The politics of the latest terror scare
Barry Grey via sam | 15.08.2006 04:58 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Repression | Terror War | World
There undeniably is a conspiracy. It is a plot to use terrorist threats, real or imagined, to terrorize the American people, intimidate them, disorient them, and accustom them to accept the militarization of every aspect of their lives and the destruction of their democratic rights. The center of this conspiracy is the American government itself.
There undeniably is a conspiracy
Five days after UK authorities arrested 24 British-born Muslims and announced that they and their American counterparts had thwarted a plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights from London to the US, neither the British nor the American government has produced any facts to substantiate their dire claims.
No details of the supposed plot have been provided, and no hard evidence that would justify the arrest of so many people or the imposition of chilling security measures that had wreaked havoc at airports in the US and Britain.
In the meantime, commercial flights are being turned around in mid-flight, and wild claims of new plots are hitting the newsstands. The latest was the arrest of three Palestinian-Americans who were hauled into jail in Michigan after they purchased some 80 cell phones from a Wal-Mart store. Local police discovered that one of them had a digital camera with an image of the Mackinac Bridge, which connects Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas. This was sufficient to charge them with conspiring, using cell phones as detonators, to attack the bridge.
This implausible “plot” was punctured on Monday when the FBI issued a statement that none of the three were connected to any known terrorist groups, that buying cell phones was not a crime, and that the Mackinac Bridge was in no danger. Family members explained that the three bought and sold cell phones to make a living. The incident was, however, indicative of the atmosphere of hysteria that is being encouraged by the Bush administration. (As of this writing, moreover, the three suspects remain in jail).
Unless and until hard facts are presented, the entire airline terror plot must be viewed with the gravest suspicion.
On NBC TV’s “Today” program Monday morning, Lisa Myers, reporting from London, said British authorities were complaining that they had less evidence than they wanted against the alleged plotters because the Bush administration insisted that the timing of the arrests be brought forward by a week. The British, according to Myers, had planned to wait until the supposed conspirators carried out a “dry run” of their plot.
That British officials are privately expressing concerns about a lack of evidence raises serious questions as to whether there are clear and convincing facts that those arrested had anything to do with the alleged plot, or that such a conspiracy existed.
Myers’ revelation reinforces previous reports that the British government had objected to claims by US officials that the alleged plot was linked to Al Qaeda. These developments suggest that far from thwarting a nefarious plot on the eve of its implementation, the British government came under pressure from Washington to participate in a massive provocation, and that once more it knuckled under to US demands.
The lack of facts has not prevented the mainstream media, especially in the US, from uncritically accepting the official claims and embellishing them with commentaries by “terrorist experts” about Al Qaeda connections, home-grown terrorist cells and similar hypotheses, all of which are calculated to create a climate of fear and intimidation.
Nevertheless, buried in the reams of newspaper articles and hours of television commentary are bits and pieces of information that cast further doubt on the substantiality of the official claims. Thus Monday’s USA Today, in an article headlined “Fearing Wider US Plot, Investigators Raced Clock,” noted the following: “There was also no immediate evidence that any of the suspects had purchased tickets for future flights, although British authorities have indicated some of the suspects had allegedly reviewed flight schedules and were honing in on specific flights.”
Yet British and American officials stated at the time of the arrests last week that the airline attack was “imminent.”
To make the entire affair more suspect, the NBC news program Monday evening reported that British authorities had discovered “new evidence” that led them to alter their approach to their ongoing investigation. What was this “new evidence?” And how could it significantly alter an investigation that had supposedly thwarted an imminent attack? These questions were not even raised.
Despite the lack of factual substantiation, official threat levels have been raised and so-called security measures have been introduced that have created chaos in the air transport system and subjected the American and British people to police-military methods that violate their privacy and infringe on their democratic rights.
Twenty-three British citizens remain in jail, under conditions, according to their lawyers, that make a mockery of due process and democratic rights. They have been denied contact with family members, have had virtually no contact with legal counsel, and are being subjected to abusive treatment, including confinement in freezing cells. They have been charged with no crimes, and, under recently passed British anti-terror laws, can be held without charge for up to 28 days.
The names and photos of most of the prisoners have been splashed across newspapers and their assets have been seized by the British Treasury, proving that the presumption of innocence is a dead letter in both Britain and the US.
These are the type of conditions that police agencies employ to terrorize suspects and extract damaging statements or confessions that are then cited to “prove” state allegations and prosecute defendants.
One thing is clear: the supposed plot has been seized on for transparently political purposes of a deeply reactionary character.
On Monday, British Home Minister John Reid announced that the official threat level in Britain had been lowered from “critical” to “severe,” even as he suggested that there were many terrorist cells operating in Britain and revived the Labour government’s call for an extension of preventive detention to 90 days.
The day before, the US homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, made the rounds of Sunday talk shows and called for changes in US laws to make government spying even more pervasive and allow for preventive detention along British lines.
Why was the Bush administration so insistent that the alleged plot be exposed last Thursday? The answer has nothing to do with security considerations. It has, rather, to do with the machinations of the clique of political gangsters—Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, among others—who run the US government.
With their favorite Democrat, the rabidly pro-war senator and former vice presidential candidate, Joseph Lieberman, losing the Democratic primary in Connecticut to a political upstart running as an opponent of the Iraq war, Ned Lamont, it was urgent that this expression of mass antiwar and anti-Bush sentiment be shoved off the front pages and supplanted by a new round of fear-mongering and hysteria.
Likewise the revelations of US war crimes in Iraq and the torture of US prisoners at Guantánamo.
Even as Cheney was in discussions with the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the impending terror scare, he held a rare press briefing to denounce the vote for Lamont as a boon to Al Qaeda. This bit of witch-hunting was then taken up by Lieberman himself, who slandered opposition to the Iraq war and to himself as tantamount to support for terrorism.
There undeniably is a conspiracy. It is a plot to use terrorist threats, real or imagined, to terrorize the American people, intimidate them, disorient them, and accustom them to accept the militarization of every aspect of their lives and the destruction of their democratic rights. The center of this conspiracy is the American government itself.
This is to be, in so far as Cheney and company have a say in the matter, the atmosphere in which the November elections are held.
What is the political context in which this latest terror scare takes place? Iraq has descended into civil war under the jackboot of American military occupation, Afghanistan is spiraling out of control, the US-Israeli war in Lebanon has ended in political failure, new opinion polls show Bush’s approval ratings once against sinking to record levels and antiwar sentiment rising to new heights.
An article in Monday’s Washington Post noted that Republican incumbents in the Northeast fear they could be wiped out in the November elections as a result of popular hatred for Bush and the war.
The answer of the Cheney-Rove conspirators is to engineer a new wave of panic and hysteria in an attempt to once again stampede voters behind Bush’s “war on terrorism.” They did the same in 2004, when in the run-up to the election the government suddenly announced a plot to attack major financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark, New Jersey—a plot that came to nothing. And there was, at a convenient point in the election calendar, the sudden reemergence of Osama bin Laden with a taped message reminding the American people that he was determined to wipe them out.
The fascist-minded denizens of American’s secret government rely on the cowardice and complicity of the Democratic Party and the services of an utterly servile and corrupt media, which is itself heavily populated by outright agents of US intelligence agencies. Not a single mainstream newspaper or media outlet has challenged the claims of the government regarding the alleged airline terror plot.
What about the 24th alleged conspirator, who was quietly released by the British authorities from jail last week? Who is he? Why was he released? Was he perhaps the MI5 intelligence agent who reportedly infiltrated the group of alleged plotters? These questions are not even asked, let alone answered.
Why does the media take the government leaders in the US and Britain at their word? They all dragged their people into a war on the basis of lies. Bush stood before Congress, the Supreme Court and the American people in his 2003 State of the Union Address and lied about Iraq’s supposed attempt to buy uranium from Niger. The US secretary of state went before the United Nations and delivered an extended brief for war that was packed with lies. Cheney is a serial prevaricator.
As for Tony Blair, he not only lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, he secretly sanctioned a shoot-to-kill policy that resulted in the police murder of an innocent worker, Jean Charles de Menezes, in the aftermath of last year’s London train bombings.
The most important lesson that must be drawn from the current terror scare is just how far advanced the police state conspiracies are in the United States, and just how criminal are the methods of those who run the country.
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/terr-a15.shtml
Photo: http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
WMR has also learned of other NewsCorp/Fox News political chicanery. During Rep. Cynthia McKinney's August 8 election night rally at the Omega Center in the DeKalb County, outside of Atlanta, witnesses saw several off-duty Atlanta policemen leave a Fox 5 News truck and engage in name calling, uttering racial and religious epithets, and engaging in other political chicanery such as attempting to start fights with McKinney supporters. Fox and other networks later reported that the offensive comments were made by McKinney supporters. The president of Fox News is Roger Ailes, a former Republican political operative and propagandist. WMR is pursuing this story.
See how Fox News manipulated the news inside and outside the Omega Center and how its reporters and hired provocateur Atlanta cops attempted to incite violence and engage in racial and religious baiting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S8rHANZtE4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_bcaElnyAU
WMR has also exclusively obtained an affidavit about the Fox News/Atlanta Police involvement in stirring up trouble at the McKinney rally at the Omega Center:
Related:
After Heathrow: What accounts for the threat of terrorism?
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/terr-a14.shtml
Counter-terrorism/liberty propaganda measures 'need strengthening'?
It makes you wonder whether they just have a list of propaganda material lined up that they don't tell the community about until the 'right time'. I mean don't tell me they couldn't have said it last week?
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19536
"Airline terror plot cooked up by Blair, Bush, and Murdoch to save Tony's political ass"
"After Blair met with Bush in Washington, he flew to California where on July 30 he attended Murdoch's News Corporation private corporate executive conference at the posh Inn at Spanish Bay golf resort in Pebble Beach. Blair met with Murdoch, Israeli former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, and various Fox, Star, and Sky News executives. The final touches were agreed to by Blair and Murdoch on how the fake terror plot would play out in Murdoch's media empire."
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
Bush-Blair and Murdoch's Terrorgate, Keelty?
Now Conditioner Guilty has told the parrort press that new detention powers in Britain enabled authorities to stop the plane attacks before they happened?
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19443
Bush-Blair and Murdoch's Terrorgate Dots Connected Plus Rupert Murdoch Spies On Prince Charles
Bush, Blair and Rupert Murdoch along with their global media empires have now been directly linked to a cooked up terrorist scare borrowed right out of Project Bojinka, a 1995 FBI Div 5 Terror script. Players included Robert Wachtel and Rami Yousf, Philippine based Terrorist that had direct ties to 9-11 and Oklahoma City.
http://sydney.indymedia.org/node/38248
Paying attention yet?
Or still wasting your precious time on backstory issues? Well, for those who are interested in attacking the beast at its most vulnerable point, read on.The Anglo-American empire’s “next 9-11” will set up final war; “foiled” UK terror plot a propaganda dry run
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/119381.php
Terrorism: you can get it in a can
The Blitzkrieg is upon Beirut, but we are supposed to imagine that little Nazis are flying over our heads.
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/119352.php
Britain Names Suspects in Alleged Airline Bomb Plot; British Muslims Skeptical, Fear Backlash
Britain has named 19 of the 24 people arrested yesterday on suspicion of plotting to blow up passenger jets flying to the United States and has frozen their assets. We go to Britain to look why many British Muslims are skeptical of the plot and fear a backlash on their communities.
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/19352/index.php
Britain’s airline terror plot: Questions that need to be answered
No such questions have been asked by the media. And yet recent months have seen a number of alleged terrorist plots—in the US, Canada and Australia—that were supposedly thwarted by the security services. In each case, mass arrests were made of people who, according to the indictments, had merely discussed terrorist acts. No concrete plans were discovered, no weapons or explosives seized. And in most of these cases, the supposed plots were initiated and encouraged by government informers who acted as agent provocateurs and entrapped the alleged conspirators.
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19329
Fake Terror Obfuscates Lebanon and Iraq Failures
Unable to window dress the obvious failure to eradicate growing resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan—even with the mighty propaganda power of a complaisant media—the neocon intelligence apparatus has staged yet another terrorist event, or would be terrorist event.
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19187
Guilty's home grown just check his handywork:
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19443
No details of the supposed plot have been provided, and no hard evidence that would justify the arrest of so many people or the imposition of chilling security measures that had wreaked havoc at airports in the US and Britain.
In the meantime, commercial flights are being turned around in mid-flight, and wild claims of new plots are hitting the newsstands. The latest was the arrest of three Palestinian-Americans who were hauled into jail in Michigan after they purchased some 80 cell phones from a Wal-Mart store. Local police discovered that one of them had a digital camera with an image of the Mackinac Bridge, which connects Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas. This was sufficient to charge them with conspiring, using cell phones as detonators, to attack the bridge.
This implausible “plot” was punctured on Monday when the FBI issued a statement that none of the three were connected to any known terrorist groups, that buying cell phones was not a crime, and that the Mackinac Bridge was in no danger. Family members explained that the three bought and sold cell phones to make a living. The incident was, however, indicative of the atmosphere of hysteria that is being encouraged by the Bush administration. (As of this writing, moreover, the three suspects remain in jail).
Unless and until hard facts are presented, the entire airline terror plot must be viewed with the gravest suspicion.
On NBC TV’s “Today” program Monday morning, Lisa Myers, reporting from London, said British authorities were complaining that they had less evidence than they wanted against the alleged plotters because the Bush administration insisted that the timing of the arrests be brought forward by a week. The British, according to Myers, had planned to wait until the supposed conspirators carried out a “dry run” of their plot.
That British officials are privately expressing concerns about a lack of evidence raises serious questions as to whether there are clear and convincing facts that those arrested had anything to do with the alleged plot, or that such a conspiracy existed.
Myers’ revelation reinforces previous reports that the British government had objected to claims by US officials that the alleged plot was linked to Al Qaeda. These developments suggest that far from thwarting a nefarious plot on the eve of its implementation, the British government came under pressure from Washington to participate in a massive provocation, and that once more it knuckled under to US demands.
The lack of facts has not prevented the mainstream media, especially in the US, from uncritically accepting the official claims and embellishing them with commentaries by “terrorist experts” about Al Qaeda connections, home-grown terrorist cells and similar hypotheses, all of which are calculated to create a climate of fear and intimidation.
Nevertheless, buried in the reams of newspaper articles and hours of television commentary are bits and pieces of information that cast further doubt on the substantiality of the official claims. Thus Monday’s USA Today, in an article headlined “Fearing Wider US Plot, Investigators Raced Clock,” noted the following: “There was also no immediate evidence that any of the suspects had purchased tickets for future flights, although British authorities have indicated some of the suspects had allegedly reviewed flight schedules and were honing in on specific flights.”
Yet British and American officials stated at the time of the arrests last week that the airline attack was “imminent.”
To make the entire affair more suspect, the NBC news program Monday evening reported that British authorities had discovered “new evidence” that led them to alter their approach to their ongoing investigation. What was this “new evidence?” And how could it significantly alter an investigation that had supposedly thwarted an imminent attack? These questions were not even raised.
Despite the lack of factual substantiation, official threat levels have been raised and so-called security measures have been introduced that have created chaos in the air transport system and subjected the American and British people to police-military methods that violate their privacy and infringe on their democratic rights.
Twenty-three British citizens remain in jail, under conditions, according to their lawyers, that make a mockery of due process and democratic rights. They have been denied contact with family members, have had virtually no contact with legal counsel, and are being subjected to abusive treatment, including confinement in freezing cells. They have been charged with no crimes, and, under recently passed British anti-terror laws, can be held without charge for up to 28 days.
The names and photos of most of the prisoners have been splashed across newspapers and their assets have been seized by the British Treasury, proving that the presumption of innocence is a dead letter in both Britain and the US.
These are the type of conditions that police agencies employ to terrorize suspects and extract damaging statements or confessions that are then cited to “prove” state allegations and prosecute defendants.
One thing is clear: the supposed plot has been seized on for transparently political purposes of a deeply reactionary character.
On Monday, British Home Minister John Reid announced that the official threat level in Britain had been lowered from “critical” to “severe,” even as he suggested that there were many terrorist cells operating in Britain and revived the Labour government’s call for an extension of preventive detention to 90 days.
The day before, the US homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, made the rounds of Sunday talk shows and called for changes in US laws to make government spying even more pervasive and allow for preventive detention along British lines.
Why was the Bush administration so insistent that the alleged plot be exposed last Thursday? The answer has nothing to do with security considerations. It has, rather, to do with the machinations of the clique of political gangsters—Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, among others—who run the US government.
With their favorite Democrat, the rabidly pro-war senator and former vice presidential candidate, Joseph Lieberman, losing the Democratic primary in Connecticut to a political upstart running as an opponent of the Iraq war, Ned Lamont, it was urgent that this expression of mass antiwar and anti-Bush sentiment be shoved off the front pages and supplanted by a new round of fear-mongering and hysteria.
Likewise the revelations of US war crimes in Iraq and the torture of US prisoners at Guantánamo.
Even as Cheney was in discussions with the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the impending terror scare, he held a rare press briefing to denounce the vote for Lamont as a boon to Al Qaeda. This bit of witch-hunting was then taken up by Lieberman himself, who slandered opposition to the Iraq war and to himself as tantamount to support for terrorism.
There undeniably is a conspiracy. It is a plot to use terrorist threats, real or imagined, to terrorize the American people, intimidate them, disorient them, and accustom them to accept the militarization of every aspect of their lives and the destruction of their democratic rights. The center of this conspiracy is the American government itself.
This is to be, in so far as Cheney and company have a say in the matter, the atmosphere in which the November elections are held.
What is the political context in which this latest terror scare takes place? Iraq has descended into civil war under the jackboot of American military occupation, Afghanistan is spiraling out of control, the US-Israeli war in Lebanon has ended in political failure, new opinion polls show Bush’s approval ratings once against sinking to record levels and antiwar sentiment rising to new heights.
An article in Monday’s Washington Post noted that Republican incumbents in the Northeast fear they could be wiped out in the November elections as a result of popular hatred for Bush and the war.
The answer of the Cheney-Rove conspirators is to engineer a new wave of panic and hysteria in an attempt to once again stampede voters behind Bush’s “war on terrorism.” They did the same in 2004, when in the run-up to the election the government suddenly announced a plot to attack major financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark, New Jersey—a plot that came to nothing. And there was, at a convenient point in the election calendar, the sudden reemergence of Osama bin Laden with a taped message reminding the American people that he was determined to wipe them out.
The fascist-minded denizens of American’s secret government rely on the cowardice and complicity of the Democratic Party and the services of an utterly servile and corrupt media, which is itself heavily populated by outright agents of US intelligence agencies. Not a single mainstream newspaper or media outlet has challenged the claims of the government regarding the alleged airline terror plot.
What about the 24th alleged conspirator, who was quietly released by the British authorities from jail last week? Who is he? Why was he released? Was he perhaps the MI5 intelligence agent who reportedly infiltrated the group of alleged plotters? These questions are not even asked, let alone answered.
Why does the media take the government leaders in the US and Britain at their word? They all dragged their people into a war on the basis of lies. Bush stood before Congress, the Supreme Court and the American people in his 2003 State of the Union Address and lied about Iraq’s supposed attempt to buy uranium from Niger. The US secretary of state went before the United Nations and delivered an extended brief for war that was packed with lies. Cheney is a serial prevaricator.
As for Tony Blair, he not only lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, he secretly sanctioned a shoot-to-kill policy that resulted in the police murder of an innocent worker, Jean Charles de Menezes, in the aftermath of last year’s London train bombings.
The most important lesson that must be drawn from the current terror scare is just how far advanced the police state conspiracies are in the United States, and just how criminal are the methods of those who run the country.
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/terr-a15.shtml Photo:
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/ WMR has also learned of other NewsCorp/Fox News political chicanery. During Rep. Cynthia McKinney's August 8 election night rally at the Omega Center in the DeKalb County, outside of Atlanta, witnesses saw several off-duty Atlanta policemen leave a Fox 5 News truck and engage in name calling, uttering racial and religious epithets, and engaging in other political chicanery such as attempting to start fights with McKinney supporters. Fox and other networks later reported that the offensive comments were made by McKinney supporters. The president of Fox News is Roger Ailes, a former Republican political operative and propagandist. WMR is pursuing this story.
See how Fox News manipulated the news inside and outside the Omega Center and how its reporters and hired provocateur Atlanta cops attempted to incite violence and engage in racial and religious baiting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S8rHANZtE4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_bcaElnyAU WMR has also exclusively obtained an affidavit about the Fox News/Atlanta Police involvement in stirring up trouble at the McKinney rally at the Omega Center:
Related:
After Heathrow: What accounts for the threat of terrorism?
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/terr-a14.shtml Counter-terrorism/liberty propaganda measures 'need strengthening'?
It makes you wonder whether they just have a list of propaganda material lined up that they don't tell the community about until the 'right time'. I mean don't tell me they couldn't have said it last week?
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19536 "Airline terror plot cooked up by Blair, Bush, and Murdoch to save Tony's political ass"
"After Blair met with Bush in Washington, he flew to California where on July 30 he attended Murdoch's News Corporation private corporate executive conference at the posh Inn at Spanish Bay golf resort in Pebble Beach. Blair met with Murdoch, Israeli former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, and various Fox, Star, and Sky News executives. The final touches were agreed to by Blair and Murdoch on how the fake terror plot would play out in Murdoch's media empire."
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/ Bush-Blair and Murdoch's Terrorgate, Keelty?
Now Conditioner Guilty has told the parrort press that new detention powers in Britain enabled authorities to stop the plane attacks before they happened?
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19443 Bush-Blair and Murdoch's Terrorgate Dots Connected Plus Rupert Murdoch Spies On Prince Charles
Bush, Blair and Rupert Murdoch along with their global media empires have now been directly linked to a cooked up terrorist scare borrowed right out of Project Bojinka, a 1995 FBI Div 5 Terror script. Players included Robert Wachtel and Rami Yousf, Philippine based Terrorist that had direct ties to 9-11 and Oklahoma City.
http://sydney.indymedia.org/node/38248 Paying attention yet?
Or still wasting your precious time on backstory issues? Well, for those who are interested in attacking the beast at its most vulnerable point, read on.The Anglo-American empire’s “next 9-11” will set up final war; “foiled” UK terror plot a propaganda dry run
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/119381.php Terrorism: you can get it in a can
The Blitzkrieg is upon Beirut, but we are supposed to imagine that little Nazis are flying over our heads.
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/119352.php Britain Names Suspects in Alleged Airline Bomb Plot; British Muslims Skeptical, Fear Backlash
Britain has named 19 of the 24 people arrested yesterday on suspicion of plotting to blow up passenger jets flying to the United States and has frozen their assets. We go to Britain to look why many British Muslims are skeptical of the plot and fear a backlash on their communities.
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display/19352/index.php Britain’s airline terror plot: Questions that need to be answered
No such questions have been asked by the media. And yet recent months have seen a number of alleged terrorist plots—in the US, Canada and Australia—that were supposedly thwarted by the security services. In each case, mass arrests were made of people who, according to the indictments, had merely discussed terrorist acts. No concrete plans were discovered, no weapons or explosives seized. And in most of these cases, the supposed plots were initiated and encouraged by government informers who acted as agent provocateurs and entrapped the alleged conspirators.
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19329 Fake Terror Obfuscates Lebanon and Iraq Failures
Unable to window dress the obvious failure to eradicate growing resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan—even with the mighty propaganda power of a complaisant media—the neocon intelligence apparatus has staged yet another terrorist event, or would be terrorist event.
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19187 Guilty's home grown just check his handywork:
http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/19443
Barry Grey via sam
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
The Power of Zilzal
15.08.2006 07:49
Because of so the called "London Liquid Bombing Plot" the popularity of Bush, Blair and little poodle Howard went up significantly!
The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine. So this, I believe, is the true story. 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.
Mr. Craig Murray is the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was dismissed from his job after he exposed the fact that there were no actual Islamic terrorists in Uzbekistan. His investigations showed that the alleged terrorists were merely innocent local Muslim people who were being systematically tortured into signing false confessions. These confessions were then gleefully received by the US and the UK despite the fact they knew them to be false. For these and other favours from the Uzbek dictatorship the US paid a lot of money and supported this tyrannical regime.
As British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray obtained from a relative photographs of the corpse of an Uzbek person who died under interrogation in prison in Uzbekistan. He sent the pictures to a forensic specialist on the UK who expressed the view that in his professional opinion the pictures clearly show that the person had died under torture (boiled alive).
This item below is his thoughts on the the UK terror plot.
=========
August 14, 2006
The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.
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.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way.
Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.
The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this
activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.
We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.
We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.
For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.
We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.
In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.
Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.
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Rex
What are you talking about?
15.08.2006 09:59
Paul Edwards
Totally agree
15.08.2006 13:45
I totally agree with Paul Edwards. It seems naive to expect police to publish some massive dossier of details at this stage in the investigations. Maybe they did get the wrong people, maybe more of the remaining 23 will be released. Either way, there's an obvious risk that releasing too much information would jeopordise the current investigation.
It's innaccurate to say that "no" details have been released. OK there haven't been many, but the basics were covered on the day: the alleged plan was to "detonate explosive devices smuggled on board the aircraft in hand luggage... It is also believed that the attacks would have been particularly targeted at flights from the UK to the USA." Since then there have been other police statements about the searches near High Wycombe and other places.
The original post also seems littered with some questionable assertions and links. The Stockwell shooting was an almighty cock-up but Blair didn't "secretly" order Operation Kratos. And what's the evidence that the prisoners have been kept in "freezing" cells? If it's true it's interesting, but it seems unlikely, particularly if the prisoners have not been able to speak to anybody from their families about their conditions?
Norville B
Olbermann Exposes Nexus Of Politics And Terror
15.08.2006 16:43
Details ten clear examples where Bush admin. alerts preceded by damaging revelations
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | August 15 2006
During a prime time segment on his MSNBC show last night, anchor Keith Olbermann presented ten clear examples where the Bush administration had issued terror alerts days after politically damaging revelations and questioned the credibility of each of the alleged plots' authenticity in light of astounding evidence to the contrary.
Olbermann overwhelmingly documents the staged timing of terror alerts spanning back four years and ends by scrutinizing the latest alleged liquid bomb plot - an operation infiltrated and surveilled for months by intelligence agencies, yet announced to the public on a carefully scripted pre-arranged schedule.
The alleged foiling of the terror plot was announced days after darling of the Neo-Fascists Joe Lieberman was defeated in the Connecticut Senatorial election by anti-war opponent Ned Lamont. Hours afterwards, drooling feverish Neo-Con cheerleaders tried to smear Lamont as "the Al-Qaeda candidate."
Click play below to watch the video segment.
Something not covered in the Olbermann segment is that - allied to the timing of terror alerts - in every major terror bust case any evidence that supposedly proves a plot actually existed quickly evaporates into thin air with police, government and security officials unapologetic as to the rash implementation and consequences of their actions.
Actions that lead to deadly confrontations and loss of innocent life such as in the case of Jean Charles de Menezes who was repeatedly shot in the head by CO19 special officers as he innocently went about his business at Stockwell tube station. People not already having nervous breakdowns on planes will be less than delighted to learn that one of the officers involved in the shooting has been promoted to train sky marshalson flights from UK to America.
Latest revelations concerning the alleged liquid bomb plot only lend further credence to the assertion that it was a brainchild of the US and UK intelligence agency script writers - fronted by Home Secretary John Reid (pictured) - who is blatantly grandstanding as some kind of Churchillian type figure in the hope of increasing his prospects of taking over from Blair as leader of the Labour Party and British Prime Minister.
"Home Secretary John Reid's assured handling of an alleged plot to blow up airliners in mid-Atlantic has strengthened his credentials to succeed Tony Blair as prime minister," reports the Scotsman.
Meanwhile, dovetailing with our investigation of the Pakistani ISI link to the alleged liquid bomb plot - it is reported today that the terror cell was funded by a Pakistani charity that last year received 10 million dollars From the British government, supposedly for "earthquake relief." As we previously highlighted, Pakistani intelligence agency and charity group links to militant terror groups continue with the blessing of the CIA, who have deliberately and consistently chosen to ignore the connection.
In a related story, an over hyped flap that suggested a large purchase of mobile phones from a Wal-Mart store in Michigan was part of a plot to blow up the the Mackinac Bridge was totally discredited and the suspects released without charge. Their master plan was to buy mobile phones in bulk for re-sale - which is apparently Al-Qaeda like behavior in the United States of Fear. Why they would need 80 mobile phones to trigger one bomb was a question never even asked.
Mike Rivero at WhatReallyHappened.com sums up the insanity up putting someone under suspicion simply because of pictures stored on their digital camera.
"I guess that means I am planning to blow up...
1. The USS Arizona
2. The neighbor's dog
3. My wife
4. The dent in my Honda
5. A pineapple
6. The moon
"Because those are all pictures I have had in my digital camera."
Keith Olbermann and CNN's Lou Dobbs don't have to try too hard to trounce the vast majority of mainstream media talking head government apologists and though a great deal of their material is distracting (in the case of Olbermann) or off-target (Dobbs), both should be commended for standing up to the self-regulating journalistic cowardice that pervades network news and hitting the bullseye on all the major issues.
10 Examples Of Terror As Weapon
To Paul Edwards
16.08.2006 06:02
...
The Chickenhawks and the poodle are despaired. Let's keep the Revolution up
16.08.2006 15:40
Freedom is near!
Frank