Obama DOJ to Target “Root Causes of Violent Extremism”

James F. Tracy

On CBS’s Face the Nation today Attorney General Eric Holder stated that the Obama administration will host a summit on February 18 in Washington DC to address “the root causes” of incidents such as this week’s terrorist attacks in Paris. “‘Countering violent extremism’ is what we call it–[so] we can deal with the root causes of what it is that attracts these young men to these really negative ideological groups.”

Holder told Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer that the United States entered a “new phase” in the war on terror some time ago that specifically concerns “homegrown terrorism.”

Probing SITE Intelligence Group

Image Credit: i24news.tv

James F. Tracy

Since mid-August 2014 major news organizations have conveyed videos allegedly found online by the SITE Intelligence Group. Unsurprisingly the same media have failed to closely interrogate what the private company actually is and whether the material it promotes should be accepted as genuine.

The Search for International Terrorist Entities Intelligence Group was co-founded by Rita Katz in 2001. Katz is an Iraqi-born Jew. Her father, an Israeli spy, was executed by Iraqis as a result of his intelligence activities.

In 2003 Katz authored a book, Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America, which she published using the pseudonym, “Anonymous.”

In the book Katz explains how she took on the trappings of a Muslim woman to infiltrate the meetings of radical Muslim terrorists. The plot is unlikely, especially when one considers that such secret fundamentalist gatherings are almost always segregated along gender lines and no woman, however elaborate her costume, would be granted entry without her identity being firmly established.

SITE Intelligence Group consists of Katz and two “senior advisers,” one of whom is Bruce Hoffman, the Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at the RAND Corporation and former director of the RAND’s Washington DC office.

The Extravagant Hypocrisy of Obama’s Foreign Policy Mandarins

Image: Steven Senne, Associated Press

James F. Tracy

Foreign policy analysts gathered before journalists at the Center for American Progress on September 12 in an event titled, “Combating the Islamic State.” The occasion was held to unveil the analysts’ co-authored report, “Supporting the Syrian Opposition: Lessons from the Field in the Fight Against ISIS and Assad.”

The document’s overall thesis is that US resources must be directed at correcting the “humanitarian situation” (p. 11) in Syria by concentrating on “the defeat of ISIS” with “the removal of Assad” as “a more long term U.S. objective” (p. 3).

A cunning piece of propaganda, the paper’s faulty reasoning is exceeded only by its blatant manipulation of recent history, both of which serve to support the larger geopolitical objective of replacing the moderate, democratically-elected Bashar Al Assad government with an entity more responsive to Western decrees.

Florida Newspaper Touts “Smart Meters”, Ignores Scientific Data

Image Credit: StopSmartMeters.org

James F. Tracy

In a recent editorial, “Smart-Meter Phobia Sad, But Don’t Cut Power,” the Palm Beach Post hyped safety claims of Florida Power and Light / Next Era Energy accompanying the utility’s statewide “smart meter” deployment while condemning the roughly 6,000 Florida households that have declined such technology.

The Post often weighs in on regional and state affairs with a discriminating editorial voice. In this instance, however, the paper’s editorial staff has chosen to ignore hard scientific data that clearly lay out the health-related dangers of exposure to the non-ionizing microwave radiation emitted by smart meters and similar wireless technologies.

Indeed, the Post’s editorial reads almost as if it was authored by FPL’s own public relations department, for it is replete with most every poorly-conceived and quasi-scientific claim the utility transmits to its broad customer base.

ISIS is America’s New Terror Brand

Endless Propaganda Fuels “War on Terror”

Image Credit: Vice News

James F. Tracy 

In the wake of World War I, erstwhile propagandist and political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined propaganda as “the management of collective attitudes” and the “control over opinion” through “the manipulation of significant symbols.”[1]

The extent to which this tradition is enthusiastically upheld in the West and the United States in particular is remarkable. The American public is consistently propagandized by its government and corporate news media on the most vital of contemporary issues and events. Deception on such a scale would be of little consequence if the US was not the most powerful economic and military force on earth.

A case in point is the hysteria Western news media are attempting to create concerning the threat posed by the mercenary-terrorist army now being promoted as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or “ISIS.”

Resisting Technocracy and “Smart Grid” Ultimatums

James F. Tracy

This week James is joined on his podcast (posted below) by Josh Hart, founder and director of the California-based Stop Smart Meters, one of the foremost organizations raising public awareness on the roll out of wireless technology and the “smart grid.”

They discuss the ongoing plan to install dangerous microwave-emitting devices on homes and businesses throughout North America and the world–and how the citizenry can resist.

America’s Real Homegrown Extremists

James F. Tracy

Eric Holder wants to convey his all-consuming concern over “lone wolf homegrown violent extremists” who have “domestic concerns”. On July 13 Holder remarked on ABC’s This Week that such bogeys keep him “up late at night” as he and his cohorts attempt “to monitor them, anticipate what it is that they are going to do.”[1]

The Attorney General’s hand wringing is compounded by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s most recent “research” report. The document seeks to inform “law enforcement about the increasingly hostile anti-government movement” the SPLC claims “has grown from 150 groups in 2008 to nearly 1,100 last year.”[2]



“In early June,” the study intones,

“Free Flow of Information Act” Targets Independent Journalism

James Tracy

The fact that the US Senate is now defining what a journalist actually is sets a dangerous precedent threatening the present marketplace of ideas that in recent history has been greatly expanded by the internet.

According to the text of an amendment sponsored by Senators Diane Feinstein and Dick Durbin to the proposed “Free Flow of Information Act” (PDF) that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 12, only salaried journalists will be given the free press protections guaranteed to all US citizens by the Constitution.

Under such a law presumably only the news reporters and analysts employed by moderate-to-substantial revenue-generating news entities are regarded as “legitimate” journalists. This is because the Feinstein-Durbin amendment’s wording is especially vague on exactly what type of news organization the writer needs to be affiliated with to be able to comment and report freely.