Government By Fear....

It's not the first time

The Fear Factory

The FBI now has more than 100 task forces devoted exclusively to fighting terrorism. But is the government manufacturing ghosts?

GUY LAWSONPosted Jan 25, 2008 10:12 AM

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Click here to read a history of every homeland-security terror alert and the real news that was buried

"So, what you wanna do?" the friend asked. "A target?" the wanna-be jihadi replied. "I want some type of city-hall-type stuff, federal courthouses."

It was late November 2006, and twenty-two-year-old Derrick Shareef and his friend Jameel were hanging out in Rockford, Illinois, dreaming about staging a terrorist attack on America. The two men weren't sure what kind of assault they could pull off. All Shareef knew was that he wanted to cause major damage, to wreak vengeance on the country he held responsible for oppressing Muslims worldwide. "Smoke a judge," Shareef said. Maybe firebomb a government building.

But while Shareef harbored violent fantasies, he was hardly a serious threat as a jihadi. An American-born convert to Islam, he had no military training and no weapons. He had less than $100 in the bank. He worked in a dead-end job as a clerk in a video-game store. He didn't own a car. So dire were his circumstances, Shareef had no place to live. Then one day, Jameel, a fellow Muslim, had shown up at EB Games and offered him shelter. Within hours of meeting his new brother, Shareef had moved in with Jameel and his three wives and nine children. Living together, the pair fantasized about targets in Rockford, a Midwestern city of 150,000, with a minuscule Muslim population and the lone claim to fame of being the hometown of Cheap Trick.

The fact that Shareef was a loser with no means of living out his imagination didn't stop his friend from encouraging his delusions of grandeur. On the contrary, Jameel continually pushed Shareef to escalate his plans. "When you wanna plan on doing this?" he asked Shareef, talking about the plot to go after a government building. "Because we have to make specific plans and dates."

"I wanna case one first," Shareef said. There was only one problem: Jameel's car was in the garage getting repaired. "We can case one when you get the car back."

"What about time frame?" Jameel prodded.

"I like the holiday season," Shareef said, displaying an ambivalence unusual in a suicide bomber hellbent on murdering civilians. "Hell, we ain't gotta hit nobody —just blow the place up."

Finding a meaningful target to blow up in Rockford isn't easy. A hardscrabble town in the middle of America, the place is not much more than an intersection of interstates and railway lines, with little of note that might attract the attention of terrorists. So Jameel suggested the main attraction in town: CherryVale Mall, a sad-sack collection of clothing stores and sneaker shops on the outskirts of Rockford. "The mall's good," he told Shareef.

"I swear by Allah, man, I'm down for it too," Shareef said. "I'm down for the cause. I'm down to live for the cause and die for the cause, man."

When Jameel got his car back from the garage, the two men went to case the mall.

"If you ever wanna back out . . . 'cause, you gotta let me know," Jameel said. "I'm checking your heart now."

"I'm down," Shareef said.

"We ain't gonna get caught," Jameel assured him. "Don't worry."

"I'm not worried about getting caught," Shareef replied. "Not alive."

For all his bluster, Shareef was, by any objective measure, a pathetic and hapless jihadist — one of a new breed of domestic terrorists the federal government has paraded before the media since 9/11. The FBI, in a sense, elevated Shareef, working to transform him from a boastful store clerk into a suicidal mall-bomber. Like many other alleged extremists who have been targeted by the authorities, Shareef didn't know that his brand-new friend —the eager co-conspirator drawing him ever further into a terror plot —was actually an informant for the FBI.

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Illustration by Matt Mahurin

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(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Democratic Response to the Fear-mongering GOP

Peter Michaelson: Democratic Candidates Can Play a Fear Card, Too

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 11/09/2007 - 1:11pm.

Guest Contribution

One or more of the Democratic candidates for president have to challenge the American people, and perhaps even chastise us, about our fear. We have allowed the George Bush Bandwagon to pound on our fears like punk rockers at a brass and percussion concert. Shame on us! The music is horrible, but still they are allowed to play on!

Frankly, I find it almost impossible to believe that American are actually as afraid as they are told they are. I'm American and have never been known for my outstanding courage, yet I can say that I have not had one fearful day since 9/11; not one. I had unsettling moments, but none of them had much at all to do with Osama bin Laden. The thought of anthrax flying around through the mail was unsettling for me. Every time John Ashcroft opened his mouth was an occasion for a shudder to two. I admit that it is quite unsettling to have a president and vice president who seem as psychotic as Betsy bugs and a congress that doesn't seem to realize that at all. It is never encouraging to have a government that seems totally out of touch with reality. Maybe I'm just a backwards kind of person, but when I find that someone is trying to terrorize me, it only makes me mad as hell.

Dennis Kucinich said recently that "Fear is not a basis to run a government in a democracy." Yes, indeed. And it's also true that too much fear among the people will ruin the beats and rhythms of democracy.

Adrenalin is stupid juice, that's for sure.

Of course, fear is often rational and justified. But it can be irrational as well. It's a large component of a child's experience, and it lingers to various degrees in our psyche when we become adults. We project this unresolved fear into our surroundings and we believe that what we see in the world justifies it.

This is true, but it doesn't have to be. Once we realize that projection of the past into the future is what we are doing, we can consciously change that mental behavior.

What could leading Democrats tell us about the politics of fear? It thwarts the growth of democracy. Democracy is not a static condition. It either grows or it falls back into more primitive forms of governance. For our democracy to grow, we have to rise to the required level of citizenship. We'll probably have to take risks and move through our fears. If we cower in a corner looking to our military to feel safe, we'll create a power vacuum at the heart of democracy. Malevolent individuals will rush in to fill positions of authority. The military is devouring our wealth and our emotional independence. The more we spend on the military, the more we rely on it. This dependence on it to solve our problems in the world only makes us more fearful.

"I'm not going to ask you to become fearless," a Democratic leader might say. "After all, we do live in a nuclear age, an age of global warming, an age of terrorism, and economic uncertainty. But I'm asking you to be as brave as you know how. That's not asking too much. That's what your country needs from you. That's what you need from yourself. It's simply unbecoming of us to be afraid of terrorists. We're much better than that. Yes, we have to protect ourselves from them. We have to find them and destroy them. But we can't afford to live in fear of them."

I wish someone would conduct a major poll in order to find out if Americans are really afraid or if they just assume they are afraid because the news media keeps telling us that we are or ought to be.

What other points could Democratic leaders touch on? They could acknowledge that change does produce fear. It's like moving across the country. You find a job in a different state, sell your home where you grew up, and move everything you own down the ribbon of the highway. A new adventure like this can be exciting but also scary, and there are no guarantees of safety or security. Changing our country's course is also a new adventure. We do it because we believe in ourselves. We believe in our destiny. We believe in America.

Tell us the truth. We need change. We need a leader who will make peace in the world, and we need leaders who will maintain it. Making war is easy and any fool can start one. Unnecessary war is a consequence of fearfulness and stupidity, while making peace requires humility, courage, and brainpower. We have to talk to people who are our enemies or potential enemies. Let's be willing to hear and consider how they see the world, how they view their neighbors, and how they regard us.

How very true. Peace takes strength, courage, authenticity and a unity consciousness. Any damn fool can start a war.

Diplomacy is the art of establishing trusting relationships. Aggressive personal diplomacy is very effective when practiced by honorable people. Here in our country, friends, family members, and married couples have to talk, negotiate, and hear each other out if they are going to grow into deeper affection, trust, and love. We don't make friends in our communities by making threats to each other or delivering ultimatums. Nations have to negotiate, too. That's how we will create peace. Otherwise, we won't have the resources and the spirit to tackle the enormous environmental and economic problems we are facing.

We, the people of earth, don't stand a chance without each other. Until we understand that clearly, we have no hope of surviving very much longer.

There is nothing more important for us now than to reestablish the faith of the world in our excellence, our steadfastness, our good sense. We also have to reaffirm our own courage. The music mustn't die. Let this be a time for our greatness to reach its crescendo.

Rather, it is time for us to realize that America's standing in the world has been sliding on the downside for years. It did not begin with Junior and Dick. This administration has, however, has made it clear to just about everybody, with the exception of some of our countrymen and women who have been brainwashed to the point of no return...a place of unreality and delusional belief systems..

My generation will probably not live to see the restoration of integrity and honor to our beloved country. It will take generations to undo what the Bush administration has done.

Firstly, the American empire must collapse, hopefully brought down by Americans. Empire, no matter how wonderful and wise it sees itself is inherently evil. Empire and Democratic Republic cannot co-exist. We must choose between the two. Empires are horrible to those they rob, pillage, rape and burn. Empires are far too expensive for those who live in the belly of the beast; not only in terms of treasure and blood, but in terms of our very souls.

Secondly , we must bring the guilty to justice. If we do not, we will never be trusted again, not even by ourselves.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Peter Michaelson is author of Democracy's Little Self-Help Book and The Phantom of the Psyche: Freeing Ourselves from Inner Passivity. He is a practicing psychotherapist and offers telephone sessions and specializes in marriage and partnership conflict resolution. PDF files of his books are available at www.QuestForSelf.com.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

FEAR

Even if Calls Not Tapped, Our Fear Is
By Diane Carman
Denver Post

Thursday 09 August 2007

Edith Williams is certain that her phone is being tapped, and nobody can convince her otherwise.

I wouldn't dare try.

Still, it makes no sense that the government is interested in the 80-year- old woman's conversations about the weather, her health and, of course, politics with her sister in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Then again, a lot of things don't make sense.

"This has been going on since 2005," said Williams, a retired insurance agent who moved to Denver from Germany in 1951. "It's a constant drag on my nerves."

Williams has noticed a peculiar clicking or an echo on the phone whenever she talks to her sister, an economist.

She's called her long-distance provider, which said there were no technical problems. Her brother-in-law, a retired police chief, checked the phone on their end and found nothing.

But every time she hears the sounds, she feels a rush of anxiety. "All of a sudden, I get afraid," she said.

Williams worries that she's being surveilled because she has e-mailed President Bush.

She began writing to him before the war began, she said.

"My e-mails were always respectful, but they also pointed out the history of trouble in Mesopotamia and that it didn't make any sense to attack the people there. I begged him to wait for the U.N."

Williams has vivid memories of the bombings in World War II-era Germany. "Some of my e-mails recalled the horrors of a child going outside after the bombings and seeing body parts in the street."

Her other memories from the war are of the suspicion that was fostered by the Nazis so that the fears of the German people could be exploited.

"I know the distrust and the loss of personal freedom that breeds," she said. "Once neighbors start watching neighbors, looking at them differently, it's a horrible thing."

Williams said she has contacted U.S. Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar about the noises on her phone. They responded with letters that said the warrantless surveillance was a national security matter over which they had no control.

"I also had conversations with people in Salazar's office, and they didn't pay any attention to me. It was like: 'Here's a little old lady. Let's pat her on the head. She's crazy,"' she said.

"And, by the way, Salazar voted for the bill."

Williams is furious with the Democratic Congress for voting to authorize the Bush administration's wiretapping of the international phone calls and e-mails of Americans.

"Sometimes when I blow off steam to a friend or a neighbor, they'll say, 'Well, if it prevents another 9/11 repeat, why not?'

"I just lose it," she said. "I admit I've never been the most patient person, and that hasn't improved with age."

On Wednesday, she called U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, who listened to her story about the noises on the phone and commiserated with her about the Protect America Act of 2007 - which he didn't support.

"I was venting to him about that, and he said, 'Edith, you're preaching to the choir,"' she said.

I asked her why we should believe her when she says she's not a terrorist who needs watching.

"My life is an open book," she said. A citizen with a grown daughter and four grandchildren, she worked until she was 70 and now lives a quiet life with her elderly dog. Chances are good that if people are listening to the conversations with her sister, the juiciest information they'll get is a sauerbraten recipe or two.

"It's a waste of time," she said.

Still, that doesn't make it right because she is "still afraid."

And that may be the real impact of the Orwellian Protect America Act of 2007.

After all, it doesn't matter whether the government actually is eavesdropping on Williams' phone calls - or yours or mine. Just knowing that some government goon can listen for any reason - or no reason at all - can make a person think twice about expressing dissent.

Williams has seen that before and knows how insidiously it happens. "Little by little, you lose your individual freedoms and you don't even notice it."

Then, she said, you wake up one morning, and all that's left is the fear.

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Diane Carman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Fearful People Do Stupid Things

Culture of Fear: Poetry Professor Becomes Terror Suspect
By Kazim Ali, New America MediaPosted on April 24, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/50939/


On April 19, after a day of teaching classes at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, I went out to my car and grabbed a box of old poetry manuscripts from the front seat of my little white Beetle, carried it across the street and put it next to the trashcan outside Wright Hall. The poems were from poetry contests I had been judging and the box was heavy. I had previously left my recycling boxes there and they were always picked up and taken away by the trash department.


A young man from ROTC was watching me as I got into my car and drove away. I thought he was looking at my car, which has black flower decals and sometimes inspires strange looks. I later discovered that I, in my dark skin, am sometimes not even a person to the people who look at me. Instead, in spite of my peacefulness, my committed opposition to all aggression and war,

I am a threat by my very existence, a threat just living in the world as a Muslim body.

Upon my departure, he called the local police department and told them a man of Middle Eastern descent driving a heavily decaled white Beetle with out of state plates and no campus parking sticker had just placed a box next to the trash can. My car has NY plates, but he got the rest of it wrong. I have two stickers on my car. One is my highly visible faculty parking sticker and the other, which I just don't have the heart to take off these days, says, "Kerry/Edwards: For a Stronger America."


Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, then the state police. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, the campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not even that. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us "safe."

These are the days of orange alerts, school lock-downs, and endless war. We are preparing for it, training for it, looking for it, and so, of course, in the most innocuous instances -- a professor wanting to hurry home, hefting his box of discarded poetry -- we find it.


That man in the parking lot didn't even see me. He saw my darkness. He saw my Middle Eastern descent. This is ironic because though my grandfathers came from Egypt, I am Indian, a South Asian, and could never be mistaken for a Middle Eastern man by anyone who had ever met one.

One of my colleagues was in the gathering crowd, trying to figure out what had happened. She heard my description -- a Middle Eastern man driving a white Beetle with out of state plates -- and knew immediately they were talking about me and realized that the box must have been manuscripts I was discarding. She approached them and told them I was a professor on the faculty there. Immediately the campus police officer said, "What country is he from?"


"What country is he from?!" she yelled, indignant.

"Ma'am, you are associated with the suspect. You need to step away and lower your voice," he told her.


At some length, several of my faculty colleagues were able to get through to the police and get me on a cell phone where I explained to the university president and then to the state police that the box contained old poetry manuscripts that needed to be recycled. The police officer told me that in the current climate I needed to be more careful about how I behaved. "When I recycle?" I asked.

The university president appreciated my distress about the situation but denied that the call had anything to do with my race or ethnic background. The spokesperson of the university called it an "honest mistake," not referring to the young man from ROTC giving in to his worst instincts and calling the police but referring to me who made the mistake of being dark-skinned and putting my recycling next to the trashcan.


The university's bizarrely minimal statement lets everyone know that the "suspicious package" beside the trashcan ended up being, indeed, trash. It goes on to say, "We appreciate your cooperation during the incident and remind everyone that safety is a joint effort by all members of the campus community."

What does that community mean to me, a person who has to walk by the ROTC offices every day on my way to my own office just down the hall -- who was watched, noted and reported, all in a day's work? Today, we gave in willingly and wholeheartedly to a culture of fear and blaming and profiling. It is deemed perfectly appropriate behavior to spy on one another and police one another and report on one another. Such behaviors exist most strongly in closed, undemocratic and fascist societies.


The university report does not mention the root cause of the alarm. That package became "suspicious" because of who was holding it, who put it down, who drove away. Me.

It was poetry, I kept insisting to the state policeman who was questioning me on the phone. It was poetry I was putting out to be recycled.


My body exists politically in a way I cannot prevent. For a moment today, without even knowing it, driving away from campus in my little Beetle, exhausted after a day of teaching, listening to Justin Timberlake on the radio, I ceased to be a person when a man I had never met looked straight through me and saw the violence in his own heart.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/50939/

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.