Clarity At Last: Border Guards Don't Need A Reason To Seize Your Laptops, Cell Phones, Cameras, iPods, Tapes, Books, Handwritten Notes...

We've heard some scary stories, and we've wondered. We've had murky questions and dark suspicions, but we didn't really know anything.

Now -- lucky us -- we have answers! We have clarity! We finally know what to expect in border inspections.

According to the government, border guards can seize any data storage medium, and copy any data -- from your laptop computers, cell phones, digital cameras, memory cards, iPods, portable disk drives and such, as well as from traditional analog media such as tapes, books, pamphlets and even handwritten notes. And they can do it for no reason, without any grounds for suspicion, without any hint that you might have done anything wrong.

We will all be comforted to have answers to longstanding questions.

Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said.

The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.

So reported Ellen Nakashima for the Washington Post in an article published February 7, 2008.

In that article, "Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches", Nakashima continued:

Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus, two civil liberties groups in San Francisco, plan to file a lawsuit to force the government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices. They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The question of whether border agents have a right to search electronic devices at all without suspicion of a crime is already under review in the federal courts.

The lawsuit was inspired by two dozen cases, 15 of which involved searches of cellphones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronics. Almost all involved travelers of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South Asian background, many of whom, including Mango and the tech engineer, said they are concerned they were singled out because of racial or religious profiling.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Lynn Hollinger, said officers do not engage in racial profiling "in any way, shape or form." She said that "it is not CBP's intent to subject travelers to unwarranted scrutiny" and that a laptop may be seized if it contains information possibly tied to terrorism, narcotics smuggling, child pornography or other criminal activity.

The reason for a search is not always made clear.

If Ellen Nakashima was asking for clarity about the rules then her request has been granted.

There doesn't have to be any reason for a search or a seizure, according to policies which have apparently been in place for some time but which were formally disclosed last week, as Nakashima reported in Friday's piece, "Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border".

That piece starts like this:

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies -- which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens -- are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

More from Nakashima's newest:

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent individualized suspicion."

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "

And there's the inevitable fair-and-balanced cross-section of American opinion, featuring one spokesman for the rule of law and two spokesmen for tyranny.

"They're saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler's laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies "don't establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched."

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts "do not infringe on Americans' privacy." In a statement submitted to Feingold for a June hearing on the issue, he noted that the executive branch has long had "plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border without probable cause or a warrant" to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today that "the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices." Searches have uncovered "violent jihadist materials" as well as images of child pornography, he wrote.

Chertoff also claims that

"... legislation locking in a particular standard for searches would have a dangerous, chilling effect as officers' often split-second assessments are second-guessed."

But that's not nearly as dangerous or as chilling as having "law enforcement" working under no rules at all -- not to mention keeping the rules secret! And these rules have been secret forever. As Judith Blakley reported in November of 2006:

Can US Customs Search & Seize Your Laptop Computer Without Cause? YES They Can!

On July 24, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that US Customs and Border Patrol Officers had the right to search and seize a person’s laptop computer, computer discs and other electronic media.

Nowhere has this information been broadcast. Millions of travelers know nothing about this ruling. Yet the word has begun to find its way out into public view. During the last week of October, 2006, an international conference of travel executives issued a warning, informing their members of this ruling and its implications. It was not until The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) warned their members that under a new law, US Customs and Border Patrol Officers may search and seize a person’s laptop computer, computer discs and other electronic media when that person arrives in the US from abroad or departs from the US for a foreign country, that word finally got out.

Business travelers are advised to be cautious when carrying proprietary information in and out of the United States. According to ACTE, 86 percent of those surveyed said that the court’s decision to allow Officers to examine, download and/or seize the contents of their laptops would limit the kind of proprietary information they would normally store in their laptops.

Most ACTE members attending the conference in Spain had no prior knowledge of this new law.

Ryan Singel at Wired Blog Network aptly notes, in "Border Laptop Searches? No Reason Needed",

What is surprising is the clarity of the policy and that it is actually public.

Remember Maria Udy, whose laptop was taken in December of 2006? She's still waiting to get it back.

"I was assured that my laptop would be given back to me in 10 or 15 days," said Udy, who continues to fly into and out of the United States. She said the federal agent copied her log-on and password, and asked her to show him a recent document and how she gains access to Microsoft Word. She was asked to pull up her e-mail but could not because of lack of Internet access. With ACTE's help, she pressed for relief. More than a year later, Udy has received neither her laptop nor an explanation.

And there you have it. Border guards can seize data storage devices of any kind, from laptops to handwritten notes, without any grounds. They are required to give seized items back to their owners in a reasonable time, but they get to decide what's reasonable. They can make copies of your data and share it with other government agencies, but if it turns out that you're not a terrorist they are supposed to destroy their copies of your data.

How would you ever know whether or not they had done so? And what would prevent them from secretly adding your data to the Main Core database?

Even more disturbingly, perhaps, this is the result of policies promulgated in secrecy, implemented without any publicity, and only now coming to light. Michael Chertoff says doing it any other way would be chilling and dangerous. And not a voice is raised in opposition -- at least not in the mainstream press.

You won't find any mention in the big media of how chilling and dangerous it is to be governed by secret laws enabling searches and seizures of private personal information and/or confidential business data -- not only without a warrant, but without any grounds at all; without even a hint of suspicion; just for the sake of "routine" inspection.

The America we sing about -- "the land of the free and the home of the brave" -- is now such a distant memory, it's hard to imagine it ever existed at all.

The America of Lincoln's phrase -- "government of the people, by the people, for the people" -- probably never existed either.

The Declaration of Independence famously declared that "all men are born equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", but it was talking about all property-owning white men, and their unalienable rights included the right to own other people.

It has always been a "government of the chattel, by the owners, for the owners."

We forget this at our peril.

And now, we carry data across international borders at our peril, too.

Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me: In Bushzarro World, Even The Good News Is Bad

Gonzo is gone but who will take his place?

Could the Devil be next?

And if not, Why not? Because somebody knows too much? And what would happen if that somebody decided to offer some resistance?

You are now entering a realm where speculation is even scarier than usual.

Chuck Shumer's optimism is startling:

Senator Schumer said that "Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations."

Of course we all know how many potential AG candidates would engender such confidence, and how many of them Bush is likely to nominate.

Or if not then we really need to start paying attention.

Truth Is Scarcely Visible As Eland Rips Chertoff Rips Brzezinski

At Robert Parry's Consortium News, guest columnist Ivan Eland plants both feet firmly in the world of fantasy with respect to the events of 9/11, yet still manages to tell a few vital truths when he calls BS on the Bush administration -- specifically Michael Chertoff -- for Exaggerating al-Qaeda's Threat.

Michael Chertoff, President Bush’s secretary of Homeland Security, desperately tried to refute Zbigniew Brzezinski’s cogent charge that the administration has hyped the “war on terror” to promote a “culture of fear,” in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

The op-ed was called "Make No Mistake: This Is War" and it was published on Sunday. Why Ivan Eland declines to link to it is beyond me.

Brzezinski's column was called "Terrorized by 'War on Terror'" and I understand completely why Chertoff declined to link to it.

Eland continues:

In addition to shamefully smearing Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Advisor, by associating him with the fringe opinion that the administration plotted the 9/11 terrorist acts, Chertoff also declared, “Al-Qaeda and its ilk have a world vision that is comparable to that of historical totalitarian ideologues but adapted to the 21st–century global network.”

Chertoff's "smearing" of Brzezinski, if indeed that's what it was, is very subtle:

Since Sept. 11, a conspiracy-minded fringe has claimed that American officials plotted the destruction. But when scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski accuse our leaders of falsely depicting or hyping a "war on terror" to promote a "culture of fear," it's clear that historical revisionism has gone mainstream.

This false denial from Chertoff may have been required, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous. It is painfully obvious that our "leaders" have indeed falsely depicted and hyped a "war on terror", and Mr. Chertoff -- one of the guiltiest parties in this regard -- knows as much.

This is the same Michael Chertoff who proclaimed that the alleged "Liquid Bomb" plot -- which was supposedly foiled in the UK last August -- was designed to destroy 10 or 12 airplanes and kill hundreds of thousands of people in the process, as if each airplane could carry tens of thousands of passengers.

But Michael Chertoff "smears" Brzezinski only by referring to him in the same paragraph as what he calls the "conspiracy-minded fringe".

Ivan Eland is much less subtle, levelling a much more blatant smear against those who recognize 9/11 for what it was, and who -- unlike Ivan Eland (and unlike Robert Parry, for that matter) -- have the courage to say so. (Parry, once among the most fearless of journalists, won't talk about election fraud, either. So it goes.)

On the other hand, Eland is right when he says that Chertoff's

rhetoric makes it seem as if al-Qaeda is more dangerous than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. When comparisons are made to these villainous titans, we should be suspicious.

After his insane pronouncements last August, we should be suspicious whenever Michael Chertoff says anything!

The same kinds of comparisons have been used before. When Bill Clinton wanted to bomb Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, he compared both leaders to Hitler. In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush also used the same comparison.

Yet, the small countries of Serbia and Iraq, as well as the rag-tag group al-Qaeda, have nowhere near the resources of a Nazi Germany and have not tried to completely overrun an important and wealthy continent.

Yes, it's all perfectly true and it's also perfectly obvious. Somewhat less obvious -- but still visible -- is al-Q'aeda's role as an instrument of western intelligence services. But Ivan Eland doesn't seem to know -- or care -- about that.

And he doesn't really have to, because his target -- Chertoff -- can be demolished with virtually no ammunition whatsoever.

Chertoff’s overheated rhetoric doesn’t stop there. He adds yet another implicit comparison -- to communism. He opined, “Today’s extreme Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda do not merely seek political revolution in their own countries. They aspire to dominate all countries. Their goal is a totalitarian, theocratic empire to be achieved by waging perpetual war on soldiers and civilians alike.”

Here the implicit comparison is to the universal communist movement, which tried to spread its revolution around the world.

Maybe in some fifty-year-old dream, the implicit comparison is to the "universal communist movement", a movement which, by the way, never existed but which was nonetheless hyped and falsely depicted for decades.

Eland misses the more obvious comparison: to the modern-day United States, the one force in the world which is -- even as we speak -- waging a self-proclaimed endless, limitless war against the rest of the world.

This endless war doesn't really have much to do with terrorism, and that fact is becoming clearer by the day. It does have a lot to do with oil, though.

Does Ivan Eland mention oil? Does Chertoff mention oil? Does Brzezinski mention oil? Or are we looking at a trilogy of more-or-less total lies?

Here's a hint. Eland continues:

Although Osama bin Laden does try to kill both soldiers and civilians -- and is justifiably deemed a vicious terrorist -- his real objective is not to dominate “all countries” by fomenting an Islamist revolution. If bin Laden had this as a genuine goal, it would be laughable to think that he could get any significant public support in Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu countries for a revolution to convert them to draconian Islamic rule.

No kidding. It seems ridiculous when phrased that way.

But on a more pragmatic level, it is equally ridiculous to base anything on what Osama bin Laden says, considering that it's been more than five years since he's said anything! We might as well base our notion of bank security on the pronouncements of Bonnie and Clyde.

In fact, his officially stated goal of recreating a caliphate that would put all of the diverse Islamic countries under one ruler is preposterous enough on its own. Even Chertoff admits that the Islamist extremists’ intent is “grandiose.” Should bin Laden ever create such a caliphate, it would not have the economic or military power of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

Should bin Laden ever create such a caliphate, it would be one of the most amazing feats ever achieved -- because everybody knows dead men don't create caliphates.

Chertoff himself acknowledges that his own comparison is weak: “To be sure, as Brzezinski observes, the geographic reach of this network does not put them [sic] in the same group as the Nazis or Stalinists when they achieved first-class military power.”

Despite bin Laden’s inflated rhetoric, his real aims -- which are also supported by many mainstream Muslims -- are to remove a non-Muslim military presence from Islamic lands and compel the United States to stop supporting what bin Laden sees as corrupt regimes in the Middle East.

These may have been his real aims when he was alive. On the other hand, he may have been nothing but a figurehead -- a CIA asset through and through. His main job may have been to do and say things which would give the folks like Michael Chertoff ammunition.

Most mainstream Muslims, however, reject bin Laden’s despicable means of targeting civilians to achieve his goals.

Non-Muslim intervention in and occupation of Muslim lands has driven Islamist violence in Chechnya, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan (during both the Soviet and current U.S. occupations), and Lebanon (during Israeli invasions and the U.S. nation-building mission during the Reagan administration). The U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf initially motivated bin Laden to strike U.S. targets, eventually resulting in the horror of 9/11.

Supposedly.

Personally I find it very disturbing that a supposedly dissident journalist would continue to parrot the official government line in the face of the facts that the government has been demonstrably lying about virtually everything, virtually all the time, and that even now -- five and a half years after the attacks -- we still have not seen any credible evidence linking Osama bin Laden to those attacks.

We've seen much more credible evidence to support the contention that al-Q'aeda doesn't even exist!

The amount of incredible evidence we have seen makes the situation much worse.

But Ivan Eland is blissfully unconcerned with any of that; he's more interested in the blowback theory.

The 9/11 attacks were treacherous acts of terrorism, but Chertoff and the Bush administration, the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and the American media act as if they were the beginning of history. Only in religion and quantum physics are there events without cause.

Clearly Chertoff and the Bush administration are interested in deception -- they've virtually made it a religion. So why on Earth should we pay them any more heed?

On the other hand, Ivan Eland is right when he says that

Most Americans are unaware of their government’s history of unnecessary and profligate meddling in the affairs of countries throughout the Middle East. For their own safety and security, Americans cannot continue to ignore that the Islamist venom resulting in 9/11 was rooted in this U.S. interventionist and quasi-imperial foreign policy.

Certainly it would be a step forward to acknowledge the roots if Islamic and Arabic venom. But to claim without a shred of evidence that it resulted in 9/11 is extremely irresponsible.

It's nothing like the sort of reporting readers of Consortium News once enjoyed. But apparently it's all we're ever going to get.

Fortunately, in this case where the target is an outrageous pack of transparent lies, it's almost good enough.

Instead of perpetuating the myth that the United States is at war with “fanatics” who have a reflexive hatred of America, the nation’s homeland security chief could better spend his time examining the real motivator for such terrorism—U.S. foreign policy—and recommending a policy of military restraint in the Middle East to reduce the chances of terrorist attacks at home.

If there is any doubt that this strategy would work, the case of Lebanon during the early 1980s should be examined. After the bombing of the Marine barracks and Ronald Reagan’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from that country, the number of anti–U.S. attacks by the Islamist group Hezbollah plummeted.

This is a great point! Finally. I knew there would be one, eventually. Or at least I suspected as much.

But perhaps creating a “culture of fear,” as Brzezinski put it, is more politically useful to the Bush administration than actually carrying out what should be the first and foremost responsibility of any government—the protection of its people.

Nobody in his right mind could argue this point -- or the previous one, for that matter. Creating a culture of fear has been tremendously useful to the Bush administration. There's no "perhaps" about it.

Without the culture of fear which this administration has created, they would have all been executed for treason a long time ago.

But all Ivan Eland can bring himself to say about this is "perhaps".

What are they afraid of? Why can't Ivan Eland and Bob Parry bring themselves to state the obvious truths of the matter? It's not as if they are in danger of losing a paying gig. They are essentially only blogging already.

And given that context, it's a shameful display, in this frozen writer's opinion. But it is also sufficient.

Despite missing the point -- over and over and over -- Eland still manages to shred Chertoff's position, and this to my mind is the clearest possible evidence that Chertoff is lying.

I mean, if you can be taken apart quite easily, by somebody who hasn't a clue ...

Big News: The GWOT Is Counter-Productive!!

Here's David Morgan of Reuters reporting on a new study written by Veronique de Rugy (photo) and released by the American Heritage Institute, a "conservative" "think tank":

Five-and-a-half years after the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush's war on terrorism has emerged as a wasteful, misguided exercise that poses its own threat to U.S. national security, experts say.

A growing number of analysts and former U.S. officials say the global war on terrorism has undermined U.S. influence abroad, forced onerous costs in American lives and money in Iraq, and unleashed a huge government spending spree that has often funded projects unrelated to national security.

It has also produced a climate of fear in the United States that helped justify the war in Iraq and the curtailment of civil liberties at home, they said.

If you had said any of these things four years ago you would have been labeled a "tin-foil hatter", or a "terrorist sympathizer", or maybe even a "traitor". But it was all true back then, just as it is all true now. So where have these so-called "experts" been all this time? What else are they saying, and how far are they willing to go?

"The atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty, and the vagueness of the definition of the enemy, makes the country more fearful and more susceptible to being steered in irrational directions," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was U.S. national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s.

Unlike the muted response to attacks by Britain and Spain, experts say the U.S. has overreacted to the September 11 attacks that killed 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania in 2001.

OK, so here's the limit, apparently. We can now say that the GWOT was an "overreaction", but it's too soon to publish anything indicating that the "overreaction" was planned in advance -- in the same way as the attack, and by the same people, too.

It may indeed be too soon for that, but the time is coming.

Congress has spent nearly $271.5 billion on homeland security since September 11, with money often going to projects that have nothing to do with security but that are important to politicians and their constituents, according to a survey by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

At the same time, the number of potential terrorism targets identified by Congress has exploded from 160 in 2003 to 80,000, allowing such unlikely sites as a Midwestern apple festival and a roadside theme park in Florida to bid for funds.

Meanwhile, the private sector -- lobbyists, interest groups, industries, the media and even universities -- has also used the national security label aggressively to sell its own agendas, experts say.

It's a money pit, and we've seen our civil liberties thrown into it too. But what is it buying us, and where is it leading?

"What's clear is that there is no focus whatsoever in the way we are fighting terrorism," said Veronique de Rugy, author of the AEI study.

Government spokesmen dismissed the criticism, as they always do, with one lie after another.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke dismissed the criticism as old and inaccurate, saying the Bush administration had never viewed sites such as small theme parks to be critical national assets deserving of funds. "This has no basis in fact," he said.

Nobody ever claimed the administration considered these sites as deserving of funds. It was pointed out that such sites bid for funds. Thus the government spokesman has destroyed a straw man of his own making, while leaving the original cricitism untouched.

You'll notice that he didn't address any of the main points.

You may also notice that calling the criticism "old" is disingenuous at best. When these concerns were first raised, they smeared the messengers by calling their patriotism into doubt. Now the concerns are raised again, and they are dismissed as being "old".

The fact that they have never been dealt with doesn't seem to matter to Knocke. And if that's not enough, we now present more lies, from Knocke's superior being.

Knocke's boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, has also taken issue with the assertion that the U.S. response to September 11 is exaggerated.

"If we begin to heed arguments that somehow our concern about security is overblown ... then I feel we're going to feel consequences in the loss of lives," Chertoff said in a speech outlining his priorities for 2007.

Utter horse manure, friends. We've lost more people trying to conquer Iraq in the past four years than we have lost to terrorist attacks at home in decades.

But terrorism experts say the United States has yet to develop a clear understanding of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups, despite the war on terrorism and a total of $500 billion spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The "clear understanding" that is needed to fight international terrorism was never part of this administration's grand plan. Every terrorist is affiliated with al-Q'aeda, in their eyes, and so is every political opponent. Unfortunately for them, the world is organized quite differently.

The most pernicious effect of the war on terrorism has been the Iraq war, which has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and damaged U.S. standing in the Muslim world for generation, experts say.

Au contraire; far more pernicious have been the way in which the administration has conflated al-Q'aeda with Iraq (supposedly justifying the war) and the way in which it has used the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to dismember our civil liberties -- despite never being able to show in any way that a reduction in our rights will make us safer.

"Iraq has been vastly worse than anything terrorism's ever done," said Ohio State University political science professor John Mueller, author of a book about the war on terrorism titled, "Overblown."

It's hard to argue with that. But let's put it in a more precise form:

What America has done to Iraq has been vastly worse than anything terrorism's ever done.

Or maybe more accurately:

What America has done to Iraq has been terrorism.

There. That's better.

While both Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged the shortcomings of U.S. policy in Iraq, experts say politicians have not questioned the war on terrorism mainly because it remains a vote-getter.

"Politicians are acting this way because they think they'll lose votes if they don't. Basically, it's a big pork-barrel, so the pork-barrel leaders are there in five seconds," said Mueller, using American vernacular for the politics of self-enrichment.

But maybe this is starting to change. Americans seem more than ever to distrust what their government tells them, except when it comes to terrorism, ironically the area in which the government tells the biggest lies of all. But seeing criticism of the GWOT -- even in a mild form -- coming from "conservatives" is somewhat encouraging.

Have we reached a point where honest forthright criticism of this so-called president and his so-called war are going to be deemed acceptable? Or is such criticism acceptable only when it comes from "conservative" sources, the American Heritage Institute?

Remember, only Richard Nixon could go to China.

Cynthia McKinney: "We Must Resist!"

Excerpt from an address given by former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), who was in Los Angeles on the 2nd of March.

In order to solve the massive problems this country now has, it can no longer be business as usual for a critical mass of us.

Whether it's the thawing tundra in Siberia or the melting glaciers in Greenland, our contribution to global warming is something that must be dealt with.

Whether it's the massive amounts of money we spend on the war machine or the fact that we still don't know what happened on September 11th, the values and priorities of the American people must be reflected in the public policy we pursue. I do not believe that is the case today and there are specific reasons why.

I have long said that the black body politic is comatose: unable to sustain itself after the massive infusion of COINTELPRO-type "clean Negroes" who don't truly provide representation for a body of people in need.

Unfortunately, now, the entire American body politic is in dire straits, too.

I have also said that the prescription for the black body politic is radical surgery. So, too, now, I believe, is the case with the American body politic.

The extreme corruption of our political system by the greedy, unseen hand that comfortably operates in the backrooms of power is turning our heroes into caricatures of themselves.

Why can't we know the truth about 9/11 and this war on terror?

Why can't we immediately repeal the Secret Evidence Law, the Patriot Act, and the Military Tribunals Act?

Why can't we get back that 2.3 trillion dollars Rumsfeld admits is missing and use it to fully fund education and health care and infrastructure?

They're asking poor, devastated university students to return their Hurricane Katrina money, but I don't see anyone going after Blackwater mercenaries, the law enforcement officials who took federal money and then denied Katrina survivors safe passage over public thoroughfares. They're not going after the Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff whose incompetent behavior directly led to the delayed response, causing as-yet unmitigated pain and suffering on the people of New Orleans, and whose continued bumbling results in one of the largest depopulations of an American city in memory.

Why can't we know if there were explosions along the levies, as historically was done before to safeguard certain parts of New Orleans?

The reason we can't get answers to our questions and doubts linger is because our leadership today just isn't what it used to be.

The current state of black America didn't arise only because of Republican policies. Despite the election of thousands of black elected officials since passage of the Voting Rights Act, nearly half of the black men in New York City between the ages of 16 and 64 are unemployed, according to the New York Times. It will take 200 years for black Chicagoans to catch up to the quality of life enjoyed by white Chicagoans, according to a Hull House/Loyola University report. It will take 1,664 years for blacks in this country to achieve a homeownership rate equal to that of whites; racial disparities on infant mortality, family income, unemployment, police stops, imprisonment, and more, have not been eliminated and in some cases are worse today than at the time of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

People of color have less wealth, less net worth, work longer hours with insecure pensions and stagnant wages.

And now all Americans do, too!

We have got to do something different because we can't stand any more of this.

So what are we to do?

Just voting isn't enough. Voting is necessary, but it isn't enough to get the kind of change we must now demand. We have to change the structure within which we cast our vote.

We must have a different kind of leadership than is possible now without the kind of change I'm talking about.

This is revolutionary in its impact.

And so, [it] will be fought even more fiercely than I've already been fought, and all I wanted to do was improve the lot of people of color in the U.S. and around the world; institute the kind of respect for human rights at home and abroad that would change the policies of our government toward the global community, including the American people; and make the U.S. government accountable to the taxpayers for the way it spends their dollars. Now, that's all I wanted to do. And you see what's happened to me!

So, what I have in mind won't be easy. But it will be worth it. And, I believe, it's possible to achieve.

Now, it would be nice if we could count on someone else to do it for us. And we would all join that person and make it happen. But, I reluctantly say that if no one else will do it, then I guess I'll have to do that, too!

Just like the Articles of Impeachment.

Finally, I have complete belief in the young people of our country and their ability to lead the kind of change that I'm talking about.

After all, it was the young people from just a few generations ago who faced attack dogs, water hoses, police beatings, and lynch mobs. They sat in at lunch counters across the country and stood up for our country.

And they won. And I know we all can do it again.

Now, should you ever waiver in your faith, just acknowledge this:

The world's most marginalized and dispossessed are already ahead of us in taking their countries back! Of course, starting in 1959 with Cuba, but then Venezuela, Cote d'Ivoire, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, India, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, and Nicaragua all have stood up to imperial domination -- and won!

In the meantime, we have to demand more from our representatives. How can you be against war if you finance war? And how can you be against George Bush if you won't impeach him?

The American people are being fed madness as sanity. But, this is not Oz, Wonderland, the Twilight Zone, and it's not 1984!

With every fiber in our being we must resist. Resist like Mario Savio told us to resist: with our entire bodies against the gears and the wheels and the levers of the machine.

We must resist because we claim no partnership in war crimes, genocide, torture, or crimes against humanity. We claim no complicity in crimes against the American people.

We will build a broad-based, rainbow movement for justice and peace. And we will win.

For more information, visit Cynthia McKinney's new website, All Things Cynthia McKinney.

To receive email updates from Cynthia McKinney, click here.

Standing In Line

Part III of a series | Part II | Part I

Monday, in the second installment of How To Survive The Midterm "Elections", we talked about the pre-requisites to "voting": registration and so on.

Now that you have registered and are eligible to "vote", now that you know where to go, when to go there and what to take with you, it's time to talk about one of the great joys you will experience while taking part in an "election" -- standing in line.

Nobody wants to stand in line, even for the privilege of casting a "vote" in an important "election", but it's an unfortunate fact of the matter. However, there are several ways in which you can reduce the amount of time you will spend waiting for a chance to cast your "vote":

Be as caucasian as possible. This is very important. "Voting" while black, brown, red, yellow, orange, green or any other non-white color is both dangerous and time-consuming.

Be as wealthy as possible. Ostentatiously wealthy is good in this case. Wear plenty of expensive jewels.

Live in an affluent neighborhood, one uncontaminated by students or seniors or people of other ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Don't have anything else to do all day long. This will guarantee a short lineup. Murphy's Other Law is in effect here; the one that says "the more things you have to do in a day, the longer it will take to do each of them."

Wear a brand new suit -- from Paris if possible. If no Parisian suit is available you may substitute one from Venice, but in this case you must wear brand-new shoes with it, so as not to appear "gauche".

Arrive in a Limousine or a Mercedes and/or accompanied by several well-built Italian bodyguards.

Be neither too young (and idealistic) nor too old (and frail).

Show support for the so-called president and his policies. You may wish to wear a t-shirt bearing the slogan "Endless, Mindless War? Sign Me Up!"

If all else fails, arrive with friends disguised as Michael Chertoff and John Negroponte.

Part IV

Think It Can't Happen Here? Think Again! It's Already Happening!!

Bella Maryanovsky, a legal resident of the United States, has been arrested and is being held without charge in a Florida prison.

What did she do? She walked into an immigration office to renew her green card papers.

Her prognosis? Her attorney has been given no indication of whether (or when) (or with what) she may be charged, or whether (or when) she might be granted a bond hearing.

So, what's the deal?

It appears she was arrested under a new immigration program called “Operation Return to Sender.”

According to Michael Chertoff in a June 2006 press release, “Operation Return to Sender is another example of a new and tough interior enforcement strategy that seeks to catch and deport criminal aliens, increase worksite enforcement, and crack down hard on the criminal infrastructure that perpetuates illegal immigration.”

“The fugitives captured in this operation,” claimed Chertoff, “threatened public safety in hundreds of neighborhoods and communities around the country. This department has no tolerance for their criminal behavior.”

However, Maryanovsky, according to her family and friends, has long been an upstanding member of society. She is currently employed placing engineers in jobs nationwide with salaries ranging from $75,000 to $250,000.

Is her case unusual? Not at all, apparently. According to her attorney, the arresting officer told him:

“We got orders to arrest everybody.”

That officer, Keith Bradley, refused to confirm or deny anything about the case [...] saying “I still have a mortgage and bills to pay.”

Surely she can get out on bail, no? Not exactly. Her chance of getting a hearing soon looks slim.

[I]f the detainee is not held near an immigration court there is no mechanism by which they can be brought before an immigration judge to challenge their detention. The individual must simply wait until the right official in the right department of ICE decides it is time to bring them to court. Immigration courts do not have sheriffs who can bring detainees in, so judges will not entertain an attorney’s request for a bond hearing unless the detainee is accessible. Thus, an individual put into detention falls into a sort of black hole.

How is she doing? Not very well.

Maryanovsky takes medication for heart arrhythmia and high blood pressure. She confided to her family and friends that prison personnel mockingly refused to give her medication, telling her, “When you have a heart attack, then we’ll help you.”
...
One friend [...] said that she has visited Maryanovsky twice, and her ankles and extremities are swelling. “[She] can go into heart failure,” [the friend said]. According to family members, her blood pressure hit 220/110, and the family obtained a doctor’s letter to present to immigration authorities, but she was still apparently not being given her medication.

This is part of the war on terror, right? Not so fast!

Ray Del Papa of the South Florida Peace and Justice Network – a coalition that includes representatives from such groups as the Quakers, Pax Christi, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Jewish Arab Defense Association, Haiti Solidarity, and many others – [...] sees an incongruity in the arrest and detention of such persons as Maryanovsky [...] while known terrorists, such as Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, and Virgilio Paz Romero, are allowed to remain free in the U.S., despite their criminal records.

What can we do about this?

First, read the article I've been quoting, from RAW STORY.

Then make as much noise as you can. But do it safely, please!

NYT Blocks British Readers from Monday's Article on Alleged Liquid Bombing Plot

Paper not shipped to UK on Monday; NYT web page blocks British visitors

Monday's New York Times included a long article about the alleged "liquid bombing plot", which -- as you may recall -- was reportedly broken up by British authorities three weeks ago.

The article "claims to reveal new information", and would certainly have been of great interest to NYT readers in Great Britain.

But they couldn't read it!

From Tuesday's Guardian: UK readers blocked from NY Times terror article

The New York Times has blocked British readers from accessing an article published in the US about the alleged London bomb plot for fear of breaching the UK's contempt of court laws.

Published in the US yesterday under the headline "Details emerge in British terror case", the article claims to reveal new information about the alleged terror bomb plot that brought British airports to a standstill earlier this month.

Online access to the article from the UK has been blocked and the shipment of yesterday's paper to London was stopped. The story was also omitted from the International Herald Tribune, the NYT's European sister paper.

Today's Guardian has a bit more, including this:

For all the precautions taken by papers, legal experts agree there is little to stop bloggers and others from quickly disseminating articles around the globe via websites, messageboards and email.

Mark Stephens, a media lawyer at Finer, Stephens, Innocent, said he did not believe the article was prejudicial and blocking it would increase the likelihood of British readers reading it.

"Lawyers have a tendency to be overcautious on occasions," he said. "By not publishing it, it is almost inevitable that the information will come into the public domain in the UK. It is already being copied on to blog sites and emailed around the globe.

Mr. Stephens is certainly right about that!

The article in question is available at the NYT website, unless you live in Great Britain, in which case you have to look elsewhere: here, for instance.

Excerpts from the article follow, along with a few comments from one very cold blogger:

Hours after the police arrested the 21 suspects, police and government officials in both countries said they had intended to carry out the deadliest terrorist attack since Sept. 11.

Later that day, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, said the goal of the people suspected of plotting the attack was “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” On the day of the arrests, some officials estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described the suspected plot as “getting really quite close to the execution stage.”

We now know that these official statements -- from Stephenson, from Chertoff, and from many others as well -- were speculative at best, deliberate lies at worst.

British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval.
...
One official said the people suspected of leading the plot were still recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers.
...
While investigators found evidence on a computer memory stick indicating that one of the men had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to cities in the United States, the suspects had neither made reservations nor purchased plane tickets, a British official said.

So they weren't ready to blow up airplanes after all. They weren't ready to do anything!

So why all the panic? Because it serves a purpose, that's why!

What purpose? Whose purpose?

Is it any wonder that these questions are never asked in the mainstream media?

And here's another important question that is hardly ever asked: Could they have done it?

Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne.
...
A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality, said HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, “in theory is dangerous,” but whether the suspects “had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen.”

Your humble and nearly frozen blogger has done some research into HMTD, and has found that its synthesis is remarkably similar to that of TATP (which we discussed last week). In other words, once the chemicals are mixed, the reaction takes a long time -- several hours at least, maybe several days -- to complete, and produces an explosive compound in the form of crystals which must be filtered out before they can be used.

Among the HMTD recipes I have found, the one which seems to take the least amount of time includes the following instructions:

[K]eep stirring for 3 hours and continue to hold the temperature at 0°C [32°F]. Next, remove the beaker from the cooling bath and let it stand at room temperature for 2 hours [...] Finally, pour the solution over a filter to collect the crystals of HMTD, wash them thoroughly with water, and rinse with methyl or ethyl alcohol so they can dry faster at room temperature.

So ... even though we joined the party in progress, we were still five hours away from being able to blow anything up. Do you think the flight crew would leave us alone in the bathroom for more than five hours?

Whether anyone on earth has the "brights" to pull it off -- in the bathroom of a moving airplane and without help from the flight crew -- is extremely dubious.

But let's get back to the New York Times:

While officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time.

“In retrospect,” said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, “there may have been too much hyperventilating going on.”

Hyperventilating? Possibly. Or maybe -- just maybe -- it was something else.

As for the timing of the arrests, you may recall that serious questions were asked almost three weeks ago, and none of them found satisfactory answers.

British officials said many of the questions about the suspected plot remained unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland Yard was ready.

The trigger was the arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a 25-year-old British citizen with dual Pakistani citizenship, whom Pakistani investigators have described as a “key figure” in the plot.
...
Several senior British officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf without informing them first. The arrest surprised and frustrated investigators [t]here who had wanted to monitor the suspects longer, primarily to gather more evidence and to determine whether they had identified all the people involved in the suspected plot.

But they didn't get a chance to do that.

[W]ithin hours of Mr. Rauf’s arrest on Aug. 9 in Pakistan, British officials heard from intelligence sources that someone connected to him had tried to contact some of the suspects in East London. The message was interpreted by investigators as a possible signal to move forward with the plot, officials said.
...
A senior British official said the message from Pakistan was not that explicit. But, nonetheless, investigators [...] had to change their strategy quickly.

“The aim was to keep this operation going for much longer,” said a senior British security official who requested anonymity because of confidentiality rules. “It ended much sooner than we had hoped.”
...
British investigators worried that word of Mr. Rauf’s arrest could push the London suspects to destroy evidence and to disperse, raising the possibility they would not be able to arrest them all.

And here we are left with more questions, among the most interesting of which is: Why was Rashid Rauf arrested?

A few days after the arrests were announced, NBC ran a report which said:

One senior British official said the Americans also argued over the timing of the arrest of suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, warning that if he was not taken into custody immediately, the United States would "render" him or pressure the Pakistani government to arrest him.

Is this what happened?

Did the Pakistanis arrest Rashid Rauf to keep him out of the hands of Americans?

We may never know.

But surely it's becoming more and more obvious that this so-called "plot" was not what we were told it was at the time.

Therefore, it makes good sense to ask: What was it?

Stay tuned, my friends; there's more to come.

===

seventh in a series

Brother of So-Called 'Ringleader' Released Without Charges in Alleged British Bombing Plot

One Other Suspect Charged; One Released; Charity Funds Frozen; more...

The Media 'Lid' Seems To Be 'On' -- But It Can't Contain That Old Familiar 'Fish Market' Aroma!

British authorities investigating the alleged "liquid bombing plot" released two more (suddenly former) suspects last Thursday, charged one person, bringing the total now charged to 12, and extended the custody limit for the remaining suspects who are still being held without charges.

One of the two people released Thursday (August 24) had previously been described as "a potentially important figure" in the alleged plot, since his brother is (or was) supposedly the ringleader.

Allo, London? We're getting mixed messages here!

But then again ... what else is new?

As you remember -- unless you don't -- the alleged plot was reportedly broken up two and a half weeks ago (August 9/10), when 24 people were arrested in England and 15 or more were arrested in Pakistan. At the time, the timing seemed more than a little bit odd, since news of the arrests was accompanied -- one might almost say "preceded" -- by a great thunderous roar from the Republican Spin-And-Noise Machine, all of them yelling "Terrah Terrah Terrah" simultaneously, except for those who were shouting "al-Q'aeda! al-Q'aeda!! al-Q'aeda!!!". Your humble and slightly frozen reporter documented the noise and the smell of that day (August 10) in a subtly-titled post called "An Avalanche of Bullshit".

It soon became obvious that the timing seemed odd for a very good reason: high-level Americans, allegedly having learned of an ongoing British-Pakistani investigation, and badly needing to change the flow of "news" on the "home front", apparently coerced Pakistani authorities to arrest Rashid Rauf, Business Man, Entreprenuer, Author and Research Analyst, the alleged ringleader of the alleged plot -- and its alleged al-Q'aeda connection. Rauf, according to authorities, sent a message saying he'd been captured, and this message was intercepted, which was why the British had made the arrests in haste, earlier than they would have preferred. In other words, this so-called "terror event", if it was an event at all, was timed and manipulated for partisan political advantage, as readers of (August 15th's) "Spin? Counter-Spin!" will remember -- unless they don't.

The following day, the New York Times revealed -- apparently accidentally -- that none of the suspects being held in Britain -- 23 at that point -- had yet been charged with a crime. Your humble blogger picked up on this aspect of the NYT's otherwise innocuous story, and blogged about it (August 16) in "NYT Beats The Terror Drums Again, But Exposes A Vital Fact!"

By the next day, the NYT had changed its story! But it was too late to fool the green-and-yellow regulars, since your cold correspondent had already quoted the vital sentence. Fortunately he had also saved a copy of the original text -- which was true, by the way; the first charges in this case were handed down five days later.

But before the charges were announced, we saw a very weird media-storm in Britain. On Thursday (August 17), word of the alleged plot was everywhere; there were hints of "al-Q'aeda connections", faint whispers about the so-called plotters' alleged intentions to "hatch" the "plot" on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, and "news" of the "discovery" of a suitcase containing a "bomb-making kit" (which was found in the woods, of course!). These stories were flying around all day. But on Friday (August 18), nothing of the sort could be seen.

Your humble blogger noticed the difference between the tone of the British and American coverage (especially the American coverage!) and the attitude of the rest of the world, which seemed quite a bit more skeptical, and wrote about it in Friday's piece: "British News Full Of Terror Revelations; World Opinion Appears Skeptical".

The first charges were announced last Monday (August 21), when eight people were charged with conspiracy to murder and another three were charged with less serious offenses. When the charges were made public, the police announced that they had collected a wide variety of so-called "evidence", including "bomb-making materials", one of which they mentioned by name: hydrogen peroxide.

Why hydrogen peroxide? For the peroxide, of course! It's a key ingredient (the "P") in TATP, otherwise known as "tri-acetone tri-peroxide", a.k.a. "acetone peroxide", a.k.a. "Mother of Satan", a.k.a. The Suicide Bombers' Weapon of Choice.

What's so special about acetone peroxide? Two qualities in particular:

[1] it can be made from materials that are (supposedly) fairly inexpensive and readily available, and

[2] it's a vicious explosive, and an unusual one: it's endothermic (all blast, no heat) and it has an explosive velocity of 5300 meters per second (nearly twelve thousand miles per hour).

Is that enough to blow a hole in an airplane fuselage? I should say so, provided you've got enough of it. But how much would you need? And how much could you make? And how long would it take? So many questions!

If you were a terrorist, or a terrorist wannabe, and somebody told you that you could go into the bathroom of an airplane, mix some common household liquids together, and step back out into the passenger compartment armed with a handful of white crystals that could blow the plane out of the sky, would you be interested?

If you said "Yes", you may now be in a most unfortunate bind. Because it turns out that making a bomb out of acetone and hydrogen peroxide is a much more difficult, hazardous and time-consuming feat than anything one could possibly do on an airplane. Last Wednesday's (August 23) piece, "To Mix The Impossible Bomb", describes in some detail just how impossible it would be to make such a bomb on a plane, and comments on illustrates the barrage of apparently meaningless (or time-managed) stories that seemed to be squeezing this particularly lurid tale out of the major British media schedule.

Why all the pressure? Could it be because this story is falling apart?

Maybe. But it could also be that this story is just starting to get interesting!

Did you ever stop and think about that one?

I did ... and the idea stuck!

We now know beyond any doubt that something very fishy has happened here. And it seems to me we have two choices; to wit:

[a] we can say "Well, that was fishy. But I didn't believe the government before now, so what else is new?" and take a deep breath and "get over it" and "move on"

... or ...

[b] we can try to find out what happened -- and why it smelled so much like rotting seafood -- and what there is to learn from all the fish we've been smelling for the last few weeks.

I like [b], and I don't think it's too hard to follow your nose in an atmosphere such as this.

So ... I've been sniffing into the strange saga of Rashid Rauf, whose reported capture by Pakistani police allegedly sparked the series of arrests that took place in England on August 9/10.

We've been told that Rashid Rauf was the main suspect, the ringleader, the mastermind, a central figure, or maybe just a transmitter of messages; in any event there's hardly ever been any room for doubt that Rashid Rauf allegedly played a key role in the alleged plot, if in fact there was a plot.

Among the various suspects, Rashid Rauf has attracted the bulk of the interest, possibly because his brother (Tayib Rauf) and his father (Abdul Rauf) have both been arrested (and released) during this investigation; or maybe because he is connected to the banned militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), unless of course he isn't!

Or perhaps it was his ties to al-Q'aeda; or possibly his al-Q'aeda connections; or maybe it was his suspected links to al-Q'aeda militants that got everybody so interested. Who can say?

Rashid Rauf's father, Abdul Rauf, was either arrested or simply detained for questioning in Pakistan during all this -- and released without charge very soon thereafter. They could have kept him a lot longer had they wanted to. But they let him go free.

This despite his known connection to a Muslim charity -- Crescent Relief -- that was thought to be linked to Pakistan-based militant groups -- and whose funds have just been frozen. Hmmmm.

We are told that Abdul Rauf co-founded the charity in 2000 but stepped down from his role in 2003. Personally, I would find this story much more convincing if I had seen a claim that Abdul Rauf had severed all his ties with Crescent Relief. But I have not heard so much as a whisper to that effect.

As you will remember -- if you can remember all the way back to the beginning of this post -- Rashid Rauf's brother, Tayib Rauf, was one of the two suspects arrested in the initial raids (August 9/10) and released without charge on Thursday (August 24). By British law, terror suspects can be held without charge for 28 days. Tayib Rauf was held for only two weeks. They could have kept him two weeks longer, had they wanted to. Hmmmm.

Meanwhile, Rashid Rauf is still being held in Pakistan, and the British are anxious to get their hands on him. Is Pakistan likely to cooperate? Up until a few days ago, I would have said: "Not a chance!"

Why? Primarily because of this article:

[Daily Mail, August 19, 2006]
Pakistanis find no evidence against ‘terror mastermind’

The Briton alleged to be the ‘mastermind’ behind the airline terror plot could be innocent of any significant involvement, sources close to the investigation claim.

Rashid Rauf, whose detention in Pakistan was the trigger for the arrest of 23 suspects in Britain, has been accused of taking orders from Al Qaeda’s ‘No3’ in Afghanistan and sending money back to the UK to allow the alleged bombers to buy plane tickets.

But after two weeks of interrogation, an inch-by-inch search of his house and analysis of his home computer, officials are now saying that his extradition is ‘a way down the track’ if it happens at all.

It's not normally possible to extradite a person unless the country currently holding that person is amenable to the idea. And usually they want to see evidence.

Rauf’s arrest followed a protracted surveillance operation on him and his family which, The Mail on Sunday has established, dates back to the 7/7 bomb attacks on London.

The possible link between 7/7 and the alleged plot emerged when this newspaper spoke to Rauf’s uncle, Miam Mumtaz, in Kashmir.

Mumtaz was approached by two members of ISI, the feared Pakistani security service, as he nervously denied any knowledge of his nephew’s alleged activities.

Well, of course. And what about the ISI men? Did they deny everything, too?

One ISI man said it had been monitoring all movement by Mumtaz and the rest of Rauf’s relatives since the 7/7 attacks.

I'll bet they have! Maybe even longer, perhaps?

It is the first official acknowledgement of any suspected link between the London bombings and the plot to blow up planes flying from Britain to America.

So ... it's no wonder the aroma seems familiar!!

It comes amid wider suspicions that the plot may not have been as serious, or as far advanced, as the authorities initially claimed.

Suspicions?

That it was not as far advanced?

As authorities initially claimed?

Oh, puhh-leeeeze!

Suspicions?!

They didn't all have passports yet. They didn't even have plane tickets. And they hadn't made any bombs.

And yet we saw this exchange on CNN [emphasis added]:

BLITZER: How many planes, specifically, were targeted?

CHERTOFF: You know, I don't know that I can give you a definitive answer to that. I think we're still investigating. We've uncovered a lot of material. The British have, and so it may take awhile before we get a precise picture. It's clear that the plan was multiple planes at about the same time.

Now, whether the exact number had been decided upon or whether that was going to depend upon some factors has not yet resolved. We don't know. But it was, under any circumstances, an attack which had the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people.

This is our chief of homeland insecurity talking. Look at all the things he says he doesn't know. Now look at what he doesn't know, but thinks he does know. How many people would have to fit on an airplane before you could kill "hundreds of thousands" of them by knocking 10 or 12 planes into the ocean? Tens of thousands, right? And it's an easy calculation, too.

But this Chertoff character, who allegedly wields all sorts of power, who supposedly is doing everything possible to keep us all safe, clearly has no idea what he's talking about. Or else he's a stone-cold liar.

Either way, how could we not have suspicions?

Quoting the August 19th Daily Mail again:

Analysts suspect Pakistani authorities exaggerated Rauf’s role to appear ‘tough on terrorism’ and impress Britain and America.

Well, that's what "they" always do, don't they?

And "we" do it too, no? But still ...

A spokesman for Pakistan’s Interior Ministry last night admitted that ‘extradition at this time is not under consideration’.

... which is why I would have said "The Brits won't be seeing this Rauf character in person anytime soon!"

A couple of days ago.

But maybe I would have been wrong.

Here's the latest from the Times of India [emphasis added]:

[August 26, 2006]
Pakistan set to extradite Rauf to UK

ISLAMABAD: Top security officials of Britain and Pakistan are negotiating the extradition of Rashid Rauf, the key suspect in the plot to blow up US-bound passenger aircraft from London, although there is no extradition treaty in place between the two countries.

Britain is waiting expiry of the physical remand of Rauf, whose arrest was registered in Airport police station for holding tampered travelling documents, The Nation said.
...
Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam confirmed the possibility of shifting Rauf to Britain where he is required in the extensive probe into the London terror plot.
...
A tip-off from Rauf through a phone call is believed to have been the green signal for the plot that was foiled by the timely arrests in Pakistan and in London suburbs.

Right.

"Timely" arrests indeed.

And what did "the green signal" say?

Here's my guess:

Dudes And Dudettes Of The Crescent: Let's Roll!!!!

Start applying for your passports now, but don't all go in together.

Don't buy any airline tickets until you all have your passports. Doh!

Remember what I told you about making a bomb on a plane: It's really, really easy!

And above all, don't believe the crazy French website that says

"Après trois jours (ou plus), il est temps de filtrer les cristaux!"

It doesn't really mean:

"After three days (or more), it is time to filter the crystals!"

Honest, it doesn't! Would I lie to you?

Ok, Good. Praise the Will of Allah!!

And repeat after me:

Rashid Couldn't Possibly Be An Agent Provocateur!

Rashid Couldn't Possibly Be An Agent Provocateur!

Rashid Couldn't Possibly Be An Agent Provocateur!

Agent Provocateur:

a secret agent who incites suspected persons to commit illegal acts

===

sixth in a series

An Avalanche Of Bullshit: Republican Attack Dogs Hit Democrats Nationwide Over Lieberman's Loss In CT Primary

Republicans suggest Democrats are soft on terror, weak on national security, friends of Al-Q'aeda, undermining the president, yada, yada

Got that? OK! Now: what -- if anything -- does this have to do with the 'Terrorists' arrested in England?

The Republican Spin-And-Noise Machine has shifted into high gear since Tuesday's Democratic Senatorial Primary in Connecticut, where the moderately anti-war Ned Lamont defeated the rabidly pro-war and pro-Bush "Democrat", Joe Lieberman, in a very close race.

What does this mean? Has the Democratic party eaten itself? Or has it been torn in half? Is this a victory for the liberal bloggers? Or a defeat for the pro-Israeli lobby? Is it a repudiation of everything the Bush administration has ever done or said? Or maybe ... just maybe ... did the Democrats of Connecticut look at the two candidates and decide they liked one just a bit more than the other?

If you listened to the words coming out of Republican mouths lately, you'd never even imagine that the result of the primary could possibly have been a reflection of the wishes of the voters:

White House tears into Dems over Lieberman loss

Quoting White House Press Secretary Tony Snow:

Key leaders in the National Democratic Party have made it clear -- no, let me back up -- this is a defining moment, in some ways, for the Democratic Party. I know a lot of people have tried to make this a referendum on the president. I would flip it. I think instead, it's a defining moment for the Democratic Party, whose national leaders now have made it clear that if you disagree with the extreme left in their party, they're going to come after you. And it is probably worth trying to trace through some of the implications of that position, because it is clearly going to be one of the central issues as we get ready for the election campaign this year, that is, the midterm elections.

First, let's think about Iraq. One of the positions is that we need to leave Iraq. We need to do it on a timetable, and we need to do it soon. It's worth walking through the consequences of that position.
...
[If we left Iraq, it] would create a power vacuum and encourage terrorists not only Iraq but throughout the region and throughout the world...
...
[I]t would create a failed state in the heart of the Middle East with the second-largest oil reserves in the world.
...
[I]t would inflict incredible damage on America's credibility.

Right. Let's walk through the consequences.

What has created a power vacuum in Iraq?

What has encouraged terrorists not only in Iraq but throughout the region and throughout the world?

What has created a failed state -- with a civil war raging -- in the heart of the Middle East?

What has inflicted incredible damage on America's security?

Is it not yet clear that all these things have already happened -- and that they were all caused by the same event?

This whole charade reminds me of the Aesop's fable Androcles and the Lion. Do you remember that one? The lion gets a thorn in his paw and he can't remove it by himself. The wound becomes infected and the infection begins to fester. The lion's paw gets more and more painful, swollen, bloody, hideous.

And what happens next? Does Androcles come along and say "We have to stay the course. We have to leave that thorn in your paw until the infection goes away and your paw is healthy again"? Does he say "We need to put more thorns in your paw! We need to bring some of our allies here and get them to put more thorns in your paw, too"?

Of course not! Androcles removes the thorn from the Lion's paw, and in the end this act of mercy -- and common sense -- saves Androcles' life.

It would only take a little common sense to realize that Iraq is the lion's paw and our troops are the thorn. But we won't be seeing any common sense from the Republicans anytime soon. No mercy either, unless I miss my guess.

Republican blitz tries to link nationwide Dems to Lieberman race

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has issued at least 10 press releases today, many asking whether particular Democrats—including Pennsylvania candidate Bob Casey, Arizona candidate Jim Pederson, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, and Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey—will "support fringe candidate Ned Lamont or the 2000 VP nominee Joe Lieberman."

Other Democrats, like Ohio's Sherrod Brown, are blasted for putting "far left politics on display in abandonment of Joe Lieberman."

"Fringe candidate"?? "Far left" politics?? They must be kidding!

They're not? Well then, they must be lying!!

What is Lamont's position on the War in Iraq? What is his position on the War in Afghanistan? What is his position on the War on Terror?

A true far-leftist would say that all these wars are illegitimate, that they are based on false-flag attacks and outright lies, that they were fabricated on flimsy and hopelessly transparent pretexts, and that their ultimate purpose is to further enrich the wealthiest segment of mankind -- at the expense of everyone else. And that's just for starters.

Is Lamont saying all of that? Is he saying any of it?

Of course not! Listen: There is no far left in American politics today, and there hasn't been one for a long time. But the Republican smear-meisters won't let that stop them:

Cheney characterizes 'disturbing' Lieberman loss as sign Democrats weak on terror

"The thing that's partly disturbing about [Lieberman's loss] is the fact that," Cheney told reporters from Jackson, Wyoming, "our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al Qaeda types--they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task."

Lieberman, Cheney went on to claim, had been "pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture" on terror.

Stay in the fight? Complete the task? Leave the thorns in the Lion's paw until the infection goes away?

Oh, wait! Guess what? We can't think about this anymore, even though it makes a lot of sense, because:

TERROR! TERROR!! TERROR!!!

Police probe flights terror plot

Homes and businesses across England are being searched and 24 people questioned after police say a plot to blow up planes from the UK to US was disrupted.

They say they are convinced they have the key players in custody, but a wider investigation is only just beginning.

Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, said the network involved was large and global.

And US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the plot was "in some respects suggestive of al-Qaeda".

"Large and global"? "Suggestive of al-Qaeda"? Of course it was! Isn't it always? How extremely convenient!

There's more from Chertoff here:

Terror Plot's Sophistication Suggests Al-Qaeda, Chertoff Says

The 21 terrorist suspects arrested in the U.K. overnight had a "well-advanced plan"' to detonate electronic devices or liquid explosives disguised as beverages or onboard U.S.-bound aircraft, a sophisticated plot suggestive of al-Qaeda, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

"We want to make sure there are no remaining threats out there,"' Chertoff said at a news conference in Washington.
...
"We believe that these arrests have significantly disrupted the threat,"' Chertoff said in a statement ahead of the briefing. "But we cannot be sure that the threat has been entirely eliminated or the plot completely thwarted."

So ... What do we do about it? Here's an idea: Force passengers to stand in line for four or five hours, and -- just to make sure they don't underestimate the severity of what has happened -- throw in some extreme security measures as well.

Baby milk under scrutiny as airport controls are tightened

The draconian security measures introduced at British airports in the wake of the foiled terrorist plot could be a taste of what is to come for the 21st century global traveller. For the first time ever in modern aviation history, the authorities imposed a ban on hand luggage being taken aboard.

The few items allowed - such as travel documents, wallets, baby food and nappies - must be carried in a transparent plastic bag.

Baby milk was being "tested" by staff at the security gate, while cleansing solution for contact lenses had to be placed in check-in luggage.

Well ... I'm glad that's settled. I sure wouldn't want to sit next to a passenger who actually had some cleansing solution for contact lenses!

Do I feel safer already? No!

I still have this nagging dread ... a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach ... that says the worst is yet to come.

As usual, Kurt Nimmo sums it up quite nicely:

Fake Terror Obfuscates Lebanon and Iraq Failures

In standard fashion, in order to apply the correct spin from the outset, we are told this latest operation has "global dimensions," that is to say it will be billed as not only an "al-Qaeda" operation but other designated "global" enemies will be fingered as well.
...
In the coming hours and days, we can expect the corporate media, eager stenographers for the neocon plan, to connect the dots—blame will be affixed to Iran, Syria, and their "proxy," Hezbollah, through "al-Qaeda," now dedicated (or scripted) to help Hezbollah, not that the homegrown resistance group needs any help, especially from a CIA-ISI engineered terror group.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

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