Is it just me?

Is it just me or... does anyone else suspect some/many of these purported "interrupted terror plots" are PR stunts which are staged by a PsyOps unit of the Pentagon, NSA, Blackwater, "Cheney's Boiz"... et al for US consumption? How can we ever know the alleged plotters are not employed actors who may _or may not_ ever spend an night in actual custody - and who may never actually be tried, much-less convicted of anything? I suspect they are well paid actors who return home to their families after driving out the back gate of whatever government installation they've been wisked away to?

And even if/when they are put on trial and perhaps even found guilty - when they are finally led in cuffs from the courtroom by burley sweating men in too-tight shirts... on the other side of that door, the cuffs pop right off as they all slap each other on the back for a job-well-done and all go out for a brew? Depositing a fat check on the way to the pub.

Field Marshall Rumsfeld admitted there were Pentagon programs which would provide just this sort of diversion for mass domestic consumption. I believe he said something about: "We don't need to convince all the people, just a significant minority."

I'm not one of the convinced.

Anyone else?

by mrk * (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 296 comments) on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 3:26:55 PM
 

No, it isn't only you, mrk.

Those three buildings at the World Trade Center were brought down by criminal elements in the Bush Administration themselves, I think we all agree on that now. But what were do not all agree on, because it hasn't had the same Internet public airing perhaps, but which is none the less true, is that NASA never put a man on the moon! Yes, yes, "Conspiracy!" and all that, just like 9/11 is a "conspiracy". A "conspiracy" implies free men agreeing to be silent about something or other. Instead, the people involved in 9/11 and in the moon landings are silent because they are subject to a mixture of bribery ("depositing a fat check on the way to the pub") and silencing, through the threat of jail, and murder no doubt (“in the interest of national security”, etc.). Ever seen one of those rare interviews of an astronaut? Can you spot a lying person when you see one on camera, someone who feels guilty about something and has something to hide? The pictures of the moon landings are all fake. The radiation in outer space is deadly, and no one has found an answer to it yet, but what personally convinced me was the fact that integrated circuits and miniaturisation weren’t available yet. The most powerful computers at the time had 516K or maybe 1MB of RAM, were built with transistors and took a specially prepared room to house, using harddisk drives the size of office cabinets. In other words, the equipment available, including the lunar module, didn’t have the computing power for the process control in the complicated manoeuvers required and for receiving and executing computer commands from the earth. Whenever someone points out one of these glaring anomalies, NASA simply reinvents the story, in other words, some bullshit story is made public by those in a position do so. Suddenly the moon landings used the “first microprocessor and integrated circuit computer ever built”, with programs and a special operating system developed by the best minds at MIT! Their particular computer was supposed to have 74K of RAM. Well, 74K isn’t enough to even give you an accurate clock, and how are you going to go back into orbit, and do the docking with the main spacecraft, without an adequate clock? (Give us the programs, NASA!) (Not everyone is going along with the conspiracy, by the way. Any of you read Bill Clinton’s autobiography? Apparently there is a one-liner in there implying the moon landings were a fake.) So, here we have the world believing that there were moon landings and that bin Laden brought down the Twin Towers, and was responsible for the Bali, Madrid and London bombings (or the attack on the Twin Towers in the early 90s for that matter). I personally found out about 9/11 and the moon landings late last year, to my utter amazement. Two giant hoaxes perpetuated on sleeping and suggestible humanity by various unconscionable coteries in a position of power! Since then I’ve become very skeptical of any of it, any hot news item proving this that and the other, those scientific articles endorsed by various authorities, etc., etc, anything which supports someone in power, or some vested interest, or where some company or businessman is set to make profit. And that includes stories about foiled terrorists’ plots. Bush and cronies brought down those Twin Towers. As far as I’m concerned there are no “terrorists”. Prove that to me first.

Robert_Hoogenboom  (@leftfoot.com.au)
Sydney, Australia

by Robert Hoogenboom (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 163 comments) on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 5:21:00 PM
 

Moon Landings

Mr. Hoogenboom,

 I'm not sure where you are getting your information from about the moon landings, but from what I understand, the moon landings were real. It's the TV footage showing astronauts on the moon that was shot on a set, so as to avoid the possibility of spilling the beans about yet another inconvenient truth that NASA had known about but had been covering up for decades - the truth that we are not alone. All of the astronauts' reluctance to talk about their missions in space stems from their remarkable encounters with the extraterrestrial presence that has been engaging earth for at least the past 60 years and probably longer. Neil Armstrong was so fed up about this gag order that he has gone into hiding and refuses to discuss his experience as the first man on the moon anymore.

Most alternative Internet news sources and forums, including this one, still refuse to cover anything having to do with this phenomenon for fear of ridicule, but that doesn't make it any less real.

by Bill Cain (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 270 comments) on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 8:47:02 PM
 

Was it on the moon, though?

Hi, Bill,

Yes, I've heard that they had strange encounters of the third kind of sorts. Was it on the moon, though? Are there any aeronautical engineers or rocket scientists reading this? With the technology extant in the late sixties, it seems an impossiblity, as it apparently still is. The Russians at the time and the Europeans and Chinese now have technology equalling or surpassing that of NASA at the time and they haven't been to the moon. And don't you think that if it were possible to go to the moon, there would be Shell and Exxon geologists walking around there right now? Be that as it may, it's interesting what you're saying about us not being alone. Do you think they are trying to save us from the calamities ahead? It really seems too late for that. All we can do is brace ourselves and hope for the best.

Robert_Hoogenboom (@leftfoot.com.au)
Sydney, Australia

by Robert Hoogenboom (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 163 comments) on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 10:56:20 PM
 

Okay - it's NOT Just Me

As if in response to above query: see this @ huffpost

"How to Foil a Terrorist Plot in Seven Simple Steps"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nora-ephron/how-to-foil-a-terrorist-p_b_50474.html

by mrk * (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 296 comments) on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 6:06:23 PM
 

infiltrator

Free Speech Radio News reports

A DIFFERENT KIND OF JFK CONSPIRACY
In other news, The FBI claims to have uncovered a plot to explode a jet fuel pipeline at New York City's JFK airport. All but one of the four men charged with conspiracy to commit a terrorist act against the government of the United States are currently in the South American nation of Trinidad. Two are awaiting extradition hearings while another remains at large. A convicted drug dealer whose testimony appears in the indictment reportedly infiltrated the group in exchange for a shorter sentence.

Oh, yeah -- that's reliable....

by Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 998 comments) on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 4:16:51 PM
 

Fear of Terrorism

"Terrorism" is just the modern day catch phrase for what has been around for thousands of years. The only "terrorists" we really need to fear are the ones in Washington. Make no mistake - we are being led down the primerose lane by madmen bent on world domination and control of the world's richest oil reserves. Please spare us explanations of what terrorism is really all about until you do your homework about 9-11.

 

by Bill Cain (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 270 comments) on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 4:36:36 PM
 

Boy the quality of terrorists is going downhill

I hope it doesn't become a trend to turn in disgruntled semi-homeless men who are mad at the government - there won't be anyone left on the streets of NY...

Great article, notwithstanding the ill-located moon landing debate - and even the "mainstream" isn't falling for the White House's fear campaign on this one - the sky most certainly is not falling.

TIME MAGAZINE: The JFK Plot: Overstating the Case?

by Gustav Wynn (50 articles, 33 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 231 comments) on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 12:08:31 AM
 

Same old song and dance.

It's called the "Push The Fear Button Blues". They have to keep their sheep thinking they are in mortal danger in order to continue to rape the country and use the constitution as toilet paper.

I don't buy this latest plot scare. However, the Republicans better hope it doesn't happen. If it does happen, it's going to spell doom for them. This is especially true if the recovery effort is on par with the efforts after Katrina, and 9/11. Another national disaster on their watch. That would be really hard to explain away.

The really dangerous part of this stupid strategy, seemingly the only one that DUBYA and his minions have left, is it could lead to "the boy who cried, 'wolf!'" syndrome. In other words, they scare us into numbness, then the real thing happens, and it is the worst disaster to ever come to our shores. Then they'd really be fucked! Unfortunately, We The People would be just as fucked!

It's a dangerous game the Republicans are playing. It shows that all they have left is desperation. I can't for the life of me understand how the Democrats can't do anything against the Republicans at this point in time. Clearly, the Republicans are down to being one-trick-ponies, and the people aren't impressed with that one trick any longer. It's not like it would take a lot of effort to stand on principle against a group of people who are seemingly, at times (as in more often than not) without anything that even resembles principled behavior.

Besides all that, it is more likely that more people will die in America of automobile accidents than from a terrorist attack on our soil. I don't have time to worry about cut-rate half-baked "terrorists". I have to worry more about the idiot in front of me who couldn't drive rationally if you paid him/her. Considering the weather here of late, I also have to worry about spinning cloud bases.

Terrorists? Bah!

Big fuckin' deal! What are they going to do to me that the DUBYA regime hasn't done yet? Kill me? Oh please! I could die five minutes after I post this here. I am tired of living in fear. I am tired of being led about by the nose. I am tired of the bullshit. I almost welcome an all out, serious, kills lots of people attack, if and only if it wipes Washington DC from reality.

And, for those who are going to say, "see, he's for the terrorists," well no, I'm not. I'm just being realistic. If the assholes, idiots, numskulls, and other lame-brained idiots in DUBYA's regime can't protect people from a hurricane, or clean up the mess even two years later, what makes anyone think they will be able to respond to another terror attack on our soil? DC gets hit, the idiots are then out of the way. Maybe people who are rational can fill in the spaces.

In the final analysis, it's sad that the only card the DUBYA administration has to play is fear. They can't play credibility. They can't play honesty and honor. They can't play we are the world's best friend. They can't play rationality.

Just fear. That's all they have. I can only ponder how it remains so effective.

Blessed be!
Pappy

by Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments) on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 1:04:47 AM
 

WSWS story

Here is Bill Van Auken on it:

print version

WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

The JFK “plot”: another grossly inflated threat By Bill Van Auken
5 June 2007

Back to screen version | Send this link by email | Email the author

The weekend’s news in the US was dominated by screaming headlines and sensationalist broadcast coverage of an alleged plot in New York to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport’s jet fuel tanks and supply lines. The attack would have been, according to many accounts, “more devastating than September 11.”

Four men were charged in an indictment [PDF] unveiled Sunday that included features that have become almost invariable in every such “terror” case brought by the government in recent years. First, the suspects had not only carried out no acts of terror, but they apparently lacked any means to realize such an attack. Second, a central figure in the alleged plot was a paid undercover informant of the FBI.

Broadcast networks spoke of the worst threat since the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, while reporters were sent out to conduct random interviews with passengers passing through JFK as well as residents living near the pipelines, asking how they felt about their supposed near brush with death.

As usual, New York City’s tabloids excelled in this sensationalism. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post Sunday referred to the alleged plot in its headline as an “inferno plan” and carried an editorial stating that the purported plan “to do calamitous damage to JFK International Airport and surrounding residential neighborhoods underscores yet again the overarching threat Islamist terrorism poses to America.”

The New York Daily News on Monday carried five pages on the “plot,” with a ludicrous front-page headline, “Evil Ate at Table Eight,” promoting an inside interview with the Brooklyn waitress who served a meal to Russell Defreitas, whom the paper describes as the “mastermind” of the alleged plot, just before he was picked up by federal agents and police.

Yet the profile of Defreitas, a 63-year-old US citizen who emigrated from Guyana 25 years ago, hardly suggests a terrorist “mastermind.” A former friend describes him as someone who, before becoming a Muslim, had declared himself a Rastafarian and grown dreadlocks. He recalled his involvement in various business schemes to ship air conditioners or refrigerators to Guyana, none of which ever came to anything.

“He couldn’t even fix brakes,” the former friend said. “He never built bombs.”

Other accounts described him as a retired worker living in an impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood, who on various occasions had been homeless. New York Newsday, for example, reported, “Since being laid off from his job as a cargo worker several years ago, Russell Defreitas has lived a meek existence—at times sleeping in trains and trying to eke out a living running two-bit scams, selling incense on street corners and collecting welfare, acquaintances said.”

Also charged in the indictment are Abdul Kadir, a citizen of Guyana and former member of the Guyanese Parliament, and Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad, both of whom are under arrest in Trinidad awaiting a hearing on a US extradition request. Lawyers for the two said that they would fight extradition, likely raising the US record of torturing terrorism suspects. A fourth defendant, Abdel Nur, also a citizen of Guyana, has yet to be arrested.

A key figure in the alleged plot, however, is named in the indictment only as “the source.” He is identified as a convicted drug trafficker who, in exchange for favorable consideration on a pending jail sentence as well as cash payments, agreed to infiltrate the supposed terrorist cell.

Much of the evidence contained in the indictment consists of recordings of conversations between “the source” and the defendants. What emerges clearly, however, is the leading role this “informant” played in the alleged plot. Defreitas is quoted as saying that they saw him as someone “sent by Allah” to lead them.

The indictment also refers to meetings and recorded conversations between both Defreitas and the source and individuals in Guyana, who are identified only as “Individuals A through F.”

These six unnamed men are quoted proposing a wide range of terrorist activity, including smuggling “mujahideen from Asia into Guyana and then into the United States,” blowing up US helicopters at the Guyanese airport and the plan to blow up the JFK fuel system. On this last proposal, these unnamed individuals also suggest the use of dynamite and chemical explosives and advise on how to obtain these materials. One of these individuals also proposes that the plotters seek the assistance of a Trinidadian Islamist group, Jamaat al Muslimeen. In the account of these conversations, Defreitas is not quoted as saying anything.

The obvious question is why these six unnamed “individuals” have not been charged. One likely explanation is that they too were, in one form or another, participants in an elaborate effort to ensnare a hapless and sometimes homeless retiree and others in a plot that was fundamentally staged by the US government for its own purposes.

The blood-curdling accounts in the media largely reflected the highly charged language of US prosecutors and police officials in presenting the indictment. Roslynn Mauskopf, the US attorney in Brooklyn, New York, in announcing the charges, said, “Had the plot been carried out, it could have resulted in unfathomable damage, deaths and destruction.” She added, “The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable.”

The words “unfathomable” and “unthinkable” were undoubtedly chosen carefully, as the type of chain reaction of explosions described in the indictment was quite simply impossible.

Both airport security officials and pipeline experts dismissed the allegedly catastrophic disaster that supposedly would have been triggered by blowing up a fuel pipeline or storage tanks. While the federal indictment suggested that such an explosion could travel along the pipelines linking tanks in Linden, New Jersey into Brooklyn, New York and across the borough of Queens, this is impossible, both because the pipelines are equipped with safety valves that shut off the flow of fuel in event of a leak and because there is inadequate oxygen inside the pipes to sustain a fire.

The New York Times, whose skepticism about the federal indictment was clearly signaled by the newspaper placing stories on the JFK “plot” on its Metro pages, quoted Neal Sonnett, a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, as saying, “There unfortunately has been a tendency to shout too loudly about such cases.”

The Times article went on to say that Sonnett, also a former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, “noted that there is a broader risk in overstating the sophistication of a terror plot. At a time when many Americans live in justified fear of an attack, the risk is that drumbeating creates a climate of fear and drives public policy.”

There is every reason to believe that the succession of “terror” cases, each one weaker than the last and virtually all of them driven by “informants” who seem to play more the role of agents provocateur, are aimed at achieving precisely this effect. They serve as a means of intimidating public opinion with fear, justifying attacks on democratic rights and diverting attention from the ongoing debacle in Iraq.

The problem faced by the government is that the public is growing increasingly skeptical about these cases, with a sizeable portion of the population having concluded that they are trumped up for political purposes.

Under these conditions, the danger is that those who now control the reins of power in Washington may be concluding that something more tangible is needed.

On the same day that the alleged JFK “terror plot” broke in the news, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published a revealing interview with that state’s new Republican Party chairman, who described himself as “150 percent for Bush.”

“At the end of the day,” said state party chairman Dennis Milligan, the owner of a water treatment business, “I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly...”

The question is whether elements in the Bush administration are reaching similar conclusions and preparing to engineer or allow another round of terrorist attacks “on American soil” as a pretext for suppressing the overwhelming popular opposition to its policies.

 

---

Copyright 1998-2007
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved

by Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 998 comments) on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 1:15:14 AM
 

FALSE FLAG ALERT

JFK Airport Plot Has All The Hallmarks Of Staged Terror

Near-retarded "ringleader", paid government provocateur mirrors legion of previous cases 

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, June 4, 2007

An alleged plot to blow up fuel tanks, terminal buildings and fuel lines running beneath Kennedy International Airport has all the hallmarks of being another staged terror alert, having never advanced beyond a rudimentary planning stage while being prodded and provocateured by a paid government informant.

In every single major terror sting we have researched in the west since 9/11, not one single plot has been absent the ingredient of a government provocateur, save the cases that were outright manufactured by imaginative government propagandists in alliance with the corporate media.

In this case, the provocateur was "An informant with a criminal history including drug trafficking and racketeering agreed to work with investigators on the case, in exchange for payments and a reduced sentence,"according to the New York Times.

Officials have refused to say how they became aware of the plot in the first place, but in every previous case of this nature we have found that it is the government agent provocateur who radicalizes the group and formulates the plot. The cover story is that the group is infiltrated by the informant having already planned the attack but as more details emerge, inevitably the plot always reveals itself as an artificial creation on behalf of the intelligence services.

What's the motive? The war on terror is the most politically exploited concept since the cold war. The propaganda boon from hoodwinking Americans into thinking they are constantly under threat from terrorists is unsurpassed. On the very day that this alleged plot was announced,Rudy Giuliani was already using it to inflate his presidential campaign.

In addition, the new head of the Arkansas Republican Party, Dennis Milligan, told a reporter this past weekend that America needs to be attacked by terrorists so that people will appreciate the work that President Bush has done to protect the country.

Once again we learn that "the plot was only in a preliminary phase and the conspirators had yet to lay out detailed plans or obtain financing or explosives," and yet the event is reported by a jingoistic and frothing media as if an imminent attack on the scale of 9/11 has been averted.

But as always, the devil is in the details, because even if the group had managed to acquire the financing and explosives to enact the plot, it would have been unsuccessful, due to "safety shut-off valves would almost assuredly have prevented an exploding airport fuel tank from igniting all or even part of the network."

The sum of the group's planning for the alleged attack amounts to nothing more than visiting Google Maps and printing off photographs.

It appears that part of the agenda in hyping the alleged plot is to undermine Hugo Chavez, since the ringleader, Russell Defreitas, has links to Jamaat al-Muslimeen, a Muslim group headed up by Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, and in turn Bakr has been affiliated with Chavez.

As Kurt Nimmo writes, Neo-Con websites are already exploiting these tenuous links to demonize Hugo Chavez, who - whatever you think of his domestic policies - has been a constant thorn in the side of the Globalists and was subject to an attempted CIA coup in 2002.

Defreitas is described by one law enforcement official as "a sad sack" and "not a Grade A terrorist," who would have been incapable of carrying out any attack. A friend described him as "not smart enough" to have carried out the attack.

In several other cases, we see a pattern where near-retarded individuals are used as patsies for terror plots orchestrated by intelligence agencies because they are easily manipulated and cannot defend themselves after the fact.

From out of nowhere, Defreitas goes from embracing American culture and enjoying jazz music to dressing in traditional Muslim garb and referring to himself as Mohammed while planning a devastating attack due to his supposed hatred of the west.

The basic tenet that the terror threat has been overhyped and magnified a thousand-fold for political propaganda is proven alone by documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act that showonly 0.0015 percent of the total number of cases filed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were terrorism related, despite the fact that the Bush administration has repeatedly asserted that it is the primary focus of the DHS.

As more details leak out, there seems little doubt that the JFK airport plot will dissipate into nothing more than another hyped terror alert - coddled, molded, and directed by the government, before being unleashed on an increasingly skeptical American public in another vain attempt to prop up the flagging legitimacy of the "war on terror".

by johndoraemi (17 articles, 12 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 170 comments) on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 1:43:54 AM
 

A further point...

...what happened to the real terrorists? I mean, these last few "terrorist" threats have such a stench of Larry, Mo, and Curly surrounding them, how can anyone with functional reasoning really consider them a threat?

It's far too convenient for these things to happen just when public opinion is moving further away from DUBYA and his minions. I smell a Republi-RAT! Besides, if these "terroristo nuevos" don't understand laws of thermodynamics and the basic triangle of fire, can we even assume they can understand what it takes to be a real threat? If they can't afford a real plan what makes you think they have the intellectual capacity to carry through with their mentally defective ideas?

Oh well, you can fool all the people all the time if you use the word "terrorist" as a part of the description.

Blessed be!
Pappy

by Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments) on Wednesday, June 6, 2007 at 12:48:47 PM
 

It is us

Dr. Huffman,

We have met the enemy and it is us. No Middle Easterners ever attack America. The planes attack on the World Trade Centers was a repeat of the burning of the Reichstag. No Middle Easterners names were on any of the manifests and seven of those pictured in Time Magazine turned up alive, five in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Lauden was and Washington D.C. prepared to pose for another video just prior to the general elections. The fuel from the planes couldn't possibly have melted the steel structures of the World Trade Center. And no one has any idea how Building #7 collapsed of its own accord s hours later.

by eagleeye (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 27 comments) on Thursday, June 7, 2007 at 6:46:13 PM