Club Troppo's Nicholas Gruen posted this bell-ringing article by a former UK ambassador, and it's ringing out danger. Have a look at this extract for a different point of view to that of the mainstream media:
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.
whotappene'd???
the value of trust .....
‘British politicians and security chiefs seemed absolutely certain that they were doing the right thing when on July 22 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent young Brazilian man was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station. I had a conversation with the mayor of London, Ken Livingston, the following morning opposite to Brent Mosque in north-west London when he told me that the police commissioner assured him that the shot man was indeed a terrorist. A few hours later the entire country was shocked to learn that the man was innocent and that the entire story about his conduct was entirely false, or I should say fabricated in a bid to safe face both government and police.
The same authorities seemed no less certain when on June 2 2006 Mohammed Abdul Kahar was shot in a near fatal attack by police. His family and his neighbours were subject to brutal assaults during the "anti-terror" raids in Forest Gate. We were told then that Abdulahar and his brother had been embroiled in the manufacture of a "dirty bomb"; it all turned to be a dirty "intelligence" work.
For days passengers across the UK and many airports around the world have been subjected to severe delays and to unprecedented humiliation because once more our politicians and security chiefs believe they've discovered a major plot to blow up transatlantic planes. More than 20 young Muslim men and women have been in detention subjected, expectedly, to intense interrogation because the Pakistani (unintelligent) intelligence services claimed a man they arrested in Pakistan was a key al-Qaeda operative who had been planning the alleged attacks.
The severe government-induced crisis in air travel coincided with the call by a large number of MPs for a parliamentary session to discuss the crisis in Lebanon and amid a growing discontent among different circles over the manner in which the Blair-led government had conducted itself during the Israeli war against Lebanon. More importantly, the crisis unfolded as Israel was being dealt the most humiliating defeat since it was created less than 60 years ago. I wonder too whether it is a mere coincidence that only days earlier Tony Blair was criticised widely for once again blaming Islam and the Muslims for the rise in "international terrorism".’
I Bet You It Will Turn Out To Be A Hoax
When It Turns Out To Be A Hoax
John, I was particularly taken with this par:
I think we've seen enough over the past five years or so not to trust politicians and the security agencies any more when they claim a plot of some sort has been foiled. They told us nothing but untruth about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and about the alleged link between the regime of the former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, and al-Qaeda. They misled the public over the de Menezes affair and then over the Forest Gate fiasco.
You caught Phillip Adams' cancellation of his flight to Heathrow, due to land on Septermber 11? The man's no dummy.
hoax indeed .....
Yes Richard .... hoax indeed .....
‘I'm going to tell you something that is straight-up heresy: America is not under attack by terrorists. There is no WAR on terror because, except for one day five years ago, al Qaeda has pretty much left us alone.
That's because Osama got what he wanted. There's no mystery about what Al Qaeda was after. Like everyone from the Girl Scouts to Bono, Osama put his wish on his web site. He had a single demand: "Crusaders out of the land of the two Holy Places." To translate: get US troops out of Saudi Arabia.
And George Bush gave it to him. On April 29, 2003, two days before landing on the aircraft carrier Lincoln, our self-described "War President" quietly put out a notice that he was withdrawing our troops from Saudi soil. In other words, our cowering cowboy gave in whimpering to Osama's demand.
The press took no note. They were all wiggie over Bush's waddling around the carrier deck in a disco-aged jump suit announcing, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." But it wasn't America's mission that was accomplished, it was Osama's.’
So Osama Walks Into This Bar, See?
meanwhile …..
‘America’s moral standing in the world has precipitously declined since 2001. For starters, blame the Bush administration's go-it-alone tough talk after 9/11, contempt for the Kyoto accord, war and then chaos in Iraq, secret prisons in Europe and alleged use of torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Democrats would have you believe that a new team — theirs — in Washington would change all this.
Not so fast.
Around the world, anti-Americanism is not simply the result of anger about President Bush's foreign policies. Rather, it is deeply entrenched antipathy accumulated over decades. It may take generations to undo.’
Why They Hate Us
They're Gonna Hate Us More
When Halliburton Subsea releases the locations of the riches of the Antartica, and it is revealed that the U.S. has, via Regime Change in Australia, gained access to the lion's share.
They won't be too happy, either, when somebody leaks Raytheon's maps of proposed defence bases on the Wilderness Continent.
And they're going to throughly pissed when negotiations for Australia's uranium (and strategic proximity to Antartica) are carried out beneath the barrel of an American gun.
In the War On Jihad, Australia could be quite a useful "proxy war"