Scapegoats and scaremongers

[IndianaGreen]

Scapegoats and scaremongers

Alan Maass unravels the deceptions and hidden motives in the government and media response to the plot to set off a bomb on a plane bound for Detroit.

January 5, 2010

THE ATTEMPT by a 23-year-old Nigerian man to explode a bomb on a Detroit-bound airplane has become the excuse for a return to some of the worst "war on terror" hysteria of the post-September 11 period.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam on December 25, apparently with the components of an explosive device hidden in his underwear. As the plane approached Detroit, he tried to set it off. Passengers and crew members subdued Abdulmutallab and put out the fire he started before the explosives detonated.

Immediately, the mainstream media shifted into overdrive. "Terrorism experts" filled hours of airtime on cable TV news networks with speculation about an al-Qaeda connection, based on reports that Abdulmutallab had traveled to Yemen in August to go to language school, and instead devoted himself to studying Islam at a mosque with a radical reputation.

All the more reason, according to the "war on terror" cheerleaders, for systematic racial profiling of Muslims and Arabs; the use of torture against Abdulmutallab and any other suspect; and immediate military retaliation against Yemen, which is now, we're told, the hub of al-Qaeda's operations.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/05/scapegoats-and-scaremongers