Stephan Salisbury, author of Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, discusses his article “Weaponizing the Body Politic;” how the War on Drugs served as dress rehearsal for the current homeland security police state; the tanks and APCs providing “security” for the Republican National Convention in Tampa; how the freedoms of speech and assembly have become quaint notions from a bygone era; a cost-benefit analysis for the War on Terror (around 1 billion spent per...

Stephan Salisbury, author of Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, discusses his article “Islam-Baiting Doesn’t Work” at tomdispatch.com; the increased popularity of Islam-bashing in political campaigns – despite the fact most practitioners in 2010 lost their elections; the real facts on Sharia law “taking over” the US justice system (and if you’re still scared, get out of the bunker, take a look outside and be comforted by the lack of marauding religious...

Stephan Salisbury, author of Mohamed's Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, discusses the double life of famed civil rights movement photographer and FBI informant Ernest C. Withers, journalists who gave up on scrutinizing governmental abuses to act as official stenographers and apologists, how zealous FBI informants create more terrorist plots than they uncover, the vast scale of NSA information gathering and the crackdown on political activism since the run up to the...

Stephan Salisbury, author of Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, discusses the 'Mosque at Ground Zero' that is neither a mosque nor at ground zero, how most 'Not in MY NYC' protesters are from out of town and don’t reflect the tolerance of Manhattan residents, the hostile sendoff of NYC cultural center representative Feisal Abdul Rauf on his State Department-sponsored Middle East religious tolerance tour, the deep rooted xenophobia in the U.S. exacerbated by...

Stephan Salisbury, author of Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, discusses the sordid history of bogus domestic terrorism cases since 9/11, an egregious example in Philadelphia, the difficulty the entrapping feds cause the local police in their attempts to build trust in their local Muslim communities, the long history of undercover provocateurs in the pay of the national government, Dick Cheney’s 1% Doctrine, the case of the 'Newburg Four,' the Albany pizza...