Flights from UK ‘escape US bans’

Passengers flying from UK airports will not be affected by a EU-US row over US demands for information on passengers, the British government has said.

The Department of Transport (DoT) said it had taken out an air navigation order, so planes flying to the US would escape potential American landing bans.

So, where there was actually no potential at all for any sort of ban, since the economic damage would be so great as to make such a move impossible, HMG decides to cave in anyway.

It means airlines can pass information to the US without running into legal trouble under data protection laws.

The action came as a deal between the EU and US remained in doubt.

A DoT spokesman said: “We took out an air navigation order so planes could have a legal basis for data transfer while the EU-level talks are ongoing.

“It’s a patch, if you like.”

Only in the ‘up is down’, ‘black is white’, ‘day is night’, ‘fast is slow’, ‘true is false’ world of this insane war criminal government could anyone possibly call an action that FACILITATES LEAKS be called ‘a patch’.

You cant make shit like this up.

Planning ahead

Paul Charles, Virgin Atlantic’s director of communications, said the British government had good foresight to put the legal patch in place.

“They took it on that if there was not a deal between the EU and the US then this patch could take effect.

“It means airlines can carry on as normal as if the argument had never occurred, and the agreement was not about to run out.

“It means airlines can go on providing the passenger data that the US require without facing possible legal action.”

In other words, Virgin Atlantic doesn’t care about the privacy of its passengers. And that is a very serious thing indeed. It is one matter to be compelled by the law to do something immoral and then to be affronted by it, but to say that violating your passengers privacy is a GOOD THING is simply astonishing.

Deadline

European and American officials had been holding talks to resolve the dispute on the transfer of airline passenger data before it ran out on Saturday.

The row began in May, when the European Court of Justice ruled against a deal set up following the 9/11 attacks.

Under this agreement, European airlines agreed to supply the American authorities with detailed information about passengers flying into the US.

The two sides had until Saturday to replace the deal, with the Americans warning it may fine airlines or deny them landing rights if they refused to provide such data.

The US government believe the information is vital in their fight against terrorism and called for even more access to information. […]

BBQ

We all know that this is completely bogus, and the only reason why they want this is to violate the ordinary citizen going about his totally lawful business. I wonder if any other EU countries have ‘patched’ their regulations, and wether or not a legal challenge can be mounted against HMG for violating the rights of the passengers that leave from here to the usa.

Now, for those that feel the compelling need to go to the usa, it is the best bet to take another, non British, carrier so that your personal data remains just that; personal.

Civil liberties
“Let liberty stand up for the law-abiding”, Mr Blair insisted as he defended his record on civil liberties and ID cards. He said there was a fundamental dilemma: “How do we reconcile liberty with security in this new world?
“I don’t want to live in a police state or a Big Brother society or put any of our essential freedoms in jeopardy. Because our idea of liberty is not keeping pace with change in reality, those freedoms are in jeopardy.” […]
Independent

???!!!

Run that by me again?

‘Liberty’ is not a person. It is a property that human beings either have or do not have. It cannot stand for or against anything. Only people can stand up for something.

There is no ‘fundamental dilemma’ this is another Bliar lie. The world is no different now to what it has been in the past, and human nature has not changed over the last twenty years. We have clear evidence of this in Bliar’s predilection for lying, his lust for Orwellian ‘Police State on Crack’ superpowers and his total disregard for the rights of human beings both here and abroad.

The fact that he can even ask such a question, “How do we reconcile liberty with security” puts the badge of fascism on his breast. Security can never be paid for by anything other than humility and respect for other human beings. When you BOMB THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of other people’s countries, YOU MAKE YOURSELF INSECURE. This is obvious, to anyone who is a normal human being, and anyone with even a slight understanding of foreign policy in the twentieth century.

Liberty is the same as life itself for a human being. With that in mind, how can you possibly say, “how do re reconcile life with security?”. Its all nonsense on stilts of course. But you know this.

“I don’t want to live in a police state or a Big Brother society…”

That is a lie. His sons are going to have to live in such a place if nothing is done to undo the damage that Bliar has done to Britain. His own son was caught drunk on a bench in Leicester Square, and had it happened more recently, he would find himself on the DNA database, with a criminal record, just for being drunk. This is the very police state that Bliar has brought into being. For him to say that he does not want to live in such a place, can only mean that he intends to leave Britain, since he has no intention of fixing what was not broken and which he smashed with his communist hammer.

Because our idea of liberty is not keeping pace with change in reality, those freedoms are in jeopardy.

Your ‘idea of liberty’ is not the true face of liberty. Period. Liberty is fixed. It does not change over time, as human beings do not change over time. Liberty is a principle that is immutable. Our freedoms belong to US, and are not currency to be bartered while you experiment with foreign policy adventures (matches). Bliar is right that our freedoms are in jeopardy; in jeopardy from the likes of him and his slobbering mad dog successor, ‘the gargoyle turd’, Brown.

The final insult cam thusly:

in the years to come, wherever I am, whatever I do. I’m with you. […]
Full Text

Bliar puts himself in the position of GOD.

Good riddance to bad rubbish: Bliar.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

America Freedom To Fascism

There are many great documentaries out there today. We are finally seeing the critical mass of both near zero cost distribution and  super cheap filming and editing equipment coming together in a runaway chain reactoin of information that is literally changing the world before our eyes.

Now all we need is the next element to go critical; the mass refusal of the population to engage with the global insanity that has gripped this world. A world-wide chain reaction of non cooperation with the nonsense, warmongering, waste and unrefined sleaze that makes all of our lives less pleasant than they should be.

Big Brother is not only watching you – now he’s barking orders too. Britain’s first ‘talking’ CCTV cameras have arrived, publicly berating bad behaviour and shaming offenders into acting more responsibly.

The system allows control room operators who spot any anti-social acts – from dropping litter to late-night brawls – to send out a verbal warning: ‘We are watching you’.

Middlesbrough has fitted loudspeakers on seven of its 158 cameras in an experiment already being hailed as a success. Jack Bonner, who manages the system, said: ‘It is one hell of a deterrent. It’s one thing to know that there are CCTV cameras about, but it’s quite another when they loudly point out what you have just done wrong.

‘Most people are so ashamed and embarrassed at being caught they quickly slink off without further trouble.

‘There was one incident when two men started fighting outside a nightclub. One of the control room operators warned them over the loudspeakers and they looked up, startled, stopped fighting and scarpered in opposite directions.

‘This isn’t about keeping tabs on people, it’s about making the streets safer for the law-abiding majority and helping to change the attitudes of those who cause trouble. It challenges unacceptable behaviour and makes people think twice.’

The Mail on Sunday watched as a cyclist riding through a pedestrian area was ordered to stop.

‘Would the young man on the bike please get off and walk as he is riding in a pedestrian area,’ came the command.

The surprised youth stopped, and looked about. A look of horror spread across his face as he realised the voice was referring to him.

He dismounted and wheeled his bike through the crowded streets, as instructed.

Law-abiding shopper Karen Margery, 40, was shocked to hear the speakers spring into action as she walked past them.

Afterwards she said: ‘It’s quite scary to realise that your every move could be monitored – it really is like Big Brother.

‘But Middlesbrough does have a big problem with anti-social behaviour, so it is very reassuring.’

The scheme has been introduced by Middlesbrough mayor Ray Mallon, a former police superintendent who was dubbed Robocop for pioneering the zero-tolerance approach to crime.

He believes the talking cameras will dramatically cut not just anti-social behaviour, but violent crime, too.

And if the city centre scheme proves a success, it will be extended into residential areas.

The control room operators have been given strict guidelines about what commands they can give. Yelling ‘Oi you, stop that’, is not permitted.

Instead, their instructions make the following suggestions: ‘Warning – you are being monitored by CCTV – Warning – you are in an alcohol-free zone, please refrain from drinking’; and Warning – your behaviour is being monitored by CCTV. It is being recorded and the police are attending.’

Mr Bonner said: ‘We always make the requests polite, and if the offender obeys, the operator adds ‘thank you’. We think that’s a nice finishing touch.

‘It would appear that the offenders are the only ones who find the audio cameras intrusive. The vast majority of people welcome these cameras.

‘Put it this way, we never have requests to remove them.’

But civil rights campaigners have argued that the talking cameras are no ‘magic bullet’, in the fight against crime.

Liberty spokesman Doug Jewell said: ‘None of us likes litterbugs or yobs playing up on a Saturday night, but talking CCTV cameras are no substitute for police officers on the beat.’ […]

Daily Mail

How long will it take for people to start SMASHING these cameras and their associated equipment?

It’s true. It’s weird. It’s nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against … Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo.

Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a “critical national security structure” in Louisiana.

On August 22, for LinkTV and Democracy Now! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It’s been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW’s (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere. One resident, Pamela Lewis said, “It is a prison set-up” — except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes.

To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nation’s second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth.

So we filmed it. Without Big Brother’s authorization. Uh, oh. Apparently, the broadcast of these stinking smokestacks tipped off Osama that, if his assassins pose as poor Black folk, they can get a cramped Airstream right next to a “critical infrastructure” asset.

So now Matt and I have a “criminal complaint” lodged against us with the feds.

The positive side for me as a journalist is that I get to see our terror-busters in action. I should note that it took the Maxwell Smarts at Homeland Security a full two weeks to hunt us down.

Frankly, we were a bit scared that, given the charges, we wouldn’t be allowed on a plane into New York last night. But what scared us more is that we were allowed on the plane.

Once I was traced, I had a bit of an other-worldly conversation with my would-be captors. Detective Frank Pananepinto of Homeland Security told us, “This is a ‘Critical Infrastructure’ … and they get nervous about unauthorized filming of their property.

Well, me too, Detective. In fact, I’m very nervous that this potential chemical blast-site can be mapped in extreme detail at this Google Map location

What also makes me nervous is that the Bush Terror Terriers have kindly indicated on the Internet that this unprotected critical infrastructure can be targeted — I mean located — at 30º 29′ 11″ N Latitude and 91º 11′ 39″ W Longitude.

After I assured Detective Pananepinto, “I can swear to you that I’m not part of Al Qaeda,” he confirmed that, “Louisiana is still part of the United States,” subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser.

Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations. [See “A Well-Designed Disaster: the Untold Story of the Exxon Valdez.“]

So I rang America’s top petroleum pusher-men and asked their media relations honcho in Houston, Marc Boudreaux, a simple question. “Do you want us to go to jail or not? Is it Exxon’s position that reporters should go to jail?” Because, all my dumb-ass jokes aside, that is what’s at stake. And Exxon knew we were journalists because we showed our press credential to the Exxon guards at the refinery entrance.

The Exxon man was coy: “Well, we’ll see what we can find out…. Obviously it’s important to national security that we have supplies from that refinery in the event of an emergency.”

Really? According to the documents our team uncovered from the offices of Exxon’s lawyer, Mr. James Baker, the oil industry is more than happy to see a limit on worldwide crude production. Indeed, the current squeeze has jacked the price of oil from $24 a barrel to $64 and refined products have jumped yet higher — resulting in a record-busting profit for Exxon of nearly $1 billion per week.

So this silly “criminal complaint” has nothing to do with stopping Al Qaeda or keeping the oil flowing. It has everything to do with obstructing news reports in a way that no one would have dared attempt before the September 11 attack.

Dectective Pananepinto, in justifying our impending bust, said, “If you remember, a lot of people were killed on 9/11.”

Yes, Detective, I remember that very well: my office was in the World Trade Center. Lucky for me, I was out of town that day. It was not a lucky day for 3,000 others.

Yes, I remember “a lot” of people were killed. So I have this suggestion, Detective — and you can pass it on to Mr. Bush: Go and find the people who killed them.

It’s been five years and the Bush regime has not done that. Instead, the War on Terror is reduced to taking off our shoes in airports, hoping we can bomb Muslims into loving America and chasing journalists around the bayou. Meanwhile, King Abdullah, the Gambino of oil, whose princelings funded the murderers, gets a free ride in the President’s golf cart at the Crawford ranch.

I guess I shouldn’t complain. After all, Matt and I look pretty good in orange.  […]

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/palast.php

The government of Sudan started seizing and quarantining laptop computers for inspection last week, ostensibly to stem the import of pornography and seditious material. Official assurances that the inspection of each laptop will take no more than 24 hours have done little to assuage fears of foreign visitors. Many are understandably reluctant to hand over collections of business and personal information for Sudanese officials to pore over in search of hostile or titillating tidbits.

Like many government policies across the globe, this directive was apparently drafted with a clear social goal in mind, but with little understanding of the use and pace of technology. Surely anyone serious about transporting intelligence information or treasonous material will use methods of encryption and obfuscation that would take more than a few hours of inspection to discover. Likewise, pornography has a way of finding its way to interested consumers no matter how it’s hampered. In any case, one would think the low-wattage beacons of leadership in Khartoum would have more pressing business in Darfur.

While the Sudanese government has been on spin cycle for half a century, the country’s leaders have been able to stabilize certain technology and energy-related aspects of the economy over the past few years. Recent ventures away from an otherwise solidly agrarian market have brought an increase in the number of affluent nationals and foreign businesspeople traveling in and out of the country — each carrying little devices with lots of data. Apparently it occurred to government officials that they didn’t understand what was in the devices and that the devices might be the conveyance for objectionable material. […] Computer World

Its clear that people are going to have to use tunneling and disposable laptops for travel. The scenario is this; you don’t want anyone to look at your private stuff. You need to be in another country on business, and you need to access your email / docs when you are there. You cannot bring your laptop with you, because some fascist will confiscate it, mirror the drive and then return it to you with a hardware keystroke logger installed. You need have a cheap terminal that you take with you, that runs a cut down version of hardened linux, the image for which you can download from a server at your HQ. When it unpacks and you install it, it sets up an SSH tunnel to your server, through which all your communication takes place. This laptop needs to be tamper evident, i.e., it uses anti tampering technology to let you know if the swines have opened up your box to put a keylogger in. If there are signs of tampering, then you simply discard it, and you have no email for this trip. If the box is intact, you go ahead and download your image and then start work once its up and running. You can even keep this image on a USB key. Anyone can have a copy of this image it is the credentials that you provide to your server at HQ that makes this image yours and allows you to access your stuff through the secure tunnel….

Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know…

… that the notorious No Child Left Behind Act includes a sneaky section that requires high schools to turn over private information on students to military recruiters?

And that the Pentagon has created an illegal database of 30 million 16-25 year-olds, including names, addresses, email addresses, cell phone numbers, ethnicities, social security numbers, extracurricular activities, and areas of study?

Yikes. What do we do? Any way you look at it, this is a family privacy nightmare, another strong-arming of our local schools, and a creepy warm-up to a possible draft. However, it’s also a great reason to get together and take action.

So, whether you’re a parent, teacher, school administrator, veteran or just another adamant American concerned about privacy rights, look for an action that you like and JOIN US!

http://themmob.org/lmca/

How about if you refuse to pay for these ‘services’ that you don’t need or want?

Three Bills Threaten the Constitution and Your Privacy

In the Senate, the Cheney-Specter Bill (S. 2453), would enshrine in federal law the president’s claim of inherent, exclusive power to set government spies loose on your phone calls and emails at will, without any individualized warrant or independent check.  It would also give officials complicit in the government’s illegal spying program a “get out of jail free card” by re-writing the criminal code after the fact, exempting the government from FISA.

The Cheney-Specter bill would make individualized warrants optional while allowing a secret court to rubber-stamp the wholesale surveillance of Americans, without even knowing the names of the Americans to be wiretapped or whether they’ve done anything wrong.

Also in the Senate, Senator DeWine’s “Terrorist Surveillance Program Act of 2006” (S. 2455) makes judicial review of wiretaps optional and permits government spies to engage in surveillance for several weeks without any court order or oversight at all.  Even after spying on potentially innocent Americans for 45 days, the Bush administration could bypass judicial approval, deciding for themselves if they want to follow the Constitution or not.

In the House, the Cheney-Wilson Bill (H.R. 5825) would allow the president to secretly search Americans’ homes, businesses, conversations and e-mails without warrants for months at a time if there were an attack.  The bill would also make judicial review “optional” for wiretapping Americans after 90 days of warrantless surveillance, and obviously optional rules providing a judicial check do not square with the mandatory check required by the Constitution.  Both the Cheney-Specter bill and the Wilson bill also redefine the meaning of electronic surveillance to allow more warrantless surveillance of Americans through the back door.

It would literally put our rights in the hands of terrorists, allowing an attack on any US territory to suspend our constitutional right to have a warrant issued before the government searches our homes and offices, or secretly listens in on our conversations.

Your calls today and in the weeks to come will help make sure your elected officials know you are counting on them to stand up to the Bush-Cheney White House and protect your rights by voting against these bills.

One of the underlying problems with any legislation on the NSA warrantless wiretapping program is that Congress has yet to hold any real, substantive investigation into the issue and get any commitment from the president that he will actually follow any laws on the books, let alone new laws.  Lawmakers must not legislate in the dark on an issue with such broad implications for our fundamental privacy rights.  Just recently, a federal judge in Detroit found the program to be illegal and unconstitutional.  The court, in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, noted that, “there are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.”  No president has the power or the right to break the law and disregard the Constitution. […]

ACLU

There are no hereditary Kings in America.

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?

Old News….

The concept of never being able to carry a liquid on a plane again has me rapt with JOY! I feel… I feel… so SAFE. I hope the next step is to have built-in stomach pump SECURITY TECHNOLOGY at airports. Crazy, you say? No, YOU’RE crazy. Everyone has terrorist-sponsored deadly HYDROCHLORIC ACID in their stomachs, PERFECT to bring down an entire plane in a flaming horror going straight to hell. With this new deadly STOMACH ACID PLOT, even your very NEIGHBOUR could be the terrorizer!! Be sure to report their every move to your local police station, ESPECIALLY if there’s a tree involved.

ALRIGHT. Is that fear boiling pretty good now? Ready to be manipulated? Yeah? Okay, here we go:

Airport ban on carrying liquids is permanent, warn security chiefs

Barrie Clement / London Independent | August 25 2006

The 200 million passengers who pass through British airports each year will face high levels of security “permanently”, senior government officials say.

Passengers will be ban-ned from taking liquids bought outside the security screening zone on an “enduring basis”, security experts at the Department for Transport (DfT) said.

The officials indicated that any relaxation of the rules would depend on the development of technology able to detect all potentially explosive liquids, the perceived level of threat and the experience gained from operating the procedures.

At present, the equipment was only partly successful. “It is a big step to go from a concept that works in the lab to one that works in a complex airport environment,” the experts said.

But don’t think they want to make the technology easier to use in the airports – quite the contrary! Total success will ONLY be acheived when security lineups spill out the doors and onto the streets. If passengers aren’t being treated like pigs at a battery farm, the government isn’t doing enough to SERVE them.

The rest of this article goes on much like the bbq piece posted earlier, wait… uh… it’s a LOT like the bbq piece posted earlier… er… you wouldn’t suspect this to be a cut-and-pasted PR piece would you? Why, that would be not only SHOCKING but also SURPRISING!

But MEGA X-RAYZ are not the only helpful new technology coming your way from your friends at the airport. But don’t stop flying, okay? Because that means the terrorists have won. (wait, who are the terrorists again?…)

The agenda is clearly to maintain a state of alert and panic until such a time that reverting back to ‘normal’ and ‘reasoned’ security measures is forgotten – the new normal becomes the insane and displaying any traits of disobedience to authority figures is taken as a sign of terrorism. Lie detector tests, voice stress analysis technology, advanced screening which produces naked images of passengers along with brain scanner and perspiration tension analysis systems are all being implemented as the notion of innocent until proven guilty is jettisoned without recourse.

The airports are merely a beta test for the exact same measures to be rolled out in major cities, where regular checkpoint officials inspect internal passports and consumers are body scanned to enter a supermarket or any kind of public event as spy drones swoop overhead to catalogue movement and alert authorities to any suspicious body language (remember Poindexter’s gait analysis?).

The key to achieving all this on the part of the Neo-Fascists is to carry out more staged terror attacks on soft targets like sports stadiums, schools and large shopping malls. In terms of police state propaganda, these attacks would be more effective than a 9/11 style event because the implications would reach down into the roots of everyday life.

After more soft target terror attacks on buses and trains, citizens will be forced to biometric scan and show ID just to enter the transport station. Resistors who refuse to take a national ID card and eventually an implanted ID chip will be punished by their exclusion from a trusted travelers program that denotes how well a citizen has behaved and compares that score to the criteria of how and when they can travel. Nationwide toll roads snaking across the US and Britain that use RFID signals at toll booths and instant kill switches in private vehicles will see this nightmare extend its tentacles into the personal vehicle of every citizen.

The majority of what I outlined is already being implemented at major transport and police hubs in the US and Britain. When the technology to automate these measures is more widely used, its cost will drop and in turn spread like wildfire outside of the major cities and into local communities – unless we scream bloody murder and stop it before it makes it out of the airport terminal and onto our street corners. […]

The Watson Report

I agree with this report, except for one point.

Screaming bloody murder is not a strategy. It is on the same level as marching, petion writing and all other pointless, innefective, 20th century energy sapping political strategies.

The only way that this ‘beta’ test is going to be proven to be a failure, and the nationwide rollout prevented is if the small number of people who use the airlines, for a stretch of 14 days, engage in a total boycott of all flights going into or coming out of the UK. As I said before, the root cause all of this is money. The airlines cannot withstand any kind of well organized boycott. These regulatoins can be dismantled in 21 days or less, and all it will take is one organized action to pull it off.

It will be seen that the beta test has failed, and not only that, the understanding of the new rules of engagement will be revealed to everyone at once.

Nothing less than this will do to solve the problem. The tools to do it ar in our hands. All you have to do is…DO IT.

Do I have to spell out how to organize a boycott? I sure hope not.

The threat of liquid explosives would remain, as it was not possible to “uninvent” a threat, but the ways in which it was dealt with could change, officials said.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5281896.stm

The mind BOGGLES at the illogic of these people.

They invent a threat, and then say everyone must suffer because they cannot uninvent what they have invented!

The comletely bogus ‘ricin plot’ is no different from this ‘liquid bomb plot’. It is a fiction, an invention, a fairy tale, a sham, a circus, a fraud, a deception, a shake-down, a fourberie, a ruse.

I’ll tell you about ‘uninvention’; the beasts who are behind this are going to be uninvented very shortly, at the polls.

This absurd baggage ban demonstrates that the Soviet yearning snakes at the helm are wiling to destroy Britain as a place of culture…without any reason whatsoever. This is hardly surprising; after all, they think that Ballet is not suitable for charity status since it is a ‘liesure activity’ and not an art. Classical music? Like private schools, its for the elite only, not fit for charitable status and should be banned altogether.

This is the true nature of the unimaginable beasts that have taken over this country. They have now locked all fine instruments into Britain and locked out all fine instruments. This means that if Hélène Clerc-Murgier wants to come here with her instrument, she cannot. It means that all classical musicians in the UK cannot get out with their instruments.

This is total insanity.

For years people have been threatening to blow up planes…and sometimes they got away with it. At no time did anyone ever suggest that everyone everywhere should be penalized due to the actions of a small number of people, and that was in the days when the threat was not manufactured; in the days of the Red Brigade, Baader-Mienhof, and Carlos ‘The Jackal’ . Are we now supposed to cower like dogs because a couple of bearded STUDENTS chat about ‘bombz’ on teh internetz?

Come on!

The UK Terror plot: what’s really going on? August 14, 2006

Craig Murray [former British ambassador to Uzbekistan]

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth.

The gentleman being “interrogated” had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for “Another 9/11”. The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that “Some people don’t get” the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

For those who don’t know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party’s “Enforcer”, (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students’ Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the “Loner” profile you would expect – a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity – that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti- terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few – just over two per cent of arrests – who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered. […]

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/index.html

The comments of both the Guardian and The Times today are totally immersed in the paralell reality of Bliar and the entirely owned Murder inc. subsidiary.

The first comment on The Guardian (where they have the guts to allow comments) demolishes that insane diatribe entitled, “These ludicrous lies about the West and Islam” perfectly:

“What an appropriate headline this column has.

You forget, for example, that there were American soldiers in Saudi Arabia from very early in the 1990s, well before the WTC bombing.

You forget the vicious overdone sanctions and continual bombing of Iraq both of which continued throughout the 1990s.

You refer three times to ‘war against Islam’ or ‘war on Islam’ – the open letter which prompted your leader does not refer to any such concept.

You write of the absurdity of implying that mass murder is less atrocious when motivated by a sense of grievance. Who has implied this? Certainly not the signatories of the letter.

You, on the other hand, write such words as ‘the conduct of the war in Iraq, regardless of the virtues of removing Saddam…has been riddled with error’. How would you react if someone were to say, ‘the conduct of Al Qaeda, regardless of the virtue of protesting US aggression, has been riddled with error’? War in Iraq and terrorism are both criminal, not simply error-ridden.

If you’re concerned about *mass* murder, about the number of killings, then Al Qaeda with a few thousand dead is to Blair and Bush, with hundreds of thousands dead, as Blair and Bush are to Hitler or Stalin or Mao, with tens of millions dead.

Al Qaeda’s terrorism and Bush and Blair’s wars are both equally unjustified.

Why are you being so defensive? It is absolutely true that Islamic terrorism is provoked by Western aggression against Moslem countries. Tony Blair does not act in the interests of the UK and its people. He doesn’t even act in the interests of the USA, rather he acts in support of George Bush’s mistaken policies.

Why is the Guardian leaping to his defence with, to use your own phrase, such ‘arrant nonsense’?”

indeed. Like I said in an earlier post no one with any education or understanding of this ‘problem’ believes the lies that are being trundled out on rusty whellbarrows by rags like the Guardian and The Times.

There is something interesting however about the screeching screed published by The Times today. It ends with;

[…] This low-level war is going to take a huge effort of will and courage. It is going to mean applying what may seem illiberal measures in order to save lives. In return, the state must exercise massive restraint and not abuse that responsibility. But the real key is for Muslims to realise that their future lies here and to embrace British values and reject violent Islamist theology. The country may indeed be in its greatest danger since the second world war, as John Reid, the home secretary, said last week. But as Britain prevailed then, so it will again.

!!!

It ends with “England Prevails”. And we all know where THAT comes from; that’s the motto of the fascist government of Britain in Alan Moore’s brilliant ‘V for Vendetta’. Whoever wrote that piece for The Times is sending a message that he knows the whole scenario, hysteria and Murdoch driven line that the paper is taking is total bullshit.

No one at The Times is so stupid or deluded that they do not understand (even if they never say so in public or in print) that what is happening today is based entirely on lies, and need not be happening at all. They are all constrained by the people who control that paper, and rather than lose their jobs, they keep quiet…which some would see as a crime…but I digress; someone in there took the risk of putting this message in the paper at a time of extreme hysteria.

Bravo to you.

Unable to window dress the obvious failure to eradicate growing resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan—even with the mighty propaganda power of a complaisant media—the neocon intelligence apparatus has staged yet another terrorist event, or would be terrorist event.

“The 21 terrorist suspects arrested in the U.K. overnight had a ‘well-advanced plan’ to detonate electronic devices or liquid explosives disguised as beverages or onboard U.S.-bound aircraft, a sophisticated plot suggestive of al-Qaeda, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said,” reports Bloomberg. “The attacks were aimed at U.S.-bound planes of United Airlines, American Airlines and Continental Airlines at London’s Heathrow Airport, the Associated Press reported, citing unidentified [undoubtedly neocon] U.S. counter-terrorism officials in Washington.”

According to White House propaganda minister, Tony Snow (Job), “The president, prime minister and their key intelligence, law enforcement and security officials have been in close and regular contact. And as you would expect, he has spoken to Prime Minister Blair about these developments in recent days.”

Considering past events, including the “terrorist events” of seven-seven and nine-eleven, we can assume select “law enforcement and security officials” were “in close and regular contact” prior to this latest would-be attack as well.

In standard fashion, in order to apply the correct spin from the outset, we are told this latest operation has “global dimensions,” that is to say it will be billed as not only an “al-Qaeda” operation but other designated “global” enemies will be fingered as well.

“Last month, the global militant group al Qaeda called on Muslims to fight those who backed Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and warned of more attacks unless U.S. and British forces pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan,” reports Reuters.

In the coming hours and days, we can expect the corporate media, eager stenographers for the neocon plan, to connect the dots—blame will be affixed to Iran, Syria, and their “proxy,” Hezbollah, through “al-Qaeda,” now dedicated (or scripted) to help Hezbollah, not that the homegrown resistance group needs any help, especially from a CIA-ISI engineered terror group.

Finally, as attention has now shifted to Muslim bad guys (either imagined or a parade of patsies), Israel will likely increase the severity of its criminal behavior against the civilians of Lebanon and those of Gaza as well, as the American public will be navel gazing video footage of inconvenienced air travel passengers. […]

Kurt Nimmo | August 10 2006

alleged, possibly, potential, supposed, it is thought, apparently…

Are we feeling scared yet?

We need to raise £10,000 to fund the emergency demonstration on Saturday 5 August and to help us build the campaign to stop the Bush/Blair wars. Please send us donations large and small. We must raise our voices. To remain silent would be criminal. […]

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

In a shameful repeat (albeing on a smaller scale) of the anti-Iraq marches and demonstrations, StopWar have once again helped fuel war, mass murder, death and destruction in the world.

Now they have the absolute audacity to ask for money to fund a demonstration!

Not only is this an insult, but it is totally and utterly insane.

But there is more.

They are asking people to:

Bring children’s shoes to the national demonstration on Saturday 5 August. We will leave them at The Cenotaph, on Tony Blair’s doorstep, to express our horror at his complicity in war crimes, which have lead to the slaughter of so many children in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan.

If this is the best these people can come up with, you would be forgiven for joining the forces of evil; no one this stupid deserves to live, let alone have their voices heard and obeyed. There are children all over the world without shoes…I mean REALLY do I have to spell it out?

I wonder too how many people drank a coffee from Starbucks during this demonstration. I noticed on Al Jazeera that in the upmarket part of Beirut there is a Starbucks. You do the math/thinking for yourself.
StopWar is a terrible energy sink, that sucks up the resources, time and money of decent people who are desperate to exert some sort of influence over the horrors being done in their name. They betray these people every time they put on a march on a Saturday, every time they march without a goal. I have been talking about this for a long time now, and frankly, I am beyond fed up with these imbeciles.
Even in the face of mass murder of children, all these people can think of is to march, knowing that it will do nothing to save a single life. This is the same Tony Bliar that ignored their last march; how delusional can they be to think that this SMALLER march will have any different result?!

If you want to do something, go and block the airport where the arms are being transferred. If you want to do something, promote the boycott against the war machine. Whatever it is you do, follow the 20AC guidelines and make sure that what you are doing will ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING.

Or STFU you scum!