From The Guardian

The war on terror moves in mysterious ways. Last month, not long after the allegedly planned terrorist attacks on multiple jetliners over the Atlantic were foiled, Ben Paarman turned up at Luton airport for a flight to Berlin. Having forgotten to remove toiletries from his hand luggage, he was hauled over for further inspection, and two books were discovered. A German novel passed without comment, but Murder in Samarkand, Craig Murray’s memoir of his incident-strewn stint as British ambassador to Uzbekistan, didn’t. “‘Is that about terrorism?’ asked the lady that examined my onboard luggage,” wrote Paarman on neweurasia.net, a collection of blogs by and about Central Asians. “‘Humm, well, it contains mentions of that, but it’s about your former ambassador to Uzbekistan and more about diplomacy,’ I replied politely. ‘Does it have al-Qaeda in it?’ I looked a bit confused. ‘Well, I have to check this with my manager, the rest of your stuff is fine, though.'” The manager arrived, asked Paarman where he got the book (Waterstone’s, Islington), then pronounced: “I am afraid you cannot take this onboard, Sir.” The book was duly confiscated. This much has already been mentioned, in this paper. But then it happened again.

On Monday Gillian Davison, an actress on her way to New York, reported on the blog that she had had her copy of the same book confiscated at Heathrow. Murray has offered to replace Paarman’s copy – and consulted lawyers. “The lawyers said that the first time it might have been just a mistake, not policy,” he replied this week, to an email from the Guardian asking how far this course of action had gone, “but twice at two different airports looks like a policy. We are strongly minded to go to the High Court for an injunction under the Human Rights Act.”

From Green Left Review

By Norm Dixon

Readers of Britain’s newspapers are regularly accosted with blood-curdling banner headlines screaming of the ‘thwarting’ of potentially catastrophic ‘terror plots’, of ‘Islamic fanatics’ being apprehended in daring midnight raids. ‘Chilling’ details, ‘revealed’ by anonymous police and government ‘sources’, underline why ‘we’ must accept a ‘trade-off’ between civil liberties and ‘security’, the editorials assure an apprehensive populace. Months or even years later, however, news that many of the ‘plots’ never actually existed is buried behind the latest sex scandal or exploitative ‘expose’ ‘ if reported at all.

On August 10, deputy commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Paul Stephenson declared that a plan to ’cause untold death and destruction’ and ‘mass murder on an unimaginable scale’ had been foiled with the arrest of 24 people. ‘We believe that the terrorists’ aim was to smuggle explosives onto planes in hand luggage to detonate them in flight’, Stephenson alleged. Britain’s and the world’s mass media trumpeted the claims.

However, within days the dramatic case against the detainees as told to the media by anonymous US and British government and police ‘sources’ began to unravel. The claim that an attack was ‘imminent’ was false. No reservations had been made or airline tickets purchased by the 10 charged with serious terrorism offences; several did not even have passports. Apparently, just one had used the internet to check flight schedules recently. There were no bombs.

The assertion that the detainees intended to destroy 10-12 aircraft was ‘speculative and exaggerated’, a British official admitted to the August 28 New York Times. Claims of a convoluted ‘Pakistani connection’ between the plotters and al Qaeda have disappeared. The possibility of successfully concocting ‘liquid bombs’ from household products in a plan’es toilet mid-air has been dismissed by chemical experts.

Misrepresentation

Gareth Pierce, defence lawyer for the 17-year-old in the case accused of possessing items ‘useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism’, told the August 31 Chicago Tribune how police had misrepresented what they had found at the boy’s mother’s home and twisted it to fit their grandiose claims. According to police, ‘suicide notes’, a map of Afghanistan and a bomb ‘manual’ had been found.

What was actually discovered, Pierce told the Tribune, were wills written by people who had fought in Bosnia more than 10 years earlier. The accused was just six when much of this material was placed in the box! ‘They’re not suicide notes at all. They’re really simple wills. To call these suicide notes was absolutely disgraceful’, Pierce said.

The wills were found in a box that once belonged to the boy’s father ‘ who has since divorced and moved out ‘ when he ran a now-defunct charity that helped displaced Bosnian Muslims. The box also contained a crude map drawn by the boy’s younger brother when he was a child. There was also a book of drawings of electrical circuits, which even if it was of some use in building a bomb, it would be useless for the device that police allege the group was trying to construct.

Associated Press on September 4 reported that prosecutors told a London court that the detainees will not face trial until March 2008. They will remain in prison and the key details of the prosecution’s case will be kept secret until then.

Lies and fabrication

Will the British government and mass media’s accusations stand up in court? Not if the record of British police, government and media lying, exaggeration and fabrication in recent ‘terror’ cases is anything to go by.

As Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, pointed out in an August 14 article on his website

‘Of the over 1000 British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only 12% are ever charged with anything. That is simply harassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few ‘ just over 2% of arrests ‘ who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do with terrorism, but of some minor offence the police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.’

At 4am on June 2, around 250 police, some wearing chemical suits, stormed a house in Forest Gate, east London. Police claimed that a chemical bomb was in the house. Awoken by the sound of doors being broken down, the two families living there thought they were being attacked by robbers. Mohammed Abdul Kahar was shot in the chest by police, who failed to identify themselves or give a warning, narrowly missing his heart.

Rupert Murdoch’s seedy Sun newspaper on June 3 ramped up the anti-Muslim panic, without a shred of evidence: ‘A CHEMICAL bomb held by Islamic terrorists is primed to go off at any time, police feared last night. The device is believed to have been designed to release a toxic cloud in a crowded space ‘ killing hundreds. And senior officers are convinced it has been prepared for an ‘imminent’ attack in the UK … Last night a frantic hunt was on to find the bomb before it could be activated by fanatics. One senior security source said: ‘We are absolutely certain this device exists and could be used either by a suicide bomber or in a remote-controlled explosion.”

Not to be outdone, Murdoch’s Times on June 3 reported the finding of a ‘poison suicide vest of death’. No chemical bombs or suicide vests ever existed. Kahar and his brother were detained for eight days without charge under the Terrorism Act (2000) before being released. ‘The only crime I have committed is being Asian and having a long beard’, Kahar told the BBC on June 13. ‘They haven’t had the decency to apologise.’

‘Red mercury’

In one of more bizarre examples of how the British government, police and the media work hand in glove to manufacture terror scares was provided when the notorious ‘fake sheikh’ Mazher Mahmood, a journalist for Murdoch’s tacky News of the World who regularly dresses up in Arab robes to trick celebrities and others into compromising themselves, and an undercover police agent in 2004 attempted to entrap three people in a ‘virtual’ terror plot.

Mahmood offered to sell them an imaginary nuclear substance, ‘red mercury’, telling them it could be used to make a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’. However, the three seemed to be more interested in the claim that red mercury could also wash marked money. The undercover cop then offered to buy the fake substance from them for $300,000 a kilo.

With the approval of the Labour government’s attorney-general, the three dupes were arrested by the Met’s anti-terrorist squad on September 24, 2004. They were charged with attempting to secure funding or property for terrorism and having ‘a highly dangerous mercury-based substance’ for use in terrorism. The following day, the News of the World’s front page screamed, ‘Anti-terrorist cops move in after News of the World uncovers bid to buy radioactive material’. Red mercury, the News of the World lied to its unfortunate readers, is’a deadly substance developed by cold war Russian scientists for making briefcase nuclear bombs’.

The three remained in jail until their acquittal almost two years later. During the trial, which cost more than ‘1 million, the government prosecutor declared that ‘the Crown’s position is that whether red mercury does or does not exist is irrelevant’ and urged the jury not to get ‘hung up’ on that point. Luckily, the jury did not agree.

Own goal in Manchester

Britain’s government-police-press team scored an own goal in April 2004, when 400 Greater Manchester police rounded up 10 Iraqi Kurds. Leading the lynch mob was the Sun, which ran an invented story that began: ‘A SUICIDE bomb plot to kill thousands of soccer fans at Saturday’s Manchester United-Liverpool match was dramatically foiled yesterday. Armed cops seized ten terror suspects in dawn raids. Intelligence chiefs believe al-Qaeda fanatics planned to blow themselves up amid 67,000 unsuspecting supporters. A source said: ‘The target was Old Trafford.’ The Islamic fanatics planned to sit all around the ground to cause maximum carnage. They had already bought the tickets for various positions in the stadium, cops revealed last night.’

The entire fantastic story, and the cops’ case against the Kurds, was improvised from leaked police information about the ‘discovery’ of a couple of old ticket stubs from a Manchester United soccer match in a suspect’s flat. He was indeed guilty of being a fanatic ‘ a fanatical supporter of Manchester United who had kept the stubs as a souvenir of the only game he and a friend had attended! They were bought from a scalper, which explained why the tickets were for different parts of the ground. The 10 people were released without charge.

Ricin reflux

Perhaps the most cynically exploited of the British government’s series of fabricated ‘terror scares’ was the police announcement in January 2003 that a ‘terrorist cell’s’ plans to use ricin poison in an attack had been foiled.

On January 7, British government ministers announced that ‘traces of ricin’ had been found in a flat raided by police. Prime Minister Tony Blair seized on the ‘plot’ to bolster the propaganda campaign to go to war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Blair made the ludicrous claim that the discovery of ricin, which can only kill if directly injected into a person’s bloodstream, proved that ‘this danger [of weapons of mass destruction] is present and real and with us now. Its potential is huge.’

Then US Secretary of State Colin Powell also referred to the alleged ‘cell’ during his speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003, arguing for war against Iraq if Hussein did not abandon his non-existent WMD. Powell claimed it was proof of a ‘sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network’.

The truth was that there was no al Qaeda cell and no ricin. On the same day that the government proclaimed the discovery of ‘traces of ricin’ in the flat, tests by the government’s own research facility at Porton Down had found there was no ricin. That finding was kept secret by the government for more than two years.

In April 2005, four people were acquitted on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, while charges against four others were dropped. One person, Kamel Bourgass, was convicted on a lesser charge of ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance by the use of poisons and/or explosives’, based on his possession of ‘recipes’ to make ricin and evidence of attempts to do so. However, the April 20, 2005, Independent reported that ‘Professor Alistair Hay, one of Britain’s foremost authorities on toxins, said Bourgass’s attempts to construct toxic weapons from his small supplies of ingredients and ramshackle ‘laboratory’ were ‘incredibly amateurish and unlikely to succeed’.’

From Green Left Weekly, September 13, 2006.

This important online database is being compiled and updated by Sala@m It comprises an inventory of arrests under the Terrorism Act 2000 (TACT) and the Anti-Terrorism, Crime Security Act 2001 (ACTSA) – pre and post July 7 2005.

“According to the Islamic Human Rights Commission, since 9/11 some 950 people, the majority of them Muslims, have been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000. Of these only 148 were charged and only 27 convicted of terrorism, defined so broadly now that a question mark hangs over some of these cases. Many thousands more have been stopped under the increased stop-and-search powers that anti-terror laws have given police. In 2003-2004 they were up by almost a third. Last year British Transport police statistics revealed that Asians were five times more likely to be stopped than whites. In the month following the London bombings, they had apprehended 2,390 Asian people. None was subsequently charged.”

From Antiwar.com

By John Pilger

If the alleged plot to attack airliners flying from London is true ‘ remember the lies that led to the invasion of Iraq, and to the raid on a “terrorist cell” in east London ‘ then one person ultimately is to blame, as he was on July 7 last year. They were Blair’s bombs then; who doesn’t believe that 52 Londoners would be alive today had the prime minister refused to join Bush in his piratical attack on Iraq? A parliamentary committee has said as much, as have MI5, the Foreign Office, Chatham House, and the polls.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer, Paul Stephenson, claims the Heathrow plot “was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” The most reliable independent surveys put civilian deaths in Iraq, as a result of the invasion by Bush and Blair, above 100,000. The difference between the Heathrow scare and Iraq is that mass murder on an unimaginable scale has actually happened in Iraq.

By any measure of international law, from Nuremberg to the Geneva accords, Blair is a major prima facie war criminal. The charges against him grow. The latest is his collusion with the Israeli state in its deliberate, criminal attacks on civilians. While Lebanese children were being buried beneath Israeli bombs, he refused to condemn their killers or even to call on them to desist. That a cease-fire was negotiated owed nothing to him, except its disgraceful delay.

Not only is it clear that Blair knew about Israel’s plans, but he alluded approvingly to the ultimate goal: an attack on Iran. Read his neurotic speech in Los Angeles, in which he described an “arc of extremism,” stretching from Hezbollah to Iran. He gave not a hint of the arc of injustice and lawlessness of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its devastation of Lebanon. Neither did he attempt to counter the bigotry now directed at all Arabs by the West and by the racist regime in Tel Aviv. His references to “values” are code for a crusade against Islam.

Blair’s extremism, like Bush’s, is rooted in the righteous violence of rampant Messianic power. It is completely at odds with modern, multicultural, secular Britain. He shames this society. Not so much distrusted these days as reviled, he endangers and betrays us in his vassal’s affair with the religious fanatic in Washington and the Biblo-ethnic cleansers in Israel. Unlike him, the Israelis at least are honest. Ariel Sharon said, “It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion ‘ that there can be no Zionism, colonization, or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.” The current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told the U.S. Congress: “I believe in our people’s eternal and historic right to this entire land” (his emphasis).

Blair has backed this barbarism enthusiastically. In 2001, the Israeli press disclosed that he had secretly given the “green light” to Sharon’s bloody invasion of the West Bank, whose advance plans he was shown. Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon ‘ is it any wonder the attacks of July 7 and this month’s Heathrow scare happened? The CIA calls this “blowback.” On Aug. 12, the Guardian published an editorial (“The challenge for us all”), which waffled about how “a significant number of young people have been alienated from the [Muslim] culture,” but spent not a word on how Blair’s Middle East disaster was the source of their alienation. A polite pretense is always preferred in describing British policy, elevating “misguided” and “inappropriate” and suppressing criminal behavior.

Go into Muslim areas and you will be struck by a fear reminiscent of the anti-Semitic nightmare of the Jews in the 1930s, and by an anger generated almost entirely by “a perceived double standard in the foreign policy of Western governments,” as the Home Office admits. This is felt deeply by many young Asians who, far from being “alienated from their culture,” believe they are defending it. How much longer are we all prepared to put up with the threat to our security coming from Downing Street? Or do we wait for the “unimaginable”?

During September, Craig will be speaking at a number of events leading up to the Manchester ‘Time to Go’ demonstration on the 23rd and beyond. The updated schedule/toured now looks like this and replaces the previous version posted last week:

Tuesday 5 September 7.30pm The Crossing, Walsall

Wednesday 6 September 7.30pm Didsbury Mosque

Thursday 7 September 7.30pm Labour Club, Lloyd St, Stockport

Friday 8 September 7.30pm Blue Flame Community Centre, High St, Daubhill, Bolton

Monday 11 September 7.00pm St Barnabus Church, Grove Road, Bow

Tuesday 12 September 7.30pm 123 Park Building, Guildhall Square, University of Portsmouth

Wednesday 13 September 7.15pm The Liner Hotel, Lord Nelson St, Liverpool

Thursday 14 September 7.00pm Blackfriars Hall, St Andrew’s Plain, Norwich

Friday 15 September 5.00pm University of Surrey

Monday 18 September 7.00pm St Albans

Tuesday 19 September 7.30pm Town Hall, St Aldates, Oxford

Wednesday 20 September 3.00pm Camp Democracy, National Mall, Washington DC

Saturday 23 September 1.00pm Albert Square Manchester – National Stop the War demo

Sunday 24 September 10.30am Roscoe Building, Brunswick St, University of Manchester

Saturday 30 September 7.30pm University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Monday 2 October 1.00 pm University of Columbia, New York

Wednesday 4 October 9.00am Fringe Meeting, Conservative Party Conference, Bournemouth

Wednesday 4 October 7.00pm Hammersmith Library, Shepherd’s Bush Road

Wednesday 11 October 7.00pm Trinity College Historical Society, Dublin

Thursday 12 October 7.30pm Theatre Workshop, 34 Hamilton Place, Edinburgh

Friday 13 October 9.00pm Edinburgh Independent Radical Book Fair

Saturday 14 October 11.00am Brighton Peace Conference

Tuesday 17 October CRAIG’S BIRTHDAY!

For more info on the other ‘Time to Go‘ events being organised go here

From The Economist print edition (Aug 31st 2006)

Liberty has been the first victim of the war fought in its name

“WE HAVE entered a new type of war. It’s a war against people who

hate freedom,” said George Bush a few days after September 11th 2001.

“We’re fighting for liberty and freedom.” But this new kind of war

seemed to need a new kind of response, one that has actually reduced

freedom.

“We will change the rules,” said Donald Rumsfeld, America’s defence

secretary. “Let no one be in any doubt, the rules of the game are

changing,” echoed Tony Blair after the bombings in London last year.

“Civil-liberty arguments”, his home secretary, John Reid, added

recently, “are not so much wrong as just made for another age.”

Since 2001 many countries have pushed through repressive laws in the

name of the war on terror-but few as eagerly as America and Britain.

America first rushed through the Patriot Act. The authorities’ powers

to snoop on American citizens were vastly increased. Agents armed with

a court warrant could now eavesdrop on private telephone calls, read

e-mails, pry into library records, bank statements, medical records and suchlike without needing to show “reasonable suspicion”. At the

same time, in an apparent breach of the law, George Bush secretly

authorised his own warrantless domestic surveillance programme. He was, he said, acting in his constitutional capacity as wartime

commander-in-chief.

Hundreds of foreigners, most of them Muslims, were rounded up after

September 11th and held without charge, sometimes for months. Tens of

thousands more were called in for questioning and finger-printing. Not

a single terrorist was found. Then came the creation of a detainment

camp in an American naval base in Guant’namo Bay in Cuba, which Mr

Bush argued was beyond the reach of the American courts. There hundreds more suspected terrorists, captured abroad, were interned in a legal limbo, without charge, without access to lawyers or conventional courts, and without prospect of release in a never-ending war. Others have experienced “extraordinary rendition”, that is, they have been spirited away by the CIA for harsh interrogation in secret prisons in third countries where even the International Red Cross has no access.

America has been lambasted for its record on human rights since

September 11th. So has Britain. It has introduced a slew of draconian

anti-terrorist measures over the past five years, and is planning more.

The mere “glorification” or “indirect incitement” of terrorism

is now a crime. Suspected terrorists can be held for up to 28 days

without charge-longer than in any other democratic country-a period

the government now wants to double. (In America suspected terrorists

whom Mr Bush deems to be “enemy combatants” may be held “for the

duration of hostilities”.) Those unable to be tried in court (usually

for want of evidence) may now be subjected to “control orders”,

ranging from electronic tagging to little short of house arrest,

imposed on the simple say-so of the home secretary for indefinitely

renewable periods of 12 months.

Britain’s judges have now ruled in favour of some suspected terrorists, detained pending deportation. And America’s Supreme Court has granted Guant’namo’s inmates certain protections, including the right to challenge their detention in court, the right to be treated humanely under the Geneva Conventions and, for the few that have been charged, the right to a fair trial.

The looming police state

Yet the critics remain unhappy. By abandoning the very values they are

seeking to protect, America and its allies are in danger of winning a

pyrrhic victory, civil libertarians protest. “It is the response to

terrorism, rather than terrorism itself, that does democracy most

harm,” Michael Ignatieff, a former head of Harvard’s centre for human

rights, argues. Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law at Yale, castigates

Britain in his new book, “Before the Next Attack”, for its “tragic slide to a police state”. He accuses America of moving “one step at a time toward a presidential tyranny”. But others,like John Podhoretz, a columnist for the New York Post, maintain the opposite. “What if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point

where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have

achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any

really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?” he asks.

For the moment those who would restrict freedom appear to have the

public on their side. Recent polls in Britain and America suggest that

most people still feel their governments are not doing enough to

counter terrorism.

From Amnesty International

Amnesty International is deeply dismayed at today’s decision of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) dismissing the appeal of an Algerian man, known for legal reasons as “Y”, against his deportation on national security grounds. The SIAC ruled that “Y” would not face a real risk of torture if he was returned to Algeria.

“The SIAC proceedings were profoundly unfair; they denied ‘Y’ the right to due process of law and any meaningful equality of arms making it impossible for him to effectively refute the UK authorities’ case that he was a national security risk,” Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty International’s Director of the Europe and Central Asia Programme said.

“Y” is a torture survivor who had been granted refugee status in the UK. In 2005, he was acquitted, together with others, of all charges in connection with a purported attempt to manufacture and use ricin. He was released from custody in April 2005, where he had been since January 2003. He was later re-arrested and held pending deportation on national security grounds.

Upon hearing of today’s decision of the SIAC, three of the jurors who had acquitted “Y” in the criminal proceedings expressed their shock that despite his acquittal at the criminal trial, the exact same evidence was being used again to ‘justify his deportation’.

They told Amnesty International:

“As three ordinary members of the public we have had our eyes opened to such an unfair and unjust sequence of events orchestrated by the authorities that we feel compelled to speak out. This is contrary to anything we thought could be possible in a democratic, free society.”

“Since January 2003, ‘Y’ has been persecuted by our government beyond all realms of imagination. We were three jurors on ‘Y”s criminal trial (the ‘no-ricin trial’) and after seven months listening carefully to the evidence and arguments from the prosecution and defence, we, as a jury, acquitted him of all charges and expected that, on his release, he could begin to rebuild his life in this country.”

Amnesty International’s delegates observed most of the proceedings before the SIAC in which “Y” challenged the UK authorities’ assertions that he was a national security risk, and that he would not face a real risk of torture if returned to Algeria.

The organization considers that in the proceedings before the SIAC “Y” was denied his right to effectively challenge being labelled as a national security risk. Of grave concern to Amnesty International was the UK authorities’ introduction of, and the SIAC’s reliance on, secret intelligence that was withheld from “Y”, his lawyers of choice and the public.

“Amnesty International has extensively documented the persistence of torture of people thought to possess information about terrorism by Algerian security forces”, Nicola Duckworth said.

“Given the extensive evidence before the SIAC that ‘Y’ would face a real risk of torture if deported to Algeria, today’s decision can only be described as an affront to justice and wrong.”

From the NorthWest Enquirer

CRAIG Murray failed to unseat Jack Straw in Blackburn at the last general election but the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan has proved something of a thorn in the government’s side since. His book, Murder In Samarkand, details human rights abuses in Uzbekistan under president Islam Karimov and criticises the British government’s support for the regime. The government has more recently fired off lawyers’ letters to prevent him publishing documents on his blog. And earlier this month Murray cast doubt on government claims about the scale and imminence of the alleged plot to blow up ten flights to the US. But the bureaucracy is exacting its revenge. Ben, a contributor to the blog Neweurasia, says he was prevented from taking Murray’s book on a recent flight from Heathrow to Berlin. ‘Is that about terrorism?’ he was asked. ‘I am afraid you cannot take this on board, sir.’

The Washington neo-cons, President Karimov of Uzbekistan and Jack Straw appear to be linked to a newly prominent “Muslim interest group” that supports the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and Israeli action in the Lebanon…

From Sufi Muslim Council Exposed

Who and what is the “Sufi Muslim Council”? They seem to have emerged from nowhere ‘ suddenly their spokesman is interviewed on Radio 4 and Newsnight and a Channel 4 documentary gives their views some weight. They have a new website and a new magazine. But hardly anyone knows who they are or what they stand for?

We wanted to know the answer to these questions so we set about doing some basic research. We have uncovered very worrying links between this new council and the neocons in Washington. There are also links to some of the most brutal regimes in the world e.g. the Karimov regime in Uzbekistan. We have also unearthed allegations of dodgy business dealings and vote rigging.

The Neocon Link

Just take a look at the SMC website [www.sufimuslimcouncil.org] and the influence of the neocons in Washington becomes very clear. The majority of the content is written by neocons that criticise Islamic groups ‘ ‘Wahhabis’, the Muslim Brotherhood, MCB, MAB, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tablighi Jamaat and Jamaati Islami are some of the examples that come in for criticism. There are articles entitled “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Conquest of Europe”, “Hizb ut-Tahrir ‘ Islam’s Political Insurgency” and “Islamic Radicalism ‘ Its Wahhabi roots and current representation”.

We found that one of the prominent authors on the SMC website, who also writes for the SMC magazine “Spirit”, is Zeyno Baran ‘ a self confessed neocon who works for the ultra right wing Hudson Institute. She is close to the Uzbek regime and close to the oil and gas interests in Washington and Central Asia. She tirelessly does the bidding of the dictatorial regimes of Central Asia by playing down human rights abuses and encouraging western governments to enact draconian measures against Muslims. She has condemned Sheikh Qaradawi and the International Union of Muslim Scholars, amongst others. She says that Islam should play no role in politics and condemns even the mere mention of Islam in the Iraqi and Afghan constitutions.

(more…)

By Alex Steffen in WorldChanging.com

What really threatens us? How do we truly make ourselves safer?

The Cato Institute (a conservative thinktank) has released an outstanding paper, A False Sense of Insecurity (PDF), which makes the point that in any rational assessment, terrorism is really just not that big of a threat to the average person. For instance, about as many Americans have been killed by terrorists as have been “killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.” Whatsmore, many WMD threats are overblown and largely preventable. Indeed, with exhaustive research, the authors can conclude that:

Assessed in broad but reasonable context, terrorism generally does not do much damage. The costs of terrorism are often the result of hasty, ill-considered, and overwrought reactions.

A sensible policy approach to the problem might be to stress that any damage terrorists are able to accomplish likely can be absorbed, however grimly. While judicious protective and policing measures are sensible, extensive fear and anxiety over what may at base prove to be a rather limited problem are misplaced, unjustified and counter productive

(more…)

Eventually we will find out something of the truth behind the alleged terror plot. The law prohibits me from commenting on the evidence: but as the police have already done so, I might say that so far nothing they said has contradicted my contention that no-one had purchased a ticket and nobody had assembled a bomb. It is also worth noting that the mother, Cossor Ali, has not been charged with conspiracy to murder, so the lurid story about her planning to blow up a plane and her baby with a bomb in a feeding bottle appears to be a fantasy.

The charges laid are extremely serious. We will wait to see what the trial brings – unfortunately, the BBC are saying that the prisoners could wait in jail for three years before a substantive trial. As with the “ricin plotters”, that is long enough that in the event of a not guilty verdict the public will have forgotten all about it and the media will be able to report it on page 22 in a single paragraph. Who doubts that if the ricin plotters had been found guilty, it would have been page 1 all over again?

Incidentally, my own straw poll indicates that most people don’t realise the ricin plot didn’t exist and the “plotters” were found not guilty. Hardly surprising when the disgraceful BBC News was today talking about the “Ricin plot” – without mentioning the not guilty verdicts – in a ridiculous scaremongering feature about “Agroterrorism”, claiming that terrorists could kill 250,000 people by introducing botulism into a milk tanker. Worth noting that the Head of News and Current Affairs at the BBC is Helen Boaden, whose brother was a New Labour candidate at the last election.

Of course, our still shiny independent Crown Prosecution Service will have impartially assessed the evidence and decided it was sufficient to go to trial – which effectively gave the CPS the power to lock these people up for three years before the evidence is tested by the defence. The CPS mission statement describes itself proudly as “an independent prosecution service”.

So, consider the statement by the Crown Prosecution Service at the police conference where the charges were announced on 21 August. I heard this on TV and sat up suddenly. I couldn’t believe my ears. I have just tracked down the quote to confirm I heard aright:

Susan Hemmings, Crown Prosecution Service:

“I was briefed in relation to these allegations before the arrest and asked to advise on some preliminary legal issues both before and just after arrest. Together with another senior CPS lawyer, I have been working with the police full time at New Scotland Yard for the last eight days.”

Source: http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/149_06.html

What? The CPS unit that took the decision was actually “embedded” with the police investigation in Scotland Yard? Was a party to the turmoil, excitement and indeed hype that has characterised this investigation?

That strikes me as very strange for the body that is meant impartially to assess the weight of police evidence and decide if there is a case for prosecution. Does anyone know if the CPS has ever physically moved itself to Scotland Yard before in any previous case?

Craig

From The Guardian

David Cameron is on course for a possible general election win, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today that shows support for the Conservatives climbing to a lead that could give them a narrow majority in the Commons, while Labour has plunged to a 19-year low.

The Tories have gained over the last month while support for Labour has fallen heavily in the wake of the recent alleged terror plot against airlines. An overwhelming majority of voters appear to pin part of the blame for the increased threat on Tony Blair’s policy of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ministers – including Mr Blair – have repeatedly denied that there is a connection. But 72%, including 65% of Labour voters, think government policy has made Britain more of a target for terrorists. Only 1% of voters believe the government’s foreign policy has made Britain safer, a devastating finding given that action in Iraq and Afghanistan has been justified in part to defeat Islamist terrorism.

That may explain why Labour support has dropped four points in a month, to 31%, the lowest figure recorded by ICM for the Guardian since just before the 1987 election and the second lowest since the poll series began in 1984. The fall may be partly caused by Mr Blair’s absence on holiday and public unhappiness at the announcement that John Prescott would stand in. The rating is worse than Labour achieved at the 1987 or 1992 elections and worse than almost every poll result under Neil Kinnock and John Smith’s leadership.

Meanwhile the Conservatives have climbed one point to 40%, passing the confidence-boosting threshold for the first time in a Guardian/ICM poll since August 1992, in the wake of John Major’s election victory.

The findings will shock many at Westminster who had expected Labour to gain ground following John Reid’s high-profile handling of the alleged plot against transatlantic airlines. Carried out over the past weekend, following the series of terror arrests, the poll shows voters do not believe the government is giving an honest account of the threat facing Britain. Only 20% of all voters, and 26% of Labour voters, say they think the government is telling the truth about the threat, while 21% of voters think the government has actively exaggerated the danger.

A majority, 51%, say the government is not giving the full truth and may be telling less than it knows. That finding comes despite a newly introduced system of public information warnings that saw the home secretary downgrade the threat level from critical to severe.

Such distrust forms the background to a dramatic shift of support away from Labour. The poll shows former Labour voters switching to the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in almost equal numbers, boosting Lib Dem support by five points to 22%.

The findings will help the party’s leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, ahead of what is expected to be a testing party conference next month. The poll follows his questioning of the prime minister’s close alliance with George Bush and could leave the Lib Dems as powerbrokers if the election produces a close result.

(more…)

From The Guardian

The removal of two men from a holiday flight on the grounds that fellow passengers feared they were terrorists was condemned yesterday. The pair, thought to be in their 20s and of Middle Eastern or Asian appearance, were removed from a flight to Manchester from Malaga, Spain, after passengers became suspicious of their behaviour.

In the early hours of Wednesday a number of passengers on Monarch Airlines flight ZB613 left the plane, refusing to fly unless the two men were removed, causing a three-hour delay.

Passengers are reported to have become suspicious after the men were overheard apparently speaking Arabic and seen repeatedly checking their watches, although this has not been confirmed by the airline.

Muslim MP Khalid Mahmood described the incident as “hugely irrational”. “People need to get their senses back into order. You can’t just accuse anybody who’s of Asian appearance and treat them like a terrorist,” said the Labour MP for Birmingham.

“If somebody is threatening anybody it’s understandable, but when they are just travelling for their own needs it’s not. People just need to calm down.”

These sentiments were echoed by Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the Muslim Parliament of Britain, who described the incident as “sad and shocking”.

(more…)

From the Star Tribune

The White House pushes for a tough anti-terror law and orders an appeal of the decision on NSA surveillance.

WASHINGTON – A federal court’s rejection of President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, on the heels of the alleged London bomb plot, is adding momentum to the administration’s push for congressional approval of tough counterterrorism proposals, including authorizing warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists and restricting detainee rights.

Speaking with reporters Friday at the Camp David retreat in Maryland, Bush said, “Those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live.”I strongly disagree with that decision, strongly disagree,” he said. “That’s why I instructed the Justice Department to appeal immediately, and I believe our appeals will be upheld.”

Bush’s advisers and allies argue that passage of a measure that explicitly authorizes the National Security Agency program would answer key elements of Thursday’s ruling. At the same time, the disrupted London plot is fueling another message: that tough policies in dealing with terror suspects are necessary to combat the continuing threat of terrorism.

Saturday August 19, 2006

By Chief Constable Ken Jones

President, Association of Chief Police Officers

Craig Murray has a lot to say about something of which he knows very little (The timing is political, August 18). The police service in this country is wholly independent of politics and the government. His suggestion that the arrests we saw last week were politically motivated is wholly false. As a one-time senior diplomat, he ought to have a better understanding of the constitutional framework within which policing operates in the UK.

The police service acts solely in the public interest against individuals or groups about whom there is reasonable suspicion or intelligence that they may be engaged in criminal acts. Those criminal acts sometimes include terrorism. The police service does not target or “criminalise” any part of any community. The suggestion that this operation was timed to generate some sort of political benefit is nonsense. The independent decision to act was made in order to ensure the public were protected. Murray must know that high-level liaison between nations facing these challenges is desirable. We are facing an ideologically motivated global threat which demands a united global response.

The police service does not “harass” any religious group. Senior police officers have questioned calls to crudely profile travellers and are leading much of the work to ensure that no one community is victimised. But there is a tiny number of people who, by distorting the core messages of Islam, pose a large-scale threat to us all. We brief our staff very carefully around issues of race, ethnicity, cultures and religions to ensure that dangerous stereotyping does not influence our actions.

We carefully assess the nature of the threat and put into place measures that will contest it. Letting terrorist operations “proceed closer to maturity” could mean that hundreds, or even thousands, might die. It seems we are damned if we act and will most certainly be damned for all time if we do not. Let us remember that those detained last week are innocent until proven guilty. We now need to give the investigators, who are police officers and staff from across the UK, the time and space to establish the truth.

Finally, global terrorism investigations are extremely complex. They involve enquiries across a number of nations. To see no charges after only seven days is hardly surprising; only last year we realised that the existing boundaries of investigation were not up to the challenges posed by global terrorism and asked parliament for a radical extension of pre-charge detention. Our core criminal justice processes were designed for a different purpose and time. They must continue to evolve to adapt to the very real threat we face.

Monday August 21, 2006

By Craig Murray, London

Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, appears appalled (Letters, August 19) that I had the temerity to suggest that the police and security services are becoming politicised. Yet in this same letter, he specifically states that the police last year requested longer periods of detention without charge, and he argues that “our core criminal-justice processes … must continue to evolve to adapt to the very real threat we now face”. Mr Jones is a policeman with a deeply political agenda. His “evolution” is a continual increase of police powers and diminution of the rights of the individual. There could be no clearer example than his letter of what it is that makes me uneasy about the politicisation of the police. It used to be their job to enforce the laws, not tell us what they “must” be.

Mr Jones complains that I don’t know the facts of the current case. Every “fact” I quoted was sourced by a reputable journalist to the police, security services or Home Office. I just reversed the original spin. I see there is no letter from the Association of Chief Police Officers attacking the hundreds of articles which have hyped the threat and effectively prejudged the accused. If police sources were not so keen to tip the wink to the press on suitcases of bomb-making material, suicide videos and improbable chemistry in plane toilets, then there would have been no need to introduce a note of scepticism.

Sorry, but I can’t forget the lies fed to the media about De Menezes, chemical-weapon vests and ricin. Lies fed by the police, up to the highest levels. I am extremely grateful for the work of the police in combating the threat of terrorism regularly since their foundation. I remember with pride those policemen and women who died doing it. Mr Jones’s association has much better staff than he deserves. But he must realise that many of us do not agree that Islamic terrorism is historically greater than other threats faced by this country. I do agree there is evil ideology out there, but it comes from Bush and Bin Laden equally.

By Ruth Knox, Liverpool

Ken Jones is quite right to state that those detained last week are innocent until proved guilty and that the investigators need time to establish the truth. Yet, almost every day reputable news organisations have led with revelations of discoveries made by these same investigators. Are we to assume that all these leaks are against official policy?

By Nick Cohen, doing a nice line in ‘patriotic’ patronising and writing in The Observer

“I broke the story about the government’s apparent hounding of Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. But ever since reading Thursday’s Guardian, I’ve been wondering if the FO wasn’t provoked.

Instead of looking Islamism in the eye, Murray declares that Bush and Blair longed to distract attention from their troubles and ‘dodgy’ intelligence about the alleged airport bombers ‘gave them a chance’.

Even as a conspiracy theorist, my former protege isn’t up to much. Compare him to the bloggers who say it is an MI5 plot to make John Reid PM or the eminent commentator who assured me that the airlines were behind it. They want to ban hand luggage so they can speed up the delivery of passengers to planes, he said. Now they have the excuse to increase their profits.

Hey, what’s the matter with you? Join the dots.”

One aspect of the alleged bomb plot which has provided a tremedous boost to the atavists, is the so-called “Baby bottle bomb”.

As the Daily Telegraph reported on August 14, “Scotland Yard are quizzing Abdula Ahmed, 25, and his 23 year old wife Cossor over suspicions that they were to use their baby’s bottle to hide a liquid bomb”.

This appalling and macabre idea is just what the rabid right needed to stoke up images of how sub-human Muslims are. Prepared to blow up their own baby! For example, John Howard, Australian Prime Minister:

“That would be an appalling reflection on the lack of humanity of that child’s parents.”

That is one of the more moderate quotes. I won’t repeat some of the stuff from US blogs.

One allegation on those blogs, that I can’t track down any original source for, is that the police found baby bottles containing residues of potentially bomb-making chemicals. This allegation has also been quoted to me in comments on this website.

Whether police really have said this, is a matter I can’t clarify. But if they have, consider this. I am looking at a bottle of Milton sterilising tablets. I, and generations of British parents, used these or similar chemicals to sterilise my baby’s feeding bottle. The instructions read thus:

Active Ingredient

Sodium Dichloroisocyanurate

Warnings

Harmful if swallowed. When in contact with an acid, releases a toxic gas.

Hydrogen peroxide is also widely sold in pharmacists and can be used for various domestic purposes including as a disinfectent.

A very high proportion of baby bottles would show traces of potentially dangerous chemicals. It means nothing.

I hope that the allegation is untrue and this young family intended no such crime. But there is nothing uniquely Islamic about infanticide. Indeed, in the last two days the news bulletins have covered prominently the stories of a British man who allegedly jumped from a balcony clutching his two children in Crete, and the inquest on a woman who threw herself under her train with her nine year old child.

Horrible? Yes. Have Muslims wreaked more horror on the World, either historically or in the last five years, than those professing other religions? No.

The Register comments on the feasibility of ‘Mass murder in the skies’

I appear to have hit a nerve with my call for a sceptical view of the alleged “bigger than 9/11” plot. Over 50,000 people so far have read the item on my own blog, and it has been quoted and reposted all over the web.

In the UK, at least, the more serious wing of the mainstream media is beginning to catch up with the idea that all is not well here.

Still, after eight days of detention, nobody has been charged with any crime. For there to be no clear evidence yet on something that was “imminent” and “Mass murder on an unbelievable scale” is, to say the least, rather peculiar. The 24th person, who was arrested amid much fanfare yesterday, has been quietly released without charge today. Breaking news, another “suspect” has just been released too.

The drip, drip of information to the media from the security services has rather dried-up. The last item of any significance was that they had found a handgun and a rifle – neither of which could have been in any use in the alleged plot. If you were smuggling undetectable liquid explosive onto a plane, you would be unlikely to give the game away by tucking a rifle into your hand baggage.

As with the murder some years ago of the uncle of the suspect held in Pakistan, it remains a possibility that there could be some criminal activity here involving a few of the suspects, which is not terrorist linked.

As the Police immediately told the press about the guns, it is a reasonable deduction that it remains true that they still have found no bombs or detonators, or they would have told us, particularly as they haven’t charged anyone yet. They must be getting pretty desperate to announce some actual evidence by now.

This brings us to one particuarly sinister aspect of the allegations – that the bombs were to be made on the plane.

The idea that high explosive can be made quickly in a plane toilet by mixing at room temperature some nail polish remover, bleach, and Red Bull and giving it a quick stir, is nonsense. Yes, liquid explosives exist and are highly dangerous and yes, airports are ill equipped to detect them at present. Yes, it is true they have been used on planes before by terrorists. But can they be quickly manufactured on the plane? No.

The sinister aspect is not that this is a real new threat. It is that the allegation may have been concocted in order to prepare us for arresting people without any actual bombs.

Let me fess up here. I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and mobile phones. So the authorities could announce – as they have whispered to the media in this case – that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, and potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers the bar, doesn’t it?

This has a peculiar resonance for me. I spoke at the annual Stop the War conference a couple of months ago. I referred to the famous ricin plot. For those outside the UK, this generated the same degree of hype here two years ago. It was alleged that a flat in North London inhabited by Muslims was a “Ricin” factory, manufacturing the deadly toxin which could kill “hundreds of thousands of people”. Police tipped off the authorities that traces of ricin had been discovered. In the end, all those accused were found not guilty by the court. The “traces of ricin” were revealed to be the atmospheric norm.

The “intelligence” on that plot had been extracted under torture in Algeria – another echo here, as the “intelligence” in this current case has almost certainly been extracted under torture in Pakistan. Another police tip-off to the media was that the intelligence said that the ricin had been stored in plastic jars, and they had indeed found plastic jars containing a suspicious substance. It turned out the containers in question were two Brylcreem tubs. What was in them? In the first, paper clips. In the second, Brylcreem.

I told the story in my speech, and concluded with a ringing “So we must congratulate the government for saving us from a dastardly Islamic plot to take over the World using hair styling products.”

I fear the government may have taken me seriously!

I do not discount the possibility that there is a germ of something behind the current alleged plot. Will it be anything like the hype? No.

The hype scarcely lowers. On the flagship ten o’clock news last night, the BBC reported breathlessly on the United flight diverted from Washington to Boston last night, and its fighter escort. We had very earnest besuited security experts terrifying us about the dangers.

The extraordinary thing was that, by this stage, we knew definitely that this was a 60 year old woman with claustrophobia, who had a few loose matches and some Vaseline intensive care hand lotion in the bottom of her handbag. The facts reported were totally at odds with the whole manner of the “be terrified” report and the analysis being built on it. But that didn’t stop them.

It has, of course, worked. When did you last see Iraq on the news? Where is Liebermann’s defeat now on the news agenda?

A blog like this is much too small a player to affect the public mood. What it can do is tap into it. The extraordinary response to these posts shows that there is a very significant section of the public not prepared to buy more Bush/Blair propaganda.