Inside the Bush Spin-and-Noise Machine: Using a Terror Threat to Unite the Party around the President

This is a lightly edited excerpt from a post I wrote in August, 2006.

~~~

Let's take a ride inside the Republican Spin-And-Noise Machine, courtesy of Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times:

In Wake of News, a Plan: Uniting Party and President

One week ago, President Bush and his political aides were facing the most daunting election-year landscape of his presidency.

Their party was splintered over Mr. Bush’s proposed immigration overhaul and uncertain about the political effect of violence in Iraq. Even with the White House working to bring Republicans together behind the president’s agenda, several candidates were making public shows of establishing their distance from him and his sagging approval ratings.

That picture of Republican disunity eased dramatically this week with the defeat on Tuesday of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut and the news on Thursday that Britain had foiled a potentially large-scale terrorist plot.

The White House and Congressional Republicans used those events to unleash a one-two punch, first portraying the Democrats as vacillating when it came to national security, and then using the alleged terror plot to hammer home the continuing threat faced by the United States.

Did you catch that? NYT said "alleged terror plot". Does that tell us something important? Is this article going to give us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Well, not exactly. But watch this: If you read between the lines, you can see the whole gory plan laid bare -- from one end to the other.

Moonwalking To Oblivion Without A Billionaire Sponsor: What's A Blogger To Do?

The early death of Michael Jackson has triggered some powerful memories, very few of which have anything to do with Jackson or his sudden demise. Nonetheless, let me take you back 25 years...

In the summer of 1984, Michael Jackson was on his "Victory Tour", moonwalking his way through cuts from "Thriller" in his first public performances after he "set his hair on fire for Pepsi" in late January of that year.

I had spent the early months of '84 trying to piece together the remnants of a jazzy-punky rock band which had finally gelled after months of preparation, played a fantastic set on New Year's Eve, and then imploded -- in my own living room, on the same weekend when Michael's hair was burning.

In our case, the fragments which were not mortally wounded in the implosion eventually reunited, wrote some new material, and played in public together again just a few times before a second implosion. And one of those performances fell on a hot and humid Saturday night almost exactly 25 years ago, a night when Michael Jackson was in town.

Were we crazy to play opposite such a huge concert? Not at all. None of the people who went to see Michael Jackson could be bothered with us, and none of the people who came to see us could be bothered with moonwalking or "Thriller" or any of the other very popular, totally inane artefacts of the little dude who somehow became "The King of Pop".

Forgive me if a bit of disrespect is showing. I will not for a moment deny that Michael Jackson was a fantastic singer, especially as a youngster, or that we would have been very lucky to have such a talented vocalist in our band.

On the other hand, I remain convinced that we made a good move by scheduling a gig when his fans were elsewhere. Our music was direct and honest, often too raw but never too polished, not commercially marketed or even amenable to such treatment. Michael could not have said this of his material, in 1984 or at any stage of his long and very successful career.

We once wrote a song that (among other things) made fun of him. But he never mentioned us. So there's another point of asymmetry.

On the Monday morning after our simultaneous concerts, while I was returning the PA gear we'd rented from a local music store, I heard this on the radio: Scalpers had been getting more for a pair of tickets to see Michael Jackson than it cost us to stage our entire show.

He drew about a hundred thousand fans. We might have drawn a hundred. And we didn't even play well that night. I remember being disappointed about that.

But on the other hand, the people who came to see us that night, the people who came to hear us, the people who came with their eyes and ears open ... they got something they couldn't have found on the Victory Tour, or anywhere else, for that matter. Some of them still talk about that show -- in complimentary terms! It wouldn't have mattered whether we played well or not. What we were doing -- what we were trying to do -- appealed to a few people, maybe one in a thousand, maybe less. But it touched them in a much deeper way than the "King of Pop" -- or anything "pop" -- could have done.

There's a lesson in all this, or a moral to the story, and I'm still not sure what it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it helps to explain why my blog readership never seems to grow, no matter how much or how well I write; neither does it seem to shrink, no matter how rarely I post and no matter what I choose to write about.

What you get here is direct and honest, often too raw but never too polished, not commercially marketed or even amenable to such treatment. It's no wonder so few people are interested. But you can't get it -- or anything similar -- anywhere else.

Maybe it's no big deal, but I got thinking of all this when I heard of Jackson's death, and it all came back to me again when I read this piece from Scholars and Rogues, and even more especially when I considered an earlier, related piece there which deals with a pointed political question: Why don't progressive billionaires fund progressive bloggers (in much the same way that conservative billionaires fund conservative bloggers)?

I would argue that such funding is neither to be expected nor to be welcomed. I would argue that there's no such thing as a progressive billionaire, although there are a few billionaires who might pretend to be leaders and/or funders of a "progressive" opposition.

The earlier S&R post -- "Devil, meet Deep Blue Sea: how much should progressives spend reaching out to progressives?" -- quotes Jane Hamsher of FiredogLake, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos, and John Aravosis of AmericaBlog, all of whom are upset that major Democratic organizations are asking for (and receiving) their support, but aren't supporting them in any tangible way, not even by advertising on their sites.

It may be pointed out that those who obtain support for free have no incentive to pay for it.

Much more importantly, in my view, the sites in question share a common approach to all the most important issues: they bury them if they can't ignore them altogether. This tendency is unfortunately prevalent at all high-traffic "progressive" websites, including the one where I used to volunteer my services.

Markos Moulitsas, the founder and chief director of censorship at DailyKos, was trained by the CIA and makes no bones about the fact that posters who entertain conspiracy theories regarding 9/11 are not welcome at his site.

The other sites mentioned above are a bit less pointed and a touch more subtle but they are nevertheless written by and for people who are not much interested in certain very inconvenient facts: facts about 9/11 in particular; facts about bogus terrorism in general; facts about how the entire "global war on terror" (or whatever Obama wants us to call it this week) is based on a fictional view of history and our role in it; facts about how the Democrats have been complicit in selling both the fictional history and the endless, limitless war it entails.

Would I want to see these sites better funded? Would I want to see them drawing even larger audiences? Would I want their reporting even more constrained by vague doubts about what the billionaire sponsor might think? Dare I even hint of the possibility of explicit instructions from such a sponsor? Or, conversely, can anyone imagine a billionaire-sponsored website without an explicit list of instructions?

An alliance between faux-progressive billionaires and faux-progressive bloggers would be a powerful way to destroy any hope of a meaningful political opposition arising in 21st-century America. But then again, there's no need to destroy things that don't exist.

And that's why it won't happen. There's no need for it. And it wouldn't matter anyway, because 99% of all Americans surveyed have already said ... that given the choice ... they'd prefer moonwalking!

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please help to put this article on Scoop's front page!

If It's Not Corporate TV, Then What Is It?

What is it, indeed? It's Not Corporate TV, a sharp new set of interlocking video blogs, with interesting entries in each of the following categories:

Project For The New American Century
911
Iran, Iraq, the Petrodollar
Bogus Terror Propaganda
John Pilger Documentaries
Mainstream Corporate Media and Propaganda
Electronic Voting

For instance, on the "Bogus Terror Propaganda" page, you can watch a piece called The Origin and Myth of 'Al Qaeda'. It's an excerpt from the BBC series The Power Of Nightmares, and it's well worth the ten minutes it will take you to watch it.

That's just one example, and there's much more, including links to some very fine blogs! It's nothing like the corporate TV you're used to, if you're used to corporate TV. And that's why it's Not Corporate TV -- bright, honest, and very well done!

Ha ha! One for the good guys!!

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Cossiga Spills More Beans On Our "Security Blanket"

Chris Floyd's site has been problematic lately; here is his most recent piece, in full (with a few comments):

Security Blanket: Western Democracy and the Strategy of Tension

by Chris Floyd | November 24, 2008

The idea that a democratic government would deliberately create fake "extremist groups" then send them out to foment violence and terrorism -- in order to discredit legitimate opposition to elite rule and to "justify" authoritarian powers -- has long been derided in "serious" circles as that worst of modern heresies: "conspiracy theory." Anyone advancing such a preposterous notion is instantly relegated to the ranks of the "lunatic fringe," and dismissed with varying degrees of contempt and condescension.

And the woeful fact that millions of the ruminants out there in the vast public herd swallow these wild tales and believe that their betters are up to no good is also widely deplored in the higher circles of public discourse. As any fully-accredited, perk-laden, sinecured think-tanker can tell you, democratic governments are led by men and women devoted to public service. Sure, there can be fierce disputes over policies and approaches and outcomes and ideologies and competence. Sure, some people may step over a line here and there in their pursuit of what they believe is the nation's best interests. But just as western democracies do not torture, do not launch aggressive wars, do not spy upon their own people or imprison them by the millions, they most assuredly do not create and support extremist groups and instigate acts of terror and chaos to advance authoritarian agendas.

It is indeed unfortunate that the general public is prey to these disturbing theories, which breed such a widespread distrust of the noble intentions and essential (if occasionally misguided or incompentently executed) goodness of our leading men and women. However, there is a very reasonable explanation for the credence given to these fringe beliefs:

They happen to be true.

We've written often here of the Pentagon's plan to foment terrorism where needed to achieve the goals of the "National Security State." This is but one of a staggering array of examples of the use of "the strategy of tension" by the "advanced" Western democracies of the modern world. This week came yet another. As Robert Mancini reports in the Guardian, the former president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga [photo], let a great many cats out of the bag when he gave some sage advice to Italy's current interior minister, Robert Maroni, on how to deal with the ongoing protests by students and professors over funding cuts for higher education.

Cossiga had previously let more than a few cats out of the same bag, when he said everybody on the inside knows that 9/11 was an inside job, planned and executed by the CIA and Mossad.

Chris Floyd continues:

As Mancini notes, Cossiga -- who had once been interior minister himself, as well as prime minister -- told the Quotidiano Nazionale [Italy's National Daily]:

"Maroni should do what I did when I was secretary of the interior. He should withdraw the police from the streets and the universities, infiltrate the movement with secret (provacateurs) agents, ready to do anything, and, for about 10 days, let the demonstrators devastate shops, set fire to cars and lay waste the cities. After which, strengthened by popular consent, the sound of ambulance sirens should be louder than the police cars. The security forces should massacre the demonstrators without pity, and send them all to hospital. They shouldn't arrest them, because the magistrates would release them immediately, but they should beat them up. And they should also beat up those teachers who stir them up. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly lecturers, of course, but the young women teachers.

Mancini notes that Cossiga's advice tracks closely with his own experience at the head of Italy's security organs in the 1970s:

For students of Italian political history, the interview is fascinating for the light it sheds on Cossiga's political views and in particular his activities between 1976 and 1978 when he too was interior minister, presiding over the police. In 1977, a demonstration by the Radical Party (partito radicale) was attacked by armed individuals who opened fire causing the death Giorgiana Masi, a 20 year-old girl.

Cossiga could not, or would not, explain what took place that day. More specifically, he was unable to shed light on whether the attackers came from within the police force....

Hence the interest in the recent interview, which sheds light on one of the most secretive periods of Italian history - the so-called "strategy of tension" that began with the 1969 bombing of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Milan (carried out by the far-right and blamed on anarchists) through to the events at the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001 where the mysterious right-wing "black-blok" group created the mayhem and destruction which brought forth the police violence against thousands of anti-globalisation protestors.

Yes, the story of terrorist creation, chaos and murder by Western governments is an old one -- especially in Italy, the epicenter of Operation Gladio, which I outlined in a Moscow Times column some years ago:

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force…the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West – against their own populations.

Hundreds of innocent people were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks – on train stations, supermarkets, cafes, offices – which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents. The purpose, as stated above in sworn testimony by Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was to demonize designated enemies and panic the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for government leaders – and their elitist cronies.

First revealed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1991, Gladio (from the Latin for "sword") is still protected to this day by its founding patrons, the CIA and MI6. Yet parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have shaken out a few fragments of the truth over the years. These have been gathered in a new book, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, by Daniele Ganser, as Lila Rajiva reports on CommonDreams.org.

Originally set up as a network of clandestine cells to be activated behind the lines in case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, Gladio quickly expanded into a tool for political repression and manipulation, controlled and funded by NATO and Washington. Using right-wing militias, underworld figures, government provocateurs and secret military units, Gladio not only carried out widespread terrorism, assassinations and electoral subversion in democratic states like Italy, France and West Germany, but also bolstered fascist tyrannies in Spain and Portugal, abetted the military coup in Greece, and aided Turkey's ferocious repression of the Kurds. All of this in the name of "preserving democracy" and "defending civilization."

Among the "smoking guns" unearthed by Ganser is a Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B, which detailed the methodology for launching terrorist attacks in nations that "do not react with sufficient effectiveness" against "communist subversion." Ironically, the manual states that the most dangerous moment comes when leftist groups "renounce the use of force" and embrace the democratic process. It is then that "US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger." Naturally, these peace-throttling "special operations must remain strictly secret," the document warns.

Indeed, it would not do for, say, the families of the 85 people ripped apart by the August 2, 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station to know that their loved ones had been murdered by "men inside Italian state institutions and…by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence," as the Italian Senate concluded after its investigation in 2000.

The Bologna atrocity is an example of what Gladio's masters called "the strategy of tension" – fomenting fear to keep populations in thrall to "strong leaders" who will protect the nation from the ever-present terrorist threat. And as Rajiva notes, this strategy wasn't limited to Western Europe. It was applied – with gruesome effectiveness – in Central America by the Reagan-Bush administrations. During the 1980s, rightwing death squads, guerrilla armies and state security forces – armed, trained and supplied by the United States – murdered tens of thousands of people throughout the region, often acting with particular savagery at those times when peaceful solutions to the conflicts seemed about to take hold....

And as we have often noted here, similar operations -- the "El Salvador option," death squads, "High-Value Targeting," etc. -- have been an integral part of the Anglo-American subjugation of Iraq. Indeed, they are a pillar of the "counterinsurgency doctrine" proclaimed by the other president-in-waiting, David Petraeus, and now avidly embraced by the War Machine. As Tara McElvey reports in The American Prospect, the Pentagon is eager to apply "High-Value Targeting" and refinements of the "Phoenix Program" -- in which U.S. forces and local proxies murdered more than 20,000 people -- and the whole panoply of "psy-ops" to imperial imbroglios around the world, applying them "to Afghanistan, then Pakistan, the Philippines, Colombia, Somalia, and elsewhere."

It's true, of course, that the American people -- and Europeans, as well -- are showing signs of growing weariness and wariness of the heavy-handed security regimes their governments have imposed upon them. There also seems to be little enthusiasm for plowing ahead in the various killing fields opened up by their elites to reap the enormously profitable blood fruits of war. Public toleration for this extravagant adventurism will be even more diminished as the cratering of the global economy -- caused by the greed and deceit of those same elites -- continues to deepen.

But more war is exactly what we've been promised by our agents of change. More war, an even bigger War Machine, "tougher" security measures, national ID cards packed with personal data and tracking devices, more surveillance cameras, new "preventive detention" laws -- and more unbounded authority to use public money to bail out the elite. Yet how to make this happen in the current atmosphere of exhaustion and anxiety? How to catalyze the public into continuing to support the Security State? How to discredit the rising chorus of opposition to neocolonialism, elite cronyism, rampant militarism and growing authoritarianism?

It's not a tough question, really:

Elite elders like Francesco Cossiga know the answer: the strategy of tension. The Gladio way. Was this the kind of thing Joe Biden was talking about, when he said the "young president" would be tested by a crisis, and forced to take unpopular measures in response?

It seems our "interesting times" are going to continue unabated in this bold new era.

The 9/11 Denial Movement still sings refrains like "Nobody would ever do such a thing", and "Nobody would even think such a thing". But as Francesco Cossiga has admitted, all the national security insiders know it's standard practice ... besides which, the falsity of the official story was obvious from Day One.

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Ludicrouser And Ludicrouser: The Alleged Liquid Bombing Plot, Revisited Again

In the UK, the prosecution has laid out its case against the alleged terrorist plotters who have come to be known as the "Liquid Bombers", and it's much different than the stories that were leaked just after the suspects were arrested, two years ago this weekend.

Those stories sparked considerable interest at this blog, where chemistry is no barrier. And the previous leaked versions of the alleged plot were utterly preposterous, as I've pointed out several times since they were leaked.

But the new alleged plot -- the one testified to in court by British authorities -- is even more ludicrous than the alleged plots in any of the previously leaked stories.

The technical difficulties inherent in the new alleged plot have been hinted at -- just barely -- in mainstream media reports, such as one from New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino, as published in the Seattle Times, which read:

Using a sealed 17-ounce sports drink, the men planned to drain the plastic bottle through a tiny hole in the bottom and then inject an explosive mix of concentrated hydrogen-peroxide, along with food coloring to make it look like the original beverage. Super Glue would seal it shut. AA batteries filled with the explosive HMTD would serve as the detonator; a disposable camera would serve as the trigger.

Prosecutors said the men planned to carry the components onto seven trans-Atlantic planes, assemble them and then explode them in midair.

WOW! Is that ALL they were trying to do?

Is this admirable brevity, or lying by omission? You decide.

Instructions for such a plot, in plain English, would run like this:

Go get some AA batteries, and start taking them apart. But do it very carefully; make sure you don't damage them. We have to be able to put them back together later -- without the cores -- and make them look like new.

What? It sounds tough? Don't worry: that's nothing compared to the other things we have to do.

Buy some bottles of sports drink -- Oasis, Lucozade, it really doesn't matter. And get a syringe, too. We'll use it to empty the bottles, and we'll use it again to refill them later. Remember to inject air into the bottles while emptying them; otherwise they'll collapse.

And that would be no good, because we need to keep them in mint condition. That's why we're not going to unscrew the tops. But don't worry. With enough patience, this part of the job is easy.

Also, buy some hydrogen peroxide -- lots of it. We won't need much, but the peroxide we need is much stronger than what you can buy in the shops. So we'll have to boil it down ourselves. This part of the process will be difficult and dangerous, but don't worry.

The danger has to do with the nature of hydrogen peroxide. It decomposes spontaneously, producing water and oxygen and heat. So if you boil it, you've got additional heat, and a strong possibility of spontaneous detonation. But don't worry. The concentrated peroxide we produce will be our ticket to paradise -- and countless virgins!

Get some Tang, and some cherry Kool-Aid, too. We'll add them to our concentrated peroxide, once it's ready, to make it look like the original sports drinks.

Then, using the syringe, we'll refill the bottles. This is going to be difficult and time-consuming. Remember to draw air from the bottle with each injection. We don't want the pressure in the bottle to build up.

It's dangerous, but not too dangerous. So don't worry. Just don't let any of the concentrated peroxide touch you -- or your clothing -- because it'll burst into flame.

Get some disposable cameras. We'll re-wire the flash and use that surge of electricity for something else. Ha ha ha!

Oh, right! The primary charge. Here's the sort of dangerous part. We're going to make some HMTD. That's "hexamethylene triperoxide diamine". We can make it with common household items, so you'd better buy some nitrogen-based fertilizer, and some bleach or strong acid, too.

Once we've made the HMTD, we're going to put the batteries back together with HMTD inside them. Take your time with this stuff; HMTD is sensitive to shock and friction, so we always have to be careful with it. But Allah will protect us. So don't worry.

Then we'll sneak everything onto airplanes, and be cool about it. Once we're safely aloft, we'll tape the battery to the bottle, wire it to the disposable camera, and presto! An anti-aircraft bomb.

The sugar in the Tang will give it even more explosive power. Just wait and see.

When the Lucozade bottles are full, seal the holes with Super Glue. This is where it gets tricky. But don't worry.

The concentrated peroxide will continue to decompose, giving off oxygen and building up pressure in the bottles. The bottles are not designed to hold pressurized contents; so it won't take much to rupture them. And that's why -- as I say -- things might get a bit tricky once they're sealed.

Because after we seal them we're going to put them in our pockets, and we're going to carry them to the airport that way, and of course if any of the bottles burst from the pressure, our clothing will burst into flame immediately. So we'll pray for Allah to be with us -- and maybe we should also pray for some help from the maniac who thought this plan would work.

Where is he, anyway? Why is he never around when you need him? And do you really think the conspiracy theorists are crazy when they say he must have been working for ISI -- and MI6?

I'm not claiming the "instructions" quoted above were delivered. We have good reason to believe no instructions of the sort were ever delivered to anyone. But that's a bit of a problem for the British authorities.

The jury is out in this case -- they've been out for a while, and now they're enjoying a two-week holiday. From the look of things, they appear set to deliberate forever. According to published media reports, it seems they haven't got enough evidence to convict the accused "terrorist plotters", and in the virulently anti-Muslim political climate of the day, they clearly haven't got enough confidence to acquit them. So there it hangs -- in a fine and apparently synthetic balance.

The prosecution showed the jury a video of a bomb exploding. They said this was the sort of bomb that the alleged plotters were allegedly plotting to make. And the explosion was terrific. In fact the bomb components were so sensitive that the police had to assemble the demonstration bomb with a robot -- in order not to risk injuring anyone through premature detonation.

But the judge had to remind the jury that the explosion they saw had come from a bomb made by the police, and that the alleged plotters had made no such bomb.

The police seized many bottles of garden-variety [3%] hydrogen peroxide, and one bottle of highly concentrated peroxide. The prosecution showed surveillance tapes of the alleged plotters visiting the shops, buying Lucozade and glassware ... but where did the concentrated peroxide come from? Nobody's saying. Why isn't this question of interest? I have my ideas.

Concentrated peroxide cannot be obtained without credentials. Who in this case had credentials? Who could obtain peroxide without leaving an incriminating trail? Who had the ability to plant evidence?

The alleged plotters met in a flat they had bought for about $270,000. Where did the money come from? Nobody's saying. Why isn't this question of interest? I have my ideas.

Several of the alleged plotters have already pleaded guilty to planning to cause a disturbance. But they all deny that they were trying to destroy airplanes, and the prosecution doesn't appear to have proven that they were.

The police had a surveillance camera in the alleged plotters' flat. The saw and heard everything that went on there. And yet they don't have enough evidence to convince a jury that the alleged plotters were doing what they were allegedly doing. So the jury continues to deliberate.

We could see this coming a long time ago. The police began a search of the woods near where the suspects lived two years ago, on August 9th. On that day, they claim, they found a suitcase presumably owned by the suspects, containing bomb-making materials, presumably put there by the suspects. But they continued to search the woods, apparently finding nothing, and the search was finally called off in December, having cost the taxpayers tens of millions.

If I were on the jury, I'd be saying:

Let's get out of here. If the cops had access to the flat to install a video camera, they had access to plant evidence. If they can't show where the most incriminating stuff came from, it's only logical to assume they put it there themselves. What are we gonna do, miss the rest of our lives sitting here arguing about it? We've been had, again. Enough is enough. What are we waiting for?

I might not convince everybody, but that wouldn't be my goal. I'd be waiting for the judge to indicate that a unanimous verdict wasn't necessary, that 11-1 or 10-2 would be good enough -- just like in the most famous previous HMTD case, and then I would only have to find nine intelligent life forms among the other eleven jury members, and we could all get out of there alive.

Not that it would matter much. The alleged plotters aren't smart enough to disassemble AA batteries without destroying them, much less get over all the other technical hurdles. But that's not a knock; nobody's smart enough to do things that are impossible.

And meanwhile the forces of tyranny already have everything they could have asked for from this case: There's ridiculously tight airport security all over the world now, all because of this palpably bogus story. And that's just the beginning of what they have gained.

The fear injected into the political echo machine two years ago reverberated for a long time -- long enough to provide some "political capital" for those who fight this bogus Terror War -- and played no small part in the passage of the Military Commissions Act, which gives our unelected president retroactive immunity for having ordered torture, as well as the power to define what shall constitute torture in the future.

This outrageous presidential power is much more important than putting a handful of knuckleheads in prison.

And so, even if the alleged plotters are acquitted, the forces of darkness will have won -- again!

~~~

I'll have more on this story again soon.

thirty-fourth in a series

~~~

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Big Surprise In Buffalo: The Art Professor Wasn't A Terrorist After All!

After a four-year nightmare, art professor Steve Kurtz has finally shaken free of the Department of Homeland Terror.

The trouble for Kurtz started in May of 2004, when his wife died suddenly in her sleep. Police came out to investigate the unexpected death, and while searching the home, they found harmless scientific and art supplies, which they claimed were evidence of terrorism.

Over the next almost-four years, a bundle of alphabet agencies did their best to misrepresent Kurtz and his art supplies as a threat to our security, but -- amazingly -- the case against him was thrown out of court, with a federal judge calling the government's entire indictment "insufficient on its face."

Kurtz spoke with Amy Goodman the other day; here's an excerpt from their conversation:

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to our next story, almost unfathomable, but true, about art in a time of terror. Even Kafka might have had trouble conjuring up this one.

Steve Kurtz is a professor of visual studies at SUNY, Buffalo — that’s State University of New York, Buffalo — a founding member of the award-winning art and theater group, Critical Art Ensemble. On May 11, 2004, his wife Hope tragically died in her sleep. When he called 911 for help, a nightmare that would last for the next four years began to unfold.

The police became suspicious of his art supplies and harmless bacteria cultures that he was using for an antiwar project about the public health impact of germ warfare programs. Kurtz was detained as a suspected bioterrorist, his home raided by the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland Security. His belongings, his cat, even his wife’s body, were seized.

After a federal grand jury refused to charge Kurtz with bioterrorism, Kurtz and his colleague Robert Ferrell of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health were charged with federal mail and wire fraud concerning the acquisition of $256 of harmless bacteria. Under the PATRIOT Act, they could have faced up to twenty years in prison.

After four harrowing years, on April 21, a federal judge dismissed the government’s entire indictment against Kurtz as “insufficient on its face.” He’s been cleared of all charges.
...

Why don’t you tell us your story, beginning that day, May 11, 2004?

STEVE KURTZ: Well, that was a very dark day for me. I woke up that morning and found that my wife had died in her sleep. And kind of after a moment of shock that slowly broke into a kind of panic, I made my way to the telephone, called 911. They came quite rapidly. And as they looked around, they did as they had to do when a woman who, quite young at this age, forty-five, dies in their home and called the police. And the police came out and secured my home, and then three detectives showed up. And for the rest of that day, I was pretty much interrogated as a murder suspect.

And one of the things that caught the police attention’s eye was my home lab, which was filled with pretty basic innocuous equipment that I primarily use for molecular biology, for DNA experiments. And they wondered why I had that, and I explained to them that I was a professor at UB, University of Buffalo, and that my specialty was the intersection between art and science, and this was part of the basic equipment I needed to have, that the university didn’t supply us studios, so we had to create our own space for it. And, you know, I showed them work I had done online, showed them my resume, showed them catalogs. But they weren’t particularly convinced by that, and they were more convinced by the idea that if someone has scientific equipment in their home that they’re probably up to something nefarious. And as the detectives left that afternoon, they were of the opinion that the FBI was going to want to talk to me.

So the following day, as I went out to go to the funeral home to make arrangements for my wife’s cremation, about three or four FBI cars came screeching up, and I was put into illegal detention and basically soft-rendered, meaning I didn’t have to get drugged and flown off to Guantanamo. It was much nicer than that. It was the pleasant way to get rendered. They take you to a hotel and hold you there without charge, without being Miranda-ized, and put you through a lighter style of interrogation.

Thus began the incredible -- but true -- saga. Well, maybe it's not so incredible anymore, not in BushLand. If a skyscraper a quarter of a mile tall can disintegrate in 10 seconds -- just because of gravity -- and if that can happen three times in the same day -- but only on that day -- then nothing's incredible anymore, is it?

When the police initially searched the Kurtz home, they found an invitation with Arabic writing on it. They used this bit of Arabic to "prove" that Steve Kurtz was a terrorist, and this "proof" was then used to "justify" a warrant.

Nothing could have been further from the truth, but it doesn't matter anymore, not in BushLand.

STEVE KURTZ: And when the prosecutor was questioned about it in the first hearing, the judge asked, "You mean if he had a Koran in his house, you would have confiscated that and used that in this manner?" And the prosecutor said, "Yes."

Well, there you have it. If you can read or write Arabic, or if you possess the tiniest sample of Arabic writing, even if you doesn't understand what it says, you may not actually be a bioterrorist, but you'd better be very wary of the police, especially if your wife happens to die in the middle of the night.

But don't worry; they're keeping us safe from art teachers.

Donuts In The Parking Lot: Toronto "Terror Plot" Not What It Seemed, Says Gov't Mole

Thomas Walkom in the Toronto Star:

In the first full-fledged trial coming out of the case of the Toronto 18, the Crown is arguing that a youth (who cannot be named) participated in a "shocking and sensational" terrorist plot "to cause harm and death by attacking innocent lives."

But in a Brampton courtroom yesterday, RCMP informer Mubin Shaikh – the government's star witness – acknowledged that while this particular youth may have been an unsuccessful shoplifter (he was caught – twice), he knew nothing about alleged schemes to blow up buildings or behead politicians.

Rather, Shaikh said, he knew the young man as a quiet, shy, considerate teenager – a recent convert to Islam – who wanted to please the alleged ringleaders of the alleged plot but who, in the main, was just trying to fit in.

And he described the antics of those attending a Washago training camp as a comedy of errors, where the alleged jihadis melted holes in the soles of their running shoes, locked one vehicle's keys in the car, almost set a sleeping bag on fire and – instead of keeping a low profile – did doughnuts in a Canadian Tire parking lot.

This is the same Mubin Shaikh who said last week that this alleged training camp was actually quite serious and not just an exercise in "picking daisies."

But that was when he was being questioned by Crown prosecutor John Neander.

Yesterday, under questioning from defence lawyer Mitchell Chernovsky, Shaikh agreed that, really, nothing much happened during the December 2005 camping trip.

This is the big deal that the Canadian media have been scared of for the past two years? This is the face of international terrorism?

A camping trip where nothing much happened, according to the government's star witness!

Malkom continues:

He said a recorded lecture on jihad played to the group of teens and young men was so boring that some dozed off.

He said the so-called military training consisted of getting the campers to march up and down a road to keep warm.

He said that when an illegal handgun was used for target practice, the youthful campers were "freaked out" by the noise.

He agreed that the campers wore camouflage outfits mainly to protect their clothes during paintball games.

Last week, Shaikh testified that one of the alleged ringleaders gave a long allegorical speech in which he spoke of the need for Muslims to bring down "Rome" – which the RCMP informer said was a reference to the U.S.

Yesterday, Shaikh acknowledged that many of those present – including the person now on trial – wouldn't have a had a clue what the speech meant.

And he summed up the Washago adventure with these words: "Nobody knew what they were doing ... Idiocy seemed to be a constant theme."

I would go farther and suggest that idiocy seems to be a constant theme among those who support the so-called "Global War On Terror".

But it's not the only theme. Some people are getting rich. And some are getting their jollies. And many are getting killed, and more are having their lives destroyed, and even those who do not appear to be affected by terrorism or counter-terrorism are having their futures sucked out from under them, not to mention the futures of their children, and their grandchildren, and so on ... and on and on ...

And it's all bogus. Or at least most of it is. 9/11 was clearly bogus. The London 7/7 bombings were bogus. Neither attack was even investigated; instead the governments involved spent millions telling us what they want us to believe. The same thing has happened with the Madrid bombing and both bomb attacks in Bali -- and since then we've had a long string of bogus terror plots that were infiltrated if not created by government moles, and actual terror strikes by groups of actual terrorists who are funded and motivated by our government -- and that's bogus too, but in an even worse way!

And we can't even talk about any of this in the national media -- because why?

Because it's all bogus, that's why! The terror is bogus and the media is bogus! And every now and then they let a little bogus detail slip out, and a reporter writes a column about it, and then it disappears under a carpet of lies, never to be seen again -- except in blogs like this, which nobody reads anyway.

And there you have it: justification for the destruction of humanity. And it's all bogus!

Phantoms Of The Terror War: Daan de Wit on the Liquid Bombers

The stories we know about the most famous terrorists and the best known terrorist plots do not match up with the facts.

Thus begins an excellent article called "The phantom terrorists of the War on Terror: Part 1 - The Liquid Bombers", written in Dutch by Daan de Wit, translated into English by Ben Kearney, and published at Atlantic Free Press.

Excerpts :

August of 2006. A group of about 25 terrorists, later to become known as the Liquid Bombers, takes the West by the throat with their plan to crash approximately ten airplanes simultaneously. President Bush addresses the nation: 'If these terrorists had succeeded, they could have caused death on a massive scale. The plot appears to have been carefully planned and well-advanced. They planned to bring the components of their explosives on board in their carry-on luggage, disguised as bottled drinks and electronic devices'. According to Michael Chertoff, head of America's Homeland Security Department, the attack could potentially have resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties. The near-attack by the alleged terrorists gets a lot of publicity because of a huge operation by the police in which a number of airplanes are grounded. This is noteworthy because the suspects had already been under the radar for about one year and hadn't made any reservations, much less purchased tickets.
...

The Liquid Bombers wanted to make the explosive TATP (triacetone triperoxide) on board the aircraft. Gerry Murray of the Forensic Science Agency in Northern Ireland and Peter Fielden of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at the University of Manchester say that it would be extremely difficult to produce TATP by combining liquids in the restrooms of airplanes. A journalist from The Register consulted experts and describes the problems with the terrorist plan. [..] In order to arrive at TATP, sulphuric acid has to be added to acetone and peroxide drop by drop for several hours at just the right cold temperature while stirring continuously. When the axphyxiating fumes are released, they form white crystals at a temperature of below 10 degrees C (50 degrees F) after a minimum of six hours - though probably much longer - which then have to be harvested by way of filtration and dried for several hours. The thermometer has to be closely monitored as well, as TATP is very unstable, as witnessed by its nickname, 'Mother of Satan'. 250 grams of the white crystalline powder resembling sugar is needed for a substantial explosion, which means that per airplane you need sixteen times the content of an airplanes bathroom sink in order for the plan to succeed.
...

One year later [...] it became clear that a number of the Liquid Bombers had been trained by Jundullah (Army of Allah), a terrorist organization which, as ABCNews suggests, is being sponsored by the U.S. in their clandestine battle against Iran. The London Telegraph is even more specific and writes: '[...] the CIA is giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan'. Prior to the training by Jundullah, the alleged terrorists - in connection with an earthquake relief operation - were present in camps run by the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), the parent organization of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). LET gets (financial) support form the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, which again is directly connected to the American intelligence agency - the CIA.
...

Even though it is for modern man easier to fall victim to a peanut or to lightning than to a terrorist, the notion of terror is still a reality of daily life. Terrorism is at the top of the agenda. The interests are huge. Large sums of money have been invested, whole careers are at stake and ad agencies - the same people who market everyday products such as deserts and insurance - make a lot of money off of expensive anti-terrorism campaigns...

All of which lends extra emphasis to the following very pertinent question:

What if it had been proven in court that the plan to explode ten or more airplanes with bombs manufactured on the spot was impossible, and all of the anxiety and security measures that followed were actually unnecessary?

The article is the first of a seven-part series that promises much.

I'd read the whole thing if I were you.

Miami Mice: One Aquitted, Mistrial For The Other Six

Almost but not quite lost in the excitement of the weekend:

Federal prosecutors have failed to secure a single conviction in a mass-entrapment operation set up in Florida by yet another FBI informant [read: agent provocateur] (no, not William "Jameel" Chrisman) who tried to incite seven Miami men to attack a Chicago landmark:

In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, one of seven Miami men accused of plotting to join forces with Al Qaeda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower was acquitted yesterday, and the case against the rest ended in a hung jury.
...

The White House had seized on the case to illustrate the dangers of homegrown terrorism and trumpet the government's post-Sept. 11, 2001, success in infiltrating and smashing terrorism plots in their earliest stages.
...

The group never actually made contact with Al Qaeda and never acquired any weapons or explosives.

Prosecutors said no attack was imminent, acknowledging that the alleged terror cell was "more aspirational than operational."
...

Lyglenson Lemorin [photo], 32, had been accused of being a "soldier" for alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste. He buried his face in his hands when his acquittal was read.

Lemorin, a legal US resident originally from Haiti, was subject to an immigration hold and would not be immediately released, his lawyer said.
...

Outside the courtroom, jury foreman Jeff Agron said ... the evidence was weakest against Lemorin, who had moved with his wife and children to Atlanta and gotten a job at a shopping mall after splitting with Batiste months before the group was arrested.

In a statement to the FBI, Lemorin said he never wanted to be associated with Al Qaeda and that he knew "nothing good would come from this."

That's for sure.

Federal prosecutor Richard Gregorie said the government planned to retry the six next year, and the judge said a new jury would be picked starting Jan. 7.

No Bail For Rashid Rauf, Alleged Liquid Bomber Mastermind, And No Court Date Either

Rashid Rauf, the alleged "mastermind" of the so-called "Liquid Bombers", has been denied bail by an Anti-Terrorist Court in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He has been held since August of 2006, when his arrest was said to have triggered the arrests of 25 people in the UK and perhaps half a dozen more in Pakistan. Of the 25 arrested in Britain, ten (including Rashid Rauf's brother, Tayib Rauf) were released without charge, eleven have been charged with conspiracy to murder, and the other four have been charged with lesser terror-related offenses, such as failure to divulge information. Trial for those who have been charged is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2008, according to long-ago whispers.

In addition to the charges and upcoming trial, airport security was tightened dramatically after the arrests were made, and only relaxed much later, and then not entirely. So if you were thinking of taking a bottle of drinking water with you on your next flight, you can forget it. Why? Because of the Liquid Bombers!

According to the story floated at the time, the British Muslim wannabe-terrorists were plotting to take down multiple transcontinental airliners, more or less simultaneously, killing "hundreds of thousands of people" according to a breathless Michael Chertoff.

Their plot -- according to the story -- was a devious one: they were planning to circumvent airport security -- especially the bomb-sniffers -- by making their bombs on the planes, from common household liquids that they would bring onto the planes in their carry-on luggage.

And they were inspired, or directed, or at the very least al-Qaeda connected, by Rashid Rauf, a British-born Muslim real-terrorist who had fled to Pakistan following the murder of his uncle and who had been allied with a shifty sequence of murky characters ever since. Or so the story goes.

But then, like the trail in Robert Frost's famous poem, the paths begin to diverge.

Back in August of 2006, there were conflicting stories about Rashid Rauf's exact connection to the plot; there were conflicting stories about where, and when he had been arrested -- and why; and there were conflicting stories about how his arrest had triggered the arrests in England.

Some sources said Rashid Rauf was the mastermind of the plot, some said he was the mastermind's right-hand man, and some said he was merely the messenger. But nearly everybody said he was the al-Q'aeda connection -- everybody except the Pakistanis, who kept calling him a "key figure" in the investigation.

Some sources said the British had the whole crew under surveillance for months and were being patient since there was no danger and not enough incriminating evidence either, but the Americans were anxious to score some political points and as soon as they found out the British were following some wannabe-terrorists, they threatened to go into Pakistan and arrest the "mastermind" themselves. This threat, according to these sources, forced the Pakistani security services to arrest Rashid Rauf, to keep him out of the hands of the Americans if nothing else. But other sources hinted that all this was just a cover story put out by the British, who were the ones actually seeking to score political points, and doing so at the expense of the Americans.

Some sources said Rashid Rauf (or a friend to whom he sent some sort of a signal, or who had seen him being arrested) sent a text message to the UK Liquid Bombers, saying to go ahead with the plot. This message might have made sense if they all had airline tickets; or if they all had passports; or if they had all applied for passports -- which they hadn't. But all such details are conveniently left out of this version of the tale, in which the heroic British authorities promptly arrested all those who had received the text messages. Other sources say Rashid Rauf was arrested several days before the others and was tortured into revealing their names, after which they were summarily arrested.

British newspapers reported on a search of the woods near where the suspects lived, which cost about 30M pounds or roughly $60M before it was called off after four months. Ironically, at the same time as the search was stopped, all terror-related charges against Rashid Rauf were dropped!

And rightly so, from the chemical point of view, because although one can make a number of different explosives from freely available liquids, it is not possible -- for many reasons -- to make any of them on an airplane, unless you have unlimited time, space, ventilation, and refrigeration, to name just a few of the requirements.

The charges against Rashid Rauf were dropped last December and since then, the Liquid Bombers have dropped out of media sight, even though the charges were reinstated shortly thereafter.

It's been a long time since Rashid Rauf or any of his alleged accomplices were mentioned in any Western media, but the travel restrictions are still in place, and Rashid Rauf is still being held without any indication that a trial may be imminent, and all this rigmarole, unless I'm reading this story way wrong, plays directly into the hands of the British.

The British won't sign an extradition treaty with Pakistan because, as they explain it, Pakistan has the death penalty. But without an extradition treaty, the British have very little chance to get their hands on Rashid Rauf, for a trial. This they apparently would love to do. But they are bound to honor Pakistan's legal claim against the suspect, so the Brits have said they would wait for charges against Rashid Rauf to be settled in Pakistan before they press for his extradition to the UK, where he is wanted not only in connection with the Liquid Bomb plot but also because of his uncle's murder. That's the story; but the legal case against Rashid Rauf appears to be proceeding (if that's the right word) as slowly as possible; and this makes Britain wait, and it raises the possibility that the others will be tried without the testimony of Rashid Rauf, and it remains my hypothesis that this suits the British just fine!

Because the case is not what it is cracked up to be, in any respect. The alleged plotters couldn't possibly have killed hundreds of thousands of people. They probably couldn't have killed any people. They surely couldn't have brought down any airplanes. There's nothing to be afraid of; no reason at all why you shouldn't be able to bring a bottle of drinking water on your next flight. And if all this ever came out at a trial -- especially a trial involving Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind and al-Q'aeda connection -- a public airing of the facts could demolish the whole war on terror, not to mention the CIA, ISI and MI6.

In short, there's more coverup here than plot, and this short article from Khalid Iqbal of Pakistan's The News is very good news for the coverup:

Court rejects Rashid Rauf’s bail plea

Rawalpindi: The Special Anti-Terrorist Court (ATC) here on Wednesday rejected bail application of accused Rashid Rauf allegedly involved in a plane hijacking case in 2006.

The hearing in his bail application was completed two weeks back. The court announced its judgment on Wednesday and rejected bail application of the accused.

Rashid Rauf has allegedly been involved in a plane hijacking case registered with the Airport Police Station last year. He was arrested from Bahawalpur and explosive material and weapons were recovered from his possession. According to police, the accused wanted to hijack a plane, which was going to New York from Britain.

Shaukat Aziz Saddique, counsel of Rashid Rauf, told ‘The News’ that he would move the bail application of his client in the Lahore High Court, Rawalpindi Bench.

Of note: the "explosive material" recovered from his possession was hydrogen peroxide, one of the common liquids that can be used to make explosives.

This is the first report, to my knowledge, that mentions weapons being seized from Rashid Rauf. But that's no surprise as the story keeps changing all the time anyway.

This is also the first report, to my knowledge, in which the accused wanted to hijack a plane going from New York to Britain. In previous reports, he wanted to facilitate others who were trying to hijack a dozen planes going from Britain to the United States. But whatever...

Even if it were possible -- which it is not -- to make enough explosives to damage an airliner, from hydrogen peroxide and other common liquids, in a short time, without any other technical requirements -- even if all that were possible, nobody has ever explained how a man in Pakistan -- hydrogen peroxide or no! -- was going to blow up a plane flying between Britain and the US.

It's one of the great mysteries of our century, one that nobody even wants to think about anymore. And it looks like it's gonna stay this way for a long time. His attorney is going to ask for bail in another court, in another city. And the judge will most likely say "No". And months will have elapsed. And nobody else will even breathe a word about it.

But, as the man says, stay tuned, for I will surely keep you posted.

~~~

twentieth in a series

Report Says Fate Of Alleged Liquid Bomber Mastermind Will Be Decided Today!

After more than a year of detention, Rashid Rauf, alleged mastermind of the so-called "Liquid Bombers plot", will be brought before Pakistan's Federal Review Board later today, according to a report from the Daily Times.

“We will present Rashid Rauf and Raingzieb Ahmed before the Federal Review Board (FRB) on Friday, where the judges will decide the fate of their cases,” a law enforcement agency source told Daily Times on Thursday.

The report says:

Rauf was arrested on August 9, 2006, in Multan while headed for Rawalpindi.

If this is true, then one of the stories we've been told, that Rashid Rauf was tortured for several days before he revealed the names of the British co-conspirators, is false, because the 25 people arrested in Britain were picked up on the 9th and 10th of August. The alternative tale, that Rashid Rauf (or a friend) sent a text message to the British co-conspirators saying to go ahead with the plot, would appear to be the only remaining credible explanation, if it were credible at all. Only one of the people arrested last August had an airline ticket. Some had not even applied for passports. Were they expected to board planes without tickets of passports because they got a text message from a stranger in a foreign country?

According to the most recent reliable reports, Rashid Rauf is charged with possession of objects for the purposes of terrorism, specifically 29 bottles of hydrogen peroxide that supposedly threatens airliners traveling from the UK to the USA. He also faces charges of forgery and impersonation in regard to allegedly carrying false papers. But this is not considered a terrorist offense and the Federal Review Board, as I understand it, must dispose of the terror-related charge first.

Of the 25 Britons arrested last August 9th and 10th, ten have been released without charge and the remaining 15 are due to stand trial beginning in the spring of 2008. In another few hours we may know whether Rashid Rauf will be joining them.

But on the other hand, we may still know nothing. The Pakistani legal system has a way of moving people backwards. Detentions get extended, charges never actually get formalized, decisions get reversed and appealed and reinstated.

So for example, the terror-related charges against Rashid Rauf were dropped last December but quietly reinstated a short time later. He was brought to court several months after his arrest but the police had not yet filled out a proper charge sheet. He was promised a quick appearance months ago and instead the term of his detention has been repeatedly extended.

I will try to keep you posted on the strange and bogus case of Rashid Rauf, alleged mastermind.

~~~

nineteenth in a series.

7/7 Press For Truth Begins

Survivors and families of the victims of the 7/7 London subway bombings "began legal action on Thursday to force the British government to hold an independent inquiry" according to a report from Reuters, which says:

The group argues official accounts of the suicide bombings on London's transport system carried out by four young British Islamists have been insufficient, inaccurate and misleading.
...

The 7/7 inquiry group, made up of bereaved relatives and those who escaped the bombings, says the refusal to hold a public inquiry breaches the European Convention on Human Rights and intends to seek a judicial review of that decision.

Lawyers for the group said the papers were being served at the High Court on Thursday.

As some of us remember, the bombings happened more than two years ago and there has never even been the pretense of an investigation.

The attacks were transparently bogus at the time, so I beg to disagree with Cliff Tibber on one point:

"Firstly we say that the decision of the former Home Secretary (interior minister) not to order an inquiry was irrational," Cliff Tibber, head of litigation at Oury Clark, told Reuters.

Deciding not to order an inquiry after a blatantly false-flag attack is anything but irrational. It's deliberate obstruction of justice. But Cliff Tibber is exactly right on this point:

"Secondly there is a positive duty under article 2 of the Human Rights Act in these circumstances to order an inquiry." The first hearing at the High Court is unlikely to take place until October.

The British government's so-called "justification" for refusing to investigate is as lame as you can possibly imagine:

The government has rejected demands for an independent review of the bombings, which opposition politicians have also called for. It says an inquiry would distract stretched security services when Britain is at serious risk of attack.

"As we have consistently maintained, experience has shown that a fuller public inquiry can take years and divert huge resources," a Home Office spokeswoman said earlier this month.

We can spend billions and kill thousands in a war on terror to avenge this crime and prevent further such events, but we don't have the time or the money to find out what actually happened? It's rubbish, of course, and it smells just like the 9/11 variety, doesn't it?

The alleged suicide bombers allegedy put their bombs in their packs and carried them aboard the trains and buses they rode, and which then blew up. But pictures of the damage seemed to show the undercarriages blasted up rather than down. Oops! Better get rid of those pictures!

The 7/7 inquiry group says there are vital unanswered questions that need to be addressed, particularly how much the authorities knew about two of the bombers, ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, before the attacks.

They were photographed, recorded and followed by intelligence operatives several times in early 2004 in the company of plotters who have since been jailed for planning attacks using fertilizer-based bombs.

The government said in the aftermath of the July 7 strikes that all the bombers were "clean skins" who had not previously crossed the authorities' radar.

The group says that means an inquiry is needed to determine whether the government had failed in its duty to protect life.

Reuters casts these questions -- questions surrounding the two alleged bombers the government allegedly knew about -- as if they were the heart of the matter. But they're only the beginning of it.

"We would very much like answers to the questions we have raised. We don't understand why we haven't received them," Jacqui Putnam, who was on board the train blown up by Khan, told Reuters.

Maybe distance is important, or maybe background, or maybe both ... but I do understand why they haven't received any answers. It's because the known facts don't fit the official fiction.

Why were there drills going on in the exact same stations at the exact same times as the bombs went off? Because that's the way false-flag attacks are organized. The drills provide cover for anyone who needs it.

Why was Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Finance Minister and former Prime Minister, warned to stay in his hotel that morning, and who from Scotland Yard told him not to board the train in the nearby station which was about to explode? Why were reports of this incident available on the morning of 7/7 but not later -- how did they all suddenly disappear?

If you want more questions, watch this video.

Ludicrous Diversion

Then watch this one:

Mind The Gap

And now, if you want some answers, look here (or here).

How the Government Staged the London Bombings in Ten Easy Steps

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet | July 13 2005

1) Hire a Crisis Management firm to set up an exercise that parallels the terrorist attack you are going to carry out. Have them run the exercise at the precise locations and at the very same time as the attack. If at any stage of the attack your Arabs get caught, tell the police it was part of an exercise.

2) Hire four Arabs and tell them they're taking part in an important exercise to help defend London from terrorist attacks. Strap them with rucksacks filled with deadly explosives. Tell the Arabs the rucksacks are dummy explosives and wouldn't harm a fly.

3) Tell four Arabs to meet up at London Underground and disperse, each getting on a different train. Make sure Arabs meet in a location where you can get a good mug shot of them all on CCTV which you can later endlessly repeat to drooling masses on television.

Paul nails it! You can read the rest (and click the links) here (or here).

Just in case you needed a reminder, this is it: 9/11 wasn't the only bogus terror attack.

Every large-scale attack underpinning the GWOT is full of fishy holes, just like this one.

And that's why refusing to hold an inquiry was the most rational thing the British authorities could have done.

Convicted For Having An Altered 9/11 Poster In His Room

You'd better be careful what you do with Photoshop: The obviously faked graphic at right is apparently legit because it puts the approved bad-guys -- or a reasonable caricature thereof -- at the scene of the crime. But you wouldn't want to mess with it too much.

Awaab Iqbal, 20, of Bradford, England, was convicted under Section 57 of Britain's Terrorism Act, found guilty of "having articles for terrorism", and has been sentenced to three years' detention, after police found a poster on which he had "swapped his face and those of friends for the faces of the 9/11 terrorists".

I can answer your immediate questions right away.

No, you can't make this stuff up, or at least I can't.

Yes, this is the world's most bogus terror conviction to date, at least that I know of.

And Yes, I got it from a reliable source: the Scotsman.

Student guilty of terrorism charge for altered 9/11 poster

A FIFTH student was found guilty yesterday of a terrorism offence. Awaab Iqbal, 20, of Bradford, had swapped his face and those of friends for the faces of the 9/11 terrorists on a poster.

He was found guilty under Section 57 of the Terrorism Act of having articles for terrorism.

The charge related to material found on his computer and in his room after an investigation was launched when 17-year-old Mohammed Irfan Raja ran away from home to be a martyr.

Iqbal had admitted editing the 9/11 picture to include himself, two other defendants and friends.

Welcome to the GWOT, where the unbelievable is commonplace.

DANGER! Cheesy Terror Warnings May Be Hazardous To Your Democracy

Herald Net of Everett, Washington has a good piece on the scary monster du jour. It draws on reporting from the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times and I've quoted quite a bit but not all of it. You can read the original here:

A day of terror warnings

WASHINGTON - Airport security officers around the nation have been alerted by federal officials to look out for terrorists practicing to carry explosive components onto aircraft.

Whoa! Why?

The warning came to light Tuesday just hours after a top U.S. military commander said he believes there are al-Qaida cells in the United States.

Ahhh.

Also, President Bush presented his most detailed and lengthy argument that al-Qaida in Iraq was essentially the same organization that attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001.

I always get nervous when I see the lies start to cascade like this. This particular sequence of manure takes me back to last August. Are we gonna see another avalanche of bullshit?

The alert, based on four curious seizures at airports since September, was distributed on July 20 by the Transportation Security Administration to federal air marshals, its own transportation security officers and other law enforcement agencies.

The seizures at airports in San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore included "wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances," including block cheese, the bulletin said. "The unusual nature and increase in number of these improvised items raise concern."

Did we get that right? Four "curious seizures" since last September amounts to a day of terror warnings? And the increase in this number -- all the way up to four! -- indicates that terrorists may be trying to carry explosive components onto aircraft? Wow! This is better than Michael Chertoff's gut.

You see what's happening here, don't you? People are so heavily propagandized that they'll panic and evacuate an airport and seize a "curious" block of cheese. Then the propagandists count the evacuations and the seizures and pretend these are actual evidence of actual threats, which they then feed into the Homeland inSecurity echo chamber. More curious seizures? Let's have another alert! Thus, more fear, more panics, more "curious" seizures, more alerts, more fear, and so on, in a self-feeding -- ultimately self-devouring! -- cycle.

So watch out for cell phones, wires, tubes or pipes, switches, and blocks of cheese -- but be especially careful with those tubes -- they could be parts of the internet!

Do you think I'm joking?

Security officers were urged to keep an eye out for "ordinary items that look like improvised explosive device components."

Now everybody who ever watched McGyver is in trouble.

"There is no credible, specific threat here," TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said Tuesday. "Don't panic. We do these things all the time."

I know they do these things all the time; that's what so bizarre. There's no credible, specific threat -- so let's make big deal of it! No worries; we do this all the time! Just look for ordinary items and be very afraid!

Earlier Tuesday, Air Force Gen. Victor Renuart, who heads U.S. Northern Command, said the military needs to triple its response teams to counter a growing threat of attack.

Triple? Why only triple? Seriously! Isn't it easier to multiply by ten? Why don't they just move the decimal point and call it the new NORTHCOM budget? Look how much we would save on our budgeting process! And we know none of the money would be wasted, right?

OK, ok, I'll try to be less emotional. Are we talking about evidence here?

"I believe there are cells in the United States, or at least people who aspire to create cells in the United States," Renuart said. "To assume that there are not those cells is naive and so we have to take that threat seriously."

Wow! It's another "I believe"! Welcome to the faith-based approach to counter-terrorism.

But it's not a total loss because there are now multiple questions on the table: let's deal with them one at a time.

Are there terror cells in the United States? We'll look at that question in a moment.

Are there in fact people who aspire to create such cells? Yes indeed! Most of them are working for the FBI, trying to reduce their drug sentences -- or simply looking to make a few bucks. To be fair, others may see themselves as "moderate Muslims" responding to the government's call for help against the "extremists". But they're all out there, looking to put together little terror plots that can then be busted, providing wave after wave of propaganda the government could never get without all these little entrapment schemes.

As for attacks, he added: "Am I concerned that this will happen this summer? I have to be concerned that it could happen any day."

There you go: any day, anywhere, anytime, be very afraid. I have to be concerned, you have to be concerned, we all have to be concerned, it could happen any day, anywhere, anytime, be very afraid...

It's a familiar tune, isn't it? You could almost dance to it!

Other U.S. officials said last week they did not know of al-Qaida cells in the United States.

Of course they don't. If they did know of any terrorist cells getting ready to strike, those terrorists would have been arrested by now. Or at least one would hope so. There's no need in our post-9/11 world to be picky about due process anymore; law "enforcement" can just say "terror suspect" and the rights of the accused "terrorist" vanish. So if the terrorists are getting ready to strike and the authorities choose not to arrest them, it must be because the authorities want them running free.

If there are terrorist cells and the authorities don't know about them, then we're hopeless. With an eighty-eight zillion dollar per year national security budget, a no-holds-barred approach to domestic and international surveillance, and military-police boundary lines getting blurrier all the time, a terrorist cell that was ready to strike would be foolish to sit still. And yet we haven't heard from them. Could this be because they're not there?

On the other hand, are there people, institutions, corporations ... with an interest -- financial or otherwise -- in keeping us terrorized? Of course there are; otherwise I would have nothing to blog about and I could go back to my previous "normal" life, with my wife and my kids -- heck, I could even get some sleep.

If you're wondering how much credibility I assign to Air Force Gen. Victor Renuart, the answer is:

Listen! On a separate but related lie,

Bush sought to rebut his critics' assertion that the Iraqi group was not a threat to American security.

To those who argue that al-Qaida in Iraq is purely an Iraqi phenomenon, Bush said, "That would be news to Osama bin Laden."

I didn't think dead guys watched the news. But I guess you learn something new every day.

Whether or not it's true may be a more difficult question. But look at this:

Citing security details he declassified for his speech,

This little detail shows exactly what Bush thinks of "national security". Would he -- and Cheney, and Rove --- use classified information for political purposes? Don't tell me they wouldn't. They do it all the time. And here is a prime example.

But a word of caution is in order, for Bush/Rove/Cheney would not be above lying even while pretending to divulge national secrets. The cover story -- that the president is revealing "security details he declassified for his speech" -- is useful to the spin-meisters in two ways: First, it can mask a change in the legend, the "official story" behind which all the vital truths are hidden. They can make up a new lie and put it out under the story that "these details have been classified until now", implying (or stating explicitly) that the conventional wisdom -- i.e. the previous "legend", now untenable -- was wrong.

And regardless of whether the new story is a lie or the truth, the very visible presidential leak of classified information reinforces the sheepishness of those who believe the president should steer the ship of state because he knows more than we do -- and he can't afford to tell us what he knows because our nation's security depends on keeping these things secret ... oh wait, then why is he divulging classified information?

It makes no sense ... until you realize that Bush is trading national security for political capital.

And every time you think it can't possibly get more absurd, it does!

Bush said al-Qaida in Iraq was founded not by an Iraqi but long before U.S. forces invaded the country by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who set up operations with terrorist associates in Iraq. Zarqawi formally joined al-Qaida in 2004 and pledged allegiance to al-Qaida chief bin Laden, Bush said.

Sure, he did. Really. I mean, would George Bush lie to you?

Bush added: "The merger also gave al-Qaida's senior leadership, quote, 'a foothold in Iraq' to extend its geographic presence, to plot external operations and to tout the centrality of the jihad in Iraq to solicit direct monetary support elsewhere."

We've been watching this for years -- I call it "the puppet shuffle". Shakespeare was born too soon: the phrase "full of sound and fury and signifying nothing" was made for this nonsense; too bad it's already "used".

American forces killed al-Zarqawi in 2006; he was replaced, Bush said, by an Egyptian, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who had "deep and long-standing" ties to senior al-Qaida leadership.

Who else has "deep and long-standing" ties to senior al-Q'aeda leadership? C.I.A!! C.I.A!!

At the time, bin Laden dispatched a senior deputy to aid al-Masri, but the aide was captured and has been sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

... where he's currently upside-down in a bucket of water, confessing to the assassination of President McKinley!

"The fact that Osama bin Laden risked sending one of his most valued commanders to Iraq shows the importance he places on the success of al-Qaida's Iraqi operations," Bush said.

The idead of a dead man maneuvering all these CIA assets around on the global chessboard is nothing less than astonishing.

If and when his body is ever accidentally discovered, I say rather than going along with George Bush's idea ("screw him in the ass"), we should put him in a museum.

But that's not what you came here to find out.

What's going on here? Clearly this is just another part of a long-running buildup, whose aims include martial law -- in effect if not in name -- at home, and expanded war abroad.

But how? Perhaps if we're sufficiently frightened of the warnings, we'll just fall to our knees and beg for martial law to be declared, and then Cheney can have his war with Iran -- and throw anyone who doesn't like it in prison -- without having to nuke Chicago.

On the other hand, maybe we're smarter than that, and maybe whipping us into line will take something much larger -- like multiple nukes in multiple cities, and possibly another US Army lab-certified biological attack against any domestic "dissident leaders" dumb enough not to fall into line.

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of darkness? I'll bet they've prepared half a dozen different scenarios.

How can we prevent them all? -- that's the question!

For starters, I think we should stop leaving blocks of cheese in the airports.

They count that cheese, my friends -- and it becomes a Weapon of Mass Distraction.