Terror- The money trail

Ebrahim Moosa

It’s a scandal that will make even Julius Malema smirk with ‘innocence.’ While the ANC
Youth League demagogue has been hauled over the coals for his alleged indulgence in
government tenders, his misdeeds would appear to be small fry when contrasted with the
fraud currently being peddled by government con-men just across the Atlantic.

In the wake of last December’s failed airline bombing, opportunist US corporates with all
the right political connections are making a killing from the public paranoia induced by
the attacks. With airport security all the rage, companies that manufacture body imaging
technologies and scanners have been quick to spot a profit. The former Homeland
Security Chief turned defense consultant, Michael Chertoff, has been leading calls for the
rollout of the scanners worldwide. His security firm called the Chertoff Group however
includes amongst its clients a company that manufactures the scanners itself: Rapsican
Security Systems has seen its shares leap some 27% since Christmas.

Other firms have been eager to snap up a piece of the Pentagon defense pie too. Despite
the contentious credentials of its scanning technologies, security giant
L-3 Communications has already received $165m worth of orders from aviation
authorities. Its success in bringing home the moolah can in no small measure be
attributed to the $600 000 it handed out to compliant senators during the past election
cycle.

In reality, the non-attack over Detroit was simply the latest incarnation of the perennial
boogieman used by governments to frighten their citizens, and has set the stage for the
next level of terror propaganda that will ultimately fast-track the loss of liberty and seal
multi-million dollar contracts for the Terrorism Industrial Complex(TIC). The TIC is a
conglomerate consisting of security agencies and contractors closely connected with
governments, many of their employees being former government and intelligence
operatives themselves.

With their specialty being their uncanny ability to sniff out new opportunities; for
military contractors, the hunt for new markets globally is always a priority.
And in the World Cup, they have found their prize.

With an expected 500 000 foreigners expected to turn up, together with 2 billion virtual
visitors via television and every global press agency expected to attend, the event offers
the perfect staging post for whipping up additional hysteria. And the tools being used for
the purpose are the same well-worn connivances deployed with such proficiency abroad.
In recent months, we have become spectators to embassy lockdowns and shrieking
headlines and have witnessed everyone from the media to prominent think tanks and
pseudo-academics trying to convince us that the terror threat is real.

But to assess the credibility of these threats, one is obliged to ask: “Who really benefits?”
Following the money trail, it is not difficult to see who the chief beneficiaries of these
apocalyptic alerts are. As part of the huge security blanket South Africa has laid for the
World Cup, an additional 55 000 police officers have been recruited. Six helicopters, 10
mobile command vehicles and water cannons and 100 high performance cars have also
been purchased at a staggering cost of 1.5 billion rand.

The endless fake terror alerts also present local elites with the opportunity to reorganize
cities to meet their own interests, As Rhodes academic Richard Pithouse argues, city
managers, spurred on by security companies, capitalize on the events to implement new
security regimes including increased surveillance and aggressive harassment of poor
people and street traders. The millions mobilized to inflate the coffers of multinationals
could instead have been invested in advancing the aspirations of millions of South
Africans. As the wildfire of service delivery protests across South Africa testify, the
needs of the hour are houses, schools and hospitals-not helicopters, body scanners and
water cannons.

The adhesive that always allows such grand theft to succeed, is fear. When confronted by
the blaze of terror publicity we have been exposed to recently, people would often feel
helpless and become willing to relinquish their most cherished rights and resources to
those who claim to be their protectors. The corporate media is key in perpetuating this
fear by its usage of sensationalism and misinformation to keep its coverage going. So too
are the private sector terrorism experts and academics who have become the darlings of
the media. A large fraction of these gurus are known to have shadowy relationships with
governments, intelligence agencies and private security firms. They thus have a material
interest in inflating the threat in order to elevate their client’s importance in countering
terrorism.

Alleged acts of terror undermine the very causes ‘terrorists’ seek to promote and cause
public sympathy for their mission to wane. If there are indeed any credible threats
globally, the danger comes not from faceless enemies, but from the manufactured terror
of the TIC working in tandem with compliant academics and unprincipled journalists.
As the next wave of terror alerts beckons, it would be legitimate for us to question just
how real the crises is and how much of it is it the result of political machinations. Is
terrorism really a threat or is it just a stage managed production choreographed to take
away peoples money and liberty in order for the elite to increase their wealth, power and
ultimately, global domination?