On August 16, two men were escorted off a plane headed for Manchester, England, because some passengers thought they looked either Asian or Middle Eastern, might have been talking Arabic, wore leather jackets, and looked at their watches — and the passengers refused to fly with them on board.  The men were questioned for several hours and then released.

On August 15, an entire airport terminal was evacuated because someone’s cosmetics triggered a false positive for explosives. The same day, a Muslim man was removed from an airplane in Denver for reciting prayers. The Transportation Security Administration decided that the flight crew overreacted, but he still had to spend the night in Denver before flying home the next day.  The next day, a Port of Seattle terminal was evacuated because a couple of dogs gave a false alarm for explosives.

On August 19, a plane made an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida, after the crew became suspicious because two of the lavatory doors were locked. The plane was searched, but nothing was found. Meanwhile, a man who tampered with a bathroom smoke detector on a flight to San Antonio was cleared of terrorism, but only after having his house searched.

On August 16, a woman suffered a panic attack and became violent on a flight from London to Washington, so the plane was escorted to the Boston airport by fighter jets. “The woman was carrying hand cream and matches but was not a terrorist threat,” said the TSA spokesman after the incident.

And on August 18, a plane flying from London to Egypt made an emergency landing in Italy when someone found a bomb threat scrawled on an air sickness bag. Nothing was found on the plane, and no one knows how long the note was on board.

I’d like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets, or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics.  The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.

We’re all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.

In truth, it’s doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline tickets, and some didn’t even have passports.

Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers’ perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they’ve succeeded.

Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up ten planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that’s basically what’s happening right now.

Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we’re terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists’ actions, and increase the effects of their terror.

(I am not saying that the politicians and press are terrorists, or that they share any of the blame for terrorist attacks. I’m not that stupid. But the subject of terrorism is more complex than it appears, and understanding its various causes and effects are vital for understanding how to best deal with it.)

The implausible plots and false alarms actually hurt us in two ways. Not only do they increase the level of fear, but they also waste time and resources that could be better spent fighting the real threats and increasing actual security. I’ll bet the terrorists are laughing at us.

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn’t engage in pointless airline security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn’t write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn’t use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we’d reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It’s time we calm down and fight terror with anti-terror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation — and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show’s viewership.

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn’t make us any safer. […]Incidents:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=401419&in_page_id=1770 or http://tinyurl.com/k5njg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/5267884.stm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/17/national/main1906433.shtml
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/08/18/doctor-winnipeg.html or http://tinyurl.com/emnox
http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/08/16/100wir_port1.cfm
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/states/florida/counties/broward_county/15321870.htm or http://tinyurl.com/s5oxe
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-20-fbi-passenger_x.htm
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/08/17/1155407916156.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6024132,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5283476.stm
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11211166
There have been many more incidents since I wrote this — all false alarms.  I’ve stopped keeping a list.

The chemical unreality of the plot:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/print.html or http://tinyurl.com/eeen2
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/msg00087.html or http://tinyurl.com/etrl8
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/14/tatp_about_that_pyro.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2306994,00.html

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/10/us.security/index.html
http://www.wondermark.com/d/220.html
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/08/wait-arent-you-scared.html

This essay also makes the same point that we’re overreacting, as well as describing a 1995 terrorist plot that was remarkably similar in both materials and modus operandi — and didn’t result in a complete ban on liquids.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/08/17/airport_futility/

My previous related writings:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-096.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-038.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/terrorism_secur.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-087.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-045.html

This essay originally appeared in Wired:
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71642-0.html

Uh oh.
Bruce is wrong to say that terrorists cause terror “sometimes out of sheer hatred”. This is never the case. Terrorists are highly intelligent men who have internally logical reasoning for their actions and tactics, that anyone would turn to if they were in their shoes. The americans did 200 years ago. The Israelis did, to get their own state. The ANC did to rid themselvs of Aparthied. Were all of these people acting out of ‘sheer hatred’?

I think not.
To say that governments do not share any of the blame for terrorist attacks is beyond naive. It is a matter of public record that many governments use terror attacks for political ends.

If you do not believe the facts, that is stupid. Stupid and dangerous.

Part of having real security means understanding the whole problem. What bruce is doing by saying that governments are not involved in terrorism is the same as saying that a computer connected to the internet without a firewall is safe from tampering because the keyboard and mouse have been removed. He should know better. Its not hard to find out the facts about the true nature of terror both in this and the last century, and if you are going to write about solving this problem, you must at least study it in its entirety and not from the spoon fed pabulum perspective of “they hate our freedom”.
Bruce is right however in saying that there are things our government(s) can and should do to fight terrorism; the primary one is not to terrorize other people in their own countries.

Americans are astonishingly insular and ignorant of their own history. Even the highly intelligent ones. This is why we are in the situation we are in today.  By all means, do not travel out of your own country; be ignorant of everywhere else in the world, but for heavens sake, pay close attention to what your own government is doing in your name.

You remember the scene from a Simpsons episode, where Bart keeps trying to grab a cake, even though each time he does it he gets an electric shock?

The US government has been accused of trying to undermine the Chávez government in Venezuela by funding anonymous groups via its main international aid agency. …

Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (Coha) in Washington yesterday [said] “The US is waging diplomatic warfare against Venezuela.”

He said that while the US had accused Mr Chávez of destabilising Latin American countries, the term “destabilisation” more aptly applied to what the US was trying to do to Mr Chávez.

[…]

I would file this under ‘normal service’.

Given the bloody history of US intervention in South/Central American policitcs, not to mention Bush’s previous worldwide, you’d think they’d realize this cake is wired to the mains.

But no. Anything in the name of spreading ‘democracy’: someone awake in 2003 said “In Bush-speak, “democracy” has been perverted to mean U.S. imperial hegemony: nations run by puppet rulers who make all the right noises”

Incredibly, ‘terrorism’ originating in South America against US targets doesn’t seem to exist to any great extent. Who’s betting that will remain the case?

Blair has created over 3,000 new criminal offences during his time in office – one for every day of his tenure and six times the amount created by Tory predecessors John Major and Margaret Thatcher. Allied with a raft of authoritarian anti-terror legislation, social behavior mandates and hate speech restrictions – ridiculous measures such as criminalizing the nomination of a neighbor to turn off your house alarm have also been introduced.

The so-called ‘liberal’ Blair has instituted a police state that obliterates anything the traditionally imperious Tories could ever get through.

In addition to the frenzied lawmaking, Blair has overseen the abolition of jury rights, handing cases likely to last over 3 months to the dictate of a single judge, criminalized any protest not authorized by the government under the Serious Organised Crime Act, mandated the entry of any protester into a terror database upon police questioning, created glorification of terror laws that are so sweeping they could apply to any form of free speech, eradicated habeus corpus by introducing house arrests and ever-increasing time lengths of detention without charge, attacked the notion of guilty until proven innocent by imposing curfews for under 16’s, supported the use of intelligence knowingly obtained from torture in Uzbekistan and allowed the use of British airports for the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of terror suspects, created framework for the introduction of mandatory ID cards and implemented a national DNA database that stores records for eternity even if the suspect is acquitted of their crime.

Using the fear of terror, Blair has presided over the destruction of liberty in Britain and the final act may be another devastating attack to herd the sheep back into their pens and leave the path clear for a Tory takeover and a continuation of the same Neo-Fascist doctrine. […]

The Watson Report

80%. That’s alot of people!

We have to get to the point (like the Spanish have) that even if there is another attack, it will not be enought to get the population ‘on side’.

But I said this before!

I had a ‘heads up’ to watch a re-run of a 2003 episode of ‘Dinner with Portillo‘. This is a discussion programme where Tory Michael Portillo chats around a dinner table with the great and the good and the thick, discussing current events. The episode is entitled ‘Ameria’.

Last nights episode featured Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, George Galloway MP, and Rosemary Righter, chief leader writer The Times.

It was PRICELESS.

All of the idiotic blinkered jackasses, cheifly Rosemary Righter, were ridiculed in the light of the Iraq debacle by their own narrow minded, inexperienced foam mouthed blatherings, all of which proved to be wrong. Georgeous George was TOTALLY VINDICATED, as he predicted absolutely and perfectly, the situation that Iraq is in right now.

Portillo came off looking silly. The Guardian writer displayed that anemic innefective posture that they are so good at. The american displayed every trait that caused the programme to have to be made in the first place. Once again, most revolting and disturbing was Rosemary Righter; venemous, unrepentant, lie barking, slandering monster, the type of which is responsible for all of our troubles and of whom there seem to be an unlimited supply.
When the history of all this is written by an honest person, George Galloway will finally be revealed as the only honest person who understood the whole problem and told the trugh throughout.

Ariel Sharon, the incapacitated former Israeli Prime Minister, is wearing an SS uniform. A man with Jewish side locks is depicted as a vampire drinking from a container marked ‘Palestinian blood’. An Arab figure is impaled to the ground by the absurdly long nose of a man in a black hat characteristic of orthodox Jews and marked ‘Holocaust’.At their worst, the images conform to lurid western stereotypes of Iran as a hotbed of anti-Semitism, as evoked by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dismissal of the Holocaust as a ‘myth’.

They are among the results of a competition run by the country’s biggest-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, to find the ‘cleverest’ cartoons satirising the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis in the Second World War.

More than 200 images have gone on public display in an exhibition at Tehran’s Palestine Contemporary Art Museum. The exhibition’s opening was attended by the de facto Palestinian ambassador to Iran, Salah al-Zawawi, who has full diplomatic status in Tehran.

Organisers say they received about 750 entries from around the world, including America and Britain, as well as many Muslim countries. The winning entrant will be announced next month and will receive a prize of US$12,000 (£6,380).

The contest, condemned by Israel and Jewish organisations, was launched in February in response to widespread Muslim outrage at the publication of Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in European newspapers. It followed a series of anti-Israeli outbursts from Ahmadinejad, including a call for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.

Massoud Shojai Tabatabai, director of the Iranian House of Cartoons which co-ordinated the project, said its aim was to challenge perceived western double-standards on free speech, which Iran’s leaders insist precludes openly debating the authenticity of the Holocaust.

‘Why is it acceptable in western countries to draw any caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, yet as soon as there are any questions or doubts raised about the Holocaust, fines and jail sentences are handed down?’ Tabatabai told The Observer.

That sentiment finds expression in a split-image cartoon from a Brazilian entrant in which a stand-up comic is portrayed performing in a venue called the West Club. In one image, captioned ‘Making jokes about Islam’, the comedian is greeted with raucous laughter. But the accompanying picture, marked ‘Making jokes about the Holocaust’, shows him being booted out of the window.

The exhibition’s other themes are a contention that the death toll of the Holocaust is exaggerated and a comparison of the Nazis’ behaviour with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The latter is explored in a cartoon, purportedly by a Belgian Jewish artist, in which two parallel railway lines – one marked with a swastika, the other with a star of David – merge before leading into a building resembling Auschwitz and bearing the slogan ‘Welcome home’. […]

Graniaud

I wonder if the Guardian printed any of these drawings…or any other newspaper running this story for that matter. hmmmmmmm!

While we are on the subject of publishing, they apologise today for publishing the name of someone who they said was arrested in the phony turrr plot, but who in fact was not arrested at all. They do not say how they made this mistake, they just say ‘sorry’. They should also say ‘sorry’ for whipping up hysteria whenever these false plots are unleashed to scare the the (half)wits out (there) of(in) the public.

And here is a TV report on the exhibition, via MEMRI.

Last night, I had the pleasure of watching Rambo III, which I had not seen for many years.
Every scene was a jaw dropping WTF ‘can you believe it?’ moment.

That film … you MUST see it if you have not yet done so … is an upside down inside out mirror of what is happening today, with the Americans replacing the Soviets word for word and action for action. For example:

• The Soviet commanders call Rambo ‘a terrorist’
• The Soviets murder innocent people playing a polo game en masse, and mow down women and children from helicopters
• The Soviets run a hellish torture dungeon / prison where they use electricity and all manner of barbarisms
• Insert your own comparison here

Honestly, If anyone  in 1988 (the date this film was released) had said that the USA would be doing EXACTLY what the Soviets were doing in teh middle east, only MUCH WORSE, they would have been laughed at, but now….its not a joke; its actually happened.

This film is a montage of all the bad behaviour that is going on, but with the characters swapped around. The only constant is the suffering and injustice poured upon the resident populations.

This film is old. Many of the people who will be watching it now were probably born around the time that it was made. I wonder what on earth they make of it? They do not have the cold war mindset backdrop to put it into perspective like we had; it must seem like a very strange affair indeed, with Russians blowing women and children to bits and the Americans saying ‘In-Sha‘-Allah‘ with the same frequency as Lord Bush refers to tuurrrrrsts.

This world…its all upside out and inside down.

Dear Dr. Waldron, All my life I was affected by the tragic end of Mr. Lumumba. My father could not explain why this very intelligent and lovely man who was the incarnation of our socio-political dreams and hopes was killed with the blessing of the USA president of the time, UN general secretary and the local leaders of the time, My question is why Lumumba was so hated? Why nobody could hear him and understand him objectively? Why king Baudouin who was so intelligent and religious could not take time to discuss with Lumumba to know him better and understand his vision for his home country? From South Africa to Algeria, Egypt to Ivory Coast, I heard similar stories of the best men who were killed to satisfy the international community.

Dear Rev. Doctor, I don’t think anyone in America had anything personal against Lumumba. They did listen to him and they understood very well what he had to say, and that is why Western economic interests killed him. Lumumba was killed by the European and American mining and banking interests because Lumumba was the only person who could hold the Congo together after Independence, and those economic interests wanted to break the Congo apart for their own profit. In order to justify killing Lumumba, they had to create the propaganda lie that he was a Communist. The assassination of Lumumba also suited the Russians who could not control Lumumba alive, but after his death could wrap their man Gizenga in his mantle. Lumumba was doomed. If the West hadn’t killed him, Russia would have, and Lumumba’s Congolese political rivals were equally determined to get rid of him so they could carve out their own little kingdoms within the Congo. This was not just Tshombe in Katanga, but do not forget that Kasa-Vuba originally called himself King Kasa in his election campaign, in which he promised to make his own ethnic group an independent entity. In the months before Independence, most of the Belgians in the Congo knew perfectly well that the Belgian Government, for the sake of the profits of Union Miniere de Haut Katanga and its other economic interests, was already engineering the conditions in which the Congo could not survive as a unified country. The Royal Family of Belgium were major stockholders in Union Miniere de Haut Katanga, and King Baudouin of the Belgians was just as profit motivated as the notorious King Leopold II was when he set up that company to exploit the mineral riches of the Congo. Ordinary born-Congolese Whites and those among the provincial administrators who were caring and honest, were outraged by what the government in Belgium was doing, not just to the African Congolese, but to the White Congolese. You can read more about this in the Luluabourg excerpt from my book THE SECRET IN THE HEART OF DARKNESS; The Sabotaged Independence of the Belgian Congo, which is on this Web site There is a saying in English, that to understand something you “Follow the Money”. Therefore, don’t look for answers to what happened to the Congo in political ethics, or animosities, or misunderstandings of what Lumumba was saying and wanted to do. Look for the answers in who was planning to profit. The people who were behind the chaos and the murder of Lumumba then looted the Congo of all its resources both through taking them directly and through loans to Mabutu at crippling interest rates to have European companies the lenders designated build (or in many cases not actually build) unneeded huge projects while letting the basic infrastructure crumble, impoverishing the country and depriving the people of the necessities of life to service the debts. The people of the Congo need peace, good government, and a viable infrastructure, and I do not know how any of these can be attained in the present conditions of corruption, chaos, war and poverty. A BOOK I RECOMMEND TO SERIOUS SCHOLARS: THE CONGO CABLES THE COLD WAR IN AFRICA–FROM EISENHOWER TO KENNEDY Author: KALB, MADELEINE G MACMILLAN, 1982, These are the actual cables back and forth between Washington, the Congo and the UN.

Source: D’Lynn Waldron

Stumbled across this speech from 1950 that contains a few things to think about and a few things you may disagree with (Controversy? We need controversy!):

The constitutions of former American slave states generally specified that the masters must provide their slaves with adequate housing, food, medical care, and old-age benefits. The Mississippi constitution contained this following additional sentence: “The legislature shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves . . . [except] where the slave shall have rendered the State some distinguished service.”

The highest honor that Mississippi could offer a man for distinguished service to his country was personal responsibility for his own welfare! His reward was freedom to find his own job and to have his own earnings, freedom to be responsible for his own housing, freedom to arrange for his own medical care, freedom to save for his own old age. In short, his reward was the individual opportunities-and the personal responsibilities-that have always distinguished a free man from a dependent.

What higher honor can any government offer?

But many present-day Americans are trying to avoid this personal responsibility that is freedom. They are voting for men who promise to install a system of compulsory, government-guaranteed “security”-a partial return to the old slave laws of Georgia that guaranteed to all slaves “the right to food and raiment, to kind attention when sick, to maintenance in old age. . . .” And the arguments used to defend this present-day trend toward the bondage of a welfare state are essentially the same arguments that were formerly used to defend the bondage of outright slavery.

For example, many of the slave-holders claimed that they knew what was “best for the slaves.” After all, hadn’t the masters “rescued” the slaves from a life of savagery? The advocates of government-guaranteed “security” also claim that they know what is best for the people. Many of them argue in this fashion: “After all, haven’t the American people conclusively shown that they are incapable of handling the responsibility for their own welfare?”

Many of the slave-holders sincerely believed that the “dumb, ignorant slaves” would starve to death unless their welfare was guaranteed by the masters.

And the advocates of compulsory “security” frequently say: “Are you in favor of letting people starve?”

But as proof of the fact that personal responsibility for one’s own welfare brings increased material well-being, consider the emancipated slaves. Among them, there were old and crippled and sick people. They had no homes, no jobs, and little education. But-most precious of all-the former slaves were responsible for their own welfare. They were free . They had the privilege of finding their own security. . . .

The advocates of this compulsory “security” honestly seem to believe that most Americans . . . are too ignorant, or lazy, or worthless to be trusted with their own destiny; that they will literally starve in the streets unless their welfare is guaranteed by a “benevolent” government. However good their intentions may be, these disciples of a relief state are demanding that they be given the power to force mankind to follow their plans. In the name of liberty they advocate bondage!

This is true because the persons who receive support from the state are thereby led to expect-and then to demand-more support from the state. They become dependents. Thus they enter into a form of bondage. They lose their individual freedom of choice to whatever extent the state assumes responsibility for their personal welfare. In time, as is now the case in the welfare state of Russia, the people become completely subservient to the state. In effect, they become slaves of the “benevolent” government that has promised to solve all of their personal problems for them!

Admittedly, this is not the intent of the planners. Apparently, most of the advocates of government paternalism really believe that they are able to know and to do what is “best” for all of the people. Most of them may honestly desire to help the people. But their efforts always result in some form of bondage. . . .

In Russia we find another example of the fact that good intentions are no guarantee of freedom. For instance, in the beginning Lenin and Stalin probably had no desire whatever to bring slavery to Russia. Their announced plan was to free the Russian people from the slavery of an all-powerful government. But look what happened!

[…]

[The American Revoltionaries] knew that the main purpose of government should be to protect whatever security the people were able to attain individually or in voluntary cooperation. They knew that electing or appointing a man to public office cannot endow him with wisdom; it can endow him only with power . Thus they took no chances on this power of government being used to encroach upon their individual liberties and their personal responsibilities. In advance, they put positive restrictions on all officeholders. And as a final guarantee of freedom, they specified that any powers not expressly given to the federal officials were to remain with the individual citizens and their local governments.

[…]

And just as the Russians are enslaved to a welfare state, so this country is being carried into bondage by accepting the same false principle. Just as force is used in Russia to make the people conform to the security laws designed “for their own good,” so we also are now forced to submit to American security laws designed “for our own good.” And just as the Russian state punishes any objector, so the American state will now imprison us if we refuse to conform.

If you doubt that compulsory socialism has gone to that extreme in this country, just test it, for instance, by refusing to pay the social security tax that is taken from your salary. The government will do the same thing to you that it did to the owner of a small battery shop in Pennsylvania who balked at the idea of compulsory social security. First, the state confiscated his property. Still he refused to obey. Then the state preferred criminal charges against him. And in January of 1943, the government gave him the choice of conforming or going to prison as a criminal-an enemy of the state because he refused to pay social security! He paid. And his six-months prison sentence was suspended. . . .

[…]

Before choosing, however, consider this: When one chooses freedom-that is, personal responsibility-he should understand that his decision will not meet with popular approval. It is almost certain that he will be called vile names when he tries to explain that compulsory government “security”-jobs, medicine, housing, and all the rest-is bad in principle and in its total effect; it saps character and strength by encouraging greed and weakness; it destroys the individual’s God-given responsibility for self-help, respect, compassion, and charity; in some degree, it automatically turns all who accept it into wards of the government; it will eventually turn a proud and responsible people into cringing dependence upon the whims of an all-powerful state; it is the primrose path to serfdom.

No, the choice is not an easy one. But then, the choice of freedom never has been easy. It never will be easy. Since this capacity for personal responsibility-freedom-is God’s most precious gift to mankind, it requires the highest form of understanding and courage.

Dean Russell was a member of the staff at The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, when he delivered this speech in 1950.

Interesting, especially if you update the meaning of security to cover what our governments are legislating against and consider the shifting of the focus of personal responsibility from empowering the individual to informing the State that the National Identity Register, Automatic Number Plate Recognition schemes (etc.) embody.

Liquid Bomb Pakistan Link Is False Flag Smoking Gun
Veracity of liquid explosives method also put under dubious doubt

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | August 13 2006

Revelations concerning the origins and connections of the alleged liquid bomb terror plot to Pakistan and the 7/7 bombings in London provide a strong indication that the operation, known for months yet deliberately timed for public release, was a synthetic ruse concocted by the Bush/Blair cabal to re-package the flagging war on terror.

Media reports in the days following the alert cite Pakistan’s ISI as having identified Rashid Rauf as, “the link between the plot’s planners and British-based Muslims who were allegedly preparing to carry out attacks on transatlantic flights.”

According to former NSA official Wayne Madsen, the Lashkar-e-Toiba terror group, to which Rashid Rauf is affiliated, is wholly operated and funded by the Pakistani ISI.

The Pakistani ISI is a CIA front and controls terror cells at the discretion of the highest levels of the US military-industrial complex. This means that the potential mastermind of the liquid bomb plot, Rashid Rauf (pictured), was operating under the oversight and direction of Pakistani and by proxy American intelligence agencies.

To understand why the Pakistan link strongly indicates that Thursday morning’s terror alert was a manufactured ruse, it is necessary to understand the the nexus that connects Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and terrorist organizations.

In October 2001, under the headline ‘Pakistani Intelligence Had Links to Al Qaeda, U.S. Officials Say,’ the New York Times reported, “The intelligence service of Pakistan, a crucial American ally in the war on terrorism, has had an indirect but longstanding relationship with Al Qaeda, turning a blind eye for years to the growing ties between Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, according to American officials.”

The ISI has received CIA funds to create and control militant organizations, including the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Funds transferred from Pakistan bankrolled the alleged 9/11 hijackers before the attack. Ahmad Umar Sheikh wired $100,000 from Karachi to alleged lead hijacker Mohammed Atta at the behest of ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad. If this isn’t a direct link from the ISI to Al-Qaeda then nothing is.

Porter Goss, later appointed as director of the CIA, was having breakfast with the money man behind the terrorists as the planes crashed on the morning of 9/11. Ahmad had also met with top defense and intelligence officials in Washington in the days before the attack, including then CIA director George Tenet, Pentagon officials, and White House personnel.

The fact that the Pakistani financier of the alleged hijackers was meeting with the top brass of the US government in the week before the attack was never investigated by the 9/11 Commission.

In addition, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was repeatedly protected by the ISI, according to Josef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.

Defense Intelligence Agency documents dated from 2001 clearly indicate that the CIA is aware that Pakistan’s ISI supports and bankrolls Al-Qaeda groups but they have deliberately chosen to ignore the connection.

This rich history of ISI creation and protection of terrorist cells, allied with the fact that the ISI is a known CIA front, and added to the revelation that the mastermind of the liquid bomb plot Rashid Rauf is under ISI control, it is therefore obvious to conclude that the entire charade was cooked and orchestrated by elements of the Bush/Blair cabal and sold as promotional propaganda for the increased surveillance and behavioral control of UK and US citizens.

At the very least, the terror cell had been fully infiltrated for months – this has already been admitted – and the snap “foiling” of the attack was coordinated and stage-managed for purposes of political grandstanding on the part of Bush, Blair and the Neo-Fascist apparatus that seeks to use the ailing justification of the war on terror for a future military incursion into Iran.

Another dimension to the indication that we are being fed another hoax, are reports detailing the alleged plot’s links to the 7/7 London bombings.

As this website has exhaustively documented for over a year, the 7/7 bombings and the patsies that were used to take the fall for them, were controlled and engineered by the British intelligence apparatus.

The alleged ringleader of the attack which targeted three tube trains and one bus, Mohammed Siddique Khan, was an MI5 informant, according to former London Metropolitan Police detective and terror expert Charles Shoebridge. Therefore, in the case of the liquid bomb plot suspects, any link to the London bombers is a link to MI5.

It is clear that the scope of the attack has been greatly exaggerated by the British government to maximize fear and subservience engendered by images of alarmed and frightened airliner passengers.

Doomsday proclamations of ten planes exploding into balls of flames in mid-air do not correlate with the capacity of the liquid explosives the alleged terrorists were to use.

The only other example where terrorists used liquid explosives was the December 1994 Philippines Airline Boeing 747 incident, a dry run for a bigger plot conducted by Ramzi Youssef.

In this case, Youssef planted the explosives explosives under one of the seats in the airliner and timed them to detonate after he disembarked for a connecting flight. The subsequent explosion killed only the Japanese businessman who was sitting directly above the bomb. Besides five people with minor injuries, the other 200-plus passengers were unharmed and the plane landed safely.

Only liquid explosives in large and noticeable amounts can have any literal chance of “blowing up” a plane in mid-air. Confiscating pregnant white women’s lip gloss is completely insane and proves in itself that the new airport measures are purely designed to act as a PR coup for the police state.

In addition, photographs of passengers being ordered to pour liquids into one single container completely belies the claim that the alleged terrorists planned to mix the liquids to create the deadly explosives. If mixing liquids was a key component of the bomb making process then why are airport security ordering people to mix liquids?

World Affairs Brief editor Joel Skousen highlights prescient questions about the inconsistencies of the properties of the alleged liquid explosives in relation to the much vaunted scale of the foiled attack.

“The supposed explosive device this time was a Peroxide-based explosive, which is mildly explosive and can be prepared from acetone, hydrogen Peroxide, and an acid catalyst. This type is claimed by governments to be “widely in use by terrorist groups,” though we have no known terrorist events where it has been used, except by one Palestinian terrorist, and then as a detonator only-not as the main charge. This explosive material is usually known by its abbreviation TATP (Tri Acetone Tri Peroxide),” writes Skousen.

“Both Peroxide and Acetone are clear liquids, but acetone (laquer thinner) is easily identifiable by smell and its high rate of evaporation. Experts indicate it is very unstable and highly unlikely to be a stand-alone explosive to take down an airliner. The quantities would have to be large enough to be easily noticed. Thus, even though this is a theoretical threat, banning all cosmetics and lotions is stupid and banning all liquids is unnecessary. Only clear liquids need checking. There is cheap test equipment for TATP, and simple ways for TSA employees to quickly check for acetone and peroxide.”

Returning to how the latest plot is a mirror image of Operation Bojinka – the Ramzi Youssef link is also telling because Youssef has been protected and coddled by the US government at every juncture.

In September of 1992 Youssef entered the US with Ahmad Ajaj. Ajaj’s luggage contained documents on how to make bombs and was stuffed with fake passports and ID’s. Ajaj was arrested – amazingly Youssef was released.

Youssef later masterminded the WTC ’93 bombing with the gracious help of FBI agents. Having penetrated the group before the bombing, the FBI’s mole, Emad Salem, was told to arm the terror cell with dummy explosives so a sting operation could ensnare the perpetrators. Salem was mystified when the orders changed, the sting was called off and the FBI allowed the bombing to go forward. This was all admitted in an October 1993 New York Times front page story.

Again, any Operation Bojinka or Ramzi Youssef link in the case of the liquid bomb plot is a link back to western intelligence agencies.

Within three days of its exposure, Tony Blair and MI5 are already milking the alleged plot for political purposes in re-introducing the argument for 90-day detention without charge legislation. Blair suffered his only defeat to date in the Commons last November when the bill was shot down by Labour rebels – a humiliating rejection of the so-called ‘liberal’ government’s feverish bloodlust for authoritarian control.

Reports of criminal insider trading on airline stocks before the announcement of the alleged foiled plot, specifically British Airways stocks, have also started to filter in and will be the subject of a follow-up investigation. […]

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/130806liquidbomb.htm

Paul Joseph Watson goes where no one else will go, ties it all together, presents the citations and cleans up the mess. Thre is no excuse for believeing the murder inc lies; if HE can do it, any ‘journalist’ can do it.

“Why don’t they” is the question that you need to be asking. Or not. We don’t need them to join the dots, after all.

Take a look at the long promo for this film:

http://www.freedomtofascism.com/index.html

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. […]

http://infowars.com/

This speech is astonishng for many different reasons. Its age, its applicability to today, the contrast between that american president and the present one. Listen to it…

Hairarchives

Project SHAMROCK, considered to be the sister project for Project MINARET, was an espionage exercise that involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data entering into or exiting from the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and its successor NSA were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegraphs via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. Operation Shamrock lasted well into the 1960s when computerized operations (HARVEST) made it possible to search for keywords rather than read through all communications.

Project SHAMROCK became so successful that in 1966 the NSA and CIA set up a front company in Lower Manhattan (where the offices of the telegraph companies were located) under the codename LPMEDLEY. At the height of Project SHAMROCK, 150,000 messages a month were printed and analyzed by NSA agents. In May 1975 however, congressional critics began to investigate and expose the program. As a result, NSA director Lew Allen terminated it. The testimony of both the representatives from the cable companies and of director Allen at the hearings prompted Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Frank Church to conclude that Project SHAMROCK was “probably the largest government interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken.”

One result of these investigations was the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which limited the powers of the NSA and put in place a process of warrants and judicial review.
“Operation Shamrock” was also the name of a plan to bring chidren to Ireland from post World War II Germany

• ECHELON: America’s Secret Global Surveillance Network
• The NSA’s Global Spying Network | by By Patrick S. Poole
• The National Security Agency: The Secret Unveiled
• Development of Surveillance Technology & Risk of Abuse of Economic Information | PDF
• Schneier on Security: Project Shamrock
• House report on Project Minaret and Project Shamrock

[…]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK

[…]

I know many people—I am one of them—who were not born here, nor have the applied for citizenship, and who yet love America with deeper passion and greater intensity that many natives whose patriotism manifests itself by pulling, kicking, and insulting those who do not rise when the national anthem is played. Our patriotism is that of the man who loves a woman with open eyes. He is enchanted by her beauty, yet he sees her faults. So we, too, who know America, love her beauty, her richness, her great possibilities ; we love her mountains, her canyons, her forests, her Niagara, and her deserts—above all do we love the people that have produced her wealth, her artists who have created beauty, her great apostles who dream and work for liberty—but with the same passionate emotion we hate her superficiality, her cant, her corruption, her mad, unscrupulous worship at the alter of the Golden Calf.

We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is the world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily being outrages, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform ; when free press is curtailed and every independent opinion gagged. Verily, poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world? We further say that a democracy conceived in the military servitude of the masses, in their economic enslavement, and nurtured in their tears and blood, is not democracy at all. It is despotism—the cumulative result of a chain of abuses which, according to the dangerous document ,the Declaration of Independence, the people have the right to overthrow.

The District Attorney has dragged in our Manifesto, and he has emphasized the passage, “Resist conscription.” Gentlemen of the jury, please remember that that is not the charge against us. But admitting that the Manifesto contains the expression, “Resist conscription,” may I ask you, is there only one kind of resistance? Is there only the resistance which means the gun, the bayonet, the bomb or flying machine? Is there not another kind of resistance? May not the people simply fold their hands and declare, “We will not fight when we do not believe in the necessity of war”? May not the people who believe in the repeal of the Conscription Law, because it is unconstitutional, express their opposition in word and by pen, in meetings and in other ways? What right has the District Attorney to interpret that particular passage to suit himself? Moreover, gentlemen of the jury, I insist that the indictment against us does not refer to conscription. We are charged with a conspiracy against registration. And in no way or manner has the prosecution proven that we are guilty of conspiracy or that we have committed an overt act.

[…]

Emma Goldman

And others

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps:

collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist;
negotiation;
self-purification;
and direct action.

[…]

As in so many past experiences, our hopes bad been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves : “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?” We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic with with-drawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

[…]

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

[…]

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant ‘Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

[…]

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

[…]

Martin Luther King’s letter from Birmingham jail

Elite special forces unit set up

Soldiers will bear the unit’s own insignia

An elite force has been set up to strengthen counter-terrorism and support special forces, Defence Secretary John Reid has confirmed. The Special Forces Support Group (SFSG) based in Wales, will be drawn from Royal Marines, Parachute Regiment and the RAF Regiment.

Its insignia is a dagger run through by a lightning flash.

Based at St Athan, the SFSG will train with special forces to be deployed around the world at short notice.

In a statement to the House of Commons on Thursday, Defence Secretary John Reid said: “The new Special Forces Support Group will enhance the capability of the UK Special Forces to operate around the world and will provide the UK with an additional counter-terrorist capability.

“I am pleased to be able to inform the House that the new Special Forces unit stood up, as planned, in St Athan, near Cardiff on 3 April.”

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4928028.stm

Hey, that logo looks familiar: