Pumping up the fear...

Washington´s Fear Campaign: US Issues Terror Alert for European Cities

In the US, administration spokesmen were at pains to present Obama as a hands-on “commander-in-chief.” The White House informed the press through email Sunday that Obama “has been following the threat information on a daily basis and was informed on the travel alert throughout.” Officials said Obama had convened meetings of his national security team on Friday night and Saturday morning, and was briefed again Sunday morning before the State Department issued its alert.

The Bush administration made heavy use of terror scares before the 2002, 2004 and 2006 elections, whether in the form of alerts like that issued Sunday by the State Department, or video and audio statements from Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda figures, usually made public the weekend before the balloting.

The heavy publicity given to the transatlantic threat is also being used to justify intensified police measures in the United States. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent a bulletin to local police agencies Sunday morning declaring there was no specific threat to US targets, but warning that Al Qaeda might seek to inspire those with “the ability to access the US legally” to carry out attacks using “small arms, lone shooters and small unit tactics.”

Such a warning is so general that it could apply to almost anyone in the United States. It comes two weeks after FBI raids on the homes of antiwar activists in Minneapolis and Chicago which have no precedent since the outrages of the J. Edgar Hoover period in the 1960s and 1970s. The FBI and DHS warning urged local police to monitor individuals “loitering for no apparent reason, sketching or pace counting.”

The terror scare also takes place within the context of mounting strikes and protests across Europe against draconian austerity measures directed against the working class. European governments clearly have political reasons to seek to divert public attention away from their right-wing policies and create an atmosphere of fear and panic that can be used to justify repressive measures.

An additional motivation for the terror alert is to justify the escalating US bombing and missile attacks on targets in Pakistan, under conditions of mounting opposition both in Pakistan itself and within the American population. Media reports claim that the supposed terror plot is being prepared from Al Qaeda bases in the tribal regions of Pakistan across the border from Afghanistan, and that the sharp increase in US drone attacks in Pakistan is at least in part a response to this supposed threat.

The European governments also face mass popular opposition to their participation in or support for the US-led colonial-style war in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials said Monday that a US drone strike killed as many as eight people of German nationality in North Waziristan, the district in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that the US claims is the haven for Al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan after the US invasion. Missiles destroyed a building in the town of Mir Ali.

Link:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21314