Sepia Friendster postergirl Jane of All Trades reads the BBC at the same time I do, because we’re both horrified at the latest development in the War on Terror:
A Muslim convert planned to detonate a dirty bomb and launch an attack on London’s Tube, a court has been told.
Former Hindu Dhiren Barot, 34, from London, plotted “massive explosions” in the US and UK and synchronised attacks.
I tripped over “former Hindu” as I was reading this and barely absorbed the appalling nature of Barot’s plans, which his lawyers argue he didn’t have the resources to carry out.
Barot, from Kingsbury in north-west London, described by prosecutors as “a member or close associate” of al-Qaeda is to be sentenced on Tuesday.
“The plan was to carry out massive explosions here and in the USA, the principal object being to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people without warning,” prosecutor Edmund Lawson QC told Woolwich Crown Court
This tidbit is kinda interesting:
The BBC, The Times and the Associated Press news agency successfully challenged a judge’s ruling that had threatened to prevent reporting of details from the court hearing.
In order to cause the greatest amount of devastation possible, Barot wanted to blow up a subway train as it traveled in a tunnel under the Thames. These are the suspect’s own words regarding his plans:
“Imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion were to rip through here [London] and actually rupture the river itself.
“That would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning etc that would occur.”
As for Amreeka, the IMF, the World Bank (what, no White House?), the NYSE and various bank headquarters were part of the accused’s plans. I will be all the more bitter about this truism tomorrow, after some deluded person in Nebraska votes red to foil terrorists who don’t give a shit about that state, since they prefer to target places where I live, like D.C. But hey– who cares? Let’s keep creating terrorists faster than we can kill them!
converts are overrepresented among terrorist islamists in the west. see understanding terror networks by marc sageman.
the conspiracy theorist in me wonders about the timing of this…
The tenatacles of Dick Cheney and the Republican Party reach into the inner depths of the British judicial system, police force and law courts!
This depresses the hell out of me. I think there will be another successful attack in the UK, it is said they are aiming for a 9/11 scale atrocity. Don’t know what to say apart from that. Situation is bad.
But on the bright side, the new James Bond movie is out on November 17th. Thank God for that.
Moi aussi. It just feels inevitable, that it’s only a matter of time before something nightmarish happens again.
Indeed. I suspect Barot was upset that his near-namesake is getting all the publicity at the moment.
The area between the White House and the Capitol in DC has been labeled the “Dead Zone”… the most likely spot for a terrorist CBRN attack. Is no longer a question of “if”, just a matter of “when”.
Anybody else see the resemblance to Jimmy Smits? Maybe all brown people really do look alike …
This sounds so morbid but I echo your sentiments. Perhaps pessimistic but my first thought when I read the details was “Shit this one foiled, many more to go” and I can’t help but feel that way. Why do so many of us feel that way?
Cuz, have you seen it? I am not exaggerating when I say it is the funniest film that has ever been made. I got a cramp in my stomach from laughing so much and one of my friends almost passed out with laughter, especially during the scene where Borat wrestles naked with his producer. I got a phone call at 1am, she wanted to laugh about it with somebody, couldnt stop laughing a day later. Funniest movie ever. He’s a genius.
Yes – and I worry for how community relations will be wrecked afterwards, apart from the horror of the acts, the backlash and souring of society. Bastards.
probably the most disturbing part of the movie! =)
Most of these plots are primarily in the minds of some Western intelligence agencies. As they are completely incapable of foiling real attacks, they have to rely on mostly made up ones to cover their incompetence.
This sounds so morbid but I echo your sentiments. Perhaps pessimistic but my first thought when I read the details was “Shit this one foiled, many more to go” and I can’t help but feel that way. Why do so many of us feel that way?
terrorism has been a fact of modern life since the emergence of more explosive weapons. in fact, guns changed the equation a lot because of their long distance killing power and concealment potential (consider the relative ease of assassination). remember that word war i was triggered by a terrorist assassination.
Because they are determined and by all accounts, in the UK at least, the number of plots being monitored is frightening. The only reason this guy is in the news is because he pleaded guilty, he will be sentenced tommorow, his co-conspirators (alleged) go on trial next week. This is just one trial – there is another gang who were plotting to blow up a fertiliser bomb outside a nightclub in central London which is currently going through the courts. All it takes is for one cell to get lucky, stay off the radar. And when you’re expecting a spectacular in London, will a suicide bomb in a shopping centre in a small English city in the north be any less effective in making their gruesome point? I know it sounds morbid but I spend a lot of time thinking about this, and thinking about how people need to prepare themselves for it, especially desis (not just Muslims) in the UK….especially Sikhs, but Hindus too.
Depressing eh? Just go and watch Borat I swear it will cheer you up, plus the new James Bond is out soon too, and you always have wine and beer in case they fail 🙂
I used to think like that — but experience and evidence changed my mind.
.
Really? How do you think they “made” him confess?
I’ve mostly stayed out of the Borat lovefest because I can’t stand SBC and don’t find him humorous and think it’s kinda shitty for him to make fun of a community/country that this country knows very little about and that can’t counter him back. It’s a safe bet. There are plenty of other communities he could have gone after that would have kicked his ass back but he didn’t.
You know every time something like this happens, I have to fend of a whole bunch of phone calls, asking me if I am fine, yes mum I am no where near the president. All I can think of is my grandmother in London and what could have happened to her if this F$%ker had been successful. You canÂ’t change the fact that you were born a Hindu, even if you denounce your gods, you MoFo will suffer for many many births that only Hinduism can impose!!!!
WORD! 😀
I am sorry for the cursing, but the menatl picture he created just upset me.
“Imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion were to rip through here [London] and actually rupture the river itself. “That would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning etc that would occur.”
Yeah — but the community he most makes fun of is America in this movie. Borat is a loveable idiot, unaware of his own obnoxiousness and ignorance.
“No 72 virgins for you ! Next !”
He shud be castrated (72 dissappointed virgins), shot, and pissed on.
This is fight/war/struggle (between * and *) has to be played out completely before it is over. We are only at the beginning. Both sides have only played few moves and everybody is implicitly waiting for THE precipitating event. I feel this is very organic to becoming a more unified world, for good or bad. And without this fight or the challenge by fundamentalists, we (the rest of the world) won’t progress towards that more unified/modern world. The bad part for me is the waiting for that event rather than the event itself which is inevitable.
Vikram, keep your virgins. 🙂 Give me a Hindu with the Kama Sutra on his bookshelf with a few drawings and notes he added himself!
charming… i like it…
My comment in #21 was Barot’s Karmic sentence… 🙂
although you forgot buried upsidedown
He not make benefit glorious nation of London borough of Brent. I not like.
i guess this is a good way to vent your anger… i guess
more people here seem shocked by the fact that this guy was a hindu convert – this is just some f’ed up guy in london – LBCD maybe? there have been many stories about how intelligence agencies have stopped terrorist attacks, and i hope that this story wasnt picked just to highlight the fact that this was an “ex-hindu” terrorist – i mean whats so surprising about that? – there have been manuy hindu and sikhs in indian intelligence agencies and armed forces that have been caught cohorting with paki ISI and terrorrists – to me, that is a far more scarier thing
… and the pig entrails ..!
A dirty bomb would blow radioactivity all over the place, not blast a big hole like a nuke. So if this guy thought his dirty bomb was going to disrupt the Thames, it’s safe to assume he’s an idiot and an incompetent and that this whole story is just a big government-sponsored charade.
Remember the “al Qaeda operative” who was going to scale the Brooklyn Bridge and collapse the span by cutting the massive steel cables with a blowtorch? Or the guys who were going to blow the Holland Tunnel and “flood lower Manhattan,” forgetting, of course, that it’s above sea level. Even the London morons who were going to blow up trans-Atlantic flights with bombs in their toothpaste didn’t even have passports.
It’s amazing how there is not one shred of physical evidence for any of these “massive explosions” that are going to take place — just one brown idiot shooting off his mouth. For that, he’ll spend the rest of his life in leg irons.
The government spooks need to figure out that the guy is himself the “bomb” — a purveyor of frightening information that the media revels in and the government exploits as politically useful. There are no explosions, except in the media and in people’s nightmares.
Good!
I like! Now I must crush him!
Word. What a charade it has all become.
Take some time to read what was going on — it may not make you change your mind, but you’re incorrect in as much as his plans to let off a radioactive dirty bomb were not related to his conceiving blowing up a tube train as it passed under the River Thames. The ‘government sponsored charade’ is just an absence of thought. The government does not sponsor the judiciary, and it’s frustrating to encounter this kind of denial. Because it is a problem. Just because you have not taken the time to look at the details, does not mean you can dismiss it, or say there is not a shred of evidence.
Yeah – Madrid and London were actually media fabrications. I mean seriously, is this an argument?
Sounds like a false alarm! The article doesn’t have one word on whether he could have actually carried out his evil intentions. Be afraid, be very afraid of the brown man next to you.
Yes but look at the idiotic vitriol above:
So far this sounds to me to be very similar to that crazy Christian-like cult in Florida that the media said were Muslim and were going to blow up the Sears Tower. It was just crazy talk by a bunch of loonies. People like that need medication and/or conseling and not leg irons.
The ‘Miami Seven’ .
If you look at the BBC’s bullet points of the proscution’s evidence, you note that it all boils down to the fact that the guy had information on his computer, some books, fake passport, a shopping list, surveillance footage, and a bad attitude. No bombs, no detonators, no RDX, no highly enriched uranium, no aluminum tubes. At some point, this guy is going to be sentenced, possibly executed, for what amounts to a thought crime.
I’m not saying the authorities shouldn’t be interested in him. But these little horsemen of the Apocalypse really aren’t that impressive, and nabbing them should not reinforce the silly notion that WE ARE ALL ABOUT TO DIE!!!!
At some point, this guy is going to be sentenced, possibly executed,
dude, seriously. ‘possibly executed.’ since when did the UK bring back the death penalty? i am mildly skeptical as well, but let’s keep it real….
That is just vitriol — but you can’t base your position on defending/dismissing him because of the vitriol of opportunist bigots. The problem has to be at least confronted and dealt with honestly. Dismissing it is not an option. Discussing the proportionality of it, criticising the threat perspective may be, but outright knee jerk dismissal, with suggestions of government sponsored conspiracy is so lazy and wrong.
People have said that this is a government sponsored charade. The British judicial system and law courts are absolutely tenacious in maintaining their independance from the executive. The courts have nixed and fought against the current Labour governments draconian anti-terror legislation with an invigorating zeal. This conspiracy theorising is so ridiculous partly because of the suggestion of a shadowy hand co-ordinating the feisty courts of law — it’s nothing less than an insult, that the entire judicial system could be dupes like that, and a total lazy fantasy to claim this.
I think people need to understand this — about the need to acknowledge the problem whilst simultaneously denying the perspective of the ‘piss on the corpses’ zealot. It’s important to think things through.
I think people need to understand this — about the need to acknowledge the problem whilst simultaneously denying the perspective of the ‘piss on the corpses’ zealot. It’s important to think things through.
amen!
Actually in this case I kind of considered it more of a BBC/press charade.
Actually in this case I kind of considered it more of a BBC/press charade.
the BBC is pretty pink…but sensationalistic.
Nobody has been executed in Britain for almost fifty years.
So your point is to maintain perspective. That’s different from claiming a shadowy government conspiracy and that we shouldnt worry about it, or that it is all media hype. Fine — just say ‘let’s maintain perspective’ — why the paranoid conspiracy theories?
Further, I really think that the judiciary (judge and jury of twelve free men and women) are in a better position to gauge the veracity of the evidence than you or I — the point is, stating ipso facto that he is NOT guilty is just as fallacious as saying that he is guilty. Stating that he is in the dock as the result of a government and media led conspiracy is just loopy.
Right — the BBC is conspiring to frame him for terrorist offences. I’m sorry, but I have to say, respectfully, that’s nonsense.
From the BBC article, summarizing the prosecution’s claims (emphases added):
And there’s this:
Where, exactly, are these mountainous training areas “near” Kashmir”?
The Swiss Alps. Don’t you watch any Bollywood?
Preston, that is the prosecution making its case. Well, it’s less a prosecution than a pre-sentencing hearing, because he has confessed and pleaded guilty.
Oh brother. I guess you think the way you do, and there is not much point debating, because your perspective is so skewed and totally set in its conspiracy theorising ways — and everything is further evidence of the conspiracy to a conspiracy minded theorist. Hey, maybe even I am part of the nefarious British government/MI6/BBC plot to frame Dhiren Barot and have been seconded to message board and blog duty to muddy the trail!
I have problem taking it seriously when you state that terrorist attacks are a media concoction. Hundreds of people died in the attacks in Europe.
Converts seem to be a staple diet of these terrorists.