The news is splashed with the latest dire warning from our benevolent overlords of a new terrorist threat. This time it is a warning about threats to the Mall of America in Minnesota. Emphasis mine:
A new video from Al Shabaab purportedly shows the terror group calling for an attack on Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minn.
According to Fox 9, the mall is one of three similar targets the terror group specifically names, including West Edmonton Mall in Canada and the Oxford Street shopping area in London.
The video purportedly shows 6 minutes of graphic images and the terrorists celebrating the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed more than 60 people.
The narrator, his face wrapped in a black-and-white kaffiyeh-type scarf and wearing a camouflage jacket, spoke with a British accent and appeared to be of Somali origin. He accused Kenyan troops in Somalia of committing abuses against Somali Muslims.
He ended the video by calling on Muslim men to attack other shopping malls in Western countries.
An image of the Mall of America is shown in the video, alongside its GPS coordinates. The mall says it is ramping up its security in response.
U.S. authorities said there was "no credible" evidence suggesting a U.S. mall attack was in the works.
No credible evidence of an attack being in the works. Just what sounds like a fairly random terror video. (By the way, every time I hear Al Shabaab I have to fight the urge to sing it over and over like the refrain from a doo wop song.)
I am quite certain that there are new threats and warnings on a near daily basis. So why does this one warrant so much media play and why now, especially since it doesn't seem to be an imminent threat? Well it turns out that there might be an ulterior motive based on a funding squabble for the Department of "Homeland Security"...
A top Obama administration official warned several times Sunday about the potential, far-reaching perils of Congress allowing the Department of Homeland Security to run out of funding in several days and got some Republican support in the Capitol Hill stalemate.
Congressional Democrats and Republicans are in a standoff over legislation that will fund the agency through late September but also roll back President Obama's executive action on immigration.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said allowing the agency to lose its federal funding after Friday could jeopardize the U.S efforts to thwart a domestic terror attack by the Islamic State and will result in 30,000 employees being furloughed.
So. We have a political squabble where the House has sent a DHS funding bill to the Senate that seeks to also undo the President's despotic and unconstitutional fiat that gives a pass to millions of illegal aliens. What is the connection? It comes at the bottom of the story....
Johnson on Sunday also linked the purported Mall of America warning from the Africa-based al-Shabaab terror group and other recent terror alerts to what he described as a "new phase" of challenges by extremist groups abroad that have used alarming Internet videos and social media to gain adherents in the U.S. and potentially prod some to action.
If I were a suspicious person I might wonder at the timing of this latest scare tactic. Now it might very well be a legitimate warning. It more likely seems to be a way to force political action in a way that frightens the American people and likely costs a bunch of employers money as shoppers stay away. I am all for people staying out of malls as there is essentially nothing you can buy at the mall that is a necessity but I am not in favor of using the "terror" threat to extort more money for a bureaucracy that does very little involved in security.
On a daily basis, really even on a minute by minute basis, we are being manipulated by base emotions: envy, greed, lust, fear. The government is every bit as active in doing this as a Manhattan advertising agency. We get played all the time and are told it is for own good. There is a desperate need for some critical thinking in this culture, especially among the church which seems to be more susceptible and even enthusiastic in having our base emotions played upon. It is pretty much impossible to carry out the work of the Kingdom when we are spending all of our time cowering in fear, sending others off to kill on our behalf because of that fear, greedily accumulating wealth and possessions or whipping up class envy and resentment. Pavlov and his dog have nothing on frightened, affluent Americans and cable news.
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