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 Brit Terror Scare: A Cynical Charade? 
  
 Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit 
  
 sent by Tim Murphy (activ-l) 
  
 Winnipeg Free Press - Aug 12, 2006 
  
  
 Terrorism scare a cynical charade? 
  
 by Gwynne Dyer 
  
 "I used to know when I was being deeply cynical and when I wasn't," said a 
 friend who just made it into London before they closed Heathrow airport for 
 the terrorist scare. "Now, I don't." 
  
 Back in February 2003, when Prime Minister Tony Blair was trying to persuade 
 a reluctant Britain that invading Iraq alongside the United States was a 
 really neat idea, tanks suddenly appeared on the perimeter road around 
 Heathrow to guard against an impending terrorist attack. It wasn't clear 
 what they were supposed to do -- crush the terrorists under their treads? -- 
 and no actual terrorists ever showed up, but it helped to shape public 
 opinion. So how different is it this time? 
  
 Hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled. Twenty-four alleged conspirators 
 arrested in East London, Thames Valley towns and Birmingham, many of them 
 described by neighbours as bearded Muslims wearing traditional dress. 
 Shocking revelations that they had a new technique for blowing up to 10 
 aircraft on the heavily travelled London-U.S. routes out of the sky 
 simultaneously by smuggling explosive liquids aboard. All cabin baggage 
 banned on flights out of Britain. And in a classic case of panic envy, the 
 U.S. Department of Homeland Security declares a red alert in the United 
 States, too. 
  
 That should scare the public into supporting a war on terror a bit longer, 
 even if the real wars are about something else, and are going seriously 
 wrong: Iraq sliding into civil war, the Taliban coming back in Afghanistan, 
 Israel flattening Lebanon without making any significant dent in Hezbollah's 
 capabilities. Most people will assume that with all that smoke, there must 
 be some fire. 
  
 Of course there's some fire. Terrorists of various sorts have been in 
 business for about 40 years, and the current crop of Islamist terrorists are 
 especially dangerous since they are willing to kill themselves along with 
 their victims. But in the United States more people die on the roads every 
 single month than Islamist terrorists have killed since the year 2000, and 
 in Britain it's more people every week. Yet neither country has tried to 
 restrict access to cars. 
  
 Maybe it's cynical, but there are strong grounds for suspecting that this is 
 all a charade. If they infiltrated these terrorist cells many months ago and 
 have now arrested most of the members, then why would they institute drastic 
 security measures on flights at this point? And did they really only realize 
 in the last few days that explosives come in liquid form as well? 
  
 British Home Secretary John Reid boldly asserted that the main players had 
 been accounted for, and Scotland Yard Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson 
 proudly announced that "we are confident that we have disrupted a plan by 
 terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and commit mass murder." 
  
 Well done, lads -- but if you have them all locked up, why are you closing 
 the airports and bringing in all these draconian security measures now? A 
 couple of months ago, when you first uncovered this plot but didn't know all 
 the "main players." I could understand such drastic precautions, but why 
 now? 
  
 Maybe it was those explosive liquid chemicals they were planning to smuggle 
 aboard the planes. After all, it's only 160 years since nitroglycerin was 
 invented. It's a mere 11 years since al-Qaida associate Ramzi Yousef plotted 
 to blow up 12 airliners flying across the Pacific at the same time with 
 nitro carried aboard in contact lens solution bottles. Who could have 
 foreseen this? Quick! Bring in new security measures! 
  
 They really aren't that stupid. They have been checking liquids that people 
 want to carry aboard flights at airport security checkpoints for years. 
  
 There would be no need for drastic new security measures even if the alleged 
 British terrorist ring were still on the loose. This is all hype, designed 
 to frighten the British and American publics into supporting the wars of 
 their deeply unpopular governments (and the war of their Israeli ally as 
 well). 
  
 [Gwynne Dyer is a London-based journalist. ] 
  
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