The great “Easter Terror Campaign” scare launched by New Labour has been in desperate need of new impetus, given the failure to find any evidence of a terrorist operation. Fortunately police were able to stage an Army Bomb Squad raid on a flat in Liverpool yesterday to give the right wing press a chance to revive the story.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5149763/Manchester-terror-police-call-in-bomb-squad.html
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/95018/Bomb-squad-join-terror-hunt
The peculiar thing is that the address raided had been under search and cordoned off for 120 hours before the bomb squad were called in. Indeed, last Wednesday 50 (yes, 50) policemen swooped on the flat and searched it for six hours. It is therefore remarkable that the “Bomb” wasn’t found for a further five days.
The official description of the Bomb Squad raid was “precautionary”.
That is “Precautionary” in the sense of “Publicity stunt”. What the mainstream media fail to report is that the bomb squad experts were able to tell the police that the suspicious substance was – table sugar. Whether cane or beet, doubtless intense forensic examination will tell us.
The United Kingdom is in breach of international law by refusing to allow the Pakistani High Commission consular access to check on the welfare of its nationals who are being held – and none of whom has been charged with any crime. They have even refused to give them a full list of names.
This kind of behaviour will backfire on British nationals who are arrested and held abroad. Our requests for access will be refused and our protestations – which I made in several cases – will be thrown back in our faces. New Labour’s participation in the continual erosion of the fabric of international law is the real story here.
Craig
You say that HMG is refusing consular access. How did you find this out or where can this be corroborated? I’d like to raise this via my MP, but I haven’t seen this reported elsewhere.
Best
Ron
Ron
I had it direct from a Pakistani diplomat. But I just did a gogle search for you and found some corroboration here, for example:
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/south-asia/pak-to-reject-uks-decision-to-deport-manchester-suspects_100179540.html
Your MP proably has better things to do at the moment.
Like trying to find investment to create jobs for people who have been made redudanct in his constituency , or trying to help the day to day running of his ward by trying to ensure things like your local hopsital, old peoples homes and schools are all well funded and well run.
I don’t getting Consular access for a suspected terrorist would top of his to do list somehow
Oh dear Peter, on my last posting you were critising a lack of humour without revealing your political bias. Now we see you are a New Labour troll which explains your lack of humour.
The problem is that if human rights are ended for “suspected” terrorists, or “suspected” anti power station protestors, they would end for all of us.
But then I gather you wouldn’t care.
I think my human rights are important thank you Peter. How could I demand human rights when I am prepared to turn a blind eye when it suits me? Anyway I’m sure my local MP is more busy positioning herself ready for the next internal attack on Gordon Browns (ahem) leadership…than the kind of activities you are suggestion
ps I wouldn’t bee too quick to joke this terror search or those involved lets not forget that in this country we have already lost police office carrying out just such a duty
RIP PC Oake.
Lets hope nothing is found this time but it’s not worth taking any chances with peoples lives
Nothing new labour about me, working class card carrying trade union man and greatly unhappy with the way my party is being run
But give me the labour party of the self serving tory right and the clueless liberal hand wringing brigade any day of the week
as the above points out PC oake lost his life in such a raid so there is no need to rush into any action is there?
ps you write away to your mp and see how quickly they respond to your queries , I’m sure itll go right at the top of the do list 😉
Peter Owen:
So despite all the crap Labour actually DO – you would still vote for them.
And people wonder how the Nazis came to power. LOL
Craigs right! You’re clearly a Labour Troll.
Young people are much more aware of the corruption and lies of politicians. A change is coming…
A taste of this is in the current music scene where you get new bands like Mongrel raising issues similar to those raised by Craig. I know the music may not be to everyones taste but check out their song ‘Lies’ on their MySpace page for a taste of what I mean:
http://www.myspace.com/wearemongrel
One line about politicians goes ‘they’re not representing me so why should I abide laws’
Stevie, I would like what you say to be true, regarding the young being political; but if they are so, where is their presence on the political blogs and forums?
Remember: Education… education… education.
Under zanu-labour it turned into: Mediocrity… mediocrity… mediocrity.
… and Ritalin.
Craig & site visitors, if it’s New Labour abuse of office you’re interested in, check out this.
The Charities Commission (the Charities Commission!) tricked or somehow strongarmed Viva Palestina into registering itself as a charity, then rushed through its application without the usual required information, purely in order to be able to use its reserve powers to freeze its bank account!
Letter from George Galloway to the Charities Commission at http://www.vivapalestina.org/alerts/GGCC_140409.htm If you don’t know anything about Viva Palestina and their extraordinary journey from Northern England to & through the Rafah Crossing, then there is plenty more on the site to enlighten you.
Some people visiting this site may not be aware of the extraordinary campaign waged by the British establishment against George Galloway for the crime of speaking the truth about Iraq and Palestine. Some people (not just the trolls) might even believe that there is something dodgy about George Galloway, so much mud has been thrown at him.
But most would acknowledge that he is capable of standing up for himself and the people he represents. However, he needs support on this, and I hope visitors to this site can provide it.
Quotes from Galloway’s letter:
“It is [the Charities Commission], for transparently political reasons, who insisted that charitable status should be sought. You registered Viva Palestina as a charity in record quick time and without the great bulk of the information you normally required. And then you froze the record-quick new charity’s bank account so that it could not operate. These are police state tactics, entirely inappropriate and without any basis.”
“I understand from my colleagues that you have now frozen more than £100,000 intended to help the suffering Palestinian people. Shame on you. I suppose it is too much to hope that you might have that on your conscience. But be sure I intend to let as many people as possible know, here and abroad, what you have done.”
Today’s Sun, ‘Terror plot cops find bomb part’. With the headline, was a picture of a policewoman carrying a very large, clear plastic bag. Inside the bag is what looks to be a very small number of sugar sachets, of the type found at cafes and diners. We are told, ‘Sugar can be mixed with chemicals to create an explosive for use in bombs and grenades.’
Wasn’t April 1st weeks ago?
As for Shocked Gaza Donor comment, I hope this is sorted out PDQ.
Galloway, the thorn in the side of every neocon 🙂
xsdogskin
Thanks, that’s amazing – you couldn’t make it up. I know from police sources they haven’t even been able to find househld bleach (bloody dirty students!!). All they have got is sugar.
Peter Owen,
I am extremely sorry PC Oake was killed. He was not killed by a terrorist. He was stabbed by a man found mentally ill, with a kitchen knife.
It happened during one of the most high profile of these New Labour propaganda raids, the so-called “Ricin plot”. It turned out there was no ricin, and no plot. The only person covicted was the confused mentally ill man who picked up his kitchen knife when police smashed into his flat in the middle of the night.
If you are really a decent working man as you prtray, you woul care that PC Oake lost his life in a pointless new labour propaganda exercise.
Well I almost don’t need to respond to Peter now do I? Craig and others have done a very good job of handling him.
However, he thinks my point is about suspected terrorists’ consular access, but it’s not. It’s about consular access for all individuals, whoever and wherever. Call it a human right, to be claimed by all who are human. Even you, Peter, you prick.
R
Peter Owen,
You really should learn about how the police operate these days. Craig is right about the circumstances of PC Oake’s tragic death. None of the local police sent to the address knew what they were there for and a long period of ‘inactivity’ took place before any arrest was made. PC Oake was stabbed during this period. Lack of information meant that PC Oake was not wearing a stab vest. All this can easily be found out by looking up the subsequent enquiry. I’ve said here before my son is a PC in the Met. He went off pretty early one morning, came back later pretty agitated. He was on a house raid, stolen goods and the thief and handler of the goods supposedly in the house. At 5:30am my son was right behind the officer who battered the door down with a huge steel ram. Just imagine for a moment how he felt when inside, they found two elderly pensioners just out of bed and trying to make tea. ‘Sorry chaps, wrong house’ was the only response my son ever got from his employers, as he saw there was an immediate danger of two serious heart attacks and desperately called for immediate ambulance attendance. This is how the police treat private homes these days, and constables always kept in the dark so that they feel the right amount of anger when doing their job.
And Peter, if your employer required you to go to Pakistan to tie up some business deal, I’m sure you’d be on to your MP pretty quickly demanding that proper embassy relations are maintained between the two countries, and not abused as the UK is blatently doing now.
But then again, I’m sure you already know everything I’ve just written here perfectly well anyway.
Just to add to the Desperate Race to Save Jacqui Smith’s Job – the BBC reported last night (not on the news, but on Newsnight much later) that most of the 114 people arrested previously for some sort of plan to protest about coal-fired power stations were subsequently released. Released that is, by being ejected from various police stations in various strange towns at 2:30 in the morning having had their mobile phones and all money confiscated because it comprised ‘evidence’ (there you have it, posession of money is now considered as ‘evidence’), and many of these were young females, had been arrested indoors and taken away with no outdoor clothing of any sort. Hardly an intelligent crime-prevention strategy. And I wonder who decided that these people should be treated in this way, the local police? (probably trying to do a decent job for their community) or someone in Westminster?
Not difficult to answer that, seeing as one of the (ex-) most senior police officers in the country was flamboyantly photographed entering No.10 immediately before this all kicked off!
This is clearly a pro-active strategy by this government to persuade the population to stay indoors, don’t go out and protest about anything, don’t even gather together to organise a protest, or this is how you will be treated because the police are now controlled by us, the government, and they do what we say…… Oh, and by the way, if you do go out, and we catch up with you, we’ll take all your money off of you and anything else we fancy as well.
Funny isn’t it how Peter Owen the “card carrying union man” suddenly forgot how to spell and punctuate when he was trying to present himself as such. How insulting to genuine working class people, to suggest they are semi-illiterate. And how he pooh poohs equality before the law, as if merely “suspected” people don’t deserve that.
There is a good comment by Noamswampy on medialens on the Times article of 13 April reporting on plans to deport the young men in custody.
‘How casually the British establishment will destroy the lives of these innocent young people (studies terminated, families harassed, deported to Pakistan where a warm welcome from the ISI awaits etc) all because they were selected, more or less at random I would imagine, for bit parts in the latest police state PR exercise.
It’s disgusting. And depressing that none of the individual human beings involved in this sorry episode (on the side of the authorites) appear (to) have courage and/or conscience in sufficient measure to do something about it – eg. REFUSING TO OBEY IMMORAL ORDERS.’
The link to the Times article –
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6083205.ece
Craig was right on the money from the start regarding the Easter bomb plot fiasco.
If Bob Quick hadn’t of committed his fax pas, Brown wouldn’t have appeared so early to warn us of a “very big plot”. Given what actually transpired, we wouldn’t have seen him at all.
Now, I’m thinking, was this plot story inflated in the vain hope that the just breaking news of smeargate would be burried.
Call me paranoid, but the really worrying thing is this, when will they get round to planting real evidence, say a few kilos of C4 on folk?
Well said Craig…
We do indeed live in frightening times – peddled by this Govt. They peddle the fear factor with these stupid adverts – you know “this is the sound of a bomb not going off…” cretinous things.
In something else possibly related, check out guido’s site – you will see it’s unavailable time and time again – why?
Something smells fishy to me…
Hmm, it sounds like the police found bun-making equipment.
Perhaps among the paraphernalia was a terrorwhisk, some Qurrants, and a plot of jam.
@Jason – ha! You forgot the sugar ;o)
@Peter Owen:
> I don’t getting Consular access for a suspected terrorist would
> top of his to do list somehow
Depends on whether ron’s MP is satisfied that the laws attacking our liberty wouldn’t apply to nice people like him/her, or whether they have woken up to the notion that “an attack on one is an attack on all”. People who believe in the importance of civil liberties tend to fall in the latter camp, and quite right too.
> But give me the labour party of the self serving tory right and
> the clueless liberal hand wringing brigade any day of the week
I am not sure I understand you there. Maybe you meant to say “give me the labour party of the self serving tory right *rather than* the clueless liberal hand wringing brigade”. If so, I doubt you are a “working class … trade union man” as you claim. No union member who believes in working class values would tolerate the radical shift to the right we’ve seen from New Labour as much as you seem to.
@Jon
The sugar?
Here it comes, 2lbs of weapons-grade Tate & Lyle.
‘Call me paranoid, but the really worrying thing is this, when will they get round to planting real evidence, say a few kilos of C4 on folk?’
The fact that they don’t shows we still have some hope. In the U.S. they could do that now and get away with it, in my opinion anyway. In theory, it might seem an easy thing to do, but it would probably need a good few willing participants to carry it out. If it went wrong the fallout would destroy those involved. Enough democracy left here to deter them from doing it. In all honesty, i’m surprised all the hell we have created in the world hasn’t created some real terrorists they can actually get their hands on! It just shows how decent most of humanity is. It’s a sick, small minority screwing it all for the whole world. Divide and conquer is their M.O.. Even my father laughs at the ‘War On Terror’ and he is pretty elderly and apathetic now. As more and more folk wake up to the stinky lies though, I genuinely do worry if we will get another big attack some time soon. Not to say that these staged raids are victimless. Detainees aside, I have read that some innocent muslims have been viciously assaulted in the north west in the past week. Directly linked to the raids I would say and it annoys me a lot. Right, i’m off to have some tea. If any ‘spookyhead’ reads this be scared, be very, very scared… Muhahaha.
P.S. I think ‘The Jessy’ got sacked.
‘A taste of this is in the current music scene where you get new bands like Mongrel raising issues similar to those raised by Craig.’
This one is a classic from my school days. They even strum in front of the all seeing eye. I didn’t have a clue about the deeper message for many years. ‘Generally speaking’ the young aren’t taught to think too much and are too busy enjoying themselves. The first point isn’t their fault and the second point I can understand. If the majority of youth ‘really understood’ I don’t think we could hold them back.
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/tears+for+fears/video/xsi9i_tears-for-fears-sowing-the-seeds-of_music