Tag: State of Fear

Your Daily Fear My Fellow Minnesotans

Are you afraid? If you’re not you should be. Why? Because the anarchists the communists the drug cartels the illegal immigrants al-Qaeda al-Shabaab the Islamic State (IS) is coming to get you!

ST. PAUL, Minn. (KMSP) – Bob Fletcher once held the title of Ramsey County sheriff, and he’s reaching out to his law enforcement contacts again because he believes America should be on guard for a new kind of terror attack. This week, Fletcher sent out a bulletin to police agencies to warn them about a new kind of car bomb that has its own brochure.

Al Qaeda published the document, titled “Car Bombs Inside America,” as a step-by-step guide. The detail is amazing, but aside from instructing people to use propane tanks and an oxygen cylinder to create the destructive device, the publication also gives recommendations for targets — including Times Square, casinos in Las Vegas, and oil trains.

Oops, my mistake. It was al-Qaeda this time, not the IS (seriously, Bob Fletcher really missed an opportunity to cash in on the current fear). But they’re supposedly going to come to Minnesota and pull a Time Square bomb here. Which means that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) will have to find some schmuck with lukewarm intelligence, radicalize him, claim he joined al-Qaeda, and and give him a fake bomb so it can arrest him when he presses the detonator and make itself look like a hero.

Mr. Fletcher, if you’re reading this (which you may very well be since I’m sure I’m the kind of guy you try to make people afraid of), please note that nobody is afraid of an FBI created bomb plot anymore. Nor is anybody going to take the threat of al-Qaeda with car bombs seriously because, let’s fact it, that scenario is pretty ridiculous. And next time make sure your boogeyman is up to day. It’s embarrassing to see law enforcement agents mention al-Qaeda when the IS is the new hotness in fear.

The Terrorists aren’t Planning to Attack via Mexico

Let me just take a moment to stroke my own ego and point out that I’m not the only one calling bullshit on Judicial Watch’s report about terrorists planning to attack from Mexico. Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, called bullshit as well:

The United States’ senior counterterrorism official said on Wednesday that there is “no credible information” that the militants of the Islamic State, who have reigned terror on Iraq and Syria, are planning to attack the U.S. homeland. Although the group could pose a threat to the United States if left unchecked, any plot it tried launching today would be “limited in scope” and “nothing like a 9/11-scale attack.”

[…]

But Olsen, whose organization was set up after 9/11 to assess terrorism intelligence and “connect the dots” about potential attacks, painted a more measured picture of the fundamentalist group. “ISIL is not al Qaeda pre-9/11,” Olsen told a Brookings Institution audience on Wednesday, Sept. 3. Osama bin Laden’s network had covert cells in European countries and Southeast Asia, as well as a home base in Afghanistan. The Islamic State is “not there yet,” Olsen said. There is “no indication at this point of a cell of foreign fighters operating in the United States.”

If you look up Judicial Watch, the organization cited by the fear mongering article on Allen West’s site, you’ll notice that it’s a neoconservative watchdog group. More often than not neoconservative watchdog groups peddle fear whenever neoliberals are in power in an attempt to scare Americans into believing that the military isn’t strong enough, the police aren’t well armed enough, and the border isn’t enough of a fortress.

The fact that the news of terrorists supposedly planning to team up with drug cartels to invade the United States came from Judicial Watch should have been the first red flag. Red flag two should have been the claim that Mexican drug cartels were working with the Islamic State (IS). Mexican drug cartels don’t want somebody like the IS in power because it would likely punishes drug producers and consumers far more harshly than the current regime. Neoconservatives and neoliberals spend a lot of time trying to make it appear as though Mexican drug cartels want to kill all Americans but the fact is Americans are those cartels’ biggest customers. This becomes apparent when you look at most of the violence committed by drug cartels and see that it’s mostly aimed at threats to its business. In other words drug cartels are just like states in that they use violence to hinder competition.

As a general rule if I see an article that paints a very scary picture I label it bullshit unless some concrete evidence proving the article truthful is available. Fear is the favorite tool of tyrants. When somebody is telling you to be scared then they are most likely trying to get you to kowtow to them.

A Scared Citizen is a Good Citizen

The Islamic State (IS), formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria (ISIS), has been front page material for weeks now. After being unable to make citizens fear Iran and North Korean and only having moderate success at making citizens fear Vladimir Putin the state and its corporate media partners have been trying to make the IS the thing for fashionable citizens to be afraid of. But the IS is way the fuck over in the Middle East so why should an American citizen fear it? Here we see Allen West, one of the state’s most effective agents at instill fear in the hearts of neocons, entering stage right:

Judicial Watch reports that ”Islamic terrorist groups are operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED).”

“High-level federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources have confirmed to Judicial Watch that a warning bulletin for an imminent terrorist attack on the border has been issued. Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies have all been placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning this imminent terrorist threat. Specifically, the government sources reveal that the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas.”

This article combines the IS, illegal immigration, and drug cartels into one giant fear smoothy! Oh, I also forgot to mention, that it is almost certainly bullshit. Why would Mexican drug cartels, which are not exactly apostles of Islam, work with an organization that seems bent on destroying anything not Islam? If the only answer you can come up with is “Because drug cartels hate Americans.” then you don’t understand how drug cartels work. Americans are their biggest source of revenue. The last thing they want is for their customers to get slaughtered en masse, which the IS is supposedly interested in doing.

Another question one should be inclined to ask is why anybody would give weight to a government terror warning. Since 9/11 this country has lived in a constant state of terror warnings. Statistically if we looked at the number of terror warnings issued since 9/11 versus the number of actual instances of terrorism in this country we would see that the percentage is almost in the negative (for those of you who don’t believe I understand how percentages work please look up hyperbole)!

But the state needs a scared citizenry. Tyrannical bullshit is very hard to sell by itself. That’s why tyrannical acts are usually preceded by a period of fear mongering. The United States government has been trying to get widespread support from the citizenry to turn this country into a prison. We’re told that our “unprotected” border will let communists (removed from the latest version of the Newspeak Dictionary) violent drug cartels, terrorists, and other people who want to kill every American across. And since the threats looking to cross today are far more dangerous than the nuclear armed militaries that were supposedly trying to cross previously we’re also told that the police must be militarized. Supposedly if our police officers aren’t roaming the streets in armored personnel carriers, clad in body armor, and armed with machine guns we’re all going to be killed by terrorists!

But fences, guard towers, and barbed wired are interesting in their ability to equally keep things outside of an area and inside of an area. The more secure a border becomes the more difficult it is to cross it when escape is your goal. Uprising are also more difficult to successfully pull off when you’re facing a force that is much better armed than yours. People know this, which is why selling tyranny is difficult unless you have a good pitch. Fear is probably the best pitch of them all.

Whenever you hear people like Allen West, Bill O’Reilly, Anderson Cooper, and Wolf Blitzer talk about why you should be afraid of the week’s boogeyman just remember that their revenue is generated by generating fear. Fear leads to page clicks, video views, and better Nielsen ratings. They’re also in, what George Carlin referred to as, the big club. If you’re in the big club the tyrannical shit being enacted by the state doesn’t impact you. But we’re not in the big club so we should be wary of people peddling fear because what they claim we need sure as the hell will impact us.