Tom Toles: Sounds Like A Good Plan To Me ...

Liquid Bombers On Trial: Jury Sees Martyrdom Videos, Crown Identifies Targets

The trial of the so-called "Liquid Bombers" has begun in London. As you may recall, twenty-five people were arrested in August of 2006 in connection with an alleged plot to assemble and detonate bombs on board transatlantic airliners, killing hundreds or thousands or "hundreds of thousands" of people.

Of the twenty-five who were arrested, fourteen were released without charges; the remaining eleven are now on trial. Eight of them are charged with conspiracy to murder, three with lesser offenses. The trial is expected to last six to eight months.

Six of the eight charged with conspiracy to murder made martyrdom videos, excerpts of which were shown to the jury last week. Everyone says these martyrdom videos are "chilling", but nobody says why. And the actual contents are reported almost nowhere.

The fullest excerpts available were reported by The Scotsman and are reproduced here along with photos courtesy of The Telegraph:

Abdulla Ahmed Ali

Ali is pegged as one of the ringleaders.

YOU show more care and concern for animals than you do for the Muslim ummah [the Islamic nation]…

Thanks to God I swear by Allah, I have the desire since the age of 15/16 to participate in jihad in the path of Allah.

I had the desire since then to punish the kuffar [non-believers] for the evil they are doing.

I had the desire since then for jannah [paradise] for the Koran. I want to go to my prophet and his companions.

Leave us alone. Stop meddling in our affairs and we will leave you alone.

Otherwise expect floods of martyr operations against you and we will take our revenge and anger, ripping amongst your people and scattering the people and your body parts and your people's body parts responsible for these wars and oppression decorating the streets.

Ibrahim Savant

ALL Muslims take heed – remove yourself from the grasp of the kuffar [non-believer] before you are counted as one of them.

Do not be content with your council houses and businesses and western lifestyle…

All Muslims feel the need to dust your feet in the training camps of jihad where men are made.

Cease debate and enter the battlefields seeking paradise. Mujahideen, for years I've desired to meet you, to walk the paths you've walked, to sacrifice what you have sacrificed. Now Allah has honoured me with an invitation to his kingdom.

Obviously after this beautiful operation they will accuse us brothers of all sorts of things and most of the things they will accuse us of is killing for the sake of killing, hating freedom, hating the west, being fed up with our lives.

Arafat Waheed Khan

WE WILL rain upon you such a terror and destruction that you will never feel peace and security. There will be floods of martyrdom operations and bombs falling through your lands. There will be daily torment in this world and a greater torment awaiting in the hereafter. Now I'd like to address the bootlickers who stand shoulder to shoulder with Kuffar in condemning these beautiful operations and the Mujahedeen.

In particular, I'd like to address the scholars to whom Allah has given knowledge which they concealed and play with to please the Kuffar, to save themselves from their disapproval.

What a miserable deal. Pleasing the Kuffar all while just pleasing Allah. Fearing them instead of fearing Allah.

I would like to thank Allah for giving me this opportunity to bless me with this Shahada [martyrdom]. I ask Allah to forgive me for all my sins, to accept me as a martyr. I ask Allah to help the Mujahedeen everywhere in every way.

Umar Islam

THIS is revenge for the actions of the USA in the Muslim lands and their accomplices such as the British and the Jews.

This is a warning to the non-believers that if they do not leave our lands there are many more like us and many more like me ready to strike until the law of Allah is established on this earth.

Know that without doubt your dead are in the hellfire whilst the Muslims who died due to your attacks will be in paradise …

You are just sitting there, you are still funding the Army, you have not put down your leader, you have not pressured them enough.

Most of them are too busy watching Home And Away and EastEnders, complaining about the World Cup, drinking your alcohol, to care about anything.

That is all you seem to care about – and I know because I have come from that.

Waheed Zaman

I HAVE been educated to a high standard and, had it not been Allah had blessed me with this mission, I could have lived a life of ease; but instead chose to fight for the sake of Allah's Deen [his religion or way].

All of you so-called moderate Muslims, there's only one way to solve this crisis. The problems will not be solved by campaigning, big conferences, peaceful negotiations with the disbelievers.

The only solution to this current situation of the Muslims is by fighting Jihad for the sake of Allah until the enemy is fully subdued and expelled from our lands.

America and England have no cause for complaint for they are the ones who invaded and built bases in the land of the Muslims.

I have not been brainwashed.

I have been educated to a high standard. I am old enough to make my own decisions.

Tanvir Hussain

PEOPLE keep on saying, you know, that we keep on targeting innocent civilians, yeah.

We're not targeting innocent civilians. We're targeting economic and military targets.

They're the battle grounds of today, so whoever steps in these trenches, they, yeah, you haven't got us to blame.

You've got to blame yourself and collateral damage is going to be inevitable and people are going to die besides, you know, it's work at a price.

You know, I wanted to do this myself. For many years, you know, I dreamt of doing this, but I didn't have no chance of doing this. I didn't have any means.

Thank God Allah has accepted my duas [prayers], and provided a means to do this. You know, I only wish I could do this again, you know come back and do this again, and just do it again and again until people come to their senses and realise, you know, don't mess with the Muslims.

Two of those charged with conspiracy to murder did not make martyrdom videos.

Both are considered -- along with Abdulla Ahmed Ali -- the "ringleaders".

Assad Sarwar

Assad Sarwar didn't make a martyrdom video himself, according to the prosecution, because he didn't intend to die. He was allegedly getting ready to send seven martyrs and thousands of infidels to their deaths, but Sarwar wasn't ready for martyrdom yet. He had further plans.

The Scotsman again:

Prosecutor Peter Wright QC said one key figure obtained detailed information about other possible targets.

He said Assad Sarwar was too important to give up his life in the wave of mid-air suicide attacks.

Mr Wright said: "The horizon in respect of Mr Sarwar's terrorist ambition was, we say, limitless."

In addition to the alleged plot against transatlantic airliners, there were allegedly also other targets, as AFP reported:

Wright said a computer memory stick found at Sarwar's home suggested the gang had assessed other targets, including London's Canary Wharf tower -- the tallest in Britain -- a gas pipeline and a number of power stations.

Mohammed Gulzar

The eighth defendant on charges of conspiracy to murder is also pegged as one of the ringleaders, according to The Guardian, which reported:

[Wright] described Ali, Sarwar and Mohammed Gulzar as the main men behind the plot.

The Sunday Express has more:

Mr Wright said Abdulla Ahmed Ali from Walthamstow, Assad Sarwar and Mohammed Gulzar were the main men behind the murderous plot.
...

Mr Wright told the court police had watched several members of the gang for many months.

He said: “From what had been observed in the days and months prior to the arrests it was realised that these men, together with others, were engaged in some sort of terrorist plot.”

The court heard how Ali and Gulzar were watched by police as they met frequently at a flat in Forest Road, Walthamstow, to make final preparations.

About that flat: David Byers reported in The Times:

The “bomb factory” allegedly used by the eight-strong terrorist gang to develop liquid explosives, with the intention of blowing up transatlantic airliners, was described in court [April 4].

The flat in Forest Road, Walthamstow, East London, was bought by Abdulla Ali, the self-declared leader of the gang, for £141,191.63 in cash on July 20, 2006, the prosecution said...

Targets

The Sunday Express account continues:

Police recovered a computer memory stick belonging to Ali which contained detailed information about flights and airport security, the jury was told.

“The memory stick contained details in respect of flight timetables, baggage information, security advice in respect of restricted items and other information about Heathrow airport,” said Mr Wright.

The jury was shown files on the memory stick giving details of flights from Heathrow to cities in North America including Boston, Denver, Chicago, Miami, New York and Montreal.

The information included the airline, terminal at Heathrow, departure times, arrival times, flight numbers, aircraft type and number of stops, the court heard.

The information on the memory stick focused only on one-way flights from Heathrow. These were all commercial airliners with passenger capacities of almost 300 people per plane.

“Collectively the flights were each of them non-stop transatlantic journeys to north American destinations,” said Mr Wright.

Of the flights on the memory stick, seven had been highlighted, the jury was told. They were on three airlines - Air Canada, United Airlines and American Airlines.

The Guardian and others have named the seven highlighted flights:

1415 United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco
1500 Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto
1515 Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal
1540 United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago
1620 United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington
1635 American Airlines Flight 139 to New York
1650 American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago

The Toronto and Montreal connections are new and have aroused some interest in the Canadian media.

The CBC reported:

John O'Connor, a former commander with Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism unit, told CBC News Thursday that it's not surprising that Canadian flights were among the targets.

"It might seem difficult for Canadians to understand, but when you're looking at Canada and America, one tends to on this side of the Atlantic combine them as one, and I'm sure that's what the terrorists do," he said from London.

"They see them as very close cousins, and they wouldn't discriminate them against one or the other…. As far as the insurgents are concerned, any Western country which is an ally of the United States is going to be seen as a legitimate target."

~~~

thirty-third in a series

The Clues Of September

I have never taken a position on the branch of 9/11 research known as "TV Fakery", but I have always had some questions about what we saw on TV that day, in particular about the video of the "hijacked airplanes" slamming into the towers.

"September Clues" looks at the various bits of video evidence broadcast by the major networks on September 11, 2001 -- and the video records those networks now have in their archives -- and finds a state of affairs that can only be described in the words of Ricky Ricardo:

"Somebody got some 'splainin' to do!!"

Analysis of the FOX coverage forms a large part of "September Clues"; I didn't see any FOX on 9/11, so my questions pertain to other coverage. "September Clues" doesn't even raise the questions I've had. And I don't mean to imply that this "omission" discredits "September Clues" in any way; merely that the list of unanswered questions is even longer...

Here's the first ten minutes:

Part One: 9/11 News Media Coverage

To watch the whole video, in 10-minute segments, click here.

Tom Toles: Next Question!

Somalia: The Open Secret Horror Show Continues

I haven't been able to devote as much time or effort to Somalia as it has deserved, but fortunately Chris Floyd has been doing exceptional work on the continuing story of American-sponsored murder and mayhem there.

Here's the latest from Chris, with some additional notes and a few extra photos from your chilly host.

Blood Harvest: The Terror War Bears Horrific Fruit in Somalia

The New York Times made one of its periodic jaunts to Somalia this week, painting a hellish picture of the fruits of the Bush Administration's third Terror War "regime change" operation.

To be sure, reporter Jeffrey Gettleman glosses over the larger context and immediate causes of Somalia's deterioration into foreign occupation, brutal civil war and the world's worst humanitarian disaster. The deep and bloody American involvement is only lightly glanced at; there is no mention of the deadly U.S. bombing raids on civilians that accompanied the invasion by Ethiopia (and no mention of the American role in arming, training and funding the armies of the tyrannical regime); no mention of the U.S. death squads sent in to "kill anyone still alive" after bombing strikes; no mention of American security apparatchiks "renditioning" fleeing refugees, including American citizens, to Ethiopia's notorious dungeons; no mention that most of these atrocities took place under the command of the recently-fired and now-saintly Admiral William Fallon, who directed all three of the Terror War's overt wars – in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia – until he was fired by Bush last month, presumably for insufficient enthusiasm about a fourth regime change op -- in Iran.

Still, these lapses aside, the NYT story is an important piece. It goes further than almost any other previous mainstream story in putting across some measure of the horrific reality in Somalia to a wider audience. And to be fair, Gettleman does mention, briefly, some context that is almost always omitted in corporate media reports: such as the fact that the "transitional government" installed by Bush and the Ethopian dictator Meles Zenawi is rife with warlords, some of them on the CIA's payroll.

However, this whisper of truth buried deep in the story is undercut by the large whopper Gettleman purveys near the top: the claim that the transitional government "was widely hailed as the best chance in years to end Somalia’s ceaseless cycles of war and suffering." Only in the imperial courts of America's political-media class would the imposition of a gaggle of walords and CIA tools, put in place by the brutal invasion of a despised foreign enemy, be seen as a way to end war and suffering. Then again, this is precisely the same idiocy that imperial courtiers – led by the New York Times – advocated for Iraq.

Gettleman -- once an eager cheerleader for the murderous Somalia caper -- doesn't make that connection, of course, but he does find a "respectable" source to say what most sentient beings looking at Somalia have been saying since the Terror War operation began: that Bush and Zenawi have turned Somalia – which had known its first measure of peace and stability in many years under the alliance of Islamic groups ousted by the invasion – into a replica of the Bush-made hell in Iraq. Of course, the dissenting figure is a Democrat – Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey – so the criticism can be safely portrayed as a "partisan attack," maintaining the sacred "balance" of mainstream journalism. But Payne's observation, whether motivated by partisanship or not, is simply a description of the objective truth: "We’re Baghdad-izing Mogadishu and Somalia. We’re making people feel wrongly treated and pushing them toward more radical positions."

This indeed is the crux of the matter. Just as in Iraq, the invasion, occupation, repression, corruption and brutality unleashed upon Somalia have radicalized many people and empowered the more extreme factions in the Islamic alliance. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Terror War is breeding more terrorists. In fact, this dynamic is so obvious that a cynic could almost believe that this is the actual aim of the Terror War: to generate "ceaseless cycles of war and suffering" – with the war-profiteering loot and enhanced state power that inevitably follow.

The suffering of the Somali people plays no part in these machinations of the great geopolitical game, of course. Why should it? Bush and the American political class have already killed a million Iraqis and driven four million from their homes, with the whole world watching; they are certainly not going to wring their hands over dead and despoiled nobodies in a land the world abandoned long ago.

Excerpts from Somalia’s Government Teeters on Collapse (NYT):

In recent weeks, the Islamists have routed warlords and militiamen who have been absorbed into the government forces but are undermining what little progress transitional leaders have made with their predatory tactics, like stealing food. After 17 years of civil war, Somalia’s violence seems to be driven not so much by clan hatred, ideology or religiosity, but by something much simpler: survival.

“We haven’t been paid in eight months,” said a government soldier named Hassan, who said he could not reveal his last name. “We rob people so we can eat.”

Nur Hassan Hussein, the prime minister, does not deny that government troops rob civilians. “This is the biggest problem we have,” he said in an interview this month.

But, he said, he does not have the money to pay them. Each month, more than half of government’s revenue, mostly from port taxes, disappears — stolen by “our people,” the prime minister said.

That leaves Mr. Nur with about $18 million a year to run a failed state of nine million of some of the world’s neediest, most collectively traumatized people....Aid organizations say that more than half of Mogadishu’s estimated one million people are on the run.

War, drought, displacement, high food prices and the exodus of aid workers, many of the elements that lined up in the early 1990s to create a famine, are lining up again. The United Nations World Food Program said on Thursday, in a warning titled “Somalia Sinking Deeper Into Abyss of Suffering,” that the country was the most dangerous in the world for aid workers.

Most Somalis do not argue with that. They say Mogadishu is more capriciously violent than it has ever been, with roadside bombs, militias shelling one another across neighborhoods, doctors getting shot in the head and 10-year-olds hurling grenades....

In the rat-tat-tat of nightly machine-gun fire, people are beginning to hear the government’s death knell. Many residents have mixed feelings about this. They contend that the government has enabled warlords. They say, almost without exception, that things were better under the Islamists. But they fear what lies ahead...

Government officials say much of the resistance is simply spoilers who are deeply invested in the status quo of chaos, like gun runners, counterfeiters and importers of expired baby formula.

But some of the men believed to be the biggest spoilers are part of the government. To get clan support and — just as crucially — more militiamen, transitional leaders have cut deals with warlords like Mohammed Dheere, now Mogadishu’s mayor, and Abdi Qeybdid, now the police chief. These are the same men whom the C.I.A. paid in 2006 to fight the Islamists, a strategy that backfired because the population turned against them, mostly because of their legacy of terrorizing civilians.

Hassan, the government soldier, said he had been in one of these warlord militias since he was 8. He cannot read or write. He has thin wrists, a delicate face, empty eyes and a wife and two children to feed, which is why he said he routinely robs people. “We are losing,” he said.

He said many of his friends were defecting to the Islamists because that was the only way to survive.

As Chris wrote last spring -- too long ago! ...

I want to reiterate a point that I have made over and over here: This war in Somalia, this carnage, this mass death, this brutality, this vast suffering is the direct result of the Bush Administration's "War on Terror." For all you Americans out there, this is our war, just as much as Afghanistan and Iraq are. It's being done in our name, with our money, at the instigation of our leaders. The American Establishment and the American media are almost totally ignoring this on-going horror story -- and downplaying the Bush gang's central role in it whenever it does get a mention -- but be assured: just because American citizens have been left in the usual amnesiac fog by their leaders, the victims of the invasion, and those watching it from outside the American media bubble -- especially in the Muslim world -- know full well whose war it really is. Once again, the brutal policies of loot and domination are preparing a terrible blowback for us; even now, you can see the thunderclouds gathering on the horizon.

The rising thunderclouds play into the hands of the Terror Warriors, who want nothing more than a storm of Islamic extremism to "justify" their "response" to the acts of bogus terror that kicked off the bogus war. It's as dramatic a reality-reversal as you could ever hope not to see. But we're seeing it already, and it will only get worse.

In other words, we started out fighting "terrorists of global reach", or the Taliban, or Afghanistan, or Islam, or Islamists, or the rest of the world, or something, because of the alleged "act of war" that was "declared against the United States" on September 11, 2001.

Never mind that the official story of 9/11 and all its official variants have been packs of lies. The "news" media were never going to expose the fiction -- not after 50 years of being secretly groomed to produce fiction -- and a huge propaganda army could be mobilized against anyone who dared to raise any questions.

So even though the truth about 9/11 couldn't be hidden forever, it could be hidden for quite a while in the United States of Propaganda -- where for generations the citizens had been conditioned to reject any hint of serious wrongdoing by their government.

And in the meantime -- while that truth was sinking in -- the US and her "coalition" of "allies" would have committed countless atrocities against countless innocent people, creating countless new enemies all over the world; these people would themselves be called "terrorists", and eventually the bogus war would have "legitimized" itself.

And then we would be in an actual war against actual terrorists, none of whom had any reason to wish us harm before the beginning of the war that we started, supposedly in order to "root them out"!

Some in the blogosphere have mentioned the media's near-refusal to touch the slaughter in Somalia, and as Chris Floyd points out, the only coverage it receives in the mainstream is highly sanitized. If I'm reading this correctly, the reason for this is because there is no "reason" for the US to attack Somalia.

In other words, we bombed and invaded Afghanistan "because of 9/11" -- a fiction that has flown so well it hasn't yet needed to be revised.

Then we bombed and invaded Iraq "because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction", but that turned out to be fiction too -- and it didn't fly quite so well. So then we changed our story and suddenly we had bombed and invaded Iraq "because Saddam Hussein had connections with Osama bin Laden" and it turned out that this story was fiction too, so now we've decided that we bombed and invaded Iraq "to bring democracy to the Middle East", or whatever the story of the day might be tomorrow.

But when it comes to Somalia, there is no reason, fictional or otherwise. There were no claims that Somalia had weapons of mass destruction, no claims of connections to 9/11, no claims that the Somalis were trying to build a nuclear bomb or wipe Israel off the map -- and no media campaign to catapult the no propaganda. Just nothing.

So the American people are not familiar with even one slightly-plausible reason why our armed forces and their Ethiopian proxies should be slaughtering innocent people in Somalia, other than reasons our "news" providers won't talk about, such as "energy" and "empire" (not to mention "ego" and "evil").

Our "news" media have been trained to produce fiction revolving around the notion that whatever America does overseas is "right"; and in this case there's no possible argument to be made in favor of our intervention in Somalia; therefore they have no choice but to avert their eyes and pretend it isn't happening.

Thus the war in Somalia -- just like many of America's clandestine operations over the years -- is a "secret" to most Americans. But it's not clandestine. It's just a secret.

In former days, when the CIA old-timers were staging a regime-change operation, they took pains to make sure nobody found out. They were afraid of the media. Now their successors don't have to be so careful, because they control the media, and they know nobody's gonna make a peep.

Unless I'm mistaken, we have never seen anything quite like this. Somalia may be the template for open secret warfare -- and if so, it's working out very well, at least in the sense that the bulk of the media are showing they can keep a secret.

What it means, unless I am very wrong, is that we can expect more of the same to start happening elsewhere. And we won't hear anything about it on the "news".

Al Qaeda Spokesman Calls 9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous'

More satire from The Onion.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Enjoy this satire from The Onion.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early