The War of Terror Goes Nuts: The Liberty City 7 Trial

I don't know if you are heard of the 'Liberty City 7 Trial' I had not, but it has echoes of the terror-scare stories past in Britain, the US and in Europe where a so-called threat is postulated by a government and the media jump on-board to whip the whole thing up into a civil-liberties-beating frenzy. The politicians can then take away our rights and justify more resources going into the military-industrial complex. Simple really. This one, the Liberty City 7 Trial, takes the biscuit though. The FBI set up a sting operation, pay thousands of dollars to seven homeless and semi-homeless guys then mount a huge paramilitary raid on them and claim they were, "prepared to wage a full ground war against the US."

Do you know what weapons the raid turned up? One single handgun. A full ground war? It's a fucking joke, except it's not:

It was a classic case of entrapment. The government recorded over 1500 hours of conversations, primarily between their guy Assad and Batiste [two of the defendants] - but the most they got was Batiste implying that to disrupt things in the US one would have to attack targets like the Sears Tower, yet never saying that he himself was planning to blow it up.

Batiste admitted during his trial that he was working a con and that he realized that these two Arabs [FBI agents] had money and he was trying to get some of it. "I was behind a couple of months on the rent, the children had no clothes," explained the father of four. "There was no food for a couple of days. There was a lot of pressure on me at the that time." Most of the others were homeless and were sleeping in their little warehouse.

And upon their arrest the U$ government claimed they were, "prepared to wage a full ground war against the US."

This is part of the same administration that tried to force a coup against Hamas in Gaza (even though the were democratically elected and 'we' are supposed to be fighting for 'democracy') that backfired and put Hamas firmly in power;

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs...President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

It's a fucking joke, except it's not.

PS. Neo-Labour, caught once more being the bunch of hypocrites they are.
PPS. Big-up to campaigners in Gloucester who scored a victory over airport expansion.
PPPS. Next GoatLab - April 18th: Syntheme's Bristol Debut!
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