"People should not fear their governments; governments should fear their people."
-- V.
Faced with another Chicken Little moment, let's consider what Jonathon Alter said on Countdown Thursday.
"Less than 10% of the cargo on passengers planes is x-rayed." Now, imagine you are a dedicated terrorist. On the one hand, you can board the plane with this mystical liquid potion and an electrical device.
Hoping to go unnoticed as a presumably dark skinned person, you can assemble it in flight, at your seat or in the lavatory, and set it off killing yourself and others, if there are no hitches. On the other hand, you can assemble the device in the comfort of your own home, ship it as air freight and explode it, sparing your own life. What to do?
. . .
. .
Over the weekend I watched the surprisingly good -- and timely -- V for Vendetta.
It's out in DVD now, and I think you might find it thought provoking. The take on living in a state of governed by managed fear is well done.
Picks of the Week:
"Neither the White House nor Downing Street has any right to expect people to accept their claims at face value, or place confidence in any of their statements.
The war against Iraq was legitimised on the basis of false claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. These lies have destroyed forever the credibility of Bush and Blair."
A good one to read through.
"Leading UK Muslims have united to tell Tony Blair that his foreign policy in Iraq and on Israel offers 'ammunition to extremists' and puts British lives 'at increased risk'.
"An open letter signed by three of the four Muslim MPs, three of the four peers, and 38 organisations including the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain, was greeted with dismay in Downing Street. It has courted the MCB and several of the signatories, such as key Labour MPs Sadiq Khan (Tooting) and Shahid Malik (Dewsbury), whom it believes can shape Muslim opinion.
"
"US Muslim groups have criticised US President George W Bush for calling a foiled plot to blow up airplanes part of a 'war with Islamic fascists,' saying the term could inflame anti-Muslim tensions." . .
. .
"'We believe this is an ill-advised term and we believe that it is counter productive to associate Islam or Muslims with fascism,' said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations advocacy group.
"
Interesting to witness the fascist Bush projecting his proclivities on others. He must think he is winning hearts and minds by killing and torturing Muslims abroad while insulting them at home.
Quite a strategery.
"Nearly two years after he left the Justice Department for a glass-and-marble office tower six blocks away, Ashcroft is building a lucrative consulting company helping security and other firms find business with federal agencies. Federal spending on homeland security is expected to reach nearly $60 billion in fiscal 2007, according to the Office of Management and Budget."
Is it possible there's money to be made from keeping the sheeple afraid with bogus terror alerts?
"While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.
"Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies."
Here's something to ponder, this British investigation of the booga booga liquid elixir supposedly was underway for months.
Certainly Tony's guys share info with the Moron's guys. If this BS had legs, why would BushCo divert funds from detecting something that would be so dangerously threatening? Scamsters.
"Before all but the sparsest details of the alleged terror plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights have been revealed, the American people are being subjected once again to a campaign of fear-mongering and intimidation directed from the White House.
"The aim of this propaganda drive, aided and abetted by the media, is to portray opposition to the war in Iraq and to the policies of the Bush administration in general as tantamount to collusion with or capitulation to terrorism and mass murder."
"Through magnification and repetition, cable news does two opposite things at once: it stokes fear and inures viewers to danger.
CNN chose a relatively prosaic rubric for its report, 'Security Alert,' while Fox News chose the more vivid title 'Terror in the Sky.' (MSNBC went for the wordier 'Target America: Terror in the Sky.') All the cable news programs used music and graphics to hype any new development as a 'breaking news' bulletin so important it would seem to merit interruptions by the Emergency Alert System.
('If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for news and official information.')"
"In a joint statement, Home Secretary John Reid and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith called for 'considerable restraint' to avoid prejudicing any future trials.
"It singled out the use of photographs and speculation over individuals' links and activities and threatened action over any breaches of the law.
"
Little or nothing is going to come of this . . .
wait and see.
"President Bush cautioned on Saturday the threat from a plot to detonate liquid explosives on commercial flights may not have passed and denied Democratic charges he was trying to use the crisis for political gains in an election year.
"'We believe that this week's arrests have significantly disrupted the threat,' Bush said in his weekly radio address.
'Yet we cannot be sure that the threat has been eliminated.'"
The biggest terror threat will be over when the Moron and The Dick are removed from office.
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