June 26, 2006
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).