continued to implement a domestic police state.  For those who question this much evidence exists.  Two points should suffice.  1.)The 2012 National defense Authorization Act violated the US Constitution  by claiming that any US citizen anywhere in the world who is declared an enemy combatant loses his right to due process and may be indefinitely detained or executed without a jury trial.  The President currently has a hit list of alleged terrorists that may include US citizens – anyone of this list is subject to execution based upon secret evidence held by the US President. Anwar al-Awlaki and  his 16 year old son were US citizens who were executed by separate drone attacks in Yemen.  2.) In 2008 The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was amended to enable the federal government to record any digital communication without a warrant. Every phone call made by a land line or cell as well as every email or any other digital communication is subject to being recorded by the government without a warrant. Obama voted for this bill as a Senator and has continued to support it as President.

After the Boston Marathon terror attack we saw martial law declared for Boston and surrounding towns – random illegal searches at gun point occurred. Both the FBI and the CIA have admitted that the alleged terrorists were under their surveillance. However there will be no investigation into criminal negligence of the FBI and CIA.  Neither will anyone in the FBI or CIA be charged with any type of criminal negligence.  Instead the result be to further erode what’s left of our liberties.  Case in point – Rep. Peter King (R-NY) wants more cameras for surveillance of the public.  The solution of the government is for the corrupt power of the state to grow and the liberties of the individual to be diminished.  The colossal hoax of the illegal “War on Terror” is being used to create the pretext for perpetual war and to incrementally construct a domestic police state.  Our Founding Fathers knew that perpetual war can not coexist with individual liberty.

“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.  War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

James Madison (1751 – 1836)

NY Times: FBI Hatches Terror Plots

NYT reports in 2012 FBI’s habit of fabricating terror attacks to make high-profile arrests – now Boston suspects’ family claims sons were led every step of the way by the FBI. 

Tony Cartalucci

landdestroyer.blogspot.com

April 21, 2013 (LD) – In an April 2012 New York Times article titled, “Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.,” it is revealed that many of the high-profile terror attacks foiled by the FBI, were in fact fabricated from start to finish by the FBI itself. The article states:

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.

The report would also reveal that a fabricated, then foiled attack in Portland in 2010, even included a van and an inert bomb parked next to a real crowd of thousands during the city’s annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony:

When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust.

Indeed, the only missing ingredient separating Portland from Boston, was the FBI’s decision of what to fill the 55-gallon drums with. (For more details on other FBI cases, see: FBI’s History of Handing “Terror Suspects” Live Explosives)

The NYT piece continues, describing how the FBI picks its targets:

Typically, the stings initially target suspects for pure speech — comments to an informer outside a mosque, angry postings on Web sites, e-mails with radicals overseas — then woo them into relationships with informers, who are often convicted felons working in exchange for leniency, or with F.B.I. agents posing as members of Al Qaeda or other groups.

The article also explains how some targets “seem ambivalent, incompetent and adrift, like hapless wannabes looking for a cause that the informer or undercover agent skillfully helps them find.” Disturbingly, the NYT reports what appears to be the coaxing of one target toward violence they would otherwise never have considered:

“He was searching for answers within his Islamic faith,” said his lawyer, Clinton W. Calhoun III, who has appealed his conviction. “And this informant, I think, twisted that search in a really pretty awful way, sort of misdirected Cromitie in his search and turned him towards violence.”

A year after the NYT article was written, the Boston Marathon would be attacked by two explosive devices, killing three and injuring many more. The suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and brother Dzhokar Tsarnaev, would be announced by the FBI a day after a bizarre press conference cancellation and a security scare at the federal courthouse where a suspect was allegedly being brought.

An explanation for the FBI’s bizarre behavior may be owed to the fact that it now turns out that at least one of the suspects in the Boston bombing had caught the attention of Russian investigators in 2011 who then contacted the FBI to investigate the matter. The FBI would indeed interview Tamerlan Tsarnaev, several family members, and conduct investigations into Tsarnaev’s background, phone conversations, and Internet activity. This was all finally disclosed on April 19, 2013 in an official statement that can be found on FBI.gov:

The two individuals believed to be responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday have been positively identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now deceased, and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, now in custody. These individuals are brothers and residents of Massachusetts. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a legal permanent resident and Dzhokar Tsarnaev is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Charges have not yet been filed against Dzhokar Tsarnaev and he is presumed innocent.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, age 26, was previously designated as Suspect 1, wearing a black hat. Dzhokar A. Tsarnaev, age 19, was designated as Suspect 2, wearing a white hat. Both were born in Kyrgyzstan.

Once the FBI learned the identities of the two brothers today, the FBI reviewed its records and determined that in early 2011, a foreign government asked the FBI for information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.

In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.

The FBI’s bizarre behavior grew more suspicious when CBS reported that initially the FBI denied it had any prior contact with the Tsarnaev’s. In their report, “CBS News: FBI Interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev 2 Years Ago,” CBS claimed:

CBS News reports although the FBI initially denied contacting Tsarnaev, the brothers’ mother said they had in an interview with Russia Today.

That interview with Russia Today, in an article titled, “‘They were set up, FBI followed them for years’- Tsarnaevs’ mother to RT,” stated of the suspects’ mother:

But her biggest suspicion surrounding the case was the constant FBI surveillance she said her family was subjected to over the years. She is surprised that having been so stringent with the entire family, the FBI had no idea the sons were supposedly planning a terrorist act.

She would say of the FBI to Russia Today:

“They used to come [to our] home, they used to talk to me…they were telling me that he [the older, 26-y/o Tamerlan] was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites… they were controlling him, they were controlling his every step…and now they say that this is a terrorist act! Never ever is this true, my sons are innocent!”

Additionally, the suspects’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, told NBC news in an article titled, “Uncle: Mentors ‘radicalized’ older Boston bombing suspect,” that:

“I strongly believe they were just puppets and executors of something of bigger scale.”

“There certainly were mentors. I was shocked when I heard his words, his phrases, when every other word he starts sticking in words of God. I question what he’s doing for work, (and) he claimed he would just put everything in the will of God. It was a big concern to me. He called me ‘confused’ when I started explaining to him, make yourself useful to yourself and to your family and maybe you’ll have extra to share with everybody else.

“It wasn’t devotion, it was something, as it’s called, being radicalized. Not understanding what he is talking (about). He is just using words for the sake of the words and not understanding the meaning of it.’’

Perhaps, these two young suspects were “looking for a cause,” that an “informer or undercover agent skillfully helped them find.”

Clearly now, it is confirmed by the FBI itself, in an official statement found on their website, that they did indeed contacted the suspect and his family. The FBI also claims it, “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign,”  but clearly there must have been some evidence of at least some “pure speech — comments to an informer outside a mosque, angry postings on Web sites, e-mails with radicals overseas.”

The FBI refuses to elaborate on the case, prompting even journalists across the mainstream media to ask important questions. Business Insider’s article, “The FBI Needs To Explain Why It Failed To Monitor Boston Bombing Suspect Despite A Clear Warning,” asks the following questions:

  • Given the explicit warning, why didn’t the FBI continue to monitor Tsarnaev?
  • Why didn’t the FBI follow up with the foreign government when it didn’t get the additional information it requested?
  • How common is a warning from a foreign government about a specific person like this? Does the FBI get thousands of them?
  • What made the FBI effectively clear Tsarnaev — and what might the FBI change  to avoid making this mistake again?
  • Will the FBI conduct a full investigation into what happened?

The answer to these questions may help answer what transpired between 2011 when the FBI allegedly closed the case, and the 2013 bombings – including answering whether or not the Tsarnaev brothers were part of yet another FBI entrapment. Perhaps such suspicion may seem unwarranted, after all, despite the FBI fabricating terror attacks, they averted them before being carried out…

But at least one undercover operation, in 1993, was carried out to deadly effect. FBI agents, according to the New York Times, were indeed overseeing the bombers that detonated a device killing six and wounding many more at the World Trade Center. In their article, “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast,” NYT reported:

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer said.

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City’s tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars.

Can the FBI then, be ruled out as a prime suspect or accomplice in the Boston blasts? And isn’t it monumental folly to allow the FBI to investigate a crime they may have played a central role in? Raising suspicions further was the decision made not to read the lone surviving suspect his Miranda rights. While US President Barack Obama, the Justice Department and Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham claim such a disgraceful violation of American law is required for “security,” it seems more likely that it is instead needed to enhance a desperate coverup.

And if 10 years of war, torture, indefinite detention without trial, and the creation and expansion of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI’s Joint Terror Task Force, the TSA, and other federal agencies couldn’t prevent the Boston bombings, why does the President, DOJ, and two Republican Senators believe suspending the rights of a suspect will in any way make America safer? A better question is, why do we the people continue to let them make these decisions?

All Over America Evangelical Christians Are Being Labeled As “Extremists” And “Hate Groups”

Michael Snyder

American Dream

April 8, 2013

All Over America Evangelical Christians Are Being Labeled As Extremists And Hate GroupsAre evangelical Christians rapidly becoming one of the most hated minorities in America?  Once upon a time such a notion would have been unthinkable, but these days things are changing dramatically.  All over the United States, evangelical Christians are being called “extremists” and evangelical Christian organizations are being labeled as “hate groups”.  In fact, as I will detail later on in this article, a U.S. Army Reserve training presentation recently specifically identified evangelical Christians as “religious extremists”.  This should be extremely chilling for all evangelical Christians out there, because as history has shown us over and over again, when you want to persecute a particular group of people the first step is always to demonize them.  And that is exactly what is being done to evangelical Christians today.  Just look at how evangelical Christians are being portrayed on television and in the movies.  Just look at how much hate is being spewed at Christians on the Internet.  The Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU, both of which are considered to be among the most prominent “civil rights” organizations in the United States, are seemingly obsessed with attacking evangelical Christians.  It has become trendy to bash Christians, and that is a very frightening thing.  After they have finished demonizing evangelical Christians, what will the next step be?

A U.S. Army Reserve equal opportunity training presentation entitled “Extremism and Extremist Organizations” actually included “Evangelical Christianity” as an example of “Religious Extremism” in a list that also included al-Qaeda, Hamas and the Ku Klux Klan.  You can find a copy of the entire presentation right here.

Is this how evangelical Christians will be treated in the future?  Will evangelical Christians be treated like members of the Ku Klux Klan or like members of al-Qaeda?

The following is how a Christian Post article described this chilling report…

A U.S. Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief describes “Evangelical Christianity” and “Catholicism” as examples of “religious extremism,” according to the Archdiocese for the Military Services and the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, who shared a copy of the documents with The Christian Post.

“The number of hate groups, extremists and anti‐govt organizations in the U.S. has continued to grow over the past three years, according to reports by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They increased to 1,018 in 2011, up from 1,002 in 2010 and 602 in 2000,” reads the first page of the slide presentation labeled “Extremism & Extremist Organizations.”

Listed alongside “extremist” groups and organizations like the Klu Klux Klan and al-Qaida, the U.S. Army slideshow has “Evangelical Christianity” as the first bullet, followed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Ultra-Orthodox Judaism and farther down on the slide, Catholicism.

Posted below is a picture of the slide entitled “Religious Extremism”…

Religious Extremism

Below that slide there is accompanying text that condemns any religion that believes that it is the only “right way” and that believes that other religions are wrong…

Extremism is a complex phenomenon; it is defined as beliefs, attitudes, feelings, actions, or strategies of a character far removed from the “ordinary.” Because “ordinary” is subjective, no religious group would label itself extreme or its doctrine “extremism.” However, religious extremism is not limited to any single religion, ethnic group, or region of the world; every religion has some followers that believe that their beliefs, customs and traditions are the only “right way” and that all others are practicing their faith the “wrong way,” seeing and believing that their faith/religion superior to all others.

Well, that is exactly what evangelical Christians believe.  They believe that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is the only payment for sin and thus the only way to be reconciled to God.  Unfortunately, this belief is now enough to be labeled as a “religious extremist”.

And sadly this is far from an isolated incident.  Since Barack Obama was first elected, Christians have been demonized in government report after government report.  In a previous article entitled “Patriots And Christians Have Been Repeatedly Labeled As Potential Terrorists Since Obama Became President” I detailed many of these instances.

But of course it is not just the government that is demonizing Christians these days.

Just look at what the reaction on social media has been to the death of the son of Pastor Rick Warren.

A lot of people out there have decided to use the death of his mentally ill son as an opportunity to spew hatred toward Pastor Rick Warren and his faith.  The following are a few examples of this hate that have been posted on Twitter…

–@Goatyeah Rick Warren compared Gay 2 mental illness/his son just killed himself 4 mental illness..Is Karma paying a visit 2 the ?

–@WagCasey So pastor Rick Warren’s son killed himself? Gee, I wonder what drove him to that?

–@BarberaLaPeters @BryanJFischer well after all the dead gay kids Rick Warren is responsible for, I guess one of his is a small price to pay.

–@SamirPerez Was @RickWarren‘s son gay? Maybe conversion therapy, condemnation and hatred towards gays was too much for matt…

–@War_of_Kings I wonder if Rick Warren’s son was gay and killed himself because of his father’s anti-gay bashing?

–@rashid7053 @BlazePhoenix_ I would’ve committed suicide if my dad was Rick Warren too.

–@GinsburgJobs @marlenan21 Rick Warren has done terrible damage; my first thought was that his son was gay thats why he did it. Its sad for the boy.

–@anyprophet so who else is shocked that rick warren drove his gay son to suicide?

–@TheReallyRick Son of Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren has committed suicide. Place your bets on when its discovered he was gay.

Sadly, those are some of the cleaner examples.  There are many more which include language that is definitely not appropriate for children to read.

So why are evangelical Christians hated so much?  Well, the truth is that they are primarily hated because of what they believe.  Attempts to intimidate evangelical Christians into changing their beliefs continue to become more frightening.  The following are just a few examples…

1 – A student at Florida Atlantic University was recently suspended from class for refusing “to write the word ‘Jesus’ on a piece of paper, fold it up, and step on it.”

2 – A 14-year-old homeschooler in Maryland received multiple death threats after testifying in favor of traditional marriage before the Maryland state senate.

3 – A 14-year-old student at a public school in Texas was suspended from school for saying that he believes that homosexuality is wrong.

4 – A gay activist group that smashed up a church in Oregon says that it hopes that it will “strike fear into the hearts” of Christian leaders…

The group that allegedly smashed up a Portland church hopes its “small act of vengeance will strike fear into the hearts of” Christian leaders who teach traditional sexual morality, according to an e-mail message the group released to the public. A group calling itself “Angry Queers” has claimed responsibility for throwing baseball-sized rocks through nine church windows in Portland’s Mars Hill Church, including two 100-year-old stained glass panes.

5 – A high school teacher in Oregon was recently escorted from his school by police for objecting to the presence of Planned Parenthood in the school.

6 – Some gay activists up in Illinois actually threw concrete brick pavers through the glass doors of one Christian organization in an attempt to intimidate them…

Pro-homosexual activists attacked the Christian Liberty Academy early October 15th – throwing two large, concrete brick pavers through its glass doors with a hate-note attached– and then issued an online statement claiming responsibility for the crime. The attackers demanded that CLA “shut down” a banquet it was hosting later that evening for the “homophobic hate group,” Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH).

7 – All over the country people are being fired from their jobs for expressing their belief in the Biblical view of sexual morality.

8 – Street preachers all over America are being threatened with arrest just for standing on street corners and preaching the gospel.  Here is one recent example from Illinois…

“I did pretty much the same thing: I preached about twenty minutes, and I handed out a few tracts,” Johnson explained. “[W]hen I got in my car to leave, … and as I was getting ready to start the car, the police zoomed up and turned on their lights, and told me to get out of the car.”

“They pretty much said the same thing,” he continued. “They said, ‘You’re not supposed to raise your voice or scare anybody and tell people they’re going to die.’ I said, ‘Well, what if that building’s on fire and I raise my voice and tell people if they don’t leave, they’re going to die? Is that wrong?’”

And the Southern Poverty Law Center is very open about who they consider the enemy to be.  The following are just a few prominent evangelical Christian organizations that the SPLC identifies as hate groups…

The American Family Association

Concerned Women for America

Coral Ridge Ministries

Family Research Council

Anyone that is familiar with any of those groups knows that they are absolutely not hate groups.  In fact, they are filled with tremendously loving people.  The people that make up organizations such as those are the backbone of America.

But these days there are many liberal organizations that will label anyone that does not agree with them as a “hate group” at the drop of a hat.

In another report entitled “The Year in Hate and Extremism“, the Southern Poverty Law Center mentions the following individuals and groups…

Rand Paul

Chuck Baldwin

TeaParty.org

ConservativeDaily.com

Judicial Watch

The Oath Keepers

The truth, of course, is that all of those individuals and organizations are deeply patriotic and are trying to turn America around.  It is the SPLC that is the one that is filled with hate, and they clearly have a very deep hatred for anyone that does not agree with them.

Sadly, what is happening to evangelical Christians in America is just part of a larger trend that is happening all over the globe.  The following is from a recent Reuters article…

About 100 million Christians are persecuted around the world, with conditions worsening for them most rapidly in Syria and Ethiopia, according to an annual report by a group supporting oppressed Christians worldwide.

Open Doors, a non-denominational Christian group, listed North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan as the three toughest countries for Christians last year. They topped the 50-country ranking for 2011 as well.

Persecution of Christians is on the rise, and it is probably only going to get worse in the years ahead.

Remember what happened in Nazi Germany.  There was a long program of demonization against the groups that the Nazis hated before they ever started to round them up and take them off to camps.

In the end, those that are now demonizing evangelical Christians will not just be satisfied with calling them names.  They ultimately want much more, and what we are witnessing now is just the warm-up act.

“Extremism and Extremist Organizations” Original source

RELATED ARTICLES

Army Reserve presentation calls Christians ‘extremists’

Army Labeled Evangelicals as Religious Extremists

Police teach tactics for handling ‘sovereign citizens’

Feds Identify 100,000 to 300,000 Americans as Terrorists

Afghan President Karzai in TV address claims the US is working with the Taliban to destabilize Afghanistan

Updated March 11, 2013, 1:22 p.m. ET

By DION NISSENBAUM and YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

Wall Street Journal Online

KABUL—America’s fraught ties with Afghanistan suffered a jarring blow Sunday, when Afghan President Hamid Karzai said during a visit by the new U.S. defense secretary that the Taliban were killing Afghan civilians “in service to America.”

The remarks, in a televised speech hours before Mr. Karzai’s meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, capped a series of confrontations between the Afghan president and the U.S. over his demands to assert Afghan sovereignty and curtail American military operations.

Mr. Karzai met Mr. Hagel a day after suspected Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 18 people at the Ministry of Defense in Kabul and in the eastern province of Khost.

In his address, Mr. Karzai said the U.S. doesn’t want to leave the country after the NATO coalition’s mandate expires at the end of 2014 because it covets Afghan resources and is talking with Taliban leaders behind his back.

“Taliban are every day in talks with America, but in Kabul and Khost they set off bombs to show strength to America,” Mr. Karzai said. “The bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost yesterday were not a show of power to America, but were in service to America…It was in the service of foreigners not withdrawing from Afghanistan.”

U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, who took command of coalition forces last month, called Mr. Karzai’s charges “categorically false.”

“We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the last 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would ever be to our advantage,” he said.

Mr. Karzai’s remarks blindsided American officials who had hoped to use Mr. Hagel’s two-day visit, his first overseas trip as defense secretary, to shore up fragile relations with the Afghan president as the U.S. ends its longest foreign war.

Though most of the 66,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan are slated to go home next year, the U.S. hopes to leave behind an advisory and counterterrorism force that would support the Afghan government after 2014.

image

European Pressphoto AgencyAfghan President Hamid Karzai said in a speech Sunday recent Taliban attacks were ‘in service to America.’

American defense officials now have to assess how much damage Mr. Karzai’s allegations will have on their plans, already threatened by discord over whether to grant immunity from prosecution to U.S. troops and by the Afghan leader’s refusal to negotiate with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The war against the Taliban has claimed the lives of 2,179 American service members since 2001, says the casualty tracking website icasualties.org. While the U.S. has held talks with the Taliban in the past, contacts were stalled by the Taliban’s refusal to negotiate directly with Kabul.

Mr. Karzai’s speech on Sunday sparked some frank exchanges during Mr. Karzai’s dinner at the presidential palace with Mr. Hagel, Gen. Dunford and other officials from both nations, U.S. officials said. Mr. Hagel “struck the right balance between expressing support for Afghanistan and strongly pushing back on wildly inaccurate claims,” one U.S. official said.

After the dinner, Mr. Hagel offered a muted public response to Mr. Karzai’s comments that came in contrast to the forceful defense from Gen. Dunford. “I told the president it was not true that the United States was unilaterally working with the Taliban,” Mr. Hagel told reporters.

The defense secretary suggested that the Afghan president might have been baiting America to cultivate support from anti-Western forces in the politically fractured country. Mr. Karzai’s term expires next year, and the field of potential successors is wide open, ranging from his brother and other allies to bitter political foes. “I was once a politician, so I can understand the kind of pressures that especially leaders of countries are always under, so I would hope that, again, we can move forward—and I have confidence that we will,” Mr. Hagel said.

The Afghan president’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said the Afghan leader used the occasion to complain about civilian casualties of U.S. operations and the detentions of Afghan citizens.

In particular, Mr. Faizi said, Mr. Karzai raised the issue of an engineering student who, he said, had been seized illegally at Kandahar University by an Afghan militia working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Karzai mentioned in his speech that he was up until as late as midnight on Saturday to win the student’s release; on Sunday, he issued a decree banning foreign forces from entering universities and detaining Afghan students.

The CIA declined to comment on the matter.

“Such incidents, if they continue, are a clear breach of Afghan national sovereignty, and will create anger among the people,” Mr. Faizi said. “Any kind of bilateral relations should be based on respect of sovereignty of the two nations.”

Mr. Karzai gained power following the U.S. ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001, and initially enjoyed close ties with the U.S., holding weekly videoconference calls with President George W. Bush.

These relations deteriorated during the 2009 Afghan presidential elections, after which Mr. Karzai accused some Obama administration officials of scheming to oust him.

In previous statements, Mr. Karzai also alleged that the U.S. was secretly flying insurgents into northern Afghanistan in helicopters, as part of a plan to destabilize the country, and once even threatened to join the Taliban himself.

Mr. Karzai and Mr. Hagel have a strained personal history. In 2008, Mr. Hagel joined fellow Senators Joe Biden and John Kerry for a turbulent dinner in which they pressed the Afghan president to seriously tackle corruption in his government. When Mr. Karzai dismissed the concerns as unfounded, Mr. Biden stormed out of the meeting, throwing down his napkin.

Mr. Hagel’s restrained comments on the Afghan president Sunday suggested that U.S. leaders recognize that they need Mr. Karzai’s cooperation to complete the withdrawal of U.S. troops and equipment. Military analysts said Mr. Karzai might be trying to challenge Mr. Hagel, who has orders from President Barack Obama to quickly end the war.

“President Karzai has a history of testing new [coalition] commanders to see what the response is to his demands,” said Kimberly Kagan, founder of the Institute for the Study of War who has consulted with the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have envisaged that NATO allies would make up a large part of the residual force after 2014. Mr. Karzai, however, on Sunday reiterated his opposition to any deal with NATO as a whole, saying nations wanting to keep troops here would need to negotiate directly with Kabul.

“If you want to stay beyond 2014, all of you separately need to sign agreements with the Afghan people,” Mr. Karzai said Sunday. “Limited numbers, in a location we chose and under our conditions and framework, with respect for our laws, our sovereignty, our traditions and culture.”

Few, if any, Western allies would consider contributing troops outside the NATO framework, diplomats say. “They want us out, that is for sure,” a Western official said. “They feel that we are part of the problem.”

Despite these tensions, Gen. Dunford defended U.S.-Afghan relations, especially between military leaders of the two countries, as dynamic partnerships that can be the “shock absorbers” through turbulent times. “We don’t have a broken relationship,” he said. “We don’t have a lack of trust. We have a relationship that can actually absorb this tension as we work through difficult issues.”

But Mr. Karzai’s Sunday speech was only one such shock to the relationship. It followed the U.S.’s abrupt cancellation of its planned handover of the main U.S. detention facility at Bagram Air Field, and Mr. Karzai’s demand that U.S. Special Operations forces leave the strategic province of Wardak near Kabul.

Following Mr. Karzai’s speech, Mr. Hagel also canceled a planned joint news conference with the Afghan leader at the presidential palace. U.S. officials said this was because of security concerns that rippled across Kabul in the wake of Saturday’s bombings.

U.S. bases in the capital were on heightened alert. Mr. Hagel previously canceled scheduled visits to the Ministry of Defense—site of Saturday’s Kabul bombing—and the Interior Ministry. Instead, he met with the two ministers at alternative locations in the city.

—Habib Khan Totakhil, Julian E. Barnes and Siobhan Gorman contributed to this article.

——————————————–

RELATED ARTICLES

Afghan Leader Alleges U.S., Taliban Colluding

Afghan President Karzai Claims U.S. Colluding With Taliban Terrorists

————————————–

Former White House Press secretary Gibbs admits he was told to lie

The Nature and Direction of the “War on Terror”

The Nature and Direction of the “War on Terror”

By Rocco J. Piserchia

Originally posted on January 13, 2012

The entire premise of the “War on Terror” must be rejected.  First and foremost it’s illegal and therefore illegitimate.  Article I Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress has the legal authority to declare war.  Any war that’s undertaken without a declaration of war by Congress is illegal.  This illegal practice of an executive or presidential war has characterized all US wars after World War II.  President Eisenhower committed the US to the Korean War under the authority of the United Nations, not Congress.

Of course it’s absurd to maintain that the “War on Terror” could be legally declared by Congress since it’s impossible to legally declare war on an ideology or, as Ron Paul has stated, a tactic.  Terrorism defined as either as ideology or tactic can not be vanquished by an illegal declaration of war.  (In order to win the “War on Terror” would all references to the words “terror” and “terrorism” need to be removed from every dictionary?) The “War on Terror” is open ended, i.e., no one can proclaim when it will end and what the objectives are. It’s been used as a pretext for illegal wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya.  (The US military has routinely used air drones on targets in Pakistan which is an act of war.)

If you think the war in Afghanistan was justified it was still illegal in that Congress never declared war against Afghanistan. US forces continue to be deployed and engaged in Afghanistan after 10 years yet our nation managed to end World War II within 4 and a half years. Illegal wars often have no clear objectives and therefore may be used as pretext to indefinitely continue hostilities.  Another terrible result of illegal wars is that no clear resolution is ever achieved, i.e., “winning” is elusive if not impossible. When the objectives of a military invasion are intentionally ambiguous the results are also ambiguous.

The fact that the “War on Terror” is ambiguous is intentional.  By claiming that our nation is at war the federal government continues to exercise carte blanche to incrementally nullify the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. All of the unconstitutional executive orders and legislation that began during the Bush administration have been accepted and expanded under the Obama administration. Understanding the illegal and irrational nature of the “War on Terror” helps expose the two party system as a sham. It’s naïve to claim that the Republican Party is to the right of the Democratic Party when the Obama administration has advanced the “War on Terror”. The inherently bogus conflict between the Right and the Left is also evident in that both parties in Congress have passed legislation related to the “War on Terror”.

The Patriot Act was passed shortly after the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01.  The Patriot Act was largely written by John Yoo, an attorney with the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush.  Congress was told to pass the Patriot Act even though they had no time to even read, much less understand, the content of it.  Among its provisions we find that any misdemeanor is classified as an act of terrorism:

SEC. 802. DEFINITION OF DOMESTIC TERRORISM.

(a) DOMESTIC TERRORISM DEFINED- Section 2331 of title 18, United States Code, is amended–

(1) in paragraph (1)(B)(iii), by striking `by assassination or kidnapping’ and inserting `by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping’;

(2) in paragraph (3), by striking `and’;

(3) in paragraph (4), by striking the period at the end and inserting `; and’; and

(4) by adding at the end the following:

`(5) the term `domestic terrorism’ means activities that–

`(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;

After the Patriot Act other legislation has been passed by Congress including the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 and the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007.  Central to the mythology of the “War on Terror” is the fluid definition of what constitutes Terror and therefore who may be classified legally as a Terrorist. The Department of Defense (DoD) has trained employees that protest is a low level expression of terrorism. “A multiple choice question included on a Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course required for all DoD personnel asks the following question: “Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?” The correct answer is “protests.”[1]

The Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) published a report dated 02/20/09, MIAC Strategic Report: The Modern Militia Movement. “According to the MIAC report, if you oppose any of the following, you could qualify for being profiled as a potential dangerous “militia member”:

The United Nations

The New World Order

Gun Control

The violation of Posse Comitatus

The Federal Reserve

The Income Tax

The Ammunition and Accountability Act

A possible Constitutional Convention

The North American Union

Universal Service Program

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

Abortion

Illegal Immigration” [2]

In March of 2009 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a Domestic Extremism Lexicon. “This product provides definitions for key terms and phrases that often appear in DHS analysis that addresses the nature and scope of the threat that domestic, non-Islamic extremism poses to the United States.”[3] In this training document the following terms are listed: alternative media, antiabortion extremism, anti-immigration extremism, direct action (defined as “Lawful or unlawful acts of civil disobedience”), and patriot movement (“also: Christian patriots, patriot group, Constitutionalists, Constitutionist”)[4]

President G.W. Bush claimed that he had the authority to declare any US citizen an “enemy combatant” and that any one so classified could be detained indefinitely without a trial by the military.[5]  President Obama continued to claim this dictatorial power and his administration even claimed to have the authority to execute US citizens living abroad merely suspected of terrorism.[6]  It was also disclosed that the Obama administration has a list of US citizens who are targeted for assassination. [7] In September of 2011 President Obama proudly announced that two US citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, were executed by US air strikes in Yemen. [8] “”This is further proof that al Qaeda and its affiliates will find no safe haven anywhere in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “Working with Yemen and our other allies and partners, we will be determined, we will be deliberate, we will be relentless, we will be resolute in our commitment to destroy terrorist networks that aim to kill Americans, and to build a world in which people everywhere can live in greater peace, prosperity and security.” [9]  President Obama’s remarks are Orwellian – the US can execute anyone in the world including US citizens without due process or any disclosure of evidence and this somehow helps “to build a world in which people everywhere can live in greater peace, prosperity and security.”

The World is a Battlefield

The logical outcome of the “War on Terror” is that the entire world is to be considered a battlefield and therefore anyone accused of terrorism, including US citizens in the USA, are viable targets for indefinite military detention or even execution. The fabricated threat of terrorism is so great there’s no longer the necessity of due process and a jury trial.  This treasonous position was defended by President Obama.[10]  “In outlining its legal reasoning, the administration has cited broad congressional authorizations and presidential approvals, the international laws of war and the right to self-defense. But it has not offered the American public, uneasy allies or international authorities any specifics that would make it possible to judge how it is applying those laws.” [11] “It is dangerous in a climate where you can be labeled as or suspected of being a terrorist simply for questioning war, protesting anything, asking questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supporting Ron Paul, being a libertarian, holding gold, or stocking up on more than 7 days of food. [And the FBI says that activists who investigate factory farms can be prosecuted as terrorists.] And see this.”[12]

The position that US citizens may be indefinitely detained without due process by the military has now been legislated in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by Congress.[13]  Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) looks and sounds crazed when he proclaims on the Senate floor that anyone who requests a lawyer will be told to shut up:

In context Senator Graham said,

“Is the homeland the battlefield? You better believe it’s the battlefield!… Why would we say that if you’re in Afghanistan, we can blow you up and put you in jail forever, [snip] but if you can make it to America, you’re home free? You can’t be interrogated by our military, or CIA; you get a lawyer and that’s the end of discussion? That’s what you would be doing! That’s crazy! … It is not unfair to… hold American citizens as long as it takes to find intelligence [snip]. When they say, “I want my lawyer”, you tell them, “Shut up! You don’t get a lawyer. You’re an enemy combatant.”[14]

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) described what he wants a person accused of terrorism to experience:

“I want that person to be terrified about what’s going to happen to them in American custody. I want them not to know what’s going to happen. I want the terror that they inflict on others to be felt by them as a result of the uncertainty of not knowing … what our interrogators are going to be limited to.” [15]

Senator Lieberman stressed that the greatest threat to the “homeland” are homegrown terrorists who are radicalized Americans.[16]

Senator Lieberman openly rejects the 8th Amendment,

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Senator Lieberman is at least consistent – he has no reason to support the 8th Amendment since he openly rejects the authority of the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments:

Amendment IV – The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V- No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI – In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. (Article III Section III also specifically guarantees a jury trial to any citizen accused of treason.)

Conclusion

The “War on Terror” is a massive and growing hoax.[17] This war is against the American populace and it continues to metastasize as the Constitution is methodically eviscerated and our country is being transitioned into martial law. The entire post 9/11 domestic security apparatus was designed to help erect a police state- the aim was never foreign terrorists.  If the “War on Terror” was valid the border with Mexico would have been secured shortly after 9/11/01. Under both the Republican Bush and Democratic Obama administrations the border with Mexico remains unsecured. However the TSA, as part of DHS, is being expanded beyond airports to rail stations, subways and other points of mass transit.[18] Regardless of presidential executive orders, court decisions or Congressional legislation, no laws that contradict the Constitution are legitimate.  “All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution, are null and void.” (Chief Justice Marshall, Marbury v. Madison).

Our Founding Fathers keenly understood liberty as well as tyranny. “They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” (Benjamin Franklin).[19] “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself” (Thomas Paine).[20] “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the rights of the people by the gradual & silent encroachments of those in power than by violent & sudden usurpations.” (James Madison).[21] “If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify” (Alexander Hamilton).[22]  May God grant us the wisdom to understand the gravity of our situation and the courage to help restore the Republic.

—————————————————–

[1] “Pentagon Multiple Choice: Dissenting Americans are Terrorists” by Kurt Nimmo

http://www.infowars.com/pentagon-multiple-choice-dissenting-americans-are-terrorists/ June 15, 2009

[2] “MY RESPONSE TO M.I.A.C. REPORT”  by Chuck Baldwin; March 24, 2009

http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin500.htm

[3] Domestic Extremism Lexicon;  26 March 2009; (U) Prepared by the Strategic Analysis Group and the Extremism and Radicalization Branch, Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division.

[4] Ibid

[5] “Enemy Combatants” by William Haynes; December 12, 2002; Council on Foreign Relations

http://www.cfr.org/publication/5312/enemy_combatants.html

[6] “ ‘Permission’ needed to kill U.S. terrorists” by Eli Lake; Thursday, February 4, 2010

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/04/permission-needed-to-kill-american-terrorists/

[7] “How many Americans are targeted for assassination?” by Glenn Greenwald

Friday, Jun 25, 2010 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/25/assassinations/index.html

[8] “Al Qaeda’s Anwar al-Awlaki killed in Yemen” September 30, 2011 5:02 AM

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/30/501364/main20113732.shtml

[9] Ibid

[10] Top Legal Expert: “President Obama … Says That He Can Kill [Any American Citizen Without Any Charge and] On His Own Discretion. He Can Jail You Indefinitely On His Own Discretion” Posted on December 21, 2011

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/constitutional-expert-president-obama-says-that-he-can-kill-you-on-his-own-discretion-he-can-jail-you-indefinitely-on-his-own-discretion.html

[11] Ibid

[12] Ibid

[13] “Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial” by Chris McGreal

Wednesday 14 December 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama

[14] “Lindsey Graham: Want a lawyer? Shut Up.” by Jennifer Briney; Dec 1, 2011

http://cspangeek.com/2011/12/lindsey-graham-want-a-lawyer-shut-up/

[15] S. 1867 (NDAA): Secret Torture Provisions For Home Grown Terrorists  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0wpAcovRFk

[16] Ibid at 4:04; Sen. John McCain admitted that US citizens are subject to indefinite military detention without due process when questioned by Sen. Rand Paul. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXbwmqq-6Y4&feature=related

[17] “The War on Terror is a Hoax” by Paul Craig Roberts; February 4, 2009

http://www.infowars.com/the-war-on-terror-is-a-hoax/  and

“Neocons Admit that “War On Terror” Is a Hoax”; Wednesday, May 7, 2008

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/05/neocons-admit-that-war-on-terror-was.html

[18] “TSA screenings aren’t just for airports anymore” by Brian Bennett; December 20, 2011 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror-checkpoints-20111220,0,3213641.story

[19] The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Sparks, ed., vol. 3 (107) 1759 [date of quote]

[20] 1791 [date of quote] Dissertation on First Principles of Government

[21] 1788 [date of quote] Virginia Convention

[22] 1788 [date of quote] Federalist No. 33