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BBC Reports UK-U.S. Terror Plot Foiled
j823777 was one of several readers to point out a BBC report that "A terrorist plot to blow up planes in mid-flight from the UK to the U.S. has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said. It is thought the plan was to detonate up to three explosive devices smuggled on aircraft in hand luggage.
Police have arrested 21 people in the London area after an anti-terrorist operation lasting several months. Security at all airports in the UK has been tightened and delays are reported. MI5 has raised the UK threat level to critical — the highest possible."
spo0nman adds a link to the Associated Press's coverage.
Update: 08/10 12:57 GMT by T : Several readers have pointed out new restrictions imposed as a result of this plot on passengers' carry-on luggage. In the UK, nearly all possession (including laptop computers) must be carried in the cargo hold; while their rules don't yet go quite as far, U.S. airlines are stepping up their enforcement of carry-on-restrictions, including banning substances like toothpaste.
Just Watch - the mid term elections this cycle will again be driven by raising the alert and fear level to drive voters into a panic, "Trust Our Imperious Leaders!" mode, no matter how corrupt, no matter how self-serving these alert levels are.
The Fearmongering must stop ! This is Stupid, Insulting, and Damaging to our Democracy!
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
they didn't happen to shoot any of *these* terrorists 9 times in the head.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
WHENEVER the popularity of their administration goes way down, the bush & co and blair & co suddenly uncover a 'devilish grand terrorist plot'.
This is getting WAY old now.
Theres no way of proving whether what they say is right or wrong, whether the arrested are really guilty or not. They raise the alert level and finitto ! Civilian authorities and organisations do not have access to 'classified' information. Why, in this way, you can do something and blame it on the martians ?
I remember last time they shot an innocent brasilian IN THE BACK, and it was discovered months later, and with chance, that he wasnt a terrorist.
Blair, is a moron. He is also an exploiter of authority, benefiting the shady circles who put so much support behind him. Not unlike bush.
Read radical news here
I am shocked the US voted in Bush. I mean the US was never a target of Terrorism when Clinton was president.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Anyone notice how all the usual terrorist-coddling media sources referred to the suspects as being of south Asian origin? For crying out loud, call a spade a spade! The correct word is ARAB! Big fucking surprise that a bunch of ARABS would want to blow up as many civilians as possible. That NEVER happens. I'm so fuckig sick of Arabs using their weak-ass militaries as a moral justification for INTENTIONALLY targeting CIVILIANS. And the world's major media outlets are only too happy to fabricate increasingly more perverse moral justifications and propaganda photos in support of this bullshit! Why don't you pussies go after some military targets, huh? Fuck the pedophile Mohammed and the imaginary winged horse he flew in on, and fuck your imaginary friend Allah.
There are people so utterly insane they are calling this a Rovian Plot. The other half is calling for the death of all Non-Judeo/Christians.
People. Seriously. You have to stop looking for boogeymen everywhere. There really are terrorists out there and they really are looking to kill people. Most of them are not from or connected Washington DC.
This
Didn't Britain just introduce a terror threat level system a few weeks ago ? And right here is the chance to crank up the threat level a few notches ! The person in charge must be thrilled.
We haven't lost the war on terror. We're actively endorsing it, by being deliberately overprotective. No beverages on flights? Trans-atlantic (or even cross-country) flights are damned long.
Unfortunately, this whole mess will simple bring back the generic "wartime" retention for incumbents, and that's honestly more terrifying than the police/interpol/whatever doing their job.
maybe my comments could have been better worded.
by sheeple in the west I mean those people being victims of a corrupt government who are hoodwinking them through unscrupulous PR tactics especially around election times.
show us the proof-where is the evidence, or is this going to be with held under guise of national security-why can we still not after 3 years convict anyone from guantanamo bay?
Dean
I'm sure this 'terror' attack will be a justification for ID cards or barcodes on our arms.
Back in a few mins.. room 101 is calling
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Its because the terror alerts, both in the US and UK, are only meant to scare people. They mean absolutely shit. I don't know how it works in the UK, but it seems that the US gov just randomly shoots it between yellow and orange most of the time. Need more people scared so that they vote for warmongering politicians? Raise that alert level to orange! Need to really get peoples nerves going? Red's the way to go!!
In short, the alert level is a bunch of political bullshit. If anyone can tell me how it helps keep the public safe, please correct me. I mean, what are we supposed to do on high alert levels, question our neighbors? Turn our parents into the authorities for anti-party thoughts???
I got nothin'
Actually, I think you'll find they merely want to convert us all to Islam and make us live under a theocracy, not literally destroy us.
And I've heard plenty of US fundamentalists advocating (further!) romping through the middle east, invading Syria, Iran, Iraq (before we went in), even Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Given the US is currently occupying two countries in the middle east, one under only the flimsiest of excuses, what gives you the right to such a moral high-ground? Especially given you tolerate mainstream religious leaders calling for the assassination of democratically-elected leaders, and/or the wholesale invasion of other countries?
And don't try the "targeting innocents" angle - do you think more or less innocent Iraqis have died as a result of the Iraq invasion than Americans died in 9/11?
Here's a clue: the two numbers differ by (over) a factor of 14.
So?
Right. And invoking the spectre of 9/11 on every possible occasion, restricting civil liberties and sliding towards a police state and issuing handy colour-coded threat levels that tell you exactly how scared you should be all the time... those things are having the opposite effect, right?
So they're not, y'know helping the terrorists win?
I think you'll find that meddling in (and destabilising) the entire middle east region for the best part of half a century got the US in this mess, actually.
If you'd kept to yourselves and not tried to arm-twist, destabilise and generally manipulate governments into acting in your own best interests, there wouldn't be as many people hating you and trying to attack you right now.
Not, of course, that there are actually that many people trying, even now. You're still more likely to get killed by lightning than killed in a terrorist attack... so where are the colour-coded "federal threat-level" charts for lightning strikes?
Oh right - the threat of lightning lacks a clear us-and-them angle to get the sheeple voting for you, and doesn't provide for nearly as many heroic-looking stage-managed photo-ops.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Religion is the main cause in this case:
If by religion, you mean the worship of the allmighty dollar as a motivation for invading iraq (and hell, the last 40 years of deliberate middle-east unrest), then yes, I do agree with you that religion is the main cause in this case.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Which third world country was it necessary to bomb in order to avert this plot?
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Since it's pretty clear both MI5 and the CIA have been involved in most of the terrorist schemes as of late, who caught these guys? Some other branch that wasn't actively busy in planning false flag operations? Rogue bad-asses that don't follow orders? Is this just yet another publicity stunt by government officials that are keen on keeping the populace in a virtual panic?
Or are there really a group of psychotic fundamentalists that "hate our freedom" in conjunction with the obvious inside job teams that also do so much damage to the economies and civilians of both countries?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Nah. The threat levels are:
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This plan, the Underground bombs, the Bali bombing, and so on, is directly connected to UK support of bloodthirsty, aggressive and morally unsupportable US foreign policy (more than 5 decades of it). Reap what you sow -- and as long as US-made bombs (Lebanon, most visibly) and bullets fall around the world, and Orwellian doublespeak conceals this root cause, so will retaliation be inspired.
you had me at #!
Well, that's one of the more ignorant things I've read today. The bulk fo the majro terrorists have been well-educated and well-off; we have been giving Middle Easterners self-determination as part of Bush's massively wrong-headed 'everyone wants to be free' scheme.
Unfortunately, not everyone is a Western libertarian; indeed, the Islamists hate such things as freedom of religion and speech, and equality between men & women--and they believe that through terror they can expand the Dar al-Islam. They are not stupid (indeed, many are quite intelligent); rather, they are evil: their ideals are diametrically opposed to our own.
The sooner the West realises that we are in a struggle for survival, the sooner we can deal with this seriously.
Not that I think banning liquids on flights is serious.
All those methods sound fine, but presuppose a degree of local influence that the West can never have on Islamic areas.
It's not about "brown people", it is about ideological conflict with Islam. (Not "Fundamentalist Islam", but "Islam".)
Note that there are actually "brown people" we don't blow up that the Islamists DO blow up. The Phillipines, India, etc, etc...
The only way to resolve this is a mix of wars and actions other than wars. Destabilizatiom, polarization, and escalation into the kind of warfare (total war) that favors the modern nations is IMO better than the death of a thousand cuts we would suffer by perpetual yielding.
Total war is a catalyst for positive change.
It swept away the degenerate monarchies of Europe.
It swept away warlordism and unified mainland China. Considering their progress since 1948, the cost was modest.
It swept away the Romanovs and readied Russia for the modern age.
Now, there is the problem of the last unreformed religion.
If one considers dead religions and their obsolete gods, wordly events are what broke them. Believers ceased to believe when their gods did nothing for them against enemies with different beliefs. This happened over time, and we haven't killed any gods recently. Visible deity failure is required to break a religion, and that means overwhelming military and social defeat. Allah can be dealt with like any other imaginary celestial friend, but it will be messy.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Your initial reply was childish, idiotic and completely uneccessary and unimaginative.
What one would expect from somebody that feeds his news needs from the worst tabloid media.
I exsuce the other guy for briniging in to question your IQ, your initial response showed very little in the brains department.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Is your terror cell living in terror? Is your safe-house not so safe? If so, read the New York Times, the jihad journal.
One of my family is a pilot that covers those flights in to/out of the region. I'm frustrated that I can not kill these men myself. These, and all voilent terrorists, should be publically desposed of with haste. Their heads on spikes at airports seems appropriate. Everyone who knowingly aided them in any way -- same treatment. Politics aside, if you knew someone were conspiring to kill your family what would you do?
Dirt doesn't need luck.
A foolish assertion. Do I need to remind you that Mohammed Atta passed security at the lightly defended Portland ME airport? It is of vital importance the the security at Kennedy Airport is the same as in Quad Cities.
I think you are confused about freedom. I am practically strip searched before I get on a plane. But I understand why and try to make it easy on the TSA folks. Is it really worth getting worked up because you can't take your Frappuccino on board anymore? Your real freedom is to travel anywhere in our glorious nation on a whim.
an ill wind that blows no good