Terror Scare - After The Storm

quarsan,

do you believe there really was or is a terror threat?I personaly do not believe a word of it.Ried is a dangerous looney.
It´s hard to tell from your post where exactly you stand as to the authenticity of the supposed attacks.
It seems obvious to me that Bliar and co have made the whole thing up.

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray says the alleged transatlantic liquid bomb plot is staged-managed propaganda on behalf of Bush and Blair - who yearn for a "new 9/11" to absolve them of domestic political trouble.

Murray previously blew the whistle on how the British government was using evidence obtained from torture in Uzbekistan - inflicted on its population US-funded regime of Islam Karimov - the dictator who likes to boil people alive.

Murray questions the intent and capability of the alleged terrorists to carry out the attack and offers the likelihood that evidence of the plot was obtained through torture in Pakistan.

"None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time,

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms."

I bet you it will turn out to be a hoax

Despite all the revelations about the latest 'terror plot', politicians and security chiefs got it wrong before and are likely to have got it wrong now too.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/azzam_tamimi/2006/08/i_bet_you_it_will_turn_to_be_a.html

There are now just too many people that doubt every statement put out by this government, and believe that such 'alerts' are stage-managed, for them all to be dismissed as 'comspiracy theorists'.

From Blair down, this NuLabor government is simply not 'fit for purpose'. They are so unfit to govern that their actions are actively diminishing the safety, security, freedoms, rights, quality of life, wealth, intelligence, health and pride of every citizen of this country. There is nothing left that matters - by any measure their failure is total - their incompetence is limitless - THEY MUST GO.

The current 'terror plot' is a huge farce. Anyone who thinks that there maybe something in it is deluded.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4796199.stm

The UK is now a fascist state which uses the security forces against it's own population.

Democracy is dead in the UK. Why are people putting up with this? 'I'm all right Jack' is the answer.

Sooner or later the comfortable bubble that most people live in will burst, but it will be too late to recover our lost civil liberties, human rights and basic freedoms.

We have become a nation of slaves to money, seeking out only our own comfort and sense of self-worth through the aquisition of material wealth.

Brainwashed my the media and advertising, people can't even discern current affairs for themseleves and rely on being told by the government how to think and feel.

I have two points to make.

1, I do not think the plot was as serious as claimed, but I do think there were some people who were considering/fantasising about a plot. Maybe they had done some planning, perhaps a few really would have wanted to carry out an attack. I predict many will be released without charge, others to have lesser charges and a couple to have serious charges. I also predict that most will not be convicted. I don't go for the big conspiracy theory.

2, I am not a pacifist, and I have felt that Islamic extremism was a real problem, but I think our strategy for dealing with this is completely wrong. Secondary to that, I believe our 'security' strategies to be woeful.

I don't go for the big conspiracy theory either... but surely you accept, Q, that there has been an awful lot of political opportunism on both sides of the Atlantic. And they were VERY quick off the mark.

I'm trying to be balanced about this, but it's difficult not to smell a rat.

Note that Bush has some sticky elections coming up in November and both he and Blair really need some justification for their 'war on terror' (which is just more terror, surely?)

Wonderful how all their supporters (or those who have to) are still in denial about how Afghanistan/Iraq/Lebanon have made things worse. It's bleeding obvious to everyone else!

Noticeably absent from his brief official biography at the government's own website is the fact that before joining the Labour Party Dr John Reid previously belonged to the Communist Party of Britain who at the time supported the Stalinist oppression and loathed Refuseniks like Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He didn't have to change too much in order to serve under New Labour leader Tony Blair since he too is in favour of centralised government and more power for the state. Like Blair he is a member of Labour Friends of Israel, thus qualified for high office, and as an added bonus his new wife is Jewish, according to Wikipedia. This Brazilian-born film director made her debut with a titillating raunchy film about a girl's sexual experimentation in a quest for her identity as soon as her mother dies.

Well, Reid is looking as toothless as ever:

Thanks to the BBC

"THEY MUST GO".

Oddly enough, I tend to agree with Matthew Parris that New Labour should, instead, be left in "power" until even the hard core of thick-headed supporters who have been voting them in finally understand how useless (and, in fact, ruinous) they really are. The fever has to run its course.

Otherwise, if a halfway competent government were to be elected, it would be struggling for years to surmount Labour's heritage of catastrophe. It would get the economic consequences of Gordon Brown smack in the chops, as his superficially attractive policies come unstuck over the next few years. It would have to sort out the appalling mess that New Labour has made out of our laws. It would have to perform some embarrassing contortions to extract itself from Blair's insane foreign policy.

Painful as it is sure to be for all of us, it is probably better to let the whole New Labour movement melt down and become a scandal to everyone - even the aforesaid thickies. Otherwise they will probably be back some time.

[...] the most sustained period of serious threat since the end of the Second World War

Sure - the prospect of a handful of individuals setting off bombs is so much worse than the prospect of a full-scale nuclear war between two superpowers. Right.

Tom - I bow to your less emotional analysis, and can accept your view - guess I am just too frustrated - to remain patient whilst NuLabor bury themselves is a tough call.

My concern is that the "... hard core of thick-headed supporters ..." is too large and too thick-headed to see reason before the next election, particularly whilst their prejudices continue to be reinforced by certain 'red-topped (waste)papers'. Of course the situation may be different if Mr. Murdoch chooses to declare for another candidate (don't you just love modern 'democracy').

I think the best hope for an accelerated demise is that myopic Gordon's economic legacy will quickly become apparent in supporter's wallets and purses, because there is no doubt whatsoever that it has started to do so.

As a casual observer of the Met's efforts to do something about the low level civil war between the UK and some of its newer citizens, I just hope that the Old Bill didn't go off half-cocked again by rounding up a few iffy lads in the hope that they would be able to engineer a serious victory over a few of the would-be terrorists in the UK's midst. They may have been right, we'll see sooner or later, but it's not addressing the underlying causes of quite why these guys feel so aggrieved against the country of their choice that they consider suicide bombing planeloads of ordinary travellers which would have to include many people of the muslim faith. Is this all worth the knee-jerk reaction at UK airports, the disruption to people's lives, the airlines, the airports, the lost baggage, etc., etc. Probably not. In any event the shutting of the stable door with little or no thought about where the horse has bolted to and what it might be doing is too silly for words. Presumably the probability that the Airports would be locked down has been known for months. Perhaps there might have been some consideration given to a bit of planning in an effort to avoid all these shenanigans. It's no way to run a railroad and this government, with Prescott running the show and Reid bucking for Blair's job, whilst he tans his backside at Cliff Richard's caribbean pad, is so clearly incompetent that it confirms to me that the best thing I ever did was to go and live in France. They all make me ill...

I don't think you should minimise the threat posed by the Daily Mail.

Anyone could read it and spontaneously combust...

Nice post, well put, fake terror is fake terror is fake terror.

I can't believe how cynical people are on this site. Don't you understand that there are evile people (moslems) that want to kill us - you, me and everyone. They are the most evil people on the planet, ever. If it wasn't for them we would all be living in paradise.

Why would politicians and the news agencies tell lies? It makes no sense. We should offer our unconditional and total support to our elected leaders who do a magnificent job protecting us, and our freedoms.

History will show all of you that George Bush and Tony Blair are the two greatest politicians ever to grace the planet. Stop moaning and start phoning 0800 789 321 whenever you see a towel head acting in a non-british way.

I lived in an evil Muslim land for two years.Sudan.Boy are those Muslims an evil bunch.Before I left the house I had to put on my sandals a light shirt(due to the heat) and sunglasses just for protection.
I look back on those two years as two of the best of my life so far.I made many evil new Muslim friends whilst there!

Sarcasticus asks Don't you understand that there are evile people (moslems) that want to kill us - you, me and everyone.

Unless, however, you have somehow been persuaded by Tony Blair that our invasion of Iraq and our support in general for American foreign policy in the Middle East hasn't increased the threat of terrorism in the UK then it does seem a tad illogical to dismiss, a priori, all reported terrorist threats as hoaxes. Or maybe the threats are real but the culprits are, in fact, always Mossad and the CIA, since radical Islamists can't possibly mean all these alarming things they keep on saying.

It is, after all, perfectly possible to accept that there really are some ill-disposed people who really do want to kill us, or, at least, aren't fussy about who they kill, because of their politico-religious grievances while, at the same time, accepting that the police will frequently over-react to specific situations, and will frequently get it wrong, and that politicians will seek to exploit the situation, and deliberately try to crank up people's fears, to make all the political capital they can.

The fact that we used to have plenty of false alarms, innocent people being arrested (and wrongly convicted), people interned without trial and politicians using the threat of Irish terrorism as an excuse for all manner of things did not mean that PIRA didn't plant the odd bomb now and again.

I think that Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) should be arrested immediately. He's songs are clearly inciting terror and jihad, in fact I recently heard that Osama Bin Laden often listens to 'Tea with the Tillerman' while thinking up new terror plots to kill everyone, cos he hates our freedoms.

I'm with David Cameron on this - british-borm moslem preachers of hate need to be deported back to where they came from. How come so few, if any, have been deported?

This government is simply not doing enough to protect us from moslems. I heard that George Galloway is a moslem. Well, I wouldn't be surprised - he cleary hates our freedoms too.

I'm worried the suspects might end up in Guantanamo even if they're innocent just to save the Blairs their jobs. After what happened on 7/7 this would not be surprising. I also read that one of the 24 arrested was discussing conspiracy theories on the web.

I don't know why "terrorists" need to be locked up without trial or contact with the outside world unless someones got something to hide. I don't know why the rules of the game have to change unless something dodgy is going on.

Reid also said Internet websites that "incite" acts of terrorism can be blocked today. He just decided without looking in to the legal/moral implications of privacy and free speach. He shook on it with Frattini on BBC news 24 today - just like that. This could be aimed at just about any website critical of foreign policy and I read that 70% of our laws are now written by unelected members of the EU.

I think it's going to target the sites which expose their not so secret societies, war crimes, corruption and fascism. Would they really be going out of their way for us?

Anonymous, internet websites hosted in the UK can be shut down already for inciting terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2006. What Reid was talking about was getting these bans to apply throughout the EU; that'll be interesting, to say the least, because it would represent a pretty massive extension of EU power into domestic criminal law, which the UK has traditionally opposed. I'll be fascinated to see what The Daily Mail, for example, make of it, since if it's carried through, presumably it'll also give German courts and legislators the power to tell British ISPs what they can and can't host.

Have any of these chaps seen a lawyer yet? I wonder if UK gov will insist that they see out their full 90, sorry, 28 days detention without charge.

It's worse in America. They don't follow laws for this, and they keep their prisoners away from a lawyer or any contact with the outside world because they are so dangerous they can set off terrorist plots merely by communicating a secret code-word through an unsuspecting accomplice. I'm not kidding. I couldn't make this shit up.

The latest 'terror scare' serves as a remonder to people that what the state (UK/US) is doing is more about humiliating the general public than stopping terrorist attacks.

After the nonsense in London, we see the Americans adopting the same tactics of treating everyone on an aeroplane as a 'suspected terrorist'.

A woman, who appears to have had an anxiety attack caused a flight to be diverted and attracted a two fighter escort. The passengers were then detained for four hours while there luggage was laid out on the runway. Each then underwent what can only by described as an interrogation.

People need to reclaim their civil liberties and rights back. Any society that puts up with this nonsense is asking for trouble.

The psyops are in overdrive at the moment, see this:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/17/WTC.TMP

I timely reminder of what the 'war on terror' is all about. They are really cranking it up, one wonders what is coming?

The most entertaining thing about yesterdays meeting with EU foreign ministers is that the UK now thinks it needs to share it's terrorist inteligence with the rest of the EU. Rather funny as the French used to nickname London as Londonistan as it had so many wanted terrorist there. Abu Hamza being the number one.

The reason, or so I was told about 20 years ago by someone quite high up in the Foreign Office, that we used to have so many people living in London who were unpopular with foreign governments was that we then took the attitude that, so long as they and their organisations stuck to agreements not to cause us any trouble, we (and others) found it quite handy to have them where we could keep an eye on them. Mindful of the benefits to them of this somewhat laissez-faire attitude, the beneficiaries apparently not infrequently provided useful information about groups that wanted to break the rules here or in relation to close allies.

Whatever the truth of this analysis, I don't find the situation quite as ironic as the spectacle of the US legislature refusing to ratify their side of our dreadfully one-sided extradition arrangments for fear that we might use them to extradite Americans who'd enthusiastically raised money for PIRA. Personally I can't see any British government cheeking Washington in this way, but it's a nice thought.

On a separate matter, Tim Worstall makes the point that if RyanAir and others go ahead with their threat to sue the goverment for losses incurred because of the security alert, 'all sorts of things come out in court cases. We might actually find out who knew what, when, and whether there really was an imminent or immediate threat'.

Just out of interest, can anyone name the last successful terrorist attack on the UK?

The terrorist attacks that really were terrorist attacks that I remember are when the IRA nearly blew up Thatcher in Brighton.

Lord Mountbatton boat getting blown up.
Canary Warf being blown up eh??? what else
Birmingham pub bombings.London pub bombings?

The London bombings I believe were not carried out by the useful idiots we are meant to believe carried them out.
Painful though it may seem.This government lies about everything including July 7th bombings.The big question is why?

having said that who did the Birmingham pub bombings?

Although we’ve done nothing
The police are to blame
They’ve slandered our families
They’ve brought on us shame.

WILLIAM POWER

BBC reports Nuclear Bomb found at Heathrow?
On a BBC news report about the unfolding terrorist plot at Heathrow last Thursday (The 2pm headlines I believe)the reporter actually said that 'several devices had been found including what police believed to be a nuclear bomb'!!! Having read 'Protect and Survive', and the pale immitation 'Preparing for emergencies' I instantly imagined a mushroom cloud over Heathrow, and the accompanying blast wave an fall out heading for London.
Suffice to say I almost shat myself as I hurried to turn off the gas, electricity, unplug the TV aerial and disconnect my mp3 drive from the computer. (Lets face it if there's gonna be a nuclear holocaust and we're all gonna die I'm not going be without loud rock music!)

Several people were with me at the time and they all heard the same terrifying report.
I rang my partner and my Mum and Dad to see if they had heard the same news headline. However by this time the reporting had changed to the threat of liquid explosives - quite a climbdown. Realising that no fissile bomb making chemical elements exist I breathed a sigh of relief, tinged with anger that for a moment I had been swayed by another Blair/Reid psyops operation. Maybe the BBC had 'flawed intelligence' on the part of their journalists. Maybe they were told the explosive was 'Red Mercury', an explosive substance that has never existed! Whatever the reporter thought, the BBC is still obviously in the pocket of the Blair/Reid propaganda machine. This is self-evident when one sees their lack of criticism of Israel bombing innocent civilians in previous days, as part of the so-called 'war on terror'.

Clearly the government is not as it claims 'seeking to safeguard peace' when the goverment peddles stories of bogus nuclear terrorism and the threat of airliners exploding and falling from the sky, when (as with the Iraqi WMDS) not one shred of incontrovertible evidence has been shown to the public. Bliar wants us to panic. He wants us to be subserient to the fears he has created. And then as a solution to this 'problem' he has created he wants us to surrender our liberty to his totalitarian regime. He's the terrorist! He's the fascist! But what's worse is that in trying to pursue so-called 'objectivity' the BBC are peddling alarmist headlines that entirely destroy the BBC news' credibility!!!

Now the police are searching a wood in High Wycombe for explosives. But will we ever see any of this evidence live on TV. No. All of the evidence will be mysteriously 'top secret' probably because it never existed in the first place! How convenient for Bliar!!!

Frequently when terrorist bombs /911 style events go off a BBC reporter will parrot a claim that the explosive 'exploded with the power of a small nuclear device', as is to say that nuclear explosions are small and surviveable, or perhaps more chillingly to try to prepare for public acceptance of the use of thermonuclear explosives in a future war theatres. Either way when it comes to nukes, perhaps the government and the BBC should study some elementary nuclear physics before using such facile knee-jerk tactics to terrify a more educated and sophisticated population!

Tom, is that a trick question or do you mean one after July 7 last year?

"Have any of these chaps seen a lawyer yet?"

The (rather bitter) joke is that half the government are themselves lawyers! Either they were really, really, REALLY bad lawyers - which was why they settled for the relatively paltry pickings of politics - or they instantly forgot everything they learned in law school as soon as they entered the cabinet. To add insult to injury, they keep raving about how lawyers are ruining everything and making life difficult for them by stopping them from executing out of hand everyone to whom they take a dislike.

Tom, is that a trick question or do you mean one after July 7 last year?

Slightly a trick question, just to see if anyone knew. It was indeed post-7/7 (and an actual explosive device, not whatever the 21/7 people were doing).

Tom Welsh - One thing that's interesting is that I haven't seen Gareth Pierce around the current set of suspects - she was quickly out as the spokesman for the Forest Gate brothers and denying they had anything to answer for, which turned out to be perfectly true. Whoever the lawyers for the 23 remaining suspects (one's been released) are they're being rather more schtumm. Make of that what you will.

There's been a long tradition of bad lawyers going into government - Michael Howard is a particularly fruity example. One suspects the bright young lawyers are now judges and Law Lords making snooty remarks from the Bench and the 'third rate intellects' like Blair are now in charge of the country.

I thought Bush and the Neocons were in charge of the country?or is it Prescott??or maybe it´s realy the evil Doc Reid.Doc Reid is to Blair as Cheney is to Dubya.

I don't doubt for a moment that there *are* people out there wishing us harm.

But the ones I'm worried about aren't arsing about with non-feasible concoctions and boasting about it in chat rooms. No, as Thom Greene astutely suggests, the ones to be worried about are keeping their heads down and being very, very careful with Dimethylmercury.

That said, if this lot had intended to cause terror and disruption, they've done so without dying, or (possibly) committing a crime.

Here's a Machiavellian theory for you:

1. Tony gets conveniently out of the way
2. Survelliance operation is prematurely busted long before there's a genuine threat, after political leaders go against the advice of various security agencies.
3. John Reid 'handles' the 'threat', appearing all statesmanlike (remembering the boost that Rudy Giuliani got post 9/11). Prezza and Brown nowhere in sight.
4. Suddenly the post-Blair transfer of power isn't being talked of as a simple coronation any more.

Funnily enough, that was my Dad's suggestion on the phone just now, more or less. Reid as a Blairite 'Stop Brown' candidate has far more clout than any Milburns or Millibands.

We agreed we'd like to see Reid and Galloway go mano-a-mano, forehead to forehead, Glasgow street style. I'd pay money to see that.

"...british-borm moslem preachers of hate need to be deported back to where they came from. How come so few, if any, have been deported?"

Deported back to the womb, perhaps?

TATP and Dimethylmercury. are diferent substances??what are you talikng about?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/tatp.htm

Dave Chappel: ...british-borm moslem preachers of hate need to be deported back to where they came from. How come so few, if any, have been deported?"

Dave Chappel, that's the logic of the official opposition leader for you. You're with me on the Cat Stevens thing though, right?

"That said, if this lot had intended to cause terror and disruption, they've done so without dying, or (possibly) committing a crime."

But isn't dying the necessary shortcut to Paradise (who must be running out of virgins by now)?

Dimethylmercury is much more potent and effective (as Thom Greene says), but it doesn't promote the cause so effectively. If you really want to take out lots of infidels, any half-trained chemist could distribute mayhem via the water supply but (happily, I suppose) blowing up aircraft is considered better advertising. Just a shame that the Home Office believe in Hollywood Science...

BTW, don't you wish that Cliff Richard would, just for once, say: "Actually, Tony, in view of Iraq/Bush/Guantanamo/TWAT/Lebanon/PFI/agriculture/prisons/everything else, do you think you could find somewhere else to stay this year?"

"TATP and Dimethylmercury. are different substances??what are you talkng about?"

Greene's point, IIRC, was that any sensible bomber (oxymoron?) would use TATP directly, rather than trying to make it on-board with the much-touted 'binary liquids', one of which would have to be fairly concentrated hydrogen peroxide.

Unfortunately, tabloid hacks, aided and abetted by the TWAT-supporters in the Home Office, have seized on the idea that just by taking the right combination of tanning lotion and baby milk on board, you can create the sort of explosion favoured by Cubby Broccoli...

The point being that it is very easy to create large scale death and destruction, especially for someone willing to die. You ban liquids, someone will make an exploding pair of trousers; you ban trousers and someone will take a nitroglycerine enema. Any idiot could make a bomb and walk down Oxford Street on a busy Saturday afternoon and there is no way to prevent this. The fact that there are a vanishingly small number of such attacks leads me to believe that the terror threat is bogus.

I thought the mechanics of this plot rang a bell from my childhood, so I sought expert confirmation from alt.comics.superman. I was right. I am informed that

'[The story is] "Superman's Fortresses of Solitude," Action 261 (Feb 1960). (The cover calls the story "Secrets of the Fortress of Solitude.") Superman has flown his entire Fortress to Metropolis so people can tour it; the admission charges go to charity. (Seems like a lot of effort to make for the handful of people we see on the tour.) Two disguised crooks from the Anti-Superman Gang take the tour along with everybody else, and they use a binary formula (ink from a pen and coffee from a Thermos) to create a gas that will result in an "atomic explosion" an hour after mixture, after Superman has returned the Fortress to the Arctic. While the hour ticks by, Superman dreamily recalls his other, former Fortresses. '

"someone will make an exploding pair of trousers.."

I think you've just provided the next plot for Wallace and Gromit...

You may laugh at the idea of exploding trousers, but the technology is there...

Over at Boing Boing there's a link to a fascinating article by a chemist that discusses the implausibility of the reported modus operandi of the supposed plot -- trying to make acetone peroxides on-board a plane -- and then goes into some weird and wonderful possibilities, including exploding clothes:

'Then, lets consider books and magazines. Sure, they look innocent, but are they? For 150 years, chemists have known that if you take something with high cellulose content -- cotton, or paper, or lots of other things -- and you nitrate it (usually with a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids), you get nitrocellulose, which looks vaguely like the original material you nitrated but which goes BOOM nicely...

'...Now, books aren't the only things you could nitrate. Pants and shirts? Sure. It might take a lot of effort to get things just so or they will look wrong to the eye, but I bet you can do it. Clearly, we can't allow people on planes wearing clothes. Nudity in the air will doubtless be welcomed by many as an icebreaker, having been deprived of their computers and all reading material for entertainment.'

"According to John Reid, we were faced with a plot 'to commit unimaginable mass murder'"

A curious phrase from someone whose imagination is responsible for much of the ensuing panic.

It will be ironic if the imaginary threat ends up saving the planet by making air travel unfeasible... :-)

Just out of interest, can anyone name the last successful terrorist attack on the UK?

Tom, is this the sort of thing you had in mind?

Steve G - weedkiller and sugar bombs...

We must ban sugar from all planes and airports.

Steve G -

Close, but more recent than that.

'most sustained period of serious threat since the end of the Second World War'

Hold it, I'd have thought that being 45 minutes away from having Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction used on us would be a much more serious threat than that.

What a lying, cheating, deceiving bunch of bastards.