host

<center><img src="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/images/2007/05/369735.jpg"><br>http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/369734.html</center>

The news media reports:
....but a representative of the US GOJ told us:

It was reported that the terrorist "plotters", after 18 months of FBI surveillance, had no funds, and no explosives, and that the method of the planned "attack" was not technically feasible.

The "ringleader", Defreitas, was a retired JFK airport "baggage handler" who it was reported, had only "obsolete" knowledge of former, less stringent security procedures at the airport. I posted above, that he is reported to have been selling books on street corners and exporting "broken air conditioners" to Guyana.

Air conditioners and refigerators are heavy....expensive to ship because of their weight. Room air conditioners for large rooms that require cooling capacity of 10,000 BTU, have come down in price in recent years to sell now for about $200.

How do the economics "work" to make any argument that exporting "broken" air condtioners and refrigerators from NYC to Guyana, seem reasonable?

Does this seem like a description of a "mastermind", to you?:
How is the cost to the US DHS and DOJ for "monitoring", for 18 months, and now incarcerating these "folks", to be justified.

Doesn't the actual "plot" seem more like symptoms of a mental health issue...as have ALL of the other "terror plots" announced in the last few years......to be tackled by healthcare authorities, assigned much earlier in the "investigation, than it does a headline grabbing example of the "danger" faced by US residents and an ever vigil, ever capable "mass" of "Homeland Secuirty", "professionals"?

Doesn't it seem like federal and local "authorities" are deliberately attempting to persuade us to "fear" unfounded "threats"?

Willravel

Absolutely. By some miracle, Americans are only being targeted overseas...and that's not good for those in the business of fear. How can Americans be afraid and distracted at home when it's clear they're (we're) safe? Simple: manufacture a threat. Defreitas, in reality, is only a threat to himself. Considering his plan was not even close to being feasible, and no evidence besides his crazy talk has been presented, it's clear this is nothing to worry about. He's no where near as dangerous as the idiot in the oval office.

Elphaba

The fear campaign is underway again and is likely meant to convince the American people that Bush's Iraq strategy is necessary. Bush has been giving speeches recently of foiled terror plots that turn out to be as unlikely as the one Host posted above.

It's time to remind everyone that the Democrats are weak on terrorism.

__________________
"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." Molly Ivins - 1944-2007

host

In addition to the concern that the Bushvolk are doing this to control us and to consolidate their own still accumulating authority over us, is the spending being wasted on a phony "war on terror",
vs. real looming crisis that have the potential to actually affect "our way of life", and the "sell out" by the press:
Are these two (described below) Bush sycophants, "reporting on the resignation of Bush's chief sycophant, really a current Newseek "reporter" and the former white house "reporter" for Time magazine?
Soooooooooooo....that's how it's done....the real threat is the spending power of the US dollar rapidly diminishing while Bush/Cheney terrorize us into distraction, turn the DOJ into a vote suppression organ, and work to make themselves unaccountable under FOIA, and under the law...they will determine when an "emergency" occurs, and what "rights" we get to keep....
...and all of it takes place as the conservative incessantly complain about the "liberal bias" of the press, that long ago traded away actual news reporting and analysis.....for what they believe is access to "insiders" like....Dan Bartlett !

cyrnel

I don't know, host. Are many people taking this latest "break" as more than marketing? The few I've spoken to about it today have been skeptical. Even early MSM coverage contained red flags questioning the plausibility. This smells of desperation. I'm slightly relieved if it's the best they can manage.

As for the press mechanisms, I can't argue with your posts. I'm only going by feel here and that's surely affected by my location in Oregon. That said, while the press may be badly broken I do notice many more questions these days, whether outright or between the lines. I'd wager the writers will continue to take the easy briefings and leaks to get ahead, but they don't want to look completely stupid again if the story goes south. They aren't staying on their sources' tracks like they did a couple years ago.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

reconmike

You people make me shake my head and think I used to get angry now I'm just amused.

If there was another attack on American soil all you peeps would be like "see we told ya, Bush the idiot in the white house has no idea how to protect America" and "all he is concerned about is Iraq". "Hang Rove, DC, and GWB, its all their fault"

Whether these people had the capability of blowing anything up, is not the point, the point is they WERE planning on trying.
They were caught and arrested for planning to do so.
Just like the people here in Jersey were planning to "kill as many as possible" at Fort Dix.
American citizens did not die, bottom line.

__________________
Where is Darwin when ya need him?

ubertuber

Host: I thought you might appreciate this article I saw on digg.com.

Michael Bloomberg on the JFK bombing plot (link)

I suppose Bloomberg is opening himself up to a major spectacle in the event of another attack, but I agree with him and am impressed that he came out and spoke so forthrightly.

I find myself wishing that Bloomberg would enter the Presidential race as an independent.

EDIT: After consideration of an earlier thread today, I want to clarify. Host, I am not providing this one article as refutation of the blatant pattern of fear-mongering. Rather, I thought you'd be interested in an instance of an elected official deviating from the usual script.

__________________
Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

Willravel

And, as usual, we'd be right. Who is responsible for the Iraqi war, which has been positively linked with the increase in global terrorism? If, and that's a big if, there is a terrorist-style attack on the US by radical militants who don't call the US home, it will be because of Bush, not in spite of him.

dksuddeth

oh yeah, because the US has NEVER been a terrorist target until Bush 43 became president.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Willravel

Are you arguing against the fact that Bush's Iraq war has increased global terrorism and hatred by militant radicals against the US? No?

dksuddeth, I know you're above strawmen.

dksuddeth

will, you're trying to say that ANY terrorist attack now is the fault of bush and that is just not true. The US has been a target of terror since before carters time so it is impossible to attribute all terror attacks to bush now simply because bush started the iraqi war.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Willravel

I'm saying that future terrorist attacks on the US will be inspired by or exacerbated by Bush, absolutely. We were attacked for a reason, and we'll be attacked for a reason which will include Iraq. Global terrorism is up as a DIRECT response to the Iraq war. No one can argue that point. Therefore, it's reasonable to think that an attack on the country that started the Iraq war would be inspired, at least in part, by the event that has increased terrorism.

Bush is responsible for the Iraq war, which is responsible for a rise in terrorism. I can't make it more plain and simple than that.

powerclown

A brief look into counter-terrorism, European style. Their systems don't seem to be as prohibitive or politically charged as the current American system is. I was surprised to learn that both Spain and Italy allow for pre-trial detentions, up to 4 years for terrorism suspects. Britain allows for wiretapping authorized by a member of government, not the whims of independent judges.


Who Needs Jacques Bauer?
The Napoleonic Code is more conducive to counterterrorism than the U.S. Constitution.
BY BRET STEPHENS
Sunday, February 25, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

Twenty-nine defendants went on trial earlier this month in a Spanish courtroom for complicity in the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 commuters and injured another 1,800. Among the accused: Jamal Zougam, a 33-year-old Moroccan immigrant who once ran a cell-phone business. In June 2001, Spanish police raided Mr. Zougam's apartment, where they found jihadist literature and the telephone numbers of suspected terrorists. But the Spaniards judged the evidence insufficient to arrest or even wiretap him. Today, the Moroccan is believed to have furnished the cellphones through which the train bombs were detonated.

In raiding Mr. Zougam's apartment, the Spanish were acting on a request from French investigative magistrate and counterterrorism supremo Jean-Louis Bruguiere. Earlier, Mr. Bruguiere had also warned the Canadian government about a suspicious Algerian asylum-seeker named Ahmed Ressam, but the Canadians took no real action. On Dec. 14, 1999 Mr. Ressam--a k a the Millennium Bomber--was arrested by U.S. customs agents as he attempted to cross the border at Port Angeles, Wash., with nitroglycerin and timing devices concealed in his spare tire.

It would be reassuring to believe that somewhere in the ranks of the FBI or CIA America has a Jean-Louis Bruguiere of its own. But we probably don't, and not because we lack for domestic talent, investigative prowess, foreign connections, the will to fight terrorism or the forensic genius of a Gallic nose. What we lack is a system of laws that allows a man like Mr. Bruguiere to operate the way he does. Unless we're willing to trade in the Constitution for the Code Napoleon, we are not likely to get it.

Consider the powers granted to Mr. Bruguiere and his colleagues. Warrantless wiretaps? Not a problem under French law, as long as the Interior Ministry approves. Court-issued search warrants based on probable cause? Not needed to conduct a search. Hearsay evidence? Admissible in court. Habeas corpus? Suspects can be held and questioned by authorities for up to 96 hours without judicial supervision or the notification of third parties. Profiling? French officials commonly boast of having a "spy in every mosque." A wall of separation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies? France's domestic and foreign intelligence bureaus work hand-in-glove. Bail? Authorities can detain suspects in "investigative" detentions for up to a year. Mr. Bruguiere once held 138 suspects on terrorism-related charges. The courts eventually cleared 51 of the suspects--some of whom had spent four years in preventive detention--at their 1998 trial.
In the U.S., Mr. Bruguiere's activities would amount to one long and tangled violation of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution. And that's not counting the immense legal superstructures that successive Supreme Courts have built over and around the Bill of Rights. In France, however, Mr. Bruguiere, though not without his critics, is a folk hero, equally at home with governments of the left and right. The main point in his favor is that whatever it is he's doing, it works.

"Every single attempt to bomb France since 1995 has been stopped before execution," notes a former Interior Ministry senior official. "The French policy has been [to] make sure no terrorist hits at home. We know perfectly well that foreign-policy triangulation is not sufficient for that, [even if] it helps us go down a notch or two in the order of priority [jihadist] targets. So we've complemented our anti-U.S. foreign policy with ruthless domestic measures."

That's something that U.S. civil libertarians, who frequently argue that the Bush administration should follow the "European model" of treating terrorism as a law-enforcement issue instead of a military one, might usefully keep in mind. As lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey argue in the forthcoming issue of The National Interest, "the [Napoleonic] Civil Law system offers considerable advantages to the state in combating terrorism--especially in terms of investigative tools and a level of secrecy--that are simply unavailable in the ordinary Common Law criminal prosecution and trial, at least as governed by the United States Constitution."

Again, review the contrasts between American and European practices. Except in limited circumstances, the U.S. does not allow pretrial detentions. But according to figures compiled by the U.S. State Department, 38% of individuals held in Italian prisons in 2005 were awaiting trial or the outcome of an appeal, while Spanish law allows for pre-trial detentions that can last as long as four years for terrorism suspects. In the U.S., the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the military in law-enforcement work, and paramilitary units are relatively rare. By contrast, most European countries deploy huge paramilitary forces: Italy's Carabinieri; France's Gendarmerie Nationale; Spain's Guardia Civil.

Even Britain, which shares America's common law traditions, has been forced by Irish and now Islamist terrorism to resort to administrative detentions, trials without jury (the famous Diplock courts) and ubiquitous public surveillance. Wiretapping is authorized by the Home Secretary--that is, a member of the government--rather than an independent judge. In the early days of the Northern Irish "troubles," the government of Edward Heath placed some 2,000 suspects, without charge, in internment camps. Ironically, it was the decision to treat terrorists as ordinary criminals that led to the famous hunger strikes of Bobby Sands and his IRA crew.

All this calls into question the seriousness, if not the sincerity, of European complaints that under the Bush administration the U.S. has become a serial human-rights violator. Europeans have every right to be proud of civil servants like Mr. Bruguiere and a legal tradition that in many ways has been remarkably successful against terrorism. But that is not the American way, nor can it be if we intend to be true to a constitutional order of checks and balances, judicial review and a high respect for the rights of the accused. When President Bush declared a war on terror after 9/11, it was because he had no other realistic legal alternative. And when the rest of us make invidious comparisons between Europe and America, we should keep our fundamental differences in mind. There is no European 82nd Airborne, and there is no American Jean-Louis Bruguiere.