Miami Mice

Read Juan Cole's take on the supposed Miami "terror cell" that Torture Gonzales is so excited to have caught in his mouse trap. These guys were not Muslims, just some weird cult with elements of Christianity and Judaism and a smattering of Muslim symbolism. They were incapable of doing much of anything--their only crime apparently being going along with an FBI provacateur's suggestions: Yes, we'd like some weapons; okay, we'll join al-Qaeda.

Chris Floyd relates the arrests to the worldwide assault on the poor, and then adds remarks about the way the "war on terror" seems to be exploiting the mentally ill to pursue its evil ends (and if the terrorist "suspects" aren't crazy enough when they are captured, they'll get tortured a while until they are).

After "sweeps of various locations in Miami, government agents found no explosives or weapons. Investigators also did not document any direct links to al-Qaeda," [reported Knight-Ridder]. "But this complete lack of evidence did not stop the FBI. "This group was more aspirational than operational," said John Pistole, the FBI's deputy director. In other words, merely thinking about "al-Qaeda," even if such a thought is planted by an agent provocateur, is illegal, a crime against the state.

George Orwell called this "thoughtcrime," and wrote: "Thoughtcrime is the only crime that matters." It does not matter if the hapless victims of FBI entrapment in Miami were actually a threat, the point here is they were thinking about "al-Qaeda," never mind this thought was planted in the mind of Narseal Batiste by the FBI...

As in the 2002 movie Minority Report, our government now considers you guilty if it suspects you might commit a crime, just like it does with other countries.