New Labour New Airport PR stunt
August 10th, 2006It should be a cause for concern that only hours before the latest greatest ‘foiled terror plot’ (a dusted-off rehash of Operation Bojinka), Home Secretary John Reid was proclaiming in another speech to Labour think-tank Demos, that traditional liberty was old fashioned and had to make way for whatever fanatical social realignment Gordon Brown and Blair desired.
To add a dash of New Labour-flavoured pretext to this dangerous nonsense, was the statement that another terrorist plot was effectively imminent:
“The hyperactive home secretary – who will mark 100 days in the job this Friday – confirmed that a terrorist attack on the UK was “highly likely”, as signalled by the current “severe” warning on official government websites” Guardian
Could it be that former-communist Reid, one of Blair’s favourite multi-purpose attack dogs, reshuffled into position as Home Secretary, swapping out former-communist Clarke after Labour’s rightly disastrous May council elections, was not clairvoyant put merely refering to the political/security timetable, arranging his speech (or adjusting the content of it) just pre-arrests and resulting kerfuffle at airports accordingly to an operation he knew was imminent ?
As Home Secretary, it seems difficult to imagine that Reid would not have been aware of what was behind the ‘severe’ warning (which had been fed out into the press in recent days).
Today “..Reid, said such an attack could have caused civilian casualties on an “unprecedented scale”.
Indeed, but it seems it was quite under control:
“A decision was made to move suddenly following months of surveillance […] There were no firm indications of plans for an attack to have been carried out today, but the US homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, said it was a “well advanced” scheme. He said the plot was based in Britain but was “international in scope”.
So let’s get this straight. A well advanced ‘plot’ which had been under surveillence for months, and which there are no firm indications it was being enacted today, is rounded up the day after Reid’s speech telling people to give up their liberty because another terrorist event was imminent.
“The decision to take action was made with the “full knowledge” of Tony Blair, the prime minister, who is abroad on holiday but has been in constant contact with ministers about the unfolding events and spoke to president Bush overnight about the situation”
As such, the event has been spectacularly successful in wiping Israel’s now escalating ground invasion of Lebanon, rubber-stamped by a vacationing Blair, off the front pages. […]
Jultra!
August 11th, 2006 at 9:31 am
Have you seen… Reid changed his speech.
John Reid was due to give a major speech on immigration on Wednesday as part of his ongoing restructure of the Home Office. Instead, he devoted his address to terrorism, speaking passionately about the nature of the threat and how critics of police and government tactics were putting national security at risk.
[…]
Mr Reid may not have known then that the police were going to have to act within hours of his speech, but he would have known about the details of the plot and that the police and the security service were going to act, probably within days. […]
Yeah, right!
August 11th, 2006 at 9:51 am
An article on The Register with the laidback response of US officials to the UK’s full on security alert yesterday: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/10/usa_not_impressed/
US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff appeared relaxed, even amused, during a Washington press conference where he explained the American response to the UK airport terror emergency.
“A few security inconveniences will be put in place until the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) figures out how better to deal with the threat of liquid explosives that the British believe are now in play. (For a good primer on improvised explosives using household chemicals, see this Naval Postgraduate School thesis.)
The new measures are confined to preventing US travelers from carrying liquids into the aircraft cabin, with exceptions for common-sense items such as drugs and infant formula. Otherwise, US passengers will be permitted to carry the usual items on board.
The overall terror threat level for airlines has been raised from yellow to orange, except that the level for UK flights bound for the USA has been raised to red. When asked why DHS had made this exception, Chertoff explained that it was meant to harmonize the US assessment with the British assessment: a polite way of saying that, for now, America is willing to humor UK officials.
Chertoff’s demeanor and body language belied any notion that there’s a serious emergency. This means either that US officials are quite underwhelmed by the UK’s evidence of a feasible terrorist plot, or that the US government’s casual indifference toward catastrophic loss of life and property, as exhibited when New Orleans was destroyed, is the new American attitude.
In favor of option one, we have a recent history of British eagerness to announce breakthroughs in the struggle against the forces of darkness, with nothing to show for it. We have Jean Charles de Menezes shot to bits at point-blank range for behaving oddly just after the 7/7 atrocity. We have the imaginary ricin plot. We have the imaginary chemical bomb plot. And we have the imaginary red-mercury suitcase nuke plot.
There’s been a lot of crying wolf in London, so it should surprise no one to find that the Americans have heard enough of it. (Although, to be fair, Washington has trumpeted its share of counterterrorist breakthroughs involving semi-harmless losers, but that’s no reason for them to buy into anyone else’s.) […]