When I was in the United States last weekend, someone we had met had mentioned that she was in Toronto when “Canada’s 9/11” was supposed to happen. I was a little bit awe struck when I realized that this person was referring to the arrests of the 17 terrorist wanna-be’s the other week in Toronto. When I thought about it after, I realized that the media had completely blown the arrests out of proportion to attempt to show to the world that Canada is “cracking down” on terrorism. The thing that most readers on CNN don’t realize is that these guys couldn’t have gotten away with anything. Every phone call they made, every time they left their house they were watched by investigators. These guys give a bad name to real terrorists.
When reading the news today, I had the same feeling about the recent arrests in Miami on Thursday. A person reading about the arrests would probably have a lot of fear that these terrorists were going to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Although I have no doubts that these guys aspired to do some sort of operation, there’s no way that they could have pulled off such an operation. But if I was a naive person living in the US, I might have a lot of fear. When reading the article in more detail, you’ll find that these guys were in contact with an FBI informant posing as an al Qaeda operative since back in November 2005. So the FBI has known about these guys since November 2005. You can be sure that these guys were monitored 24 hours a day 7 days a week. But the media still makes these terrorist wanna-be’s out to be imminent threats to the United States, and the sweeping arrests averted yet another attack on the United States.
The latest headline in the news is “Suspects wanted to kill all the devils we can”. Sometimes I wonder if the media is a Hollywood production. These terrorist arrests in Canada and the United States are blown out of proportion by the media. The real terrorists are too clever and patient to get caught, so don’t think for a second that these arrests are actually significant. The only purpose the media is serving is to instill more fear in the general public that the terrorists walk amongst them and that people should be afraid.
The word terrorism is used as a propaganda engine. The real meaning of terrorism will be long lost and another terrorist attack on the US will only be used to gain more support for overseas imperial wars. This isn’t a very good thing to say, but the complications in the Iraq mission have helped maintain some world stability. If the Iraq mission was over by now, Iran would surely be occupied by now.