Thomas Gaist

A Bahraini armoured personnel vehicle reinforces US
embassy security in Manama, Bahrain. (Associated Press)

Patrick Martin: The US terror scare

The US State Department announced Sunday that 19 foreign embassies will remain closed all week in accordance with the ongoing global terror alert announced Friday. The alert was launched, according to a White House statement, in response to a threat “possibly occurring in or emanating from the Arabian Peninsula.” Britain and a number of other European countries moved to close their facilities in Yemen as well.

US officials said on Sunday that the decision to extend the closures was based on the need to “exercise caution” and not on new information regarding possible attacks. On Monday afternoon, the State Department released information citing “a rare intercepted communication” between Ayman al-Zawahri in Pakistan and Nasir al-Wahisi in Yemen, claiming that this intercept prompted the terror alert.

The media continues to promote the claims of the government uncritically, despite the absence of any factual substantiation and the vague and non-specific nature of the purported threat. There is barely a hint from the corporate-controlled media that previous terror alerts in the course of the so-called “war on terror” have proven baseless, and no reference to the rampant lying of the government in relation to the illegal spying operations that have been exposed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Lawmakers, both Democratic and Republican, continue to seize on the terror alert as supposed justification for the National Security Agency’s sweeping eavesdropping and data collection programs, which are in flagrant violation of the US Constitution. Yet there is no suggestion in the alarmist media reports that there might be an ulterior political motive behind the sudden announcement of an imminent terror threat.

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William Blum

It’s not easy being a flag-waving American nationalist. In addition to having to deal with the usual disillusion, anger, and scorn from around the world incited by Washington’s endless bombings and endless wars, the nationalist is assaulted by whistle blowers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, who have disclosed a steady stream of human-rights and civil-liberties scandals, atrocities, embarrassing lies, and embarrassing truths. Believers in “American exceptionalism” and “noble intentions” have been hard pressed to keep the rhetorical flag waving by the dawn’s early light and the twilight’s last gleaming.

That may explain the Washington Post story (July 20) headlined “U.S. asylum-seekers unhappy in Russia”, about Edward Snowden and his plan to perhaps seek asylum in Moscow. The article recounted the allegedly miserable times experienced in the Soviet Union by American expatriates and defectors like Lee Harvey Oswald, the two NSA employees of 1960 – William Martin and Bernon Mitchell – and several others. The Post’s propaganda equation apparently is: Dissatisfaction with life in Russia by an American equals a point in favor of the United States: “misplaced hopes of a glorious life in the worker’s paradise” … Oswald “was given work in an electronics factory in dreary Minsk, where the bright future eluded him” … reads the Post’s Cold War-clichéd rendition. Not much for anyone to get terribly excited about, but a defensive American nationalist is hard pressed these days to find much better.

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Patrick Martin

The latest in a long series of US terror scares since the September 11, 2001 attacks has unfolded over the last three days, following a well-worn pattern.

Top officials of the executive branch issue vague and ominous alerts. Congressional leaders, after closed-door briefings by the intelligence agencies, echo the warnings. The media amplifies the alarm uncritically, seeking to stampede the public. Not a single voice is raised to question the claims or essential premises of the scare campaign.

A number of questions are raised by the global travel alert and closure of US diplomatic facilities throughout the Middle East announced on Friday.

First, there is the timing of the measures. They come after nearly two months of nonstop revelations about massive US government spying on the American people, including the collection of both metadata and the content of the telephone conversations and e-mail of virtually every person in the United States. The Obama administration has been thrown on the defensive by the information made public by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, with the assistance of Guardian newspaper columnist Glenn Greenwald.

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