TERRORISM DEPENDS ON YOUR POINT OF VIEW

            The latest terrorist attacks raise serious doubt about the Government’s ability or even the will to combat terrorism in the USA.    What may not be as obvious is that they also tell us a lot about government-sponsored suppression of free speech and invasion of privacy of the people.

            Some commentators have suggested that the disclosures of Edward Snowden have caused the Government to be more cautious and as a result not as aggressively pursuing potential terrorists as it may otherwise have been.  This, they opine, is the reason why authorities missed recent terrorist attacks by knife wielding decapitator Alton Nolan and hatchet wielding attempted be-header Zale Thompson.    This is demonstrably untrue on the widely reported known facts, which, quite to the contrary, show that the government is not attempting to root out terrorism and, to the contrary, may be  actively engaged in covering it up.  Let’s look at what we know.

            Zale Thompson was a recent convert to Islam, renaming himself with a Muslim name and posting a public face book page with this information and openly encouraging war against the people of the United States within our own borders in the name of Islam.   Well after making these posts, On October 22, 2014, Zale attacked four New York police officers who were distracted by someone allegedly taking their picture.  The hatchet wielding Zale managed to plant the hatchet in the head of one of the officers and wounding the other who attempted to stop him before the other two shot Zale dead.

           The White House failed to identify this as a terrorist attack and government agencies have admitted that Thompson was not under surveillance nor was he the subject of any FISA or other wire-tap warrant.  Why not?  The publically available posts of Thompson would have been enough to obtain a lawful wire tap under traditional law and certainly should have triggered an electronic surveillance warrant if the government had been actually interested in stopping terrorist attacks.

            Alton Nolan decapitated a woman and was in the process of trying to do the same to another when he was shot by his boss (who fortunately happened to have a gun).  Similar to Thompson, Nolan had a public jihadist face book page praising Osama Ben laden, showing a photo of a beheading and showing the twin towers with the by line, “we did this because…“; self reported himself as a Muslim convert and quoted passages from the Quran about beheading infidels.    Among all the other incriminating evidence, of particular note on Nolan’s Facebook page is a picture of a beheading and the following lines:

            "Thus, do we find the clear precedent that explains the peculiar penchant of Islamic terrorists to behead their victims: it is merely another precedent bestowed by their Prophet." Just below the image is a citation from the Quran, "I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off of them."

  

            Even though this quote (under a picture of a person who had been beheaded) may have been clipped from another site and the quote is from the Quran; nevertheless, the fact that Nolan chose to post this on his personal site along with other Anti-American and jihadist material strongly evidenced his intent to commit a terrorist act, in particular, a beheading. 

            Instead, with all this evidence, after the beheading and the resulting ability to review any past e-mails, phone records, phone calls stored on its super computers in Utah, the Face book page with admissions, instant messaging and the like; the Justice Department is unable to find any indication of terrorism.  How is it possible the Justice Department could have found Nolan to be a terrorist before the crime, when it cannot find terrorism even after the terrorist act?     

            The same thing happed after the shooting by major Hassan at Fort Hood well before the Snowden disclosures.  In that case, Hassan was in the military and under constant observation by co-workers and commanding officers.  We now know virtually everyone around him knew for years he was a radical Islamist advocating violence against the military; yet, nothing was done, including no surveillance or warrant for electronic monitoring.  Instead, to this day, the FBI and the Justice Department insist he was not a terrorist, but, rather, a disgruntled employee.  He recently made the news again for writing a threatening letter to the Pope essentially admitting he is a terrorist on a mission of Jihad and claiming the mission is to wipe out Christianity.

            Again in the case of the Tsarneyev brothers bombing at the Boston Marathon, the elder Tsarneyev had jihadist rants publicly posted on UTube for at least a month before the bombing.  In addition, Russian intelligence warned the FBI on two occasions that the he had traveled to Chechnya and was believed to be meeting with Chechnya Muslim terrorist groups; and he was attending a Boston Mosque known to be preaching radical Jihad; yet no surveillance or electronic eavesdropping was opened prior to the bombing.  The FBI claims they interviewed the older Tsarneyev and he seemed like a nice guy so they dropped it.

            The charge of terrorism is an aggravating factor to be added to an act that would already be a crime.  It is similar to the designation” of a “hate crime”.   If someone commits a murder, lets say, for one of the typical reasons:  jealousy or money, then its just an ordinary murder.  But if there was a motivation of hatred, lets say because of racial or homophobic animus, then there is the added aggravation of a “hate crime.”   Terrorism therefore is a crime that is an aggravating charge in addition to an underlying standard charge such as murder.    Terrorism should be differentiated from conspiracy to commit terrorism.  Terrorism alone is simply the intent to commit a terrorist act, not necessarily conspiring with others to do so.

            The charge of terrorism is therefore important to the conclusion that the government is diligently looking for terrorists.  Obviously they are not; since,  they refuse to charge terrorism in obvious cases, how can we credibly believe they are seriously looking for suspects.  Note, for example, that the FBI has initiated an investigation of a potentially racially motivated killing in Ferguson, Missouri based solely on the fact that the cop was white and the victim was black and the victim had no gun.  There was no racist web site.  The circumstances of the shooting alone was enough to suggest to the Justice Department of a racial motivation.  Yet a Jihadist radical Muslim, anti American threatening face book page plus a beheading with a knife suggests nothing to our justice Department in the Nolan case suggesting terrorism.   

            The Obama administration has purged all references to terrorism and extremist Islam from all documents, procedures, training manuals and texts in the Justice Department and the military and all other federal law enforcement.  The Justice Department is coincidentally preparing and soon to issue directives to prohibit any reference to Islam as a possible factor in any crime.  Coupled with the consistent refusal to identify terrorism, it can only be concluded that the failure of the government to prevent terrorism has nothing to do with curtailment of the illegal NSA spying program.  In each of the recent cases of terrorism, there was ample publicly available warning of the intent to commit acts of terror before the fact.  It appears the government did not want to find it.

            At the same time, we know from Snowden’s document releases, since his documents are admitted by the government to be authentic, that the NSA is monitoring the private e-mails, phone calls, and web activity of millions of Americans.  They are building hundreds of thousands of square feet of nondescript buildings in Utah to house their super computers and data base of millions upon millions of American’s private communications and internet activity allegedly directed at finding terrorist activity.  The government claims even the slightest connection with a suspected terrorist justifies electronic surveillance of American citizens, thus justifying the millions being monitored    We now know conclusively from the recent terrorist attacks that these massive spying operations are not monitoring the people who openly post public information admitting they are jihadists advocating terrorists attacks within the United States. Let’s face it;  the FBI or the NSA could have found all of the terrorists we have discussed who actually committed terrorist acts in the USA with a couple of geeks in their mothers’ basement with a relatively good Dell.  If not potential terrorists, then who is the government monitoring with these billions of dollars and massive Crell computers?   We, unfortuanatley, know the answer to this as well. 

            The people being monitored are not “terrorists” as you and I understand the term. The word terrorism depends on your point of view.   To you and me it means someone who is intent on committing murderous acts against helpless civilians for some extreme political cause.  To the government, however, it means something totally different.  A terrorist to the government is a citizen so outraged over the government wasting their tax money that they actually have the audacity to try to create a citizen political action group. The evidence sadly shows that the true object of government spying operations are law abiding citizens like you and me who believe the government is spending too much money, violating the constitution by spying on its citizens without probable cause; or, even worse, who have the audacity to start political groups opposing big government with words like “patriot” or “tea party” in the name.   That’s what strikes terror in the heart of a government beaurcrat.