The latest in a long line of extremely high profile arrests that appear to be based on extremely little really concrete evidence, prosecutors have announced Boston physicist Rizwan Ferdaus is being charged with “material support for terrorism” and “attempting to destroy federal buildings using explosives” over what they assure is an enormous plot.
Putting aside his scarily foreign-sounding name, Rizwan is a 26-year-old physicist from Ashland, MA who officials say “was radicalized watching videos from the Internet” and then bought a model airplane under an assumed name.
A few hand-waving exercises and model airplane becomes “drone” and selling some cell phones to undercover FBI agents becomes “selling electric switches for improvised explosive devices intended to kill US soldiers.”
A model airplane and “no information to indicate he was connected to a foreign terrorist organization” might not be much, but it translates into officials being positive that he was going to launch drone attacks against the Pentagon and the Capitol building.
The move will be added to the administration’s long list of illusory threats foiled, right after the December 2010 arrest of a guy in Baltimore who “watched Osama bin Laden videos” on his computer and posted anti-US statements on Facebook, and then went on to pretend bomb a military recruitment center with fake explosives the FBI gave him.
Sooner rather than later the people being targetted by drones will develop through the help of scientists and engineers drones of their own.
USA and Israel will no longer have a monoploy on this relatively new killing weapon. The resultant mayem will only have the US to blame.
Far better at this stage eliminate all use of drones by every country.
Shooting down drones is relatively easy, they only work because the leaders of the targetted countries are given appropriate amount of aid money to allow us to do the killings.
Northeastern's Physics curriculum must be really bad. What can a tiny plane like that do to Pentagon?
If the FBI is to believed, the model airplane would have leveled the whole structure, or perhaps have sunk an aircraft carrier . . .
This just gets better and better. Watch them ban toys now because they could be used by terrorists as drones…to damage the Pentagon, no less. I bet they'll find that this guy has ties to them dastardly Haqqanis.
Does this mean that children and adults who own or have owned remote controlled airplanes are now on the terrorist watch list?
Are they trying to put the remote controlled airplane industry out of business too? What about remote controlled boat? Cars?
Are we considered good citizens if we report our neighbors kids who play suspect games? How about the Boy Scouts of America, will they be declared terrorist training camps for offering the remote controlled airplane merit badge?
It is a relief knowing that Homeland Security is turning over each and every stone to keep us safe. They should put out official guidelines on these matters, however, so that we know where we all stand and which neighbors to turn in.
"Does this mean that children and adults who own or have owned remote controlled airplanes are now on the terrorist watch list?"
Jesus. Wait till they find out that some people build model rockets from kits, like I did as a kid.
Oh, oh! Do know that you have just confessed to a proclivity in rocket building. That makes you a suspect of the highest caliber on Big Brother's list of would be terrorists.
I'm sure somebody is already working on laws restricting radio-controlled models of all sorts, and probably banning all toys that look like anything from the AK series of rifles.
Come to think of it- if you detach the downtube from my vacuum cleaner and stick the furniture cleaning head on it, from a distance it really does look like… like….OMG IT LOOKS LIKE AN RPG LAUNCHER !!! Darn those would-be Al-Qaeda weapons designers at Bissell !
Does this mean that children and adults who own or have owned remote controlled airplanes are now on the terrorist watch list? What about remote controlled boats and cars?
Can we expect The Boy Scouts of America centers to come under suspicion of being terrorist training camps because they offer such things as remote controlled airplane merit badges?
It is a relief knowing that Homeland Security is turning over each and every stone to keep us safe. They should put out official guidelines on these matters, however, so that we know which neighbors to turn in as suspected terrorists.
Any journalist worth his salt would have bothered to investigate this so-called "plot". But, calling the prostitutes in the mainstream media "journalists" is an insult to the world's oldest profession.
A quick skimming of several threads about this incident on hobby forums dedicated to model aircraft indicates that the so-called "plot" sounds scary in newspeak, but in reality is highly implausible (Read: Practically useless) and should rank well below that pizza-delivery-attack-on-Fort-Dix plot.
This can't be real. Clearly the American security establishment has lost it's f**!^'in mind.
The Soviet show trials were just as absurd in their accusations and premises, but for the accused who were executed or disappeared into the Gulag, the farcical events were all too real.
Hmmmm… Lots of CYA sounding stuff in that CNN article. E.g.: 'was never a threat' given the surveilence ('close contact'); don't you feel safer now that they spy on you? They're sure 'only a small amount' of the C4 was real since it'd suck to remind anyone of the first WTC bombing. And look at the care here ' "…given the opportunity to back down, but he never wavered" from his intention to carry out the attacks, the source said.' ' Well, now it's not even so entrapment-sounding, is it? See, Hoover Boys respect you when you just wuss out. They wouldn't -like- lose a tape or something… CNN and/or their source sure sound like they're very conscious of past or potential criticism of 'terror' stings. I guess what's hardest for me to believe is that a guy with a physics BoS really didn't know that 'terrorism' benefits government.
First, they came for the religious leaders and I did nothing because I wasn't a religious leader
Then, they came for the peace activists and I did nothing because I wasn't a peace activist
Then, they came for they came for the physicists and I did nothing because I wasn't a physicist
Then, they started coming for all the Muslims and I did nothing because I wasn't a Muslim
Then, they came for me and there was no one left to do anything for me.
Begging Rev. Martin Niemoller's pardon for borrowing and adapting his famous quote.
Exactl;y terrorism benifits the government after all they are resonsible for 9/11 witch they are trying to make it a crime to say so.It just a reason to make the public scared so they can justfy wastefull spending.No another innocent person to add to the how nows how many are behind bars for none crimes or crimes of government imagination.If there are terrorists out there they don't have to attack America America is right werte they want them.I see them as what they were called when fighting the USSR FREEDOM FIGHTERS.Like Ron Paul says what would Americans do if a country like China did what America does to these poor people that have done nothing wrong.For every so called terrorist they kill they kill 10 or more civilians.Tell me who the rea;l terrorists are.I personaly can't stand looking at Bush,Obama and that scum bag Mcain they make me sick.
Come on guys, the FBI has to make an arrest now and then to justify their large budget. They have a mortgage to pay too. By the way, what about the two teams of 3 men armed to the teeth that where to follow up on the devistation caused by the model airplane attack. Any word on their arrest of if they even exist? Maybe the FBI could supply them also, why not, they supplied everything else.
Of course our governments own use of drones and indiscriminate killing of civilians would never be construed as "terrorism" but should someone else get a glimmer in their own noggins or push, pulled or blackmailed into participating in their own setup then it is?
Isn't that what has now become the new American Exceptionalism?
Do as we say, not as we do.
I don't know… Maybe Rezwan is crazy… but I often read postings of Russian Muslims in their Islamist chat rooms. It is scary, how much they hate all non-Muslims. They were responding to the news about the gays in the US Army with such glee and insults, claiming it would be easier to defeat such a decadent Army. And the more they live among the Westerners, the more they hate us.
My American-born grand daughters, being totally politically-correct, laughed at me when I warned them on the train from Moscow to St.Petersburg to watch for our neighbor in a sleeping car, a young Uzbek. Well, in the middle of the night he tried to molest one of them. The car attendant politically-incorrectly promised to throw him out while train was moving after my complaint.
There are plenty of the Chechen refugees in Oregon. Call me anything you want, but the memory of several bombings in Russia tells me to better be safe than sorry.
So we got Mr. Rogers and his wittle toy airplane. How cute.
My fucking God. When will this retarded madness end?
Keltrava says, “Far better at this stage eliminate all use of drones by every country.”
After USA nuked Japan, vaporizing 220,000, it had two main options: (1) Declare the use of A-bombs a crime against humanity and enforce such a just decree with the most powerful military on earth. (2) Increase the power and number of its nuclear arsenal, plunder weaker nations by brutal imperialism and be an Empire.
But actually — our Empire had only one option. For comes now the dominant morality of all nations since the beginning of civilization:
“Be All You Can Be,” earn all you can earn and take all you can take.
So, show me one Empire that ever willingly stopped being an Empire or pulled its punches when a colony was in rebellion? For a dominant morality is your dominant paradigm that controls every aspect of your mind, character and personality.
If one is going to go to the trouble of building a radio-controlled model, why not do it right and build a replica of something like a V-1 flying bomb? Those are so ridiculously simple to make with modern materials and with some FBI-supplied explosives one of those could really pack a wallop.
What I want to know is this: when is the FBI going to slip up in one of these 'stings' and the target really IS a terrorist and outsmarts them and really DOES carry out an operation that they themselves planned? They pass fake explosives to homeboy, homeboy switches them for the real thing = boom. "I just did what they told me to do, and used what they gave me" – Random Terrorist 1, FBI 0.