There never was a liquid bomb plot. It was proven in court not to exist. It was a fabrication of the minds governing a Pakistani torture chamber.
It is only a week ago that, as the terrorist industry sought to terrify us with the idea that jihadists from Syria would attack the UK, I wrote that:
“The patent absence of any genuine Islamic terrorism in the UK to fight is an obvious threat to the funding of this huge industry. Hence the current hype about the threat from Birmingham school governors or British residents fighting in Iraq and Syria. We have the usual propagandists for this threat thrust upon the airwaves again – Frank “Goebbels” Gardner and even the utterly discredited “Quilliam Foundation” who have been back on the BBC. At the moment they are peddling the utterly untrue line that 9% of those who travel from the UK to participate in fighting abroad, on return get involved in terrorist activity in the UK. Frank Gardner has been repeating this ad nauseam”
Now the terror industry has moved to ramp up this entirely false fear with worldwide headlines about a new threat of bombs on planes. The BBC and Sky both link this to the great “liquid bomb plot” of 2006. Everybody remembers that massive story that dominated the headlines for weeks. It was described by the British security services as “Bigger than 9/11”. Today BBC News described it as a “plot to bring down seven airliners simultaneously”.
22 people were arrested in Stasi style raids conducted on their hones at 2.30am. These included a 22 year old woman with a young baby. The Home Office proudly proclaimed that the Home Secretary, Dr John Reid, had been awake all night and personally directed those raids on sleeping families with children.
You may recall that the tabloids – directed by Rebekah Brooks and Coulson – ran front page stories about the evil Islamic mother and the liquid explosive in her baby bottles. These evil Muslims are so heartless they are prepared to blow up their own babies!! John Howard, Australian Prime Minister, said “That would be an appalling reflection on the lack of humanity of that child’s parents.”
Except it was all untrue. The chemical traces the police claimed to have found on the baby bottles proved to be Sodium Dichloroisocyanurate, normal baby bottle sterilising solution, from Boots. The woman was found not guilty on all charges. Neither the tabloids, the police, nor Dr John Reid and John Howard have ever apologised. Of the 22 people arrested in those darkest night raids, only eight were ever charged – fourteen were released without charge, there being no evidence against them. Of the eight who were charged, five were found not guilty. Three were convicted as terrorists – but there was nothing in their plans about blowing up aircraft. I am not personally convinced of the safety of their convictions anyway. They may have been unpleasant fantasists, but not much else. These three certainly had no practical plan or method to bring down seven aircraft, despite the BBC repeating that lie continually at the moment. The recent death of Gerard Conlon reminds us all of the horrifying willingness of English juries to convict the demonised other, be they Irish Catholics or Muslims.
This is what I blogged just three days after the story broke. Everything I wrote here proved to be true:
“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.”
Despite the fact I was right and the entire mainstream media was wrong, I was directly attacked by highly paid alcoholic warmonger Nick Cohen in the Observer as a “conspiracy theorist”.
The famous “liquid bomb plot” was used by both the UK and US governments to drive through yet more anti-civil liberties legislation, despite the fact that the plot did not actually exist and the technology of home made portable and easily deployable binary liquid explosives is a myth.
The mass hysteria whipped up by the mainstream media and appalling neo-con politicians over the “liquid bomb plot” did a huge amount to boost the massive budgets of the terrorist industry. The media never carried the news of the non-existence of the plot, so there was never any downward pressure on those budgets as a result. The patent lack of Islamic terrorism in the West is becoming a threat to those budgets now. But, Hell! The liquid bomb myth worked last time, didn’t it? Why not use it again?
That the BBC can recycle as fact the “liquid bomb plot to blow up seven airlines” is sickening enough. But then they did something that was so jaw-dropping as to be unbelievable, even given the total lack of ethics at the BBC. To make sure the “fear” really sunk in, they showed a “reconstruction” of the liquid bomb plot. A section of aircraft fuselage was mounted on the ground, and then an explosion blew out a big hole in it. Text labelled it “reconstruction” underneath.
How can you have a “reconstruction” of something which never happened, and was shown in court not to have happened? I should love to believe that this BBC ploy is so ludicrous it did not work; but I have a sad feeling that 90% of people probably believe the “liquid bomb plot” did exist, as Tony Blair, George Bush, John Reid, John Howard and the entire media told them it existed, and nobody has ever told them it did not.
That smartphone could be a berm! Rifkind.
‘It’s simply foolish to believe the threat is behind us’: Spy watchdog warns of ‘devilish technical skill’ to turn phones into bombs
Sir Malcolm Rifkind warns against ‘disturbing’ levels of complacency http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2682197/Its-simply-foolish-believe-threat-Spy-watchdog-warns-devilish-technical-skill-turn-phones-bombs.html
The queues will be out on to the M25.
‘American officials have ordered some overseas airports with direct flights to the US to intensify screening of electronic devices.
Transport officials said in a statement passengers could be asked to switch on devices, and equipment that does not power up would not be allowed on board.
An official told the BBC that London’s Heathrow was among the airports.
The US announced new security measures last week, apparently in response to a terror threat, but gave no details.’
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28185149
Lithium batteries are dangerous if they short-circuit, and can easily be modified into an incendiary device:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2010-08-16-airlinebatteries16_CV_N.htm
“Highly paid alcoholic warmonger.” God I enjoyed that. When Cohen reviewed my last book he called me a shameless conspiracy theorist, which I suppose is one step worse, but at least I didn’t have to suffer being described as his protege. My god. We share critics, Criag. I think it was Aaro last time.
It is possible to make a liquid bomb, of course. Ramzi Yousef tried one out on Philippine Airlines Flight 434 in 1994. And as for powered or non-powered devices as bomb containers, that was precisely what brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, or so we are told. Plastic explosives in a tape recorder. None of this is new. The news cycle ebbs and flows, and digs up old stories just as shifting sands reveal old bones, although it is steered by certain interested parties.
I watched Gardner on mute and he was still annoying even then.
“Evil muslims” might not use babies in their bomb plots, but there is ample evidence of muslims using children as suicide bombers using religious fervour to program them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_suicide_bombers_in_the_Israeli–Palestinian_conflict