Anti-Semitism In Action: UK Lowers Terror Threat Level; Guardian Reports On The Change

Is anti-Semitism on the rise? You bet it is, and for good reason. It's well-funded.

Consider, for example, the following piece from Alan Travis, home affairs editor of The Guardian, which appeared on July 20, 2009. The headline reads: "Britain downgrades al-Qaida terror attack alert level". The sub-heading says "Officials reduce assessment of threat from 'severe' to 'substantial', its lowest level since 9/11", and the text of the article reads:

The official assessment of the threat level of an al-Qaida terrorist attack on Britain has been lowered from "severe" – where an attack is deemed highly likely – to "substantial", where an attack is considered a strong possibility.

The decision to lower the official threat level follows a new assessment by MI5 and the joint terrorism analysis centre, based on intelligence gathered in Britain and abroad on how close terrorist groups may be to staging an attack.

The designation of a "substantial" threat level is the lowest since 9/11. It confirms that the swine flu pandemic is now a bigger threat to the life of the nation than terrorism.

The home secretary, Alan Johnson, acknowledged that fact on Sunday, when he told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme that swine flu came "above terrorism as a threat to this country". He said the long-term preparations had involved the whole "Cobra machinery", a reference to the Cabinet's emergency committe [sic] that handles major disasters.

The decision reportedly follows an official assessment of Operation Pathway, one of MI5's biggest counterterrorism campaigns, which led to the arrest of 11 Pakistani men in April. All those arrested were released without charge, and no explosives or weapons were found.

The system of threat levels is made up of five stages. At "critical", an attack is expected imminently. At "severe", an attack is regarded as highly likely. At "substantial", an attack is a strong possibility. At "moderate" an attack is possible but not likely. And at "low", an attack is deemed unlikely.

The home secretary said in a statement: "We still face a real and serious threat from terrorists and the public will notice little difference in the security measures that are in place, and I urge the public to remain vigilant. The police and security services are continuing in their thorough efforts to discover, track and disrupt terrorist activity."

Did you catch the anti-Semitism in this piece? Don't feel badly if you didn't; it's very subtle and it takes an expert to detect it. Fortunately, such an expert happened to be available -- eventually. But first, a number of Guardian readers made comments reflecting the obvious absurdity of the situation, such as this from nega9000:

Hang on a minute, weren't we being told just last month that a, quote, 'spectacular' attack was being planned?

Oh, I get it, whoever's our equivalent of Jack Bauer averted said attack in the nick of time, killed all the terrorists and is, as we speak, copping off with the foxy but feisty young agent who was there for no discernable reason other than to offer expository dialogue.

Phew. Was getting worried there for a minute.

and this from metalvendetta:

Let me get this straight, they arrested eleven Pakistanis and couldn't find anything to link them to terrorism, so now the threat is reduced? Could it be that they just arrested the wrong people? Or is this decision based on intelligence - the same kind of intelligence that led them to believe that those eleven innocent men were terrorists in the first place?

Haywire asks:

Does this mean i now have to stop rifling through my neighbours' bins looking for empty 'chemicals' containers which may well have been used for making bombs, as was suggested by a recent publicity awareness campaign? If so, what the hell am i now going to do with my Sundays? Go to church??!!

nimn2003 asks:

Does this mean we no longer need ID Cards and the Database? Thank the Lord for that!

and ChrisWoods answers:

No we still need ID Cards and database because although there is more chance of dying by eating peanuts, the risk of death by terrorism is still too great and we need total surveillance of you all the time and also need to know all your private details, phone conversations & email just to make sure you will be ok in the future.

Do you see it yet? Nobody has mentioned Israel, and nobody has said anything about any Jew or Jews in particular, nor has anyone said anything about Jews in general. But still, for those with the correct viewpoint, there's anti-Semitism dripping from every word.

Eventually -- belatedly but better late than never -- comes along GnosticMind, with a comment to set them all straight:

I am shocked at the inhrently anti semitic slant displayed in the entire article , not to mention in the tone of the public responses-- Only in the Guardian is such blatant anti semitism, and anti israel rhetoric allowed, and even considered manifestly praiseworthy.

The very next comment was from butteredballs, who wrote

@ GnosticMind

please explain yourself

but GnosticMind was busy elsewhere, apparently. And the comments on this article are now closed, so GnosticMind could not come back and explain, even if she wanted to. Not -- as I see it -- that she would want to.

You see? It's so ineffable, you could never explain it.

It's inherent. It's blatant. But it can't be put into words -- at least not by GnosticMind, or any of her cohorts... and not by anybody else who just happens to be working for the Israeli government.

According to an article published July 5th in Calcalist, a Hebrew-language paper based in Tel Aviv,

Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The Foreign Ministry’s department for the explanation of Israeli policy* is running the project, and it will be an integral part of it.

We're reading an English translation prepared by George Malent for Occupation Magazine, courtesy of MuzzleWatch.

In a footnote, Malent explains the asterisk: for "the Foreign Ministry’s department for the explanation of Israeli policy" you can read "the Ministry of Propaganda".

The piece continues:

“To all intents and purposes the Internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,” Elan Shturman, deputy director of the policy-explanation department in the Foreign Ministry, and who is directly responsible for setting up the project, says in an interview with Calcalist. “Our policy-explanation achievements on the Internet today are impressive in comparison to the resources that have been invested so far, but the other side is also investing resources on the Internet. There is an endless array of pro-Palestinian websites, with huge budgets, rich with information and video clips that everyone can download and post on their websites. They are flooding the Internet with content from the Hamas news agency. It is a well-oiled machine. Our objective is to penetrate into the world in which these discussions are taking place, where reports and videos are published – the blogs, the social networks, the news websites of all sizes. We will introduce a pro-Israeli voice into those places.

Yes, of course! That's exactly what's missing today, among the endless array of pro-Palestinian websites: a pro-Israeli voice!!

Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as “ordinary net-surfers”?

“Of course,” says Shturman. “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”

What will they be required to do? Shturman continues:

Their missions will be defined along the lines of the government policies that they will be required to defend on the Internet.

and here -- finally! -- is the explanation of the anti-Semitism in The Guardian.

The Israeli government wants you to be frightened of the militant Islamofascist suicide bomber jihadis and jihadi-wannabes who are everywhere and who are always plotting against you. The Israeli government wants you to be afraid of them, even if they don't exist, not because it's good for you to be afraid of things that don't exist, but because it's good for the Israeli government.

From the correct -- Israeli -- point of view, it's bad enough that Britain has downgraded the threat level. That's a blatant betrayal by a close ally, and it's inherently made worse by the Guardian's having the nerve to report on the government's downgrade. But worse still are the comments, making fun of the British government for taking so seriously -- or pretending to take seriously -- a threat which -- dare I say it? -- has been vastly overblown, if it existed at all.

But how can employees of the Israeli government say this? They can't, unless they are very highly placed, with chutzpah in professional abundance and a swarm of faux-journalists running interference for them.

Ordinary Israeli government employees can merely mouth the party line, as supplied by the Foreign Ministry's department of policy-explanation: the official propagandists cannot say "You must believe this lie even though it's bad for you, because it's good for us."

That would be just a touch too transparent.

Instead we get nonsense like this:

I am shocked at the inhrently anti semitic slant displayed in the entire article, not to mention in the tone of the public responses -- Only in the Guardian is such blatant anti semitism, and anti israel rhetoric allowed, and even considered manifestly praiseworthy.

which -- let's be honest -- is not transparent at all!

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Pathway To Darkness, Part 1: "The Easter Bombers"

On April 8, 2009, amid a blaze of publicity, police in the north of England arrested 12 men who were Officially Described As (ODA) "terror suspects".

England's Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, congratulated the police and intelligence agencies on having broken up "a very big plot".

Police spokesmen were mostly mum but anonymous sources told the British media that the authorities had foiled an imminent attack which would have involved multiple suicide bombers.

Eleven of the suspects were ODA Pakistani nationals living in the UK on student visas. Sources told the British papers the suspects came from the "lawless tribal region" of northwest Pakistan and were linked with the al Qaeda terrorists whose global headquarters is ODA in the same region.

Police said they had been watching the suspects for several months in an anti-terror operation code-named "Operation Pathway", and that to the best of their knowledge the alleged terrorists had not yet selected a target. Many potential targets were suggested in the media, nonetheless.

And no dates were confirmed either, but the police were ODA taking no chances with public safety, especially with the Easter weekend approaching.

The arrests, we were told, had been planned for the morning of April 9th, but had to be moved forward by about 12 hours because of what was ODA a "blunder" by Britain's most senior anti-terror officer, Robert Quick.

Quick, who at the time was Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan London Police, arrived at No. 10 Downing Street for a meeting with the Prime Minister on April 8th and emerged from his car carrying a couple of file folders.

Outside the folders was a document ODA "secret", outlining the planned arrests in which the "Operation Pathway" suspects would be taken.

Photographers are always camped outside the Prime Minister's office, of course -- with digital cameras and telephoto lenses. And Bob Quick was ODA realizing the implications of his "blunder" immediately. The British authorities moved promptly to suppress publication of any photos of the "secret" document, and they also moved promptly against the suspects.

And Bob Quick promptly tendered his resignation, which was promptly accepted. After 30 years on the force and more than a year as the top anti-terror officer, he retired, supposedly in disgrace but with a six-figure pension. And at the same time, the anti-terror SWAT teams went to work.

Normally, the police prefer to arrest suspects in their homes, while they're sleeping. No muss, no fuss, no resistance. But in this case, with the operation suddenly public, the police were ODA "forced" to take the suspects from public places, in broad daylight, with considerable muss and fuss.

Thus two men were taken from a university library in Liverpool. According to one of them, police forced them to the floor, tied their hands behind their backs, and held machine guns to their heads for an hour before taking them away.

In Clitheroe, a small town about an hour north of Manchester, more than a hundred armed officers surrounded a home improvement supply store which was preparing for its grand opening, and arrested two men who were working there as security guards. (The store opened the next day as planned.)

Another suspect was taken from his car, which was stopped at gunpoint on the highway. And so on. All twelve suspects were arrested within an hour, which gives us an indication of how serious the alleged plot was considered to be, and how closely the suspects were being watched.

With the suspects safely out of the way, the search began for what was ODA "the terrorists' bomb factory". Police searched the suspects' apartments, and found nothing: no weapons, no ammunition, no bombs, no bomb-making equipment, no bomb-making ingredients.

Then they temporarily relocated some of the suspects' neighbors and started searching whole apartment buildings. Again they came up with nothing.

Next they took the suspects' computers, books, notes and other personal items for forensic analysis, and found nothing incriminating in any of them: no plans, no hints of plans, no dates, no targets, nothing.

And so, within two weeks of the arrests, all the suspects were ODA "released".

But even though they are now ODA "released", eleven of the twelve -- the Pakistani students -- are still in prison. And rather than facing criminal charges pertaining to terrorism, they face deportation, for reasons ODA related to national security.

The Pakistani students have appealed against the deportation order, hoping to remain in Britain and continue their studies. So they won't be leaving without at least a hearing.

And since they are ODA a serious threat to the national security of Great Britain, their deportation hearings will take place in secret. So whatever evidence the authorities may have against them which is not admissible in open court will apparently be presented behind closed doors, if at all.

According to a recent report, the men who were ODA terror suspects have requested anonymity, so the British press may not publish their names, not that it's going to make much difference. The police have never released an official list of the names of the people who were arrested. And the news media don't usually try for names anyway; they've simply been referring to the "Easter Bombers" or the "Manchester Terror Plot".

Aside from leaving some families in Pakistan wondering whether their sons have been arrested, the failure by police to name the people they have arrested, along with the prospect of having the rest of the drama played out behind closed doors, leads a skeptical observer to wonder whether there's more here than meets the eye -- or maybe less!

The stunning security breach ODA "Quick's blunder" is only one fascinating and illuminating aspect of the "Operation Pathway" story. There are many others. In future installments of this series, I intend to explore as many of them as possible. But first, a few words about the timing of the arrests and the timing of the "releases".

~~~

On April 1st, a week before the alleged plotters were arrested, a high-profile G20 meeting began in London. Protesters took to the streets, and so did the police, of course. The police used a technique they call "kettling", in which they cordon off part of the city and refuse to let anyone (except other policemen) into or out of the cordon.

So people were trapped in the heart of the city for hours without food or water, with no sanitary facilities, surrounded by surly police with attack dogs and truncheons. It was almost as if the police were trying to provoke violence in a peaceful protest.

There are other reasons to suspect the police of trying to provoke the crowd. A Member of Parliament has brought to light reports of another incident involving two "protesters" who were throwing bottles at police and urging others to do the same. When these two individuals were accused by actual protesters of being police agents provocateurs, they made straight for the cordon, presented some identification to the police there, and disappeared through the police line.

When Ian Tomlinson finished work that day, he found himself inside the cordon. Tomlinson, a 47-year-old newspaper seller, started walking home. But he never made it.

After a quick police autopsy, Tomlinson's sudden death was ODA caused by a heart attack, and the story was mostly ignored by most of the British papers. The police released a statement explaining that when Tomlinson suffered his heart attack, police tried to come to his assistance but were prevented from reaching him by protesters throwing bottles. One newspaper even accused the protesters of throwing bricks! But none of this was true.

Tomlinson's family requested a second autopsy, which ascribed his death to internal bleeding. And the falsity of the police account of Tomlinson's death was convincingly proven on April 7th when The Guardian published excerpts from testimonies of numerous witnesses who all described something very different.

In addition, The Guardian posted on its website a video showing Ian Tomlinson walking along with his hands in his pockets, and being hassled by police, then suddenly knocked to the pavement by a policeman attacking him from behind.

The video continues, showing protesters attempting to help Tomlinson, while police stand by with their shields and dogs. It shows no flying bottles, nobody throwing bricks, and no attempt whatsoever by the police to rush to Tomlinson's assistance.

By the most amazing coincidence, less than 24 hours after the video appeared online, Bob Quick appeared at the front door of No 10, with Operation Pathway's secrets on display.

~~~

Customarily in Britain, the police can hold criminal suspects for only 96 hours -- four days -- before they must either charge or release them. Under the new anti-terror laws, the authorities have a maximum of 28 days to either charge or release terror suspects, but the 28 days' detention are parceled out a week at a time.

So if the police don't have enough evidence to lay charges within a week of the arrests, they must appear before a judge and try to convince him that there is reason to believe another week's detention would allow the police to find the evidence they need to support criminal charges.

After a second week, the process must be repeated, and it can be repeated again after the third week, but each time the judge must be convinced that the evidence collected so far justifies holding the suspects for another seven days. And after four weeks, the deadline is immovable: the police must either charge the suspects or release them.

Fairly often in Britain, people ODA "terror suspects" are held for slightly less than two weeks before being released without charges. Usually this means the police have brought nothing to the table at the end of the first week, and the judge has granted them a second week, but told them not to bother coming back unless they find some evidence.

It appears that the same thing may have happened in this case. But it's hard to tell. This much is certain: if police did appear before a judge after the second week, he was not impressed with what they brought with them.

And here we come to another amazing coincidence: even though the police had enough on all these suspects to make a big splash with very public arrests, they didn't have enough on any of them, even after two weeks of searching, to convince a judge that holding any or all of them for another week would likely result in the discovery of incriminating evidence.

~~~

In this post I haven't provided any quotes or links, but future installments of this series will look at various facets of the story in great detail and will include plenty of quotes, and dozens if not hundreds of links.

If you wish to read more about the case in the meantime, you might enjoy a visit to my newest other blog, "Operation Pathway". There you will find more than 200 news articles, and links to many more news and blog items.

Coming soon: detailed articles about Quick's "blunder", the surveillance and arrests of the suspects, the alleged al Qaeda connection, and much more.

~~~

Next: Pathway To Darkness, Part 2: Babar Ahmad and the TSG

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Big Surprise: Human Rights Watch Says UK And Pakistani Agents Colluded In Torture

Last month the Pakistani daily Dawn reported:

A shocking new report alleges widespread complicity between British security agents and their Pakistani counterparts who have routinely engaged in the torture of suspects, a report in the Observer has revealed.

Quoting from the report, which will be published next month by the civil liberties group Human Rights Watch, the Sunday newspaper said that at least 10 Britons are identified who have been allegedly tortured in Pakistan and subsequently questioned by UK intelligence officials. It warns that more British cases may surface and that the issue of Pakistani terrorism suspects interrogated by British agents is likely to ‘run much deeper.’

Much deeper indeed.

The piece in Dawn, "Pakistani, British agents accused of torture", and the report in the Observer to which it refers, "UK agents 'colluded with torture in Pakistan'", both describe the alleged al Qaeda terrorist Rangzieb Ahmed, who claims Pakistani interrogators removed three of his fingernails with pliers, after which his left hand looked like this:


Mark Townsend in The Observer:

Ali Dayan Hasan, who led the Pakistan-based inquiry, said [...] evidence collated from Pakistan intelligence officials indicated a "systemic" modus operandi among British security services, involving a significant number of UK agents from MI5 rather than maverick elements. Different agents were deployed to interview different suspects, many of whom alleged that prior to interrogation by British officials they were tortured by Pakistani agents.

Among the 10 identified cases of British citizens and residents mentioned in the report is Rangzieb Ahmed, 33, from Rochdale, who claims he was tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by two MI5 officers. Ahmed was convicted of being a member of al-Qaida at Manchester crown court, yet the jury was not told that three of the fingernails of his left hand had been removed. The response from MI5 to the allegations that it had colluded in Ahmed's torture were heard in camera, however, after the press and the public were excluded from the proceedings. Ahmed's description of the cell in which he claims he was tortured closely matches that where Salahuddin Amin, 33, from Luton, says he was tortured by ISI officers between interviews with MI5 officers.

Townsend mentions a number of other cases and continues:

Hasan said that evidence indicated a considerable number of UK officers were involved in interviewing terrorism suspects after they were allegedly tortured. He told the Observer: "We don't know who the individuals [British intelligence officers] were, but when you have different personnel coming in and behaving in a similar fashion it implies some level of systemic approach to the situation, rather than one eager beaver deciding it is absolutely fine for someone to be beaten or hung upside down."

He accused British intelligence officers of turning a blind eye as UK citizens endured torture at the hands of Pakistan's intelligence agencies.

"They [the British] have met the suspect ... and have conspicuously failed to notice that someone is in a state of high physical distress, showing signs of injury. If you are a secret service agent and fail to notice that their fingernails are missing, you ought to be fired."

The poster in this photo (also from Dawn) poses an interesting question: What does torture teach our children? Equally interesting: What does torture teach us?

For most of us, it seems, the answer is "Not Much".

But for the rest of us, for those with enough courage to face our common reality (at least some of the time), torture teaches us to loathe and fear our government.

And that, from all indications, is exactly what it is intended to do.

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On Silent Paws: Identity Cards Coming To The UK In November

Tyranny moves like a big cat: one silent step at a time. Here's Reuters, via the NYT, (in full):

Britain to Issue Identity Cards for Foreigners in November

Britain’s home secretary said Thursday that the government would begin in months to carry out its plan for national identity cards.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith [photo] said that the government would start distributing cards to foreigners in November.

The nation’s 200,000 airport workers, who are expected to receive cards next year, will be the first British citizens required to have them, because of the high level of security needed for their jobs, Ms. Smith said.

Beginning in 2010, students will be encouraged to apply voluntarily for identity cards, which will store the holder’s fingerprint on a chip.

“It will make it easier to enroll on a course, apply for a student loan, open a bank account or prove your age,” Ms. Smith said at a meeting with a research agency in London.

By 2011, the government will begin widespread distribution of the cards and passports containing electronically stored fingerprints.

The cards will not initially be compulsory for British citizens — although airport employees will not be permitted to work without them. But they will be required for foreigners from outside the European Union staying in Britain on visas.

The government is phasing in the policy until most of the population is covered before deciding whether to pass laws to make the cards compulsory.

You see how it comes? Just airport workers, at first. Just foreigners from outside the EU. What have you got to hide?

And what's the need for any new laws? Why fight over controversial legislation? Just get most of the people used to carrying their cards, and there'll be no problem. You won't be able to take their chains away.

Ms. Smith said the cards would prevent identity theft, help reduce illegal immigration, fight terrorism and make it easier for people to obtain public services. But civil rights groups and the opposition parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, say the cards are unnecessary, expensive and intrusive.

The two opposition parties say they will end the plan if they are able to form a government.

How would the opposition go about forming a government? And could we do something like that here??

Bugged: British Prisons Spy On Lawyers, Visitors

In the UK, the Telegraph has yet another blockbuster story about yet another way in which the rule of law has been eviscerated since 9/11 -- not by terrorists (who could never do such a thing) but by governments:

The full scale of a nationwide policy to bug British jails can be disclosed today after a whistleblower revealed that hundreds of lawyers and prison visitors had been secretly recorded.

The covert eavesdropping of the MP Sadiq Khan is alleged to be just the first case in a far wider operation to bug terrorist suspects and other serious criminals introduced after the September 11 attacks.

Lawyers, including the human rights solicitors Gareth Peirce and Mudassar Arani, were allegedly "routinely bugged" by police during visits to see clients at Woodhill prison. Listening devices were said to have been concealed in tables at the jail.

Well, what do you know? [Click the image to enlarge it.]

The scandal came to light after Mr Khan, a Muslim Labour MP, was covertly recorded during two visits to a terrorist suspect held at Wood­hill prison in Milton Keynes in 2005 and 2006.

It led to a political outcry as the bugging of MPs has been prohibited since the 1960s. Mr Straw was forced to set up an inquiry. He insisted he had known nothing of the operation before last weekend, although it later emerged that officials in his department had learnt of the allegations two months ago.

Now someone with detailed knowledge of the operation claims that Mr Khan's visits were allegedly among "hundreds of conversations" bugged by Det Sgt Mark Kearney during his time with a four-man intelligence team based at the prison since early 2002.

The recordings are deemed so sensitive that copies are stored at a secret facility protected by armed guards.

Initially, only a handful of prisons implemented the alleged bugging policy - including Woodhill and Belmarsh - but over the past 18 months the secret policy is alleged to have been rolled out across Britain.

At least 10 solicitors had conversations recorded at Woodhill while dozens more are thought to have been monitored across the country, the insider claimed. Hundreds of prison visitors were also targeted.

The whistleblower said: "Mark [Kearney] didn't feel what was going on was right or legal. Every person who came in and saw these terrorist suspects was the subject of an eavesdropping operation. He was put under huge amounts of pressure. Initially, it was just one or two machines but it steadily increased and now covers other category A prisoners such as murderers."

Documents seen by The Daily Telegraph reveal that Mr Kearney's team was also ordered to search and copy the contents of prison visitors' bags including keys and mobile phone sim cards.

These allegedly included confidential documents left by lawyers. It is also alleged that senior Woodhill prison staff were extremely unhappy with the practice.

CRUCIAL VIDEO: "7/7 Ripple Effect"

Here's an excellent account of the London bombings of July 7, 2005 -- a vitally important and often overlooked specimen of state-sponsored false-flag terror at its worst.

I remember it all so well ... I was in a high-pressure blogging situation at the time, pulling double duty and desperate for something to write about. As a story, for somebody like me, it was a gift from Heaven. Right from the very beginning it had all the signs of a black op, and I said so at the time.

The attacks were even more opportune for some others. They occurred at a time when the run of news stories -- and of events -- was against the other puppets of the ruling class, especially in the U.K., as the British had nearly been pushed out of Iraq, the rich countries had been pushed to at least talk about helping the poor ones at the G8 summit, and Tony Blair was wilting under pressure. It all seemed just too convenient, as I wrote at the tim.

Rudy Giuliani was there. Benyamin Netanyahu was there -- and Netanyahu was warned not to leave his hotel, just a few minutes before a bomb exploded in the nearest tube station.

Peter Power explained that his consulting firm was involved in a terrorism-preparedness drill working with the exact scenario that transpired -- four explosions: three on trains and one on a bus ... and in exactly the same locations, too!

Think about that for a moment -- how far beyond coincidental can you get? This was treason of the highest order, and at the very top of the government.

Ever since I started blogging I've been trying to place terror in the context of government, in a deeper and more meaningful way than the approach followed by some more mainstream reporters such as Rolling Stone and Keith Olbermann, who draw connections between bogus terror alerts and political crises, but don't talk about how actual governments in search of ever-increasing power have participated in actual terror attacks which have killed hundreds or thousands or even more actual innocent people.

The London bombings of 7/7/2005 provided as clear an example of such a government in action as we are ever likely to see -- with the Mayor of 9/11 and a former Israeli Defense Minister right in the middle of it.

This video, "7/7 Ripple Effect", goes way beyond my quick and relatively simple analysis, and most of it makes perfect sense to me. It gets two minor details wrong, as far as I know, but neither makes any difference to any of the main points.

There are a few small bits that I still don't understand, but nothing that shocks me very much. I've reported on bogus-terror entrapment scams so often that most of my regular readers will be able to see the parallels in this case ... and if they don't, they'll probably ask questions!

Thanks to J for Justice dot Co dot UK for putting this video together, and a tip of the frozen cap to Sea Dreamer.

Special Pak/UK Extradition Agreement In The Works; Former Suspect's Assets Released; Lighters Now OK On Airplanes

A confused report from India that reached us over the weekend suggested that Britain and Pakistan had signed an extradition treaty. Negotiations over such a treaty have faltered in the past, reportedly because the British don't like the way the Pakistanis use capital punishment.

A subsequent report from Pakistan indicated they had merely signed an agreement to exchange a few prisoners.

A full extradition treaty would have been a breakthrough of sorts in the so-called "Liquid Bombers" case, as it could perhaps allow Britain to try the alleged ringleader, mastermind, and al-Q'aeda connection Rashid Rauf, who was arrested last August and is being held in Pakistan, where he still hasn't even had a proper court appearance.

Instead of an extradition treaty, officials are now talking about a one-time extradition agreement that would make Rashid Rauf available for trial in Britain, where he is wanted in connection with both the alleged airline bombing plot and the 2003 murder of his uncle.

In other "Liquid Bomber" news, the assets of Shazad Khuram Ali have finally been released. They were frozen on suspicion of fundraising for terrorism after he was arrested on August 10 of last year, and even though he was released without charge on September 6, his accounts remained under UK government control until they were finally released earlier this month.

They didn't have enough to charge him with any crime whatsoever, but they froze his assets for more than a year! What justifies this sort of treatment? This is as close to an explanation as we are likely to get:

A Treasury spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with ministry policy, said Ali's assets were released after consultation with police and intelligence officers.

"It is for the police and the intelligence agencies to make operational judgments about which tools to deploy in individual cases," the spokesman said. "Cases are always kept under review."

John Caruso at The Distant Ocean caught an amazing news item last month.

TSA will no longer ban common lighters in carry-on luggage starting August 4, 2007. Torch lighters remain banned in carry-ons.

Lifting the lighter ban is consistent with TSA's risk-based approach to aviation security. First and foremost, lighters no longer pose a significant threat.

So someone can now bring a device through security that lets them start a fire on the plane, but you can't bring enough water with you to put it out. Makes perfect sense to me. You might find yourself wondering why it is that "lighters no longer pose a significant threat" -- which apparently means they once did -- but good luck finding out from the TSA news release, which assiduously sidesteps the issue. Then again, maybe it's better not to probe too deeply, since it's actually quite comforting to learn that fire on an airplane is no longer dangerous!

How and why was this change made? Because that's the way Zippo wants it to be.

We've fallen so far through the looking glass that even the word "unbelievable" is too mild.

My mother-in-law called from the airport the other day; she was about to board an international flight and the security people confiscated a bottle of water she had bought to take with her. I said "That was a mistake, Mom. You should have brought a lighter!" She didn't think that was funny.

She said there was a big bin by the loading gate that was full of bottles of water. "Any lighters in there?" I asked. But she didn't think that was funny, either.

But what the heck? Since fire on an airplane is no longer dangerous, who needs water?

~~~

Eighteenth in a series.

Gandhi: Why Are We Over There Again?

Here's one of Gandhi's latest, in full:

Qui Custodiat Custos? Custos Ipsum!

[Latin: "Who guards the guard? He guards himself!"]

The latest reason why UK troops have to stay in Iraq: to protect themselves:

Hopes of a rapid British withdrawal from Iraq appeared to diminish yesterday after a minister said the present force level was needed for the safety of the troops.

Bloody hell.

Meanwhile our brave Aussie diggers have murdered another innocent man in Afghanistan. Oh, sorry - he couldn't have been innocent, because they shot him. So he must have been guilty. Of something.

Why are we over there again?

I know that's a rhetorical question, but here's a simple answer:

Client Regime. Oil Law. Permanent Bases.
Client Regime. Oil Law. Permanent Bases.
Client Regime. Oil Law. Permanent Bases.
Client Regime. Oil Law. Permanent Bases.

Freeway Blogging, UK Style ... With A Twist Of Truth!!

This is the sort of thing I love to see ... it's kind of like the Freeway Blogger, but in a foreign language.

9/11 Truth Activists Strike Motorway Lorry

By Mick Meaney | RINF Alternative News

On the northbound M6 motorway, between Preston and Lancaster, 9/11 truth activists engaged in some hardcore guerilla activism by ‘branding’ a motorway advert lorry with a 9/11 truth web site.

www.ae911truth.org can clearly be read from the motorway and it is expected to be seen by at least 302,400 people a week, that’s 43,200 people a day minimum.

In an anonymous message to RINF, one of the activists stated: “We hope this will inspire other groups around the country to take similar action because a short and to the point website URL can be hugely effective on motorways as it will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people every week.

“It’s very easy to do and doesn’t take much time. The benefits are enormous and since similar action was taken in September last year, we’ve noticed awareness of 9/11 truth in the area has increased dramatically,” he said.

There you go.

"Awareness increasing dramatically" is always a good sign.

It doesn't take much effort. Just a bit of initiative and a clever mind.

And some paint!!

Educating Interpol

When I was a student I had a professor from Papua New Guinea who had been arrested in Guatemala by police who thought his passport was fraudulent because they had never heard of PNG.

"Fair enough," he thought. "Why should Guatemala City police know South Pacific geography?" So he convinced them to call Interpol -- but the Interpol officers assigned to Guatemala had never heard of Papua New Guinea either!

Things have changed, apparently, but not by much. The Global War on Terror has been raging for nearly six years now and Ronald Noble, secretary general of Interpol, doesn't understand it yet.

But at least he's asking the right questions.

From AP via the Toronto Star:

The head of Interpol said Monday that Britain's anti-terrorist efforts are "in the wrong century," pointing out that authorities in London had not shared any information from the investigation of three failed car bomb attacks and had not made good use of a passport database.

"We have received not one name, not one fingerprint, not one telephone number, not one address, nothing, from the U.K., about the recent thwarted terrorist attacks," Ronald Noble, Interpol's secretary general, said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. television.

"My view is that the U.K.'s anti-terrorist effort is in the wrong century," Noble said.

"It is not aware of what we are able to do today globally, and they should do more. We don't have one Metropolitan police officer from the anti-terrorist unit assigned to Interpol – not one. Can you explain to me why that is?"

Yes!

~~~

Dear Mr. Noble,

The so-called Global War On Terror is a fraud.

The Brits don't want any of your information because there are no terrorists in your database. They're the ones with the terrorist database. It's called al-Q'aeda.

They don't want to give you access to their information because you will see at once that the entire murderous charade is bogus.

It's the same in the USA. Homeland Security is a joke -- a joke with weapons and a huge slush fund. It is not a serious attempt at public safety, and that's why

The Bush administration has failed to fill roughly a quarter of the top leadership posts at the Department of Homeland Security, creating a "gaping hole" in the nation's preparedness for a terrorist attack or other threat, according to a congressional report to be released today.

Today! Today, sir!

On the very day that your question is published, a congressional report will be released containing the answer.

I understand that you weren't expecting your question about Britain to be answered in a report from the United States, but it's a global village now, sir, and this is what we mean by "coalition". The US and the UK are in it together. You can't understand one without the other. And keep tabs on Australia, too.

Please ask more questions, sir.

There's an enormous international war crime going on, and many of us in the blogosphere have been pointing this out for some time, hoping that by drawing attention to it -- and to the fraudulent means by which it has been "justified" -- we can help to get it stopped.

In this regard, it will help quite a bit if we can get Interpol up to speed.

Yours sincerely
WP

~~~

UPDATE:

The government's response to Ronald Noble's charges is feeble.

Home Office denies Interpol criticisms

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, today defended her department from the head of Interpol's unprecedented criticism that the UK's counter-terror effort is "in the wrong century".
...

Ms Smith told the Commons work was under way to help police and other agencies access the Interpol databases.

She said that the UK had recorded "all known and suspected terrorists declared by Interpol" on a watch list maintained by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

Ms Smith did not respond to Mr Noble's complaint that Britain was also failing to pass on its own counter-terrorism information to Interpol, and a ministry spokesman said he had no further comment to make on the matter.

Maybe I overstated it a bit. The response would be feeble if it could. It's still striving for feeble.

False Alarm Hysteria Grounds British Airlines

Heathrow scare traps thousands as 150 jets are grounded

Tens of thousands of holidaymakers were stranded last night as a series of bomb-scares swept the country.

Police swooped on airports, railway stations and the underground network as reports of suspect packages and suspicious behaviour flooded in.

The worst chaos was at Britain's busiest airport terminal as thousands of summer holidaymakers were evacuated when a man was seen running from security checks.

Some passengers were forced out into the pouring rain at Heathrow's Terminal 4 where more than 150 cancelled flights that left more than 20,000 stranded.

Ouch!

Travellers were surrounded by armed police carrying machine guns and herded into outside car parks as flights to the U.S., Canada, Africa and Asia were axed along with host short-haul flights to Europe.

There's no point being subtle, is there?

There were also dramatic scenes at Victoria Station in London where a suspect car was reported. Police, the fire brigade, sniffer dogs, paramedics and a bomb disposal team were all called to what turned out to be a false alarm.

No, no point at all, unfortunately. There's no incentive for the police or the media to downplay anything; quite the contrary.

Parts of London's Underground were also shut down in the morning when a suspect package was discovered at Hammersmith Station.

The station, along with nearby Baron's Court station, was shut down and a controlled explosion was carried out shortly after 9am in the heart of the rush hour.

I wonder whether the detonation involved any explosives in the suspect package, or whether they just blew it up because they didn't know what it was. Probably the latter.

The night before, a Polish man caused a security-alert at Stansted Airport in Essex by leaving an unattended bag outside the terminal. An area around the suspect luggage was cordoned off and bomb disposal experts were called in.

And then what?

Similar scares threaten a summer of misery as security is stepped up across the country in the wake of the failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.

Lin Homer, chief executive of the Government's new Border and Immigration Agency, said she made 'no apology' for putting safety first.

She said: 'We check people based on risk and not on queues. Our objective is to secure our borders, and tougher checks on people entering the UK can mean longer queues.'

Yep. Right-oh, guv! We'll stand on queue all day and night if it makes traveling safer. Or even if you just tell us it makes traveling safer. Yuk yuk yuk, where's my ten quid?

A second opinion is called for, and here's one from the future! (It's tomorrow down under, so this report from Australia is dated July 4th):

Bomb scare chaos at London's Heathrow

London's Heathrow airport reopened a busy, international terminal today after a security scare led to the cancellation of more than 100 flights.

Thousands of passengers were evacuated from terminal four after a suspect bag was found just before midday, the airport's operator BAA, a unit of Spanish infrastructure and construction company Grupo Ferrovial, said.

Police also ordered the evacuation of the departure lounge so that all passengers could be searched a second time.

The terminal reopened just after 5pm.

Flights arriving at the terminal, which handles only international flights, were not affected.

British Airways, the main operator at the terminal, said it had cut 108 flights after cancelling all its European departures from the terminal for the day, as well as all long-haul flights due to depart between 3pm and 9pm.

At least seven transatlantic flights to the United States were cancelled, stranding American passengers hoping to return for July 4 Independence Day celebrations.

How convenient! Direct impact on American tourists means direct impact on American public opinion, which is virtually the only group still taking this stuff seriously -- even if it is legit!

Meanwhile, were there any explosives found? Was there anything involved in this series of alarms except thoroughly false ones? Were the failed attacks of the London and Glasgow car-bombs last weekend legitimate or phony? We may never know the answers to any of these questions, but it won't matter, because the fear cycle is already well underway.

So it appears that Lin Homer had it right with "We check people based on risk and not on queues." Because if the authorities can control the risks, they can also control the queues ... and the people who form them ... and their friends and neighbors!

Oops! I wasn't supposed to say that, was I?

The London And Glasgow Attacks In Perspective

Unfortunately I was not able to keep up with the breaking news from London and Glasgow, and I am only now catching up.

Fortunately for me, Craig Murray has been making all kinds of sense about the car-bomb-wannabe pseudo-attacks that happened, or almost nearly happened, in several recent posts on his blog. Links and excerpts appear below; in my opinion the following posts are all worth reading in their entirety:

June 29: London Bomb - Cui Bono?

Whoever was behind the apparent car bomb in London, it almost certainly wasn't the police explosives experts who made it safe, and we should acknowledge the heroism it takes to do that job.

Peter Clarke, the Met's anti-terrorism point man, gave a press conference claiming he was not going to speculate, but then doing everything he could to indicate it was an Islamic plot. He referred to other recent cases, including the Barot case, in which night clubs were mentioned as targets, and the use of gas canisters in cars discussed. The one bit of modus operandi pointing another way - the fact it wasn't a suicide bomber - he was at pains to explain away by speculating that the driver had lost his nerve.

Of course the last time a nail bomb was actually exploded among clubbers in Central London, it was by a homophobic fascist. So it is right to keep an open mind. But whoever did this, the only people who can possibly benefit are the vast and ever-burgeoning security industry of all kinds, and those who want discord between the Islamic World and the West. Unfortunately, the extremists on all sides are strengthened by this incident.

June 29: Bombs and the Great Wen

A good rule is to look at what did happen, not what might have happened. Consider this:

a) Nobody committed suicide. Rather than follow Scotland Yard's Peter Clarke and speculate that was because the driver lost his nerve, let us admit that it is at least possible that nobody was intended to commit suicide. If suicide was not part of the modus operandi, that vastly increases the number of groups and individuals who might have been responsible.

b) No bomb exploded and nobody was killed. There seems a general presumption that was because the trigger failed, or was defused in time. That is possible, certainly. It could well be so. But there is another possibility that cannot be ruled out yet - perhaps the thing was not meant to explode, perhaps no-one was meant to be killed. Perhaps it was meant to look like a convincing bomb, even like a convincing failed bomb. If you accept that as a logical possibility, that would bring in even more individuals and organisations who might have been responsible. To be up for a bomb scare is very different to being up for a bomb.

Let me be quite clear again: Islamic extremists may very well be responsible. I am not saying they are not. I am saying nobody knows yet. But let me expand a bit on my Cui Bono theme.

There are plenty of companies - and wealthy individuals - making huge amounts of money from both the War on Terror and its equally ugly sister, the War in Iraq. There has been much speculation that Brown will edge away from both of these. If British troops were to withdraw from Iraq, for example, that could reduce the access currently enjoyed by companies, including Aegis and BAE, to billions of dollars of US government contracts for arms and mercenaries. These companies make money out of killing. Death is their business. Today's car bomb - and the immediate media presumption it is Islamic terrorism - certainly forces Brown further into the War on Terror. The fact that the Iraq war is the root cause of an upsurge of terror in the UK, strangely does not negate the surge of political support for the War that this sort of incident brings as a reflex reaction from our leaders.

I am not saying it was Aegis or BAE. I am saying don't be one-eyed about the possibilities. Look at the list of amazing things in London above. Do I really believe that there are wealthy people in London who would stage this sort of thing to protect or further their financial interests? Yes, I do.

June 30: Glasgow Airport Incident

It will take a little time to work out what has happened in Glagow. From eyewitness accounts, this does seem like a definite attack, but an eyewitness on BBC News 24 has just described seeing two men get out of the car and try to torch it with bottles of petrol. The BBC also have a photo plainly showing the car well ablaze on the pavement, under the canopy and pointed towards, but not having penetrated, or apparently reached, the airport doors. This would have to have been taken after the occupants got out as it is very well ablaze. This is hard to reconcile with continued journalists' reports of the car being inside the terminal building.

Anyway, four people have been arrested, so we should get some answers on this one fairly quickly. At least two of the arrested men were Asian. There is no simple equation between Asian and Muslim but in the UK, and particularly in Glasgow, it does increase the likelihood. Fortunately, on the information so far, it seems nobody has been killed.

Thankfully, whatever is happening, we do not appear to be facing a wave of attacks by sophisticated terrorists with good bomb making skills.

June 30: Home Grown Terror

According to Willie Rae, Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police, there are clear links between today's Glasgow incident and the London car bombs. He declined to expand further, but I presume he meant more than that both events involved cars and petrol. A copycat crime is, in a sense, always linked to the crime it copies. But Willie Rae is not the Metropolitan Police, with its track record of lying to us, so I am prepared to believe that he knows something more substantial.

I still cannot understand why the Met does not release the CCTV footage of the London suspects. As the suspects must realise that they will have been caught on CCTV, I can't think of a single sensible motive for witholding it.
...

Thank goodness the only injured in Glasgow were the attackers, and one member of the public, who is not in danger. Fortunately, amateur does not do justice as a description of these attackers - absolute rubbish comes closer to it. It is worth noting that, if the London car bombs had ignited, they would probably have burnt like the Glasgow car, and almost certainly would not have had the kind of explosive force that the media tried to claim. Gas canisters are designed to withstand fire without exploding; they will eventually vent and the gas flare as it comes out. That is what looked on TV like it might have been happening in the back of the car in Glasgow.

Petrol and gas can be a deadly effective component of a bomb, and even a very small quantity of high explosive would have made the London car bombs potentially devastating. But there was no explosive present - I have held back on blogging on this aspect until I could confirm that fact from my own sources.

So this is not al-Qaeda, and we are not dealing with trained bomb-makers. [...] This threat will indeed remain with us until we stop being an acolyte for US foreign policy. Nobody is attacking Ireland - if Western hedonism and culture were the target, Ireland should be in big trouble.

July 2: Terror Attacks

The link between the Glasgow and London bombs now appears to be fairly convincing, particularly as much of the confirmation is coming out of Scotland rather than from the discredited Met. What we have this time appears not to be home grown discontent, but more direct blowback from our Middle Eastern policy. I make no apologies for having noted at the start of this series of events that, while this was likely to be terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists, there were other possiblities and we should not straightaway jump to that conclusion.
...

Now it does appear that Islamic extremists were indeed responsible for both Glasgow and London.

But my question cui bono? was also helpful in pointing out that these terrorist attacks are not only callous and inhuman, but extraordinarily stupid. Islamic terrorism fills those who hate Muslims with unholy glee. You only have to surf the internet for five minutes to prove that. At the same time it sends those of us who try to improve community relations, and it sends the established Muslim communities in the UK, into deep despair. Those in the security, weapons and mercenary industries who make billions from continued War are rubbing their hands and counting the cash.

From a slightly different point of view, Gwynne Dyer predicts that the stillborn attacks will have a much greater impact in the USA than in the UK.

Excerpts from Dyer's most recent column, via the Framingham (MA) MetroWest Daily News:

More competent terrorists might have killed dozens of people, of course, but it's safe to say that this incident will be taken more seriously in the United States than it is in Britain itself or anywhere else in Europe.

An occasional terrorist attack is one of the costs of doing business in the modern world. You just have to bring a sense of proportion to the problem, and in general people in Europe do.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued the obligatory statement that Britain faces "a serious and continuous threat" and that the public "need to be alert" at all times. But there were none of the efforts to pump up the threat, the declarations that civilization itself was under attack, that were standard issue when Tony Blair was running the show.
...

Most European cities have also been heavily bombed in a real war within living memory, which definitely puts terrorist attacks into a less impressive category. So most Europeans, while they dislike terrorist attacks, do not obsess about them. They know that they are likelier to win the lottery than to be hurt by terrorists.

Russians are also pretty cool about the occasional terrorist attacks linked to the war in Chechnya, and Indians are positively heroic in their refusal (most of the time) to be panicked by terrorist attacks that have taken more lives there than all the attacks in the West since terrorist techniques first became widespread in the 1960s.

In almost all of these countries, despite the efforts of some governments to convince the population that terrorism is an existential threat of enormous size, the vast majority of the people don't believe it.

Whereas in the United States, most people do believe it.
...

Inexperience is one reason: American cities have never been bombed in war, so Americans have no standard of comparison that would shrink terrorism to its true importance in the scale of threats that face any modern society. But the other is relentless official propaganda: the Bush administration has built its whole brand around the "war on terror" since 2001, so the threat must continue to be seen as huge and universal.

Ridiculous though it sounds to outsiders, Americans are regularly told that their survival as a free society depends on beating the "terrorists." They should treat those who say such things as fools or deliberate liars, but they don't. So the manipulators of public opinion in the White House and the more compliant sectors of the U.S. media will give bigger play to the British bombings-that-weren't than Britain's own government and media have, and they will get away with it.

I don't always agree with Gwynne Dyer, nor do I always agree with Craig Murray, but they both seem close to the mark on this one.

I may change my mind about this, but not without letting you know.

Study Calls Norway (And Iraq) The World's Most (And Least) Peaceful Nation(s)

It's kind of interesting to see how the BBC reports this story: Norway rated most peaceful nation

A study has ranked Norway as the most peaceful country and Iraq as the least in a survey of 121 countries.

The Global Peace Index, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, looked at 24 factors to determine how peaceful each country was.

It places the US at 96th on the list and the UK at 49th, while New Zealand ranks second and Japan fifth.

Clearly whaling was not among the considerations.

The authors say it is the first attempt to produce such a wide-ranging league table of how peaceful countries are.

Factors examined by the authors include levels of violence and organised crime within the country and military expenditure.

The formula seems to require some adjustments, but the results are still interesting.

The survey has been backed by the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former US President Jimmy Carter and US economist Joseph Stiglitz, who are all Nobel prize laureates.
...

Scandinavian and other European countries generally performed well in the survey.

But Britain's ranking comes partly from its involvement in Iraq and other conflicts.

The United States is 96th - between Yemen and Iran - [...] because of such things as its military spending, its involvement in Iraq, violent crime at home, and a high prison population.

The survey also places Russia and Israel at the wrong end of the scale - 118th and 119th respectively.
...

TOP FIVE COUNTRIES
1 Norway
2 New Zealand
3 Denmark
4 Ireland
5 Japan
...

BOTTOM FIVE COUNTRIES
117 Nigeria
118 Russia
119 Israel
120 Sudan
121 Iraq

There's more, and you can read about it here.

Alleged Liquid Bombers Plead 'Not Guilty'; Extradition Of Alleged Mastermind 'Conditionally Stalled'

The alleged plotters who were allegedly plotting to bomb intercontinental airliners headed from Great Britain to the USA -- the so-called "Liquid Bombers" -- have finally entered their pleas: not guilty! The accused were among 25 people arrested in the UK last August.

Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind of the alleged plot, was arrested in Pakistan shortly before the UK arrests, and his arrest was said to have triggered the arrests in Britain. Rauf is still imprisoned in Pakistan, and UK officials have apparently been trying to arrange for his extradition.

Although officials in both countries have repeatedly implied that an extradition deal is in the works, recent reports describe the extradition of Rashid Rauf as "conditionally stalled". It's as good a description as any.

Pakistan reportedly wants 8 Balochi nationals in return for Rauf, and routinely imposes the death penalty, so the British are reluctant to hand anyone over to the tender mercies of the Pakistanis. Meanwhile Rashid Rauf supposedly awaits trial in Pakistan, but his trial appears to be on indefinite hold. And the Pakistanis are saying that even if the Brits were willing to hand over the 8 Balochis, Rashid Rauf is not going anywhere until his trial is over. Or so the official story runs.

But there's an unreported subtext, an aspect of this case which has not just been unreported but actively suppressed: the alleged plot was so unlikely that it must be considered impossible.

The alleged plot, as described in breathless detail by US and UK officials such as Michael Chertoff and John Reid, involved attacks on as many as a dozen aircraft simultaneously, with the objective of killing "hundreds of thousands of people", as Chertoff said at the time.

We've been told that the plotters were planning to smuggle ordinary household liquids such as acetone and hydrogen peroxide onto airplanes, mix them together in the sinks of the airplanes' restrooms, and produce explosives capable of knocking all those planes out of the sky simultaneously.

But it didn't take much research to find out that the reaction which makes explosives out of acetone and hydrogen peroxide takes at least several hours (some sources say two or three days!) You'll forgive me if I don't link to any of the bomb-making recipes, especially since the FBI considers that a serious offense now, despite the fact that some of the most accurate bomb-making recipes reside on the FBI's own website. But let's not get bogged down in tricky administrative details!

Then a bit of math revealed that the quantity of explosive needed to puncture the fuselage of a plane is at least fifteen times as much as anyone could make in a tiny airplane sink. So, unless each of the accused plotters had fifteen or twenty accomplices -- who could all find sinks to work in without being detected -- there would be no way for a plotter to make enough explosives to take down a plane.

But at Heathrow, officials imposed strict security anyway, even after all the so-called plotters had been arrested. And airline passengers are bound by very strict rules to this day, supposedly to defeat the threat that the alleged liquid bombers allegedly posed.

But it's all a sham. It couldn't possibly be anything else. The only interesting question remaining is: What kind of a sham is it?

Either the Brits are lying about everything and there never was such a plot, or else there was a plot but it was impossible to pull off and therefore of little or no danger. Certainly there was no way any number of terrorists making bombs from acetone and peroxide could kill hundreds of thousands of people! There's really no way -- barring outrageous assistance from the flight crew -- that anyone could make a peroxide bomb on a plane at all.

Nonetheless, Rashid Rauf is still being held in Pakistan on multiple charges.

In addition to his terror-related charges, he's also accused of carrying forged identity papers. The terror charges were dropped in December, then reinstated, and his case was delayed because the police didn't file a charge sheet. Later when they did the paperwork, we learned that Rashid Rauf is accused of possessing 29 bottles of hydrogen peroxide for the purposes of terrorism. His trial -- off and on and off -- was scheduled to resume April 16th, but he hasn't appeared in court, then or since.

The nature of the mechanism whereby Rashid Rauf's 29 bottles of peroxide in Pakistan were supposed to be used in attacking airliners leaving Heathrow for the USA remains to be explained, as do the circumstances of his arrest, and the nature of the trigger whereby his arrest caused a wave of arrests in Britain. We've had a number of reports on these issues and they have differed greatly in ways that have never been explained, satisfactorily or otherwise. The entire case is strange from one end to the other.

It was widely reported that Rashid Rauf was the mastermind of the plot, although in some accounts he was described as the mastermind's assistant, and in other versions he was represented as merely a messenger. But he was always portrayed as the al-Q'aeda connection, for there never was any doubt that this alleged plot was the work of al-Q'aeda.

And perhaps because al-Q'aeda was established by the CIA through their friendly cutout, the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI), and Rashid Rauf is alleged to have ISI connections, it came as a surprise to see reports indicating that Rashid Rauf also had connections to the banned terrorist group JeM.

How and when was he arrested? Accounts differ. How was the news of his arrest connected with the arrests made in Britain? Accounts differ. Some say he was arrested a week before the others and tortured by the ISI until he revealed the names of those who were arrested in Britain.

Others say he was his arrest happened just before the others and was noted by an associate who sent a message to the alleged plotters in Britain -- telling them to go ahead with their plan! -- or that Rashid Rauf sent such a message himself. The "go" message would have come as a shock to the alleged plotters, since only one of them had any airline tickets, and some didn't even have passports. But it was allegedly intercepted by the British authorities, who had supposedly had all these people under surveillance for months, and this, we are told, was the reason for their arrest.

Having spent nine months arranging for the accused plotters to enter a plea, the swift British justice system now shifts into overdrive, with the trial scheduled to begin in April of 2008.

British authorities attribute the long pre-trial period to an abundance of evidence. But an enormous police search of the woods near where some of the suspects lived was called off in December, apparently because of the cost of the investigation (nearing 30 million pounds -- roughly $60M) and the apparent fact that they have apparently found very little -- if anything at all -- in their previous months of searching the woods.

For a recap on the accused, the charges and the pleas, here's the most recent report from the BBC (slightly edited for grammar and punctuation):

Accused deny airliner bomb plot

Twelve men accused of plotting to bring down an airliner with a bomb have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.

They denied charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion on an aircraft between January and August last year.

The defendants also denied other charges in an indictment which contained 27 counts.

They are due to face trial at Woolwich Crown Court in April 2008.

The accused were: Abdul Ahmed Ali, 26, from Walthamstow, east London; Assad Sarwar, 26, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire; Tanvir Hussain, 26, of Leyton, east London; Mohammed Gulzar, 25, of Barking, east London; Ibrahim Savant, 26, of Walthamstow; Arafat Waheed Khan, 26, of Walthamstow; Waheed Zaman, 22, of Walthamstow; Adam Khatib, 20, of Walthamstow; Umar Islam (also known as Brian Young), 29, of High Wycombe; Donald Douglas Stewart-Whyte, 20, of High Wycombe; Mohammed Shamin Uddin, 36, of Stoke Newington, north London and Nabeel Hussain, 23, of Chingford, east London.

Other charges

Additionally, Nabeel Hussain is accused of involved in the preparation of terrorism by meeting Mr Ali, having a will contemplating a violent death, and taking out a bank loan worth £25,000.

Mr Ali, Tanvir Hussain, Mr Savant, Mr Khan, Mr Khatib, Mr Islam and Mr Sarwar denied separate charges under the Explosives Substances Act.

Other charges on the indictment include possessing articles for use in terrorism.

A 13th man, Mohammed Usman Saddique, 25, of Walthamstow, will face a separate trial.

He denied being involved in the preparation of terrorism by owning a number of mobile phones as well as a CD containing titles such as Bombs And More.

Abdul Ali's wife, Cossor Ali, 25, will also face a trial on her own.

She denied failing to disclose information which could have prevented a terrorist act.

All of the accused, except Cossor Ali and Nabeel Hussain, who are on bail, appeared by video link from prison.

There's a bit of new information in this report, such as the fact that Mohammed Usman Saddique is in trouble because of the names of the tracks on a CD. But not much.

In other recent Liquid Bomber news, four British newspaper groups have agreed to pay substantial libel damages to Abdul Rauf for having falsely reported that he was detained for questioning over suspected involvement in the plot. Two of the papers had previously printed retractions and apologies. There was a similar report in the Turkish Press at the time, but there's been no correction or apology from Turkish media, let alone a libel settlement. Nor has there been any mention of the fact that Abdul Rauf is Rashid Rauf's father.

This is the second time British newspapers have made substantial payments over inaccuracies in their reporting. Amjad Sarwar was paid £170,000 in December after British papers falsely reported that he had been arrested in August along with the others. Amjad Sarwar's brother, Assad Sarwar, is one of the twelve facing "conspiracy to murder" charges.

It's tough not to speculate that the British media may be growing tired of huge libel suits and wondering how they could have been led so badly astray. And it's also tough not to speculate that the longer Rashid Rauf stays in Pakistan, the better it might be for UK authorities, who could be severely embarrassed by whatever he might say in a British courtroom. At this point it appears that the most incriminating thing he could say would be "Yes, I know the bombing plot was impossible, but I convinced all these aspirational jihadis to pretend they were planning to do it, so that you would have somebody to arrest when you needed to claim you'd made a major achievement and inject another jolt of fear into the bogus War on bogus Terror."

===

Sixteenth in a series.