Arthur Silber

"Yes, sir. We've been tracking them for the last week. They've been traveling through an area controlled by that terrorist group we're watching. Every night, they've stayed at the homes of people who are family relations or friends to someone we suspect of being a terrorist. All of them are involved with those protests about taxes, the land appropriation policy, and the forced labor program. As you know, sir, some of those protests have been very violent."

"Tell me again what they look like."

"Well, sir, as best we can tell, they're pretty scraggly and dirty. And swarthy, you know? They certainly don't look like regular folks or decent people, you know, not like us. And of course, they're carrying those suspicious looking packages."

"You still don't know what's in them?"

"No, sir. We haven't been able to figure it out for sure. We've caught glimpses of things that look like they might be drugs. And a few glints of something that might be precious metal. As you know, that all fits the terrorist profile."

Stephen Lendman

CIA/Special-Ops & surveillance somewhere in Africa...

It's more than about oil, stupid. It's for vast African riches. Resource/mineral wars define America's agenda.

On December 15, 2006, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was authorized. On February 6, 2007, it was announced. On October 1, 2007, it was established. On October 1, 2008, it became operational. It's mission is controlling Africa's riches.

They're vast. They're some of the world's largest and richest. Potential new deposits await to be found. Others known about await development. Modern exploration methods enable global exploitation. Virtually nothing escapes discovery. Africa's rich in oil, gas, gold, silver, diamonds, uranium, iron, copper, tin, lead, nickel, coal, cobalt, bauxite, wood, coltan, manganese, chromium, vanadium-bearing titanium, and much more. Continental agricultural lands are valued. So is offshore fishing. Congo, Southern Sudan's Darfur region, Gulf of Guinea, Libya, Nigeria, and Niger, among other areas, hold special interest.

So does Mali. Last October, Reuters headlined "Mali war plan to be ready within weeks: AU," saying:

Military intervention is planned to reclaim territory seized by "Islamist militants." On March 22, an army coup toppled President Amadou Toumani Touré.

At the time, France signaled readiness to intervene. Malian junior officers revolted. They control northern areas. Obama officials call Mali a "powder keg." Conditions threaten regional destabilization, they say. Reasons are invented to intervene. Obama wants congressional funding. He prioritizes wars. He's eager to begin term two with new ones. Permanent ones define his agenda.

Barry Grey

"[The] direct attack on Constitutionally protected free-speech rights, begun under the Bush administration, has been expanded by the Obama administration, which treats virtually all forms of social and political protest as a potential criminal and terrorist threat."

Internal Federal Bureau of Investigation documents released last Saturday by a civil liberties organization show that FBI anti-terror units across the US targeted and spied on the Occupy Wall Street protests even before they got underway in September 2011.

The secret documents, obtained by the Partnership for Public Justice Fund (PCJF) through Freedom of Information requests and published on the organization’s web site, show that the FBI used police informants and infiltrators to systematically monitor the activities of anti-Wall Street groups and share information about them with other federal, state and local police agencies as well as with private corporations.

The documents are heavily redacted. Nevertheless, they demonstrate that the so-called “war on terror” and the police-state laws and agencies established in its name are being employed to disrupt and suppress political dissent and protect the American corporate-financial elite against the growth of social opposition.