Sears Tower attack plot foiled

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  • John of Phoenix
    Senior Member
    • Jun 2001
    • 31214

    Sears Tower attack plot foiled

    Seven arrested.

    Seven men arrested in a raid on a Miami warehouse have been charged in a federal indictment with conspiring with al-Qaeda to commit acts of terror in the United States, including blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago.

    The federal indictment, details of which will be made public later this morning in Washington and Miami, also alleges plans to blow up a federal building in Miami, news agencies reported.
    Gonzales will be on TV in a few minutes with details.
  • ljb5
    Senior Member
    • Jan 2004
    • 18136

    #2
    The AP is telling a slightly different story:

    ". . . no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations . . . . no imminent threat to Miami or any other area. . . . never found evidence of a credible terrorism threat against Sears Tower that has gone beyond criminal discussions. . . ." Neighbors said the men caught in Thursday night's raid exercised at night and slept in a warehouse and sometimes had young children with them and invited couple of locals to join their karate class. Benjamin Williams, 17, said the men would "cover their faces. Sometimes they would wear things on their heads, like turbans."
    Nevertheless, this dispoves Bush's theory of "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here."

    Whether or not this was a realistic threat, it was hatched, discovered and eliminated here with nothing to do with Iraq.
    ”If you look at it from a contextual standpoint, I think it's accurate. If you contextualize in concrete numbers fashion, it's not accurate."

    Comment

    • John of Phoenix
      Senior Member
      • Jun 2001
      • 31214

      #3
      Sounds like a bunch of kids in a ghetto who are pissed at their situation and looking to strike out at the establishment.

      Not too smart and not much of threat according to all reports.

      Comment

      • LeeG
        Senior Member
        • May 2002
        • 72803

        #4
        Let's invade Jamaica

        Comment

        • John of Phoenix
          Senior Member
          • Jun 2001
          • 31214

          #5
          One's from Haiti. Sure, Jamaica it is!

          ON TO KINGSTON!!

          Comment

          • Meerkat
            Senior Member #4667
            • Feb 2002
            • 21774

            #6
            Whatever the basis, it's going to be spun to death as part of the election cycle.
            If you don't think for yourself, someone else will do it for you!

            Comment

            • PatCox
              Senior Member
              • Mar 2002
              • 5456

              #7
              The indictment is posted at thesmokinggun.com. Its comical. An FBI agent gave them a camera, told them to take pictures of the FBI building so they could blow it up, then drove them to the FBI building so they could take the pictures. Thats the big "overt act."

              Comment

              • Meerkat
                Senior Member #4667
                • Feb 2002
                • 21774

                #8
                Sadly, too many Americans won't look past the administration's barking dogs to the facts.
                If you don't think for yourself, someone else will do it for you!

                Comment

                • Kim Whitmyre
                  Two Huller
                  • Jul 2005
                  • 1271

                  #9
                  Humorous summation

                  We got the Ninjas!
                  By Taylor Marsh

                  Hey, Alberto Gonzales here.

                  So, I’m sitting around in my air conditioned office in Washington the other day thinking, I need to make an arrest. It’s just been way too quiet lately and the boss is taking incoming from generals, veterans and military families on Iraq. I need to do something. I need to prove we’re fighting them "over here" to make… well, anyway, we need to keep America safe.

                  Anyway, an FBI agent walks in and starts talking about a tip we just got from someone down in Miami. With Jeb down there it’s friendly territory anyway, so I thought, what the hell, right? Next, I allocate some funds and sign off on an operational request. We called it Operation Ninja, and then my personal FBI agent buddy — not a regular FBI agent, but one of our Republican moles — gets on the phone to Florida.

                  So, now I’m a Ninja fighter. You may ask, why am I calling the bad ass terrorists in Florida Ninjas? Because they dressed up in "ninja clothing" to disguise their purpose and to shape shift between good and evil doers. It was on cable. It’s true.

                  But after my FBI agent calls the head Ninja, a problem arises. Sure, they want to blow up stuff and raise hell in America. After all, that’s what homegrown terrorists do. But the Florida Ninjas don’t have a camera to take pictures of the buildings they want to blow up.

                  They don’t have boots.

                  They don’t have guns, equipment or any weapons of any kind. They don’t even have explosives. There was "no threat from this cell."

                  They don’t even have a van to case the building they hope to target.

                  That means more money and set up costs for me, so that the Florida Ninjas can set up shop so I can go in and arrest them for plotting terrorism. Well, this is a presidential pain.

                  And I have to do all this while also planning a big fancy blow out press conference for when I arrest the Florida Ninjas. Sheesh. An attorney general’s job is never done.

                  Then I find out that there’s been "absolutely no plotting" from these "mutant jihadists." The mainstream press is also calling them "incompetent wannabes." Yeah, but they’re MY incompetent wannabes. I made these guys. These evil doers are mine.

                  We now rejoin reality, already in progress, which is owned by the progressive community…

                  Taylor, here. Color me cynical, but wake up and smell the election year fear campaign. Hear Karl Rove hiss. I’m all for catching terrorists, but when you catch a bunch of wannabe jihadists in ninja clothing just arrest them. Do you need to call a glory hound press conference?

                  Hold on, Alberto’s back…

                  Hey, Alberto again. Won’t be able to check in until later because we got another tip. Seems a call just came in about a bunch of Boy Scouts planning a military skirmish outside Foggy Bottom. Sounds suspicious to me. Those guys have knives.
                  ~~~~~/)~~~~~~~~~
                  ~~~~√ √~~~~~~~~~~~~
                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                  Comment

                  • Kim Whitmyre
                    Two Huller
                    • Jul 2005
                    • 1271

                    #10
                    More humour, more to the point:

                    A comment posted re this "news item":

                    "Orange alert!Orange alert! The elections are coming, the elections are coming!"

                    ~~~~~/)~~~~~~~~~
                    ~~~~√ √~~~~~~~~~~~~
                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                    Comment

                    • Kim Whitmyre
                      Two Huller
                      • Jul 2005
                      • 1271

                      #11
                      Update. . .



                      FBI Exploits Mentally Ill in “Homegrown” Terrorism Effort

                      Sunday June 25th 2006, 9:17 am

                      It is now an established pattern: the government seeks out mental cases and disturbed individuals and turns them into “al-Qaeda” terrorists, or wannabe al-Qaedaites.

                      Narseal Batiste, “the accused ringleader of a wacky terrorist cell” in Miami, as the New York Daily News puts it, “needs psychiatric help,” according to his father, Narcisse Batiste. “He was distraught after his beloved mother, Audrey, died in 2000, relatives told The News, and the next year he left Chicago and dropped out of sight.”

                      From all accounts, Narseal Batiste is not an over-the-top mental case like Zacarias Moussaoui, but it appears he is vulnerable enough to be exploited by the government, determined to fabricate “homegrown” terrorists.

                      In fact, the government more or less admits it does not have a case against Batiste and his young adult and teenage charges.

                      “Even as Justice Department officials trumpeted the arrests of seven Florida men accused of planning to wage a ‘full ground war against the United States,’ they acknowledged the group did not have the means to carry out the plan,” reports Knight Ridder. “The Justice Department unveiled the arrests with an orchestrated series of news conferences in two cities, but the severity of the charges compared with the seemingly amateurish nature of the group raised concerns among civil libertarians,” who noted that the group had “no weapons, no explosives” and yet the government considers the arrests and case a “major announcement.”

                      If not for the “confidential government informant” inserted in their midst, who convinced them to pledge allegiance to the cartoonish “al-Qaeda,” there would be no case.

                      After “sweeps of various locations in Miami, government agents found no explosives or weapons. Investigators also did not document any direct links to al-Qaeda.” But this complete lack of evidence did not stop the FBI. “This group was more aspirational than operational,” said John Pistole, the FBI’s deputy director. In other words, merely thinking about “al-Qaeda,” even if such a thought is planted by an agent provocateur, is illegal, a crime against the state.

                      George Orwell called this “thoughtcrime,” and wrote: “Thoughtcrime is the only crime that matters.”

                      It does not matter if the hapless victims of FBI entrapment in Miami were actually a threat, the point here is they were thinking about “al-Qaeda,” never mind this thought was planted in the mind of Narseal Batiste by the FBI.

                      “U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held up the case as a good example of the Justice Department’s strategy of taking out domestic terrorists before they strike. He said the group is representative of ‘homegrown’ terrorist cells that operate without ties to a larger group such as al-Qaeda.”

                      Thus we have realized the world envisioned by Philip K. Dick in his 1956 short story, Minority Report, made famous by Steven Spielberg’s film by the same name. In the short story and film, it is illegal to think about crime. In the story and film, the government employs “precogs,” or “previsions,” to detect illegal thoughts. However, in Miami, no such talents were required, as the FBI simply located a man with mental problems and had an agent provocateur insert thoughts in his mind, and then the boom was lowered.

                      In addition to planting thoughts in the mind of Batiste, the government has characterized the group as Muslim, even though there is no evidence of this, not that evidence matters.

                      “Despite early reports to the contrary, the men didn’t appear to be members of mainstream Muslim communities. A close friend of one of the defendants said Batiste’s teachings came from the Moorish Science Temple of America, an early 19th-century religion that blends Christianity, Judaism and Islam with a heavy influence on self-discipline through martial arts.”

                      Even though Knight Ridder makes mention of the fact Batiste and his pathetic crew of impoverished kids have nothing to do with Islam, and include this fact in the second to last paragraph of a follow-up news article, no doubt many Americans, carefully indoctrinated over the last few years, believe “al-Qaeda” is alive and well in Florida, as initial news stories certainly give this impression.

                      In fact, convincing Americans that “al-Qaeda” sleeper cells—not necessarily Arabs, but in this instance seemingly innocuous African-American kids—may live next door, or reside in the ghetto across town, is what the Justice Department’s absurd case is all about.

                      “The Justice Department made it clear that it is determined to stop people from following the model of al-Qaida,” reports the Sun-Sentinel. “There is cause for concern that this ideology of hatred has the reach and tentacles that it appears to have,” Jack Riley, a “terrorism expert” at the Rand Corporation, told the newspaper.

                      Finally, it should not be surprising the corporate media, fully onboard with the insane neocon plan for generational war and its necessary pretexts, including manufacturing pathetic patsies, would run to the Rand Corporation for meaty quotes.

                      “Covert foreign policy became the standard mode of operation after World War II, which was also when Ford Foundation became a major player for the first time. The institute most involved in classified research was Rand Corporation, set up by the Air Force in 1948. The interlocks between the trustees at Rand, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations were so numerous that the Reece Committee listed them in its report (two each for Carnegie and Rockefeller, and three for Ford). Ford gave one million dollars to Rand in 1952 alone, at a time when the chairman of Rand was simultaneously the president of Ford Foundation,” writes Daniel Brandt (Philanthropists at War).
                      ~~~~~/)~~~~~~~~~
                      ~~~~√ √~~~~~~~~~~~~
                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                      Comment

                      • Meerkat
                        Senior Member #4667
                        • Feb 2002
                        • 21774

                        #12
                        I don't think this plot was foiled, I think it was plastic wrapped!
                        If you don't think for yourself, someone else will do it for you!

                        Comment

                        • paladin
                          Senior Senior Member
                          • Dec 2000
                          • 26476

                          #13
                          and it sounds like the project was incubated by the fbi.....
                          Wakan Tanka Kici Un
                          ..a bad day sailing is a heckuva lot better than the best day at work.....
                          Fighting Illegal immigration since 1492....
                          Live your life so that whenever you lose, you're ahead."
                          "If you live life right, death is a joke as far as fear is concerned."

                          Comment

                          • PatCox
                            Senior Member
                            • Mar 2002
                            • 5456

                            #14
                            I was just thinking, I could probably get some gibbering street person to accept money and arms from me in a plot to blow something up; and then I could foil that "terrorist plot."

                            I believe that it turns out these guys are somehow related to the group known as the "moors." We have some of them in Camden, NJ. They are harmless crazies, they recently sent most of our local ones to jail for tax evasion.

                            Comment

                            • ljb5
                              Senior Member
                              • Jan 2004
                              • 18136

                              #15
                              Originally posted by PatCox
                              I was just thinking, I could probably get some gibbering street person to accept money and arms from me in a plot to blow something up; and then I could foil that "terrorist plot."
                              That's how we got a lot of the 'terrorists' who are currently in Gitmo.

                              In Afghanistan, we offered bounties in the range of $3000 to $5000 per person and then all the petty criminals started pointing fingers each other.
                              ”If you look at it from a contextual standpoint, I think it's accurate. If you contextualize in concrete numbers fashion, it's not accurate."

                              Comment

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