Breaking News: “Plot to blow up planes disrupted”

well good job the “plot” was disrupted. Doesn”t seem to be clear what the hell is going on - but Heathrow”s closed to all “incoming flights” - goodness! that sounds like it will cause mass chaos - and “all flights have been cancelled to Europe”. Right bang in the middle of holiday season so it must be pretty damn chaotic right now.

Additionally Lufthansa and Iberia have also cancelled flights to the UK.

MI5″s current threat level has been raised from SEVERE to CRITICAL - i daresay this is the highest it can get.

So what”s going on? - Scotland Yard says “A plot to blow up planes from the UK mid-flight and cause “mass murder on an unimaginable scale” has been disrupted”. Oh dear! No details yet but mentions of upto 10 flights involved - and recent BBC headlines point to upto 21 arrests being made in London and West Midlands.

The Met says:

We believe that the terrorists” aim was to smuggle explosives on to aeroplanes in hand luggage and to detonate these in flight. We also believe that the intended targets were flights from the United Kingdom to the United States of America.

and BA says:

It was too early to estimate the cost of the disruption, adding that it had temporarily halted all short-haul flights to and from Heathrow.

Airport operator BAA said that Heathrow had been closed to all incoming flights not already in the air and warned passengers to stay away.

and what”s been happening in the US:

The US Department of Homeland Security increased the threat level applied to US-bound commercial flights originating in the UK to “red” - the first time it has done this for flights coming in from another country

Hopefully as the day progresses, we”ll have more news and detail - though realistically this will all be clouded in confusion and no one will know what”s been going on, how the bomb plot was averted, who”s been arrested, etc. etc. Naturally, for selfish reasons - given it”s prime holiday season - people will need to have information - especially if they have flights to catch etc. and need to make other arrangements. Tony”s on holiday and Ministers are in “Emergency Meetings”. A BBC Security Correspondent has said that the

plot had an “international dimension” and the investigation had involved the CIA.

The original Da Vinci Code?

With the international success of the bestselling novel The DaVinci Code, esoteric subjects have been enthusiastically received by a large audience.

The Holy Blood - Holy Grail - Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982)

Written as a follow up to a BBC documentary, this is the book where the authors presented an ‘audacious’ and groundbreaking hypothesis : theories which of course have achieved notoriety in the shape of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. It’s funny - on the back cover ( it did cause a fair amount of hoo-ha when it was released) Newsweek said ‘ A brilliant thriller in the making’ - and of course, as we know, some people came along and did just that. Definitely worth a read. Of course for all Templar and Grail enthusiasts but nowadays anyone who wanted to know about where some of the ideas presented in the fictional Da Vinci Code had their roots ( and enough information and bibliography is presented in the text for people to take their own research further and draw their own conclusions about the subject matter) Again - they make it clear that theirs is a startling hypothesis and a set of speculations about historical events.

The Rule of Four - Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

I am fascinated with ancient and mediaeval texts and a good mystery at the same time so this was right up my street. It’s focus is the mysterious, lengthy, erudite and anonymous Renaissance text - the Hypneromatochia Poliphili

“A mysterious coded manuscript, a violent Ivy League murder, and the secrets of a Renaissance prince collide in a labyrinth of betrayal, obsession, and genius..”

Book Journal

Next on my reading list:

Robert Richardson : The Unknown Treasure: The Priory of Sion Fraud and the Spiritual Treasure of Rennes-le-Château (Houston, TX: NorthStar, 1998)

Great title eh?

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has published its report on the classification of drugs: they’ve got a good sense of humour I see. The title of the report is: “Drugs Classification: Making a Hash of It?”

This is the fifth report of the session 2005-2006 and the Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to “examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Office of Science and Innovation and its associated public bodies.”

The report is the “second of three case studies under the Committee’s over-arching inquiry into the Government’s handling of scientific advice, risk and evidence in policy making. It addresses the relationship between scientific advice and evidence and the classification of illegal drugs“

So what do they have to say about the government”s drugs reclassification policy and actions?

“With respect to the ABC classification system, we have identified significant anomalies in the classification of individual drugs and a regrettable lack of consistency in the rationale used to make classification decisions. In addition, we have expressed concern at the Government’s proclivity for using the classification system as a means of ‘sending out signals’ to potential users and society at large—it is at odds with the stated objective of classifying drugs on the basis of harm and the Government has not made any attempt to develop an evidence base on which to draw in determining the ‘signal’ being sent out.”

Overall Recommendation:

“We have found no convincing evidence for the deterrent effect, which is widely seen as underpinning the Government’s classification policy, and have criticised the Government for failing to meet its commitments to evidence based policy making in this area. More generally, the weakness of the evidence base on addiction and drug abuse is a severe hindrance to effective policy making and we have therefore urged the Government to increase significantly its investment in research.”

Ah…very interesting! So perhaps there may be something to what I”ve been saying on posts on this site a while back about the cannabis debate- when the re-re-classification hoo-ha was raging. I”ve always had a sneaking suspicion that the drug classification of cannabis has to do more with funny ideas and attempts at moralizing (not very good ones i might add ) on the part of Government, the sort of thing that only leads to less information on what”s actually going on, a good source of income for criminals, lot of work for the police, hassle for spliff lovers, and not much else.

August 2nd 1990 - 16 years ago. Iraqi troops invade Kuwait - eventually leading to the Gulf War.

I remember that day far too clearly - I was 12 years old then. About 6 a.m. my dream was getting a bit loud and i woke up and found the noise was was real. a funny noise and the floor was somewhat shuddery.. I had these great big windows and i leaned out and what did i see..( well i don”t have my own pictures anymore so this will have to do to give you an idea)

We were supposed to be going on holiday at 10. a.m. Seeing as the airport was the first thing that was bombed - that obviously wasn”t going to happen. What was going on ? i remember the unreality feeling being the strongest during those early moments. is this really happening? this can”t be happening! we had to listen to the BBC and Voice of America broadcasts on the radio announcing that Iraq had invaded Kuwait before it started to sink in. Well it didn”t really sink in for a bit - not till later on in the day when we stepped outside to see lots of soldiers with rifles milling about, and later later on all the casualties of the morning”s shelling strewn about the highways and roads. of course there was no one left to clear up the wreckages. one of the things that most stuck in my mind was the image of a car wrapped around and melted into a traffic lampost, and you could see the hole where the bomb had landed. Years later obviously no car anymore but the warped lampost remained..

anyways. i hope never to wake up to something like that again - but you never know. taking safety for granted is something i try not to do anymore.

–There”s not much interest on the net about this day and memorials etc. - i did a google search to see if anyone else had noted that some of us might be marking this date - ha not much - everything is either about the Gulf War - or as is to be expected - stick in invasion and iraq and kuwait and the 2003 events come up) But hey. I know there are a lot of people out there - spread across the world ( Kuwait was and still is mostly full of “expatriates”) who went through this ( who”re still alive that is..) and whether or not they are sitting there consciously remembering this day 16 years ago - here”s to life.

I haven”t ever really written anything much about my experiences and I may do some day. There”s too much to go into here and now anyways. Later on in life when i read the Diary of Anne Frank a couple of things really resonated with me. The waiting the not knowing and Anne was writing about her 14th birthday in hiding, and that made me think about my 13th birthday. i”m a virgo so i turned 13 that September, still under “Occupation”. Some fun that was! Being a year younger than the others in my class had always made me eager to be a bit older. and as a 12 year old i couldn”t wait to become a teenager. all my mates” had had their 13th birthday parties and i had been so looking forward to mine. Alas..
–Still i”ve lived to tell my tale if i so choose but unfortunately Anne - and a million other people across the world in different conflicts - didn”t. So i”m pretty thankful and lucky.

On a lighter note : - in 1967 on this day the second Blackwall Tunnel opened in Greenwich.

So apparently today the “official assessment” of the terrorist threat facing Britain is being made public for the first time today on the MI5 and Home Office websites.

OOh Secret Information! Or not? So what”s it say? Under “Threats” - –>

CURRENT THREAT LEVEL: SEVERE

Ah well, nothing new there then. A nice little quote by Tony is also featured:

“The [security] threat we face is not conventional. It is a challenge of a different nature from anything the world has faced before - Prime Minister, Tony Blair “

Ah indeedy. What”s a conventional threat then?

What else do they say –> Another little excerpt:

“There is a serious and sustained threat from international terrorism to the UK and UK interests overseas. The most significant terrorist threat comes from Al Qaida and associated networks. Information on Al Qaida”s typical methods of attack and targets and the current threat to the UK has been prepared by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. Northern Ireland-related terrorism continues to pose a threat. Dissident republican terrorist groups, who have rejected the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998, still aspire to mount attacks in Great Britain.

The spread, or proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction(WMD) is another potential danger to the UK”s security. The Security Service has been involved in countering this threat since 1992. The threat from espionage(or spying) against the UK did not end with the collapse of Soviet communism in the early 1990s. Several countries are actively seeking British information and material to advance their own military, technological, political and economic programmes”

UPDATE 10th August: MI5 CURRENT THREAT LEVEL UPPED TO CRITICAL