Friday 22nd of November 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

the war on budgie smugglers .....

the war on budgie smugglers .....

There is no "war" against terrorism. What George W. Bush launched and Barack Obama insists on perpetuating does not qualify. Not if by war one means doing the obvious and checking a highly suspicious air traveller's underwear to see if explosives have been sewn in.

If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had put the stuff in his shoes we would have had him because that was tried before, but our government was too preoccupied with fighting unnecessary conventional wars and developing anti-missile defense systems to anticipate such a primitive delivery system.

The explosives-laden underwear--worn by an airline passenger who had previously been flagged as a potentially dangerous fanatic, and who had paid cash for his ticket and had no checked luggage--was the terrorist's weapon of choice, one that could have blown a hole in the side of Northwest Airlines' Detroit-bound Flight 253 on Christmas Day, killing hundreds of innocents. But it is not a weapon to be effectively countered with the deployment of hundreds of thousands of American combat troops. Nor can it be stopped by the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of planes, subs and missiles in our arsenal of Cold War-era weapons, part of an annual defense budget that is higher in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any time in the past half-century.

The technology that could help detect a sophisticated plane hijacker or suicide bomber has been largely botched in development and only half-heartedly deployed even when it is available. On Tuesday, a devastating report in The Washington Post revealed that the full-body scanning equipment hyped after 9/11, which might have detected the explosives involved in last week's incident, is still not in wide use. As the Post stated, "A plan that would have helped focus the development of better screening technology and procedures--including a risk-based assessment of aviation threats--is almost two years overdue, according to a report this fall by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress."

So, screening equipment that can detect plastic explosives exists, but it was not used in this case and, as the GAO predicted, "TSA cannot ensure that it is targeting the highest priority security needs at checkpoints; measure the extent to which deployed technologies reduce the risk of terrorist attacks; or make needed adjustments to its PSP [Passenger Screening Program] strategy." As a result, the GAO concluded: "TSA lacks assurance that its investments in screening technologies address the highest priority security needs at airport passenger checkpoints."

The "systematic failure" in the nation's security that President Obama referred to Tuesday derives from the war metaphor itself and from the assumption, begun with Bush's irrational invasion of Iraq and extended with Obama's escalation in Afghanistan, that terrorism is a military rather than a criminal threat. The terrorists are not rebel fighters rooted, as are the Taliban and the remnants of the Iraq insurgency, in their homeland struggles and subject to being defeated on conventional battlefields.

Rather, they are rootless cosmopolitans of violence, alienated from any stated homeland and free to move easily about the world, armed in almost every instance with valid passports, visas and money to exploit our inability to seriously evaluate our own intelligence data. They can count on our top government officials ignoring blinking red warnings, as the Bush White House did before 9/11, or the alarm of a well-connected and properly concerned Nigerian banker-father.

Preventing terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland has nothing to do with occupying vast tracts of land or winning the hearts and minds of backward villagers whom we falsely depict as surrogates of an evil empire, as we did in Vietnam and are now doing in Afghanistan. What is needed is smart police work to catch these highly mobile fanatics, and that begins with actually reading and then acting on the readily available intelligence data. It requires detectives with brains and not generals with firepower.

The ballooning of the defense budget after 9/11 has proved a great boondoggle for the military-industrial complex, which suddenly found an excuse to build weapons and deploy conventional forces against a superpower enemy that no longer exists. But our stealth fighters and bombers designed to defeat Soviet defenses that were never built are a poor match against a terrorist's stealth underwear.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/144880/the_global_war_on_stealth_underwear/

follow the money .....

The Editor,

Sydney Morning Herald.

Sir,

It's said that the wise will often evaluate the relative merits of a proposal by asking 'who benefits' ('The truth about airport body scanners', December 31).

Whilst the latest security scare on an American bound aircraft has proponents of body scanning technology reaching for taxpayers' cheque books the world over, it is interesting to note that one of the loudest & most persistent voices in favour of their introduction in America is one Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Through dozens of media interviews, security tsar Chertoff has loudly spruiked the merits of introducing body scanners at all airports, although he has neglected to mention that one of the clients of his security consulting agency, the Chertoff Group, happens to be the manufacturer of said devices.

So, who benefits? Just follow the money.

John Richardson

name the smell .....

Ten days after the failed attempt to explode a bomb onboard Northwest Flight 253 as it approached Detroit-an action that, if successful, would have killed nearly 300 people-there are mounting questions about the actions of US government agencies.

According to the official story, propagated by the Obama administration and uncritically parroted by the US media, the various components of the US national security apparatus were incapable of bringing together the following known facts:

  • In May, the British government withdrew its student visa for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian who had studied at University College, London, and placed him on a watch list, barring him from reentering the country.

• In August, US intelligence agencies learned of Al Qaeda discussions of an operation against a US target to be organized from Yemen, using a "Nigerian."

• On November 19, the father of Abdulmutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, visited the US embassy in Abuja and told State Department and CIA personnel that his son had fallen under the influence of radical Islamists, gone to join them in Yemen, and broken off contact with his family.

• Based on the father's report, State Department and CIA officers at the embassy informed Washington on November 20 and a security file was opened on Abdulmutallab at the National Counterterrorism Center, the main Washington clearinghouse for terrorism information.

• On December 16, Abdulmutallab visited a ticket office in Ghana and paid $2,831 in cash for a ticket on a Northwest Airlines flight from Lagos through Amsterdam to Detroit, landing on Christmas Day.

• On December 25, Abdulmutallab boarded the flight in Amsterdam with only a carry-on bag for a trans-Atlantic journey. Following standard procedure, the US Department of Homeland Security was notified at least an hour before departure that he was a passenger on the flight.

No intelligent person can believe the official US government account of its failure to stop the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253. The claim that US intelligence agencies were unable to detect the bomb plot, despite so many warnings months in advance, is simply not credible.

http://www.countercurrents.org/martin040110.htm

whoops .....

At Newark Liberty Airport last Sunday, a TSA agent left his post, and a young man walked past it to kiss his girlfriend good-bye. Then the young man turned and left the secured area and left the airport.

So far no harm; no foul. But because the government's surveillance cameras in the airport didn't work, the feds panicked and ordered over 10,000 passengers to leave the terminal, go out into the 15-degree Newark, NJ cold at night, and then re-enter the airport. Flights were delayed and missed, kids did not get to school on Monday morning, and soldiers were listed as AWOL. All because the government over-reacted to a kiss.

This humiliated the feds: New Jersey's 86-year-old senior Senator Frank Lautenberg demanded that the guy who kissed his gal be hunted down and prosecuted because of the chaos he caused. He caused? Let's see; the government has cameras that watch us every time we scratch our noses, and when those cameras don't work, the government blames the person whose picture it was supposed to be taking? Come on.

 

All this, of course, brings out the false argument of liberty versus security. And we hear it from the Progressives that the government must take our freedoms in order to keep us safe.

That's hogwash. Freedom is our birthright. It doesn't come from the government; it is part of our humanity. America is the only country in the history of the world dedicated to the truism that we are endowed by our Creator, as Jefferson wrote, with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government has forgotten basic civics: "Endowed by our Creator" means that our rights come from God and not from the feds. "Inalienable" means that we and our freedoms cannot be separated, unless and until we are convicted by a jury of violating someone else's rights.

What is the value of being safe if we are not free? Did our forefathers flee the kings and despots of Europe and come here to be safe? Did Patrick Henry say "Give me safety or give me death?" Here is the mistake that the Big Government crowd wants to thrust upon us: they want to balance liberty and safety. There is no such thing as balance when it comes to freedom. We will not trade freedom for anything, or balance it against anything, and we certainly won't give it up to the TSA.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/napolitano/napolitano13.1.html

the sick joke continues .....

The federal government has announced it will spend $200 million over four years to boost security at Australian airports.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the package of measures would strengthen international and domestic aviation security against emerging threats.

"The Christmas Day attempt [to blow up a plane in the US] showed that no nation can afford to be complacent when it comes to security," he told reporters today.

"The government's highest priority is the safety and security of Australians."

Mr Rudd said the government would spend $28.5 million to help the industry pay for a range of new screening technologies for airline passengers.

They would include the latest body scanners, the next generation of multi-view X-ray machines and bottle scanners, which could detect liquid-based explosives.

"Body scanners will be introduced progressively as an additional screening measure at screening points servicing international departing passengers by early 2011," Mr Rudd told reporters.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/200m-boost-to-airport-security-20100209-nop6.html?autostart=1

The Zionist Racially Motivated Rebellion in Palestine.

G'day John,


Even in my younger days during WW II it was generally accepted that "if someone wants to invade your home bad enough" they will.

The Japanese certainly made a pretty good effort when they controlled most of the Pacific and MacArthur was going to give them all of Australia north of the "Brisbane line".

While the fair dinkum title of "terrorist" was used to describe the Zionist' racially motivated rebellion in Palestine during the latter days of WW II, the Zionist power over Britain was obvious.  After the unprecedented "declaration of the state of Israel" the US seemed to come on board for their own interests in having a "base" in the Middle East.

So, was that successful because the Palestinians were gullible? Or had no defensive MISSILES? Or because the Palestinians had caused the Jewish Holocaust? Or because they were available suckers?

Whatever people think, the Zionists had made a shameful deal with the WW I British government, (what power) which was intended to secretly convince America (with what power) to enter the war on the British/French side - totally in opposition to the "Pact with Honor" which was being negotiated between the antagonists.

IMHO, the oxymoron “Great War” was the end of “National Honor” and the beginning of universal hatred and political deception - whether real or imaginary, that created an ignoble mental attitude to those who would take advantage of the “suckers” of WW I.

So, when we take a good look at Blair and his lies regarding the invasion of Iraq - WHY do we call that nation "Great Britain"?

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

 

 

scammed by scanners ....

Rapiscan Systems, a manufacturer of body-scan technology, is a client of Michael Chertoff's (Bush's Homeland Security Secretary and co-author of the Patriot Act) security consulting firm, the Chertoff Group. It is worth noting that Chertoff (of dual Israeli nationality) played an important role in letting the detained suspected Israeli agents go back to Israel without any trial, immediately after 911.

Chertoff is not alone in promoting companies like the Rapiscan Systems that make the airport nudie-scanners; many former congressmen are also involved. Lobbyists for Rapiscan (whose contract is worth $173 million) include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) who's coincidentally chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. They claim that such machines are a leap ahead of the metal detectors used in most airports, and are necessary to keep up with the plans of potential terrorists.

As we know better, such claims are absurd. If these latest full-body-scanners were that effective in detecting harmful objects, the travelers could have been spared of the extra pat-down searches.

The Homeland Security Department and other government agencies have been reviewing the Homeland Security Advisory System's usefulness for more than a year. The five-tiered, color-coded terror warning system, created after the Sept. 11 attacks, was one of the Bush administration's most visible anti-terrorism programs. Criticized as too vague to be useful in communicating the terror threat to the public, it quickly became the butt of late-night talk show jokes.

In the middle of 2009 Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered a 60-day review of the color code. Last week, 566 days later, she decided to phase out the colors and go with another system -- the National Terrorism Advisory System, or NTAS. By the end of April, terror threats to the U.S. will no longer be described in shades of green, blue, yellow, orange and red. The new plan calls for notifying specific audiences about specific threats. In some cases, it might be a one-page threat description sent to law enforcement officials describing the threat, what law enforcement needs to do about it and what the federal government is doing.

It is high time for Secretary Napolitano's office to stop the insanity with scan machines which serve no purpose other than costing American government and its people billions of dollars. Surely, if a terrorist wants to carry out its deadly attack, the gathering places of the passengers for security check-ups are easier targets. He/she need not even go through the scan machine to commit the heinous crime.

So whom are we fooling with expensive gadgets that do nothing other than fattening the coffer of the vested interest?

The Insanity With Security Gadgets Must End

naked view...

Sydney Airport trials full-body scanners


Updated August 01, 2011 15:51:28

Full-body scanners that produce a generic outline of airline passengers are being trialled at Sydney's international terminal.