Another terror plot thwarted...

[can-o-phish]

are the ambient sounds much different from where you are now?

Well, I live in downtown Toronto...I'll be visiting my family in a seaside community of approximately 2500 people...what do you thing?

[AD]

haha, yeah fer sher.

ad

[can-o-phish]

haha, yeah fer sher.

ad

Hey, sorry about that, I wasn't giving you a snide remark...oh yes, really looking forward to capturing as many sounds of a fishing village and wharf sounds that I can...

[c-towns]

I flew from Toronto to Calgary on Friday and had absolutley no problems or delays. Anyone flying out of the country had some serious delays though.

[djmelbatoast]

I used to work in an ice plant and we used to blow up bottles all the time. You wouldn't believe how loud it is, a great way to waste your time.

As for the "terror threat" I think everyone should be forced to watch George Carlin's "You are All Diseased".

"It's just one more way of reducing your liberty and letting you know that they can fuck with you anytime they want, if you let them."

-George Carlin

[Birdy]

I flew to San Francisco from Detroit yesterday and it was probably one of the easiest days of travel i've had in a long time.. there was no delay at the border, the border guy was awesome, the airport had two people in front of me in security and apart from a few more pre-recorded messages of "in the interest of aviation security' echoing throughout the airport, all was as if nothing ever happened. friggin' media hype.

[KarinGarage]

My purse didn't pass security this summer.So I had to wait until they went through it and that they did.It was a fingernail file so I said I don't want to deal with this again so throw it in the garbage.They put it back in my purse as I didn't have to have another security check.

Better to be safe than sorry though.

last spring, after i got home from a ski trip in lake tahoe , i realized that I, inadvertently, flew home the whole way with a swiss army knife in my purse. i went threw the security check points about 6 times, at 2 different airports, because i had to go outside to smoke, and nobody once said a thing. i thought about writing the national transportation safety board (NTSB) about how i got it the knife threw, unknowingly of course, but figured i'd get in trouble for bringing the knife aboard, even though i didn't mean to do any harm with it and forgot it was even there.

does it really make a difference if you check your liqiud luggage; is it harder to detontate liqiud explosives in the luggage compartment then if it is stored "[color:purple]safely under your seat, [color:purple]that can also be used floatation device?"

[StoneMtn]

The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?

Craig Murray

August 14, 2006

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.

------

As Britain's outspoken Ambassador to the Central

Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped

expose vicious human rights abuses by the

US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now

a prominent critic of Western policy in the region.

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