planes

adruu

This Is It
decentralized hegemony with an american face is pretty fragile isn't it? what...it's like a hand grenade with a silkstring pin, or the spinning fine china on rods parlor trick. just enough "tragedy of imminent collapse" to keep the whole living fast, working fast, playing fast, facade racing along forward frantically panting...anyone have better metaphors? in the new model of web 2.0 participation, i'll paypal you a half a cent for each one i like.

did it occur to anyone how many airports there are in "muslim" countries? or if the clash of civilizations was real, then you would have had a plane flying into tel aviv already? i dont really get the sick fantasies (ideological fetishes maybe?) that are getting played out here on both sides, but to say that it all bugs me is an understatement.
 
When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed.
 

nomos

Administrator
tampons and prescription drugs in clear plastic bags. i wonder if you'll still have to pay for water on the cheapskate airlines. maybe more people will get drunk and disorderly because they have nothing to do for 8 hours except look around for signs of trouble.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
HMGovt , gotcha

'A burn out shell of a man ... the warrior .. Max'

But no, it's gotten crazy out there,
sounds like Qatar avoided a hijack today as well

Is it another code day ? a ' Zero Hour' ?
 

nomos

Administrator
Reuters: Samri said the man appeared to be about 20 years old and from an African country.
Google news:

qatar.jpg
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Well then , whatever the Qatar guy was on about , needing to pee or what not
it appears today's arrests were about heading off a next 'zero hour' 'spectacular attack' the Al Q leaders have been warning about , as supposedly in two days these cats were going to be buying tickets on Trans Atlantic planes for dry runs for a 9. 11 anniversary blow out
 

ripley

Well-known member
Kid K and I are supposed to fly to Heathrow tomorrow, and out again the next day. So we'll report back on any hijinx.

Boingboing.net has some interesting pictures of Airport officials pouring confiscated liquids into big barrels in teh middle of the airport, surrounded by people. If they really were explosive, would that be the wisest thing to do?

I wonder how long these rules are going to last?
 

tatarsky

Well-known member
What's really angered me about this, is not so much the (possibly) needless disruption of people's 2 weeks of Dan Brown by the beach, sunburn and vomit, but the way John Reid has manipulated this whole scenario to further his (and New Labour's) political aims. On tuesday, he makes a speech announcing how we face a threat more significant than any since WW2. And what a surprise! The very next day all the airports are shut due to a terror alert.

How fucking transparent is that?!
 
O

Omaar

Guest
tatarsky said:
On tuesday, he makes a speech announcing how we face a threat more significant than any since WW2. And what a surprise! The very next day all the airports are shut due to a terror alert.

How fucking transparent is that?!

It did strike me as a little odd that the new UK terrorist warning scale was only altered last week to include a critical warning level, and then as soon as this new critical stage is introduced they start using it. Perhaps they introduced the scale the other week in anticipation of using it after dealing with this plot. The anchor on channel 4 news last night asked some offfical about why the threat level was raised to critical after the threat had been neutralised, while prior to this it had been set to the step down on the scale, which was amusing.

Also on the news, an interview with a researcher with ties to the bush administration uncovering a shocking fact: after researching suicide bombings for 5 years, he concluded that they are not, as was previously thought, usually motivated by religion but are actually more often carried out for political reasons. major breakthrough.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Ripley: From what I understand from tech and soft weapons person ,
these liquid componants would explode with even a slight jiggle from say,
the bumps on a luggage conveyor or even the opening of a screw cap -
so opening and pouring into a big container does not inspire confidence
that those specific security people know what they are supposedly up against .
I hope to doubt that you wouldn't see that on UK side , which one can sense is much more on their toes and with it then the brain challenged ones over here .

As we know , the currently lanquishing in US jail Yusef did test a semi - liquid bomb by putting it under a Phillipines airlines plane seat some years bk , sorry the poor guy who was sitting just in front of him -
but the plane survived.

And re: the Politico's manipulating the public with their early knowledge of what was up between Pakistan and UK , it's in high gear over here for sure.
Witness Bush's Press flack (X -Fox TV bongo right ?) dressing down anyone who wants to er, 'cut and run'
in the face of the blah, blah blah'
then the Bush hissself bumbling through a few lines ( boy , it's got to be tough) about Islamic Fasssccchists'
and the 'Amuuriccan people'.
Retch bk on ya Bush

Here's hoping the restrictions on carry on don't last forever too ...
 

Eric

Mr Moraigero
polystyle desu said:
Here's hoping the restrictions on carry on don't last forever too ...

yes. (this is a little bit trivial but) the prospect of flying from asia to europe without ANYTHING to do is hard to imagine. waste lots of money on drinks I guess.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Hearing you Eric and maybe not so very trivial
I LIKE my special tea in a pet bottle , a dab of moisturizer , eye drop or 2 and perhaps words on a page
(am hearing no 'books' on carry on) and will miss it on next 12 hr flight into the big T 9/1 ...

What's the sound of Duty Free shops dying on the terminal vine ,
Euro lux brands stock taking a hit ...

Not that those are on my list , it did used to be nice to p/up the gift of alcohol for a relative
in between being searched.
 

mms

sometimes
i was at my mates in the walthamstow rd where 3 of the raids were this afternoon, cops outside houses and press, fkin daily mail reporters ringing house to house, long lense cameras and outside broadcasting units. bored cops in hired vans

what the hell is soemone going to say to the press except go away,or they seemed nice, or make up something.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
From Rense... :eek:
http://www.rense.com/general73/terplot.htm

--

The UK 'Terror Plot' -
What's Really Going On?
By Craig Murray
8-15-6


Mr. Murray was the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004

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.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
Gwynne Dyer: Scaring the public into backing wars
From the NZHerald (premium content - subscription required)

Wednesday August 16, 2006

"I used to know when I was being deeply cynical and when I wasn't," said a friend who just made it into London before they closed Heathrow Airport for the terrorist scare. "Now, I don't."

Back in February 2003, when Prime Minister Tony Blair was trying to persuade a reluctant Britain that invading Iraq alongside the United States was a neat idea, tanks suddenly appeared on the perimeter road around Heathrow to guard against an impending terrorist attack.

It wasn't clear what they were supposed to do and no actual terrorists ever showed up, but it helped to shape public opinion. So how different is it this time? Hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled. Twenty-four alleged conspirators arrested in East London, Thames Valley towns and Birmingham, many of them described by neighbours as bearded Muslims wearing traditional dress.

Shocking revelations that they had a new technique for blowing 10 aircraft on the heavily travelled London-US routes out of the sky simultaneously by smuggling explosive liquids aboard. All cabin baggage banned on flights out of Britain. And in a classic case of panic envy, the US Department of Homeland Security declares a red alert in the US, too.

That should scare the public into supporting the "war on terror" a bit longer, even if the real wars are about something else, and are going seriously wrong: Iraq sliding into civil war, the Taleban coming back in Afghanistan, Israel flattening Lebanon without making any significant dent in Hizbollah's capabilities. Most people will assume that with all that smoke, there must be some fire.

Of course there's some fire. Terrorists of various sorts have been in business for about 40 years, and the current crop of Islamist terrorists are especially dangerous since they are willing to kill themselves along with their victims. But in the US more people die on the roads every month than Islamist terrorists have killed since the year 2000, and in Britain it's more people every week. Yet neither country has tried to restrict access to cars.

Maybe it's cynical, but there are strong grounds for suspecting that this is all a charade. If they infiltrated these terrorist cells many months ago and have now arrested most of the members, then why would they institute drastic new security measures on flights at this point? And did they really only realise in the past few days that explosives come in liquid form as well?

After the arrests in Britain on the night of August 9, Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, assured the media that "during the investigation an unprecedented level of surveillance has been undertaken ... We have been looking at meetings, movement, travel, spending and the aspirations of a large group of people ... The investigation reached a critical point last night when the decision was made to take urgent action in order to disrupt what we believe was being planned."

Fair enough, although this is the same organisation that took "urgent action" to kill an innocent Brazilian called Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005 "in order to disrupt what we believe was being planned", and earlier this year shot and wounded another innocent person in London in the course of a raid on a Muslim family in east London based on manifestly unreliable information.

So maybe 24 terrorist plotters have been arrested in Britain, or maybe 24 innocent British Muslims with full beards, or more likely some combination of the two. But whatever the truth of that, why the panic?

British Home Secretary John Reid boldly asserted that the "main players" had been accounted for, and Scotland Yard Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson proudly announced that "we are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and commit mass murder".

Well done, lads - but if you have them all locked up, why are you closing the airports and bringing in all these draconian security measures now? A couple of months ago, when you first uncovered this plot but didn't know all the "main players", I could understand such drastic precautions, but why now?

Maybe it was those explosive "liquid chemicals" they were planning to smuggle aboard the planes. After all, it's only 160 years since nitroglycerin was invented. It's a mere 11 years since al Qaeda associate Ramzi Yousef plotted to blow up 12 airliners flying across the Pacific at the same time with nitro carried aboard in contact lens solution bottles. Who could have foreseen this? Quick! Bring in new security measures!

They really aren't that stupid. They have been checking liquids that people want to carry aboard flights at airport security checkpoints for years. There would be no need for drastic new security measures even if the alleged British terrorist ring were still on the loose. This is all hype, designed to frighten the British and American publics into supporting the wars of their deeply unpopular governments (and the war of their Israeli ally as well).

Or am I being too cynical? Maybe they're just stupid. I really don't know any more.

* Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
 

adruu

This Is It
I forgot where I read it, but someone made a crack about how we will all have to fly nude in the future. Pretty funny I thought.

Maybe I can start a company, and get into Security Awareness Management, or maybe Perception Levelling. Call the company...uh, say - Securoc...maybe something innocous like ICUCON

Being brown with a little facial hair (and an MP3 player!!!!) maybe I can get paid to pretend to get a thorough patdown, attract some evil eyes, maybe make all of you "normal" people feel a little safer.

Just think -- everybody wins, I make $100K a year (Hellloooo Coke Habit and Island Life!), airport security looks attentive, people in line feel a little better. Just a great business plan I tell you.

maybe not...
 

nomos

Administrator
Innocutech Normalisation Consultants Inc.

Yeah, I read that too, nude and sedated, but how would you prevent someone from filling their colon with nails and nitroglycerin. Where was that? The first thing I thought of when they thought it was ipods and Gatorade was a bunch of upwardly mobile joggers being rounded up and sent to Cuba. Suddenly the bike paths our swarming with freedom haters.

gelbombs.gif


Creepy creepy Michael Chertoff...
Chertoff: We must "eliminate people who are susceptible to becoming killers"
Michael Norto (retired journalist: The AP and BBC, 1988-2004, in Haiti) says:
Heard Aug. 11, an NPR interview with Michael Chertoff, US cop of cops. The question he addresses is long-term anti-terrorist policy, the need for psychological studies of what makes "a person turn from an ordinary person to a bomber."
This is his answer:

"Clearly at the end of the day, we've got to eliminate that pool of people who are susceptible to becoming killers."
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
I don't understand the logic there.

Make traveling hell and thereby create support for the war in Iraq. What?

Ok, so my sample is biased but everyone I read seems to see it as a political plot so who are these people who will be convinced that there is a real threat and that therefore we must not be allowed to have carry-on luggage?

What's more, are the terrorists really so dumb as to attack planes any more? Sneaking in there is getting harder and harder. You could do a lot more damage just blowing up the bomb in the security check point where everyone is crowded. The effect would be the same, travelling would no longer be considered safe (why are they trying to do that anyway? What about other ways of bringing down the Western infrastructure?). What about airports in non-Western countries where security isn't so tight, American airlines fly from them too.

When you think through all that you really have to wonder if there really is a terrorist threat.
 
Top