The Gatorade Gambit of August 10, 2006 At Heathrow, London October 10, 2006 IHT: Terminal at London's Heathrow Airport evacuated because of a suspicious package YYC: Don't tell me, let me guess. The package had no identifying marks, it contained a Koran, nobody recalls anything about the man except that he looked "middle eastern", and the surveillance cameras were inexplicably not working at the time. September 27, 2006 CTV: U.S., Canada to relax ban on liquids and gels "We now know enough to say that a total ban is no longer needed from a security point of view." YYC: An admission that they really didn't "know enough" to arrest anybody? Or is it just that the terror of it all has had the desired impact and reinforcement, and can now be let up for a bit? The effect being that people are trained to stand in long lines, to obediently allow themselves to be subjected to invasion of their persons and property, and to be conditioned to fear terrorism so much that they will trust their government to protect them while at the same time becoming more suspicious of one another, particularly of those with brown skin. September 18, 2006 Rawstory: August terror plot is a 'fiction' underscoring police failures Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, has suggested that the police and government story about the "terror plot" revealed on 10th August was part of a "pattern of lies and deceit." ... "The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable" ... If there was a conspiracy, he added, "it did not involve manufacturing the explosives in the loo," as this simply "could not have worked." The process would be quickly and easily detected. The fumes of the chemicals in the toilet "would be smelt by anybody in the area." They would also inevitably "cause the alarms in the toilet and in the air change system in the aircraft to be triggered. The pilot has the ability to dump all the air from an aircraft as a fire-fighting measure, leaving people to use oxygen masks. All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths." YYC: We don't really need a former British intelligence officer to tell us it was all a fake, but he has anyway. It's a long article and delves into worse scenarios, so watch out for fear mongering. September 2, 2006 OpEdNews: CENSORED: The NY Times "Terror Plot" Expose They Don't Want You (Brits) to Read On 28th August 2006, the New York Times printed an investigative story on that month's 10/8 "terror plot", undermining the claims of US and British government officials, and suggesting that details had been exaggerated beyond all proportion for political reasons. The article was also published online here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/world/europe/28plot.html But interested British readers quickly discovered that they had been denied access to the article. Instead they discovered the following web message: "This Article Is Unavailable ... YYC: All to prevent "prejudicing" the case. But of course Loose Lips Chertoff was allowed to prejudice the case by saying that the attacks were imminent when they couldn't possibly have been, and others went on and on about what a massive disaster it would have been. I wonder if British customs is confiscating all subscription hard copies of the NYT arriving in the mail? At any rate, in accordance with a suggestion by the OpEd author, I have reproduced the NYT article here. And to think we turn up our noses at China. August 27, 2006 DissidentVoice: The Liquid Bomb Hoax: The Larger Implications Some of the suspects were arrested because they have traveled to Pakistan at the beginning of the school year holidays. British and US authorities forget to mention that tens of thousands of Pakistani ex-pats return to visit family at precisely that time of year. The wise guys on Wall Street and The City of London never took the liquid bomb plot seriously: At no point did the Market respond, nose-dive, crash or panic ... George Bush or Tony Blair, who were informed and discussed the “liquid bomb plot” several days beforehand, didn’t even skip a day of their vacations ... YYC: Bush also continued reading a goat story for 20 minutes after being told a second plane had crashed into the WTC. See, none of this is meant to scare the profiteers; only the sheep they fleece. August 25, 2006 12:15 PM LSE: And then there were 12 .... Umair Hussain, 24, from Chingford, east London, is charged with failing to discharge information about an act of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000 ... During an application for bail, which was rejected, his lawyer Tim Rustem told the court: "My client has been extremely cooperative with the police and is very proud to be both British and Muslim." YYC: Still proud to be British? Charged with not squealing on other Muslims who have liquids and MP3 players in their homes? August 21, 2006 1:10 PM  Click here to read COMMENTS
from readers on this issueTelegraph: Police charge terror suspects Searches had found more than 400 computers, 200 mobile telephones and 8,000 computer media items such as memory sticks, CDs and DVDs YYC: Can you imagine the homes and lives that were terrorized to carry out those 69 searches? Yet, out of 24 "terrorists", they have "evidence" against fewer than half of them, none of it hard evidence, all of it easily explained away. I personally have in my possession all of the items mentioned, including a martrydom video on my hard drive. Oh, except for one thing - I haven't got a DVD player, but if CSIS offered me a free one ... Where are those agents provocateurs when you need them? I wonder if the writers of these reports crack up giggling half way through? Do they insert those ridiculous paragraphs about searches turning up the most mundane items for the fun of it? Because even though this is terribly serious for the kids who have been arrested, the reports and the dramatizing are certainly high comedy. The searches also turned up peroxide, so if you know what's good for you, you'll get rid of your first aid kit. I don't think the police realize that the white cross on the bottle means it's GOOD peroxide - unless you drink it of course, in which case you're your own worst terrorist. August 20, 2006 10:45 AM Thanks to Rob in Toronto for suggesting this: ICH/Blum: Saved again, thank the Lord, saved again It's known as "entrapment", and it's supposed to be illegal, it's supposed to be a powerful defense for the accused, but the authorities get away with it all the time; and the accused get put away for very long stretches. And because of the role played by the agent provocateur, we may never know whether any of the accused, on their own, would have gone much further, if at all, like actually making a bomb, or, in the present case, even making transatlantic flight reservations since many of the accused reportedly did not even have passports. Government infiltrating and monitoring is one thing; encouragement, pushing the plot forward, and scaring the public to make political capital from it is quite something else. YYC: I don't know how we know that these guys didn't have passports, but it seems common knowledge. Yet officialdom wanted us to believe that the attacks were imminent, like in a couple of days. I wonder how quickly passports can be stolen, or provided by the secret police. August 17, 2006 2:45 PM AsiaTimes: Be Skeptical, be very skeptical Not surprisingly, the loudest voices of skepticism about the alleged plot are heard in Pakistan, where of course the public is habitually cynical over anything that goes to the credit of the establishment. This despite the insistent claim that the UK, US and Pakistani security agencies had actively coordinated in thwarting the plot - a scenario that cast Pakistan as a plucky, feisty partner in the "war on terror", quite contrary to the prevailing impression that Islamabad is possibly indulging in doublespeak. The skeptics in Pakistan feel that the entire plot is a crudely executed hoax by the Bush administration. YYC: This excellent article mentions the video: The Power of Nightmares/The Rise of the Politics of Fear. You can download the full length documentary here. August 16, 2006 12:30 PM Thanks to Mike: Fountainhead/Hussain: Something is rotten in the State of Denmark Why this just-in-time-uncovering of the plots (e.g. Toronto, Florida, the earlier London plot etc) only days/weeks before the supposed attempts, one may ask? The answer probably lies in the 9/11 truth movement being on the crest of a wave of media exposure. YYC: The title does not mean the article is about cartoons. The phrase originated in Shakespeare's Hamlet, but neocon propaganda has forever altered its connotation. What it shows is that every terror plot we've seen has had the mark of the secret police upon it. Another example is Canada's Air India bombing in which CSIS was so mired and mysteriously lost or destroyed so much of the evidence for. No culprit has ever been found, and with our neocon Harper government behind the call for a public inquiry, do we really think we will see the truth of it? 9-11 and Al Qaeda ... August 15, 2006 6:45 PM Thanks to "greathouse": UrukNet: The UK Terror plot: what's really going on? ... 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 ... 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. YYC: You'd think the police would have this much common sense, wouldn't you? August 14, 2006 2:45 PM M&GOnline: Pakistan: Terror 'ringleader' admits al-Qaeda link Not only to "Al Qaeda" but to Afghanistan. Way to bolster the war being waged there! <Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said it was obvious how the information had been obtained. "I don't deduce, I know -- torture," she said. "There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all."> It's one of two things: Rashid Rauf was tortured and has become a Zubaydah, or else his "ringleader" status means he was a plant, an instigator, a mole, an agent provocateur. It's all just too pat, to predictable, too much like all the other so-called terror plot panics that didn't pan out. Like Zubaydah, this guy will finger people, but once the US/British spooks get hold of him will they ever produce him in court? I think not. Eventually, like Zubaydah, his testimony will be discredited. Zubaydah is (was) listed as one of the ghost prisoners being ferried from country to country, either to protect his true identity or to allow him to be tortured. August 13, 2006 2:30 PM Now that the hard news has dried up, scanty as it was, the weavers of fiction are plying their trade, milking the plot, trying their best to embellish it. Not much is heard out of Britain, but all the way from down under comes the tale of the captured "Al Qaeda" leader. Strangely, the number of planes targeted has been downscaled to "up to nine" and involved "up to twenty" terrorists, which is the same as saying the magical "19" without saying it - you know, to keep fresh in the minds of the people being led astray by the conspiracy buffs that 9-11 was real, real, real.  Oooooooh, "at least two suspects escaped".
What a great horror story, just like the one about the tiny lizard that
escaped into the sewers and grew into a gigantic monster that ate a
whole city. We love stories like that! "Have we got
everybody?" the official asks ominously. Can you feel the
shivers down your spine?<"The leadership was very professional," a police source said.> Trained by MI5? <A Pakistani official close to the intelligence services there was reported as saying that there might have been a British mole planted by the security services inside the terror cells in Britain.> Might have been? I can practically smell the sewer, can't you? August 12, 2006 1:40 PM - Reader comment added 10:30 AM Thanks to Anatole G. who thought I might "appreciate the eloquence": HuffPost: Another Inconvenient Truth For The GOP I'm not saying there was no plot. Just wondering about the timing of our notification and the decision to raise the threat level ... People have figured out that Republicans are the ones who have placed us in peril with their inane, neoconservative policy of acting as judiciously on the world stage as Dick Cheney does with a shotgun. So let the attempted manipulation begin. YYC: Ah, yes. A well-placed simile [my underlining above] is worth a thousand other words. Unlike the author of the above, however, I am saying that there is a plot no matter how one looks at it. As Mia Farrow said in "Rosemary's Baby", "There are plots against people, aren't there, Doctor?" Do you emember how the kindly physician replied in the affirmative to make her think he was on her side thereby rendering her docile, and then assisted the plot against her? It's not my place to lecture the American voter, but from here the Democrats seem even worse than the Republicans because they are only pretending to be Democrats. In reality, they are like Canada's Liberals in that they have moved covertly to the right and have been assisting the far right plot against their own people and against the rest of the world. August 11, 2006 11:00 PM BBC:Terror fears in Walthamstow "There are always extremists in any society - just look at the IRA," he said. "But this is different. People are getting arrested and taken away and then released because the allegations are not true. These are people I know - when I hear what they are supposed to have done, I don't believe it. All we're all doing is trying to deal the growing pains of life, of families, of study." YYC: The people in Walthamstow don't have fears about terrorists in their neighbourhood; they are in terror of the police. I wonder if there is anybody, anywhere, who really believes this is a real terror plot. If there is, I wonder if they have a full marble count. 3:30 PM From IHT: Rodolfo Mendoza, chief superintendent and deputy director of investigation for the Philippine National Police, said in an interview that the terrorists are "very, very obsessed with Bojinka," referring to the plot that he and his team uncovered in 1995 ... "It was very, very similar to how those behind Bojinka planned their operation," he said. YYC: I'm always suspicious of people who want to make something sound serious but can only come up with "very, very" to describe it. Somebody may indeed be obsessed with Bojinka, but the "they" may well be the "intelligence" think tanks and the fear propagandists. By the way, according to a NY Daily News item reproduced here, the Bojinka plan did not involve suicide. "The whole crux of bojinka was to have timed explosions and the operatives to be off the flights and escaping" Yet everything in the Gatorade plot points to suicide - the bombs being assembled inflight, the suicide video conveniently left behind. 1:00 PM Thanks to reader "greathouse": From War in Iraq: Stage Two of the October Surprise <News report mentioned that there was an under cover British government agent inside the terrorist group, for several months. This should spark a public debate about the role of government agents who penetrate suspected groups. What if the agent was playing a leading role? What if the whole thing was prompted, suggested, and orchestrated by the government agent and his superiors? Is this really a terrorist plot or a government-staged operation created for political reasons?> 12:15 PM From the Houston Chronicle: <Neighbors identified another suspect as Don Stewart-Whyte, 21, from High Wycombe, a convert who changed his name to Abdul Waheed. "He converted to Islam about six months ago and grew a full beard," said a neighbor, who refused to be identified. "He used to smoke weed and drink a lot, but he is completely different now." YYC: Okay, you got me. I complain about media interviewing the neighbours and getting a lot of garbage, and now I quote the neighbours. Can't help it - as soon as I hear of a recent convert to Islam behing involved, I smell an entrapment rat. Another one was previously named "Oliver" before he converted. How difficult would it be for secret police to threaten "weed smokers" with jail, and then offer them a lucrative way out if they will act as instigators and informers. The Canadian RCMP does this all the time. From the Boston Globe - <... politicians from both sides of the aisle yesterday sought partisan advantage in the news that British authorities had smashed a terrorist plot to bomb multiple aircraft bound for the United States.> YYC: Bush, naturally, is talking about how we're all safer now, and everybody and his brother is trying to take credit for that. 11:30 AM Canada.com: Five Pakistanis have been arrested in Pakistan as suspected "facilitators" of the plot, a government official said, in addition to two Britons arrested there about a week ago.> Note that the original number of arrestees was given, in most cases, as 24. Now it's been whittled down officially to 19 who have been named. That leaves five unnamed. Does this make you suspect that the Pakistani secret police - working for the military junta which has worked closely with the CIA in the past to arrest "Al Qaeda" suspects - you know, arranged things? Five people not named in Pakistan, 19 named in Britain. Ah, here it is in the Times Online: <The ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, is said to have warned MI6 of the involvement of officials of Lashkar-i-Taiba - a militant group with close links to al-Qaeda, blamed for innumerable terrorist acts in Kashmir and, more recently, for the Bombay train bombings which killed 180 commuters last month.> When "intelligence" is involved, can "false flag" be far behind? I think not. But I wonder if officials even care how silly they look or whether or not we believe it. It's the diversion that's important. I mean, we needed another wildly distracting fear campaign, didn't we? And the US and Israel need a pretext for continuing to slaughter tiny "Islamic fascist" babies in order to entrench the more popular American fascism. We've been watching the Israel/US war crimes, and the 9-11 truth issue has been heating up ... and the tide has been turning ... NewYorkTimes: In Walthamstow, East London, John Weir, 50, said he lived opposite one of the houses raided in London. “It was sold overnight,” he said. “One day it was up for sale, and the next it was gone.” He said two men moved in the next weekend, but the house often seemed empty. And this proves ...? In the coming days there will be a lot of garbage coming out of the mouths of neighbours as the media ghouls use this event to increase sales. MalayStar: Britain names 19 people - this obsession with the number 19 is pathological. The Bank of England published all their names and addresses as part of the process of freezing their funds. The Star says: <John O'Connor, a former member of London's serious crime squad, said it was almost unprecedented to release the names of people who had not yet been charged with a crime.> So much for confidentiality at the bank. So now we know these people have not been charged with anything - yet. They all come from the same neighbourhood, and we all know that, unlike any other people, Muslims all think with the same brain, and if they live in the same neighbourhood, well you've got trouble - especially if they have liquids and cameras in their houses. ( In Canada, it's flashlights and barbeque grills.) The military junta that has taken control of Pakistan, with the apparent blessing of the West, keeps patting itself on the back for helping to finger the suspects. (Please Mr. Bush, we've been good. Now can we have as many nuclear bombs as India?) The recent "Al Qaeda" message was designed to lend credibility to this caper. Whether these boys have done anything is immaterial. The message is carried to the US and Canada, and more restrictions are being placed on innocent citizens - why? In the hope of getting them accustomed to standing patiently in lines and having their privacy invaded? MalayStar: Passengers required to taste baby milk before being allowed on British Flights. I think this must be a case of the airlines hearing "liquids". I guess they don't read the Irish Examiner: <“The terrorists planned to dye the explosive mixture red to match the sports drink sealed in the top half of the container.”> Considering all the delays and the further dampening of people's interest in flying - not because they fear terrorists but because the process of getting on a plane is so undignified and insulting - it seems there is a plot against the airlines themselves. August 10, 2006 10:30 PM HalifaxLive: Canadian Government Imposes New Restrictions on Airline Passengers Effective Immediately YYC: This article gives a list of things to avoid trying to take onto a plane. But it doesn't seem clearly thought through. For one thing, breast milk is allowed. What's to stop a nursing mother from applying a little diaper rash gel and detonating herself with the baby monitor? 9:10 PM Guardian: Officials see plot as worst threat since 9/11 "Can we have an entirely foolproof system? Probably, but at what cost, psychologically or economically?" said Frank Cilluffo, director of the homeland security policy institute at George Washington University in the US capital. YYC: It's funny already. There is no such thing as a foolproof system, but this dreamer wants you to believe that the only thing preventing one is Homeland Security's compassion and frugality. The powers that be have decided we need to be distracted from Israel's uncontrollable destruction of Gaza and Lebanon. DetroitFreep: Transcript of terror plot briefing Pretty much all the transcript says is that the US has raised the threat level to - I don't know, what's the highest - chartreuse? Officials say 21 were arrested. CNN says 24 were arrested, so does Yahoo News Yahoo also says: "A federal law enforcement official in Washington said that at least one martyrdom tape was found during ongoing raids across England on Thursday. Such a tape, as well as the scheme to strike a range of targets at roughly the same time, is an earmark of al-Qaida." It's also an earmark of clumsy efforts to make it appear that Al Qaeda is behind it. Well, did Chertoff say earmark or hallmark? See you can't believe anything you read. Not even Chertoff's comment that this plot resembles "the infamous Bojinka plot hatched by the 9/11 mastermind Sheikh Mohammed in 1995 to bring down 11 airliners over the Pacific." If he means it was very fishy - I can agree with that. One of the Bojinka "masterminds", Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, went on quite undisturbed by the authorities to purportedly plot the 9-11 attacks, without the aid of ades of any kind. Bush gets mileage out of it (Oh please make my polls go up, please, please, please): "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation." Tough words, letting the Islamists know that there is room for only Amurkin style fascism in Dodge City. The Plan: Using common liquids, gels, and MP3 Players to blow up 10 planes; but I'm almost positive I saw "20 planes" flashed on a the TV screen a few minutes ago. Why not 40? Why not 100? What difference would it make since the dreadful plot was foiled? The Assistant Director of the FBI, who no doubt moonlights as a soap opera writer, said that "If this plot had actually occurred, the world would have stood still." Dramatic or what? Fully able to express what might have happened, but barely in touch with the real horrors wreaked in the name of Bush's war on "Islamic fascism." Pakistan, as always, was invaluable in helping to fabricate - er - foil this plot. Two of the arrestees are said to have visited Pakistan recently, and received money from Pakistan after their return home. Well, yes, It would take at least two agents provocateurs to pull off such an unbelievable plot. The briefing transcript deals mainly with all the new, humiliating and frustrating ways that plane travelers will be jerked around. Even so, at the height of the security crisis, Time reports that "a passenger at Washington's National Airport ... passed unchecked through security with toothpaste and lotion in his hand luggage", suggesting that the new rules are more to heighten a sense of danger than to prevent liquids from boarding. Still, I would strongly advise passengers to pee before the entering the boarding line. You can't be too careful. Time also says: "It may be more important for the security system to be geared towards detecting passengers with intent to do harm rather than relying on detecting the specific means they've chosen. Boston's Logan Airport is currently testing a version of profiling called the SPOT program ... " Wow. Machines that know what you're thinking. Machine to inventor: "You're thinking about making a bundle off the terror climate." Ron Saba, Editor of Parody News reports by email: "Stockwell Day, Canada's Minister in charge ot terrifying the daylights out of Canadians, has announced that he has given orders that any person seen in Toronto's Pearson Airport with a Gatorade (any flavour) and an iPod will be shot dead, no questions asked." Ron goes on to say that Canada's alert level has been raised to fuschia. That's good to know, Ron. How is that pronounced? It looks like a cuss word to me. Comments:
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