the G20 in Pittsburgh, etc

The video is via Alternet, here.

The last G20 meeting was in April, when CBS breathlessly reported that Obama persuaded the G20 leaders to "set their personal differences aside and listen to reason," whatever that means.

In comments at Rob's post below I suggested that the noise we're hearing about the US threatening Iran is partly a tactic related to this week's G20 summit, where various countries are likely to pressure Obama to enact all sorts of austerity measures(e.g. substantial tax hikes) in order to shore up the dollar, and US noisemaking about Iran is a response, essentially saying to the Europeans, "don't press us on the dollar or we'll do more crazy shit."

I also look at recent arrests of young Middle-easterners here, in Dallas and Denver, as being intended to say that, yes, there really is a war on terror, and the US needs to keep spending massively, the various G20 countries need to keep us afloat, and "none of you blankedy-blank Europeans better say a peep about your lack of confidence in the dollar if you know what's good for you."

The arrest here in Dallas looks particularly suspect to me. The 19 year old kid, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was tricked, according to the Ft Worth Star-Telegram,

into thinking he was detonating a bomb placed in an SUV parked under the skyscraper before they arrested him, according to court documents.

But the entire case appears to exist due to an entrapment scheme hatched by the FBI, and it seems questionable that this kid would have done anything unlawful without government agents goading him into it.

Federal agents said that they discovered Smadi within a group of online terrorists and that he stood out because of his willingness to conduct terrorist attacks.

"This is not related to any other investigation," said Mark White, an FBI spokesman. "This is a stand-alone terrorist."

One person's 'group of online terrorists' is another's chatroom of hotheaded morons blowing off steam. Meanwhile there is an online poll on Facebook now asking if Obama should be killed. Why doesn't the government take an interest in things like that?

Additionally, if Smadi was a 'stand-alone terrorist' and the government's entire case is based on how FBI agents decided to prod and coax him into co-operating with their frame, one has to assume that some serious funding and manpower hours were requisitioned into making this sting happen, and you don't advance careers, whether in law-enforcement or any other realm, by putting together a plan that won't fly.(The article also says they tried to talk him out of it, to persuade him that there were non-violent alternate paths to jihad. In other words, the FBI agents alternately tried to talk him into it and talk him out of it...) If this kind of thing is what the FBI is devoting resources for nowadays, then we are in pretty big trouble, and not because of terrorists.

(CNN's subsequent item indicating that their in-house expert was certain that the Dallas and Denver arrests were simply coincidental only re-enforces my mistrust. Taken all together, it all sounds like the 'terrorism theater' that Naomi Klein talks about in the Shock Doctrine.)