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Terrorists in DisguiseBeware! The guy pestering you to buy dibidi or the vendor you approached in looking for a nice combination of 12 movies which includes your favourites may well be a terrorist in disguise. That is, if the claims of an American expert Jeffrey Williams, a former a special agent with the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), are to be believed. Williams said there was now more evidence showing links between organized crime groups and counterfeit goods. He even cited a report by Ronald Noble, secretary general for Interpol, who claimed, in his testimony before the U.S. Congress on July 16, 2003 that “intellectual property crime is becoming a preferred method of funding of terrorist groups.” Now that is one for the books. Only experts in terrorism may well think that the ordinary guy trying to earn a living by selling pirated DVDs or compact discs of movies and music is a terrorist. And only these experts can conclude that people who do not have the money to pay for the steep royalty fees of Hollywood and giant recording companies, which are embedded in the prices of the commercial ones, are funding terrorism. There is no argument that behind the lowly vendor is the big business of piracy. But piracy thrives because of the hefty fees mega movie and music making companies are charging thereby causing the costs of producing these to skyrocket. The fact that piracy survives is proof that recording and selling these can be much cheaper given the development of technology. There is also no argument to supporting struggling artists. That is, if it is really the artists who get the lion’s share of the profits and not the giant companies. But before getting carried away in the debate over the propriety of patronizing pirated goods, let us proceed to the more important point. The statement of Jeffrey Williams may seem, at first glance, incredible. But a deeper analysis of the statement shows not only the paranoia of “experts in terrorism.” More importantly, it reveals the real motives behind the so-called “war on terror.” These so-called experts in terrorism and their client states most especially the U.S. and the Philippines are really experts in spreading fear and panic. They do this to justify the curtailment of civil liberties in the name of the “war against terror.” What do you think Michael Terrence Meiring was doing tinkering with a bomb when it exploded in May 2002? Meiring was spirited out of a Davao hospital after the blast by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the help of the U.S. embassy which provided the helicopter. Why do you think the names of former Defense Sec. Angelo Reyes and Gen. Victor Corpuz, former head of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, cropped up when the Oakwood mutineers, headed by now Sen. Antonio Trillanes, exposed the hand of the military in the Davao International Airport and Sasa Wharf bombings in Davao? The motives The plan to project U.S. military hegemony to push forward its economic interests was pushed as early as 1990, during the term of George Bush Sr. Then U.S. Defense Sec. Dick Cheney, who is now vice-president under George Bush Jr., Donald Rumsfield, who took the blows for Bush Jr.’s debacle in Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz, who recently resigned as World Bank head because of a corruption scandal, and I. Lewis Libby, who was recently convicted for lying to government investigators but whose sentence was commuted by George W. Bush Jr., framed the Defense Policy Guideline, in 1992, promoting the use of pre-emptive strikes and stronger U.S. military intervention in the world. All they needed then was the excuse and the justification or escape goat for the increase in U.S. military troop deployment in the light of the end of the Cold War. The September 11, 2001 crash of the World Trade Center provided them with the excuse and the so-called ‘Islamic fundamentalists-terrorists’ became the escape goats. While the crash at the World Trade Center was condemnable, the U.S. response was way out of proportion and revealing in its direction. It is thus not surprising that the “war on terror” is closely-related to the push for imperialist globalization and corporate interests. It is directed against countries which resist globalization and U.S. political-military and economic dominance, and promote their national interest such as Iran, Syria, China, North Korea, and Cuba. The “war on terror” is against people’s anti-globalization and anti-war movements. It is thus logical that the “war on terror” and imperialist globalization would be against local industries and industrial piracy, the nemesis of corporate super profits. The former it defeats by the flooding of cheap imported goods but for the latter, being imitators of imported products, it had to shut down by force. From simply raiding warehouses and companies with imitation goods, the fight against “intellectual piracy” is now being elevated into a war against terrorists. In the Philippines, this would not be too difficult as the escape goats for the “war on terror,” the Moro people, also dominates the trade of pirated DVDs and CDs. To serve and to protect It liberalized the economy and launched a crack down against piracy to allow multinational corporations to gain super profits in its trade and investments in the country in exchange for allowing the entry of overseas Filipino workers. And now it passed the anti-terrorism law, euphemistically called as the Human Security Act, both as concession to the U.S., thus the Abu Sayyaf terror tag, and to be used as repressive instrument against its perceived enemies, especially those working for its ouster, thus the red scare. While the HSA was passed to serve the interest of its U.S. master, the anti-terror law will also be used to protect its collapsing regime against the restless masses coagulating into a growing movement working for its ouster. ( categories: )
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