Stephen Lendman

A legal definition. Entrapment occurs when law enforcement officials or agents induce, influence, or provoke crimes that otherwise wouldn't be committed. However, it doesn't apply in cases of willingness to act lawlessly, government merely aiding, abetting, or facilitating a good chance to do so.

Entrapment involves the following:

● government officials or agents initiated the idea;
● individuals were persuaded to act; and
● they had no previous intent or willingness to do so.

Key is that prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that subjects weren't entrapped. Otherwise, due process convictions are prohibited, though judicial fairness seldom occurs in cases involving anyone for political reasons, especially Muslims. An earlier article explained.

Post-9/11, they've been victimized, vilified, and persecuted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, activism, and charity. They've been targeted, hunted down, rounded up, held in detention, kept in isolation, denied bail, restricted in their right to counsel, tried on secret evidence, convicted on bogus charges, given long sentences, then incarcerated as political prisoners. Hundreds languish in America's gulag, the shame of the nation.

Many there were lawlessly entrapped, a common FBI tactic, one of several earlier articles explained, accessed through this link.

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Mike Head
WSWS

"The mounting divisions in the [Australian] government reflect growing differences within the [...] ruling elite over the nature of Australia’s political, strategic and military relations with the US, under conditions where the US is in historic decline and tensions are rapidly rising between Washington and Beijing."

Representatives of nearly all the mainstream Australian media organisations today released an open letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, condemning her denunciations of the WikiLeaks publication of secret US diplomatic cables as “illegal”. The letter declares that “the reaction of the US and Australian governments to date has been deeply troubling” and states: “We will strongly resist any attempts to make the publication of these or similar documents illegal.”

The document was signed by 26 editors and news directors, including from the Murdoch and Fairfax media empires, the four national commercial television networks, the two government-owned broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, and two other radio stations. It declares its opposition to attempts to use Australian law or criminal charges to assist the US-led witch-hunt against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian citizen. “There is no evidence, either, that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have broken any Australian law. The Australian government is investigating whether Mr Assange has committed an offence, and the Prime Minister has condemned WikiLeaks’ actions as ‘illegal’. So far, it has been able to point to no Australian law that has been breached.”

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

An Israeli soldier inspects a wall of a mosque desecrated by
suspected Jewish settlers, reading "Muhammad is a pig,"
West Bank city of Qalqiliya, December 2008. (Khaleel Reash/
MaanImages, Electronic Intifada)

A few weeks ago, a supposedly religious activist, probably from one of the Gulf States, suggested to me that Muslims shouldn't confine our attacks to Zionists; we ought, he said, to attack Jews as Jews, on the grounds that the vast majority of Jews support Israel.

I treated this "advice" with great caution, suspecting that he might be one of those overzealous fanatics who are duped by Zionist circles to malign Jews so that Israeli hasbara (propaganda) operatives such as MEMRI and Honest Reporting [sic] would be able to use his extremist rhetoric to their best advantage. They highlight "Muslim anti-Semitism" and con the world into thinking that the conflict in the Middle East is not really over the Israeli occupation of Palestine and oppression of its Christian and Muslim people, but is rooted in deeply-held Arab racism against the Jews.

After some investigation, I found out that the website used by that extremist was actually a Mossad front used to attract religious radicals in order to serve Israeli propaganda purposes. Needless to say, Zionist groups just love Muslims like this and they usually have no shortage of such imbeciles to use; when there is, the Mossad hasbara department simply creates or recruits a few more.

Today, one of Israel's major propaganda goals is to exacerbate the ancient dispute between Shiites and Sunnis over events that took place immediately after the death of Prophet Muhammed, more than 1,400 years ago. It is widely believed that dozens of fanatical "Shiite" and "Sunni" websites are run or influenced by Mossad and its hasbara tentacles. The main function of these sites is to have the two main Muslim communities demonize, vilify and dehumanise each other. Aside from fanning the flames of ancient hatreds, Mossad also uses some of these sites to recruit fanatics and infiltrate their ranks. In the final analysis, it may well be that some of the most fanatical and extremist, supposedly "Islamist", groups may actually be serving the Zionist agenda, probably unwittingly.

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Scott Lazarowitz
Strike the Root

The most recent example of the sheeple’s State-obedience has been the response among many politicians and news media blabbermouths and scribblers to the latest WikiLeaks release. The documents show the utter ineptness of our government officials who have no idea what they’re doing, and the documents also show the bureaucrats’ crassness and attitude toward foreign leaders.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had written on her Facebook page that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange has “blood on his hands.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that the document release “threatens our national security.” And U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said that Assange should be charged with espionage and that the release “is worse even than a physical attack on Americans; it's worse than a military attack.”

Do we need any more proof that F.A. Hayek was right when he asserted in his book, The Road to Serfdom, that the worst get on top? And by “worst,” I mean morally and especially intellectually.

Now, when I listen to these people – and I try not to, believe me – I can’t help but conclude that it is just imbecilic for Sarah Palin to assert that Assange has “blood on his hands” merely by exposing the incompetence and buffoonery of government officials. One would think that the one with “blood on his hands” would be George W. Bush, who started both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, and both based on either lies or propaganda, or both. Whoever starts wars has blood on his hands, and worse, when starting the wars was clearly based on deception and, even worse than that, for self-serving political reasons – in Bush’s case, to get himself reelected.

It is unfortunate that so many people don’t learn from history, and can’t see into the long term. People just don’t seem to comprehend that the U.S. government’s very policies of interventionism and territorial expansionism are really what have been undermining Americans’ security. Much of what we have been suffering now – an out of control federal government and its intrusions abroad that motivates the inhabitants of those foreign territories to retaliate, and a “War on Terror” police state run amok – is the result of the Elder President Bush’s first Iraq war, also totally unnecessary and based on lies and propaganda, that included the intentional destruction during the 1990s of Iraqi water and sewage treatment facilities that led to surges in cancer and child mortality rates and an even angrier Middle Eastern and Muslim population. And Julian Assange has blood on his hands?

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Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

The reaction to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange tells us all we need to know about the total corruption of our "modern" world, which in fact is a throwback to the Dark Ages.

Some member of the United States government released to WikiLeaks the documents that are now controversial. The documents are controversial, because they are official US documents and show all too clearly that the US government is a duplicitous entity whose raison d'être is to control every other government.

The media, not merely in the US but also throughout the English speaking world and Europe, has shown its hostility to WikiLeaks. The reason is obvious. WikiLeaks reveals truth, while the media covers up for the US government and its puppet states.

Why would anyone with a lick of sense read the media when they can read original material from WikiLeaks? The average American reporter and editor must be very angry that his/her own cowardice is so clearly exposed by Julian Assange. The American media is a whore, whereas the courageous blood of warriors runs through WikiLeaks’ veins.

Just as American politicians want Bradley Manning executed because he revealed crimes of the US government, they want Julian Assange executed. In the past few days the more notorious of the dumbshits that sit in the US Congress have denounced Assange as a "traitor to America." What total ignorance. Assange is an Australian, not an American citizen. To be a traitor to America, one has to be of the nationality. An Australian cannot be a traitor to America any more than an American can be a traitor to Australia. But don’t expect the morons who represent the lobbyists to know this much.

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Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

Fake detonator with fake bomb = fake terrorist.

"The Obama regime is in the process of completing Dick Cheney’s dream by legislating the legality of indefinite detention. American law has collapsed to the dungeons of the Dark Ages."

Why does the FBI orchestrate fake terror plots?

The latest one snared Osman Mohamud, a Somali-American teenager in Portland, Oregon. The Associated Press report by William Mall and Nedra Pickler (11-27-10) is headlined in Yahoo News: "Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Oregon."

This is a misleading headline as the report makes it clear that it was a plot orchestrated by federal agents. Two sentences into the news report we have this:

"The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the [FBI] agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said."

The teenager was supplied with a fake bomb and a fake detonator.

Three sentences later the reporters contradict the quoted authorities with a quote from Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon:

"The threat was very real."

The reporters then contradict Balizan:

"White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Saturday that president Barack Obama was aware of the FBI operation before Friday’s arrest. Shapiro said Obama was assured that the FBI was in full control of the operation and that the public was not in danger."

Then Shapiro contradicts himself by declaring:

"The events of the past 24 hours underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad."

The story arrives at its Kafka highpoint when President Obama thanks the FBI for its diligence in saving us from the fake plot the FBI had fabricated.

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David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

Wow! What got into Barack Obama?!?!

This week we saw two behaviors out of him that have been completely absent for his entire presidency. Two attitudinal displays that many of us have been longing to witness for a couple of years now.

First, he’s showing some real passion, campaigning hard for a big item on his policy agenda.

And, second, he’s using some tough talk against the people who are in his way.

It’s great to see. And many of us have long wondered why he never did this before, back when his health care bill was getting savaged, or when we needed someone pounding the bully pulpit to stand up for working people or the unemployed.

Yeah, it’s great to see.

Except for one small caveat.

The passion he’s finally showing is for a horrific piece of legislation, and the people he’s dumping on are his own base.

How great is that, eh? The right can do anything they want to this president, say anything about him they want, personally or politically, and he can’t be bothered to hold them remotely accountable for their monstrous excesses. But if the people who actually made him president get angry at being crapped on by their own guy for the umpteenth time, if they finally stand-up and just say no to another sell-out, if they shake their heads in wonder at the dude who once talked about “the fierce urgency of now”, well then, by gosh, that right there unleashes his unbridled rage and contempt.

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