What does one of these things have to do with the other? After the failed Christmas attack on Northwest Flight 253, it was revealed that, in the U.K., they "now issue 370,000 student visas a year - almost the entire population of Bristol or Manchester - yet hardly any of the applicants ever see hide nor hair of an Immigration Officer." Fast-forward three months to the story below, and its reports of increased availability, smuggling of, and expertise in hazardous materials, and a potentially catastrophic weakness in the defense against nuclear jihad becomes apparent.
"Nuclear terror risk to Britain from al-Qaeda," by Duncan Gardham for the Telegraph, March 22:
Britain faces an increased threat of a nuclear attack by al-Qaeda terrorists following a rise in the trafficking of radiological material, a government report has warned.
Bomb makers who have been active in Afghanistan may already have the ability to produce a "dirty bomb" using knowledge acquired over the internet.
It is feared that terrorists could transport an improvised nuclear device up the Thames and detonate it in the heart of London. Bristol, Liverpool Newcastle, Glasgow and Belfast are also thought to be vulnerable.
Lord West, the Security Minister, also raised the possibility of terrorists using small craft to enter ports and launch an attack similar to that in Mumbai in 2008, when more than 150 people were killed.
The Government is so concerned about the threat that it is setting up a command centre to track suspicious boats.
The terrorism threat level was raised from "substantial" to "severe" in January after the failed attempt to blow up an aircraft over Detroit on Christmas Day.
Three separate reviews of the country's ability to prevent a major terrorist attack were published simultaneously yesterday, before an international meeting on nuclear security in Washington next month.
Downing Street released an update to the National Security Strategy in which it stated that "the UK does face nuclear threats now" and added that there was "the possibility that nuclear weapons or nuclear material [could] fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorist groups".
The International Atomic Energy Authority recorded 1,562 incidents where nuclear material was lost or stolen between 1993 and 2008, mostly in the former Soviet Union, and 65 per cent of the losses were never recovered.
Another report, on the Government's "Contest" counter-terrorism strategy, said there was a danger that the increased expertise of insurgents in making bombs in Afghanistan had increased the threat from a radiological "dirty bomb".
It added that there was a "significant increase in the illicit trafficking of radiological materials, the availability of chemical, biological radiological and nuclear (CBRN) related technologies over the internet and the increased use of CBRN material for legitimate purposes", which could be acquired by terrorist organisations.
A third report, on Britain's strategy for countering chemical, biological radiological and nuclear terrorism, described al-Qaeda as the "first transnational organisation to support the use of CBRN weapons against civilian targets and to try to acquire them".
The report said security around stockpiles of decommissioned material was "variable and sometimes inadequate, leaving materials vulnerable to theft by insiders and criminal and terrorist organisations".
Legitimate uses for such materials also "significantly increases the risk that they may be diverted and exploited by terrorist organisations".
It added that al-Qaeda had established facilities to conduct research into CBRN weapons when Afghanistan was under the control of the Taliban before 2002.
Since then the terrorist group had approached Pakistani nuclear scientists, developed a device to produce hydrogen cyanide, which can be used in chemical warfare, and used explosives in Iraq combined with chlorine gas cylinders.
The possibility of an attack launched from speedboats was highlighted by Lord West, speaking at the new National Maritime Information Centre in Northwood, Middlesex. He said hundreds of thousands of small boats arrived in Britain unchecked every year. "I think the public would be surprised to discover that we do not know about every single contact [with a vessel]," he said.
He said the agencies responsible for guarding the coastline did not know "with any clarity what is going on around our coasts"....
I believe "firmly", in my heart, that it is going to take a nuclear strike to relieve the dhimmis from control, and start England on the road to recovery.
Meanwhile, the government of Great Britain announces that it is expelling an Israeli diplomat for his role in obtaining passports used by those who were involved in that made-for-television business in Dubai. In a rightly-ordered world, the heads of both MI-5 and MI-6 would both have congratulated the Israelis on that feat of derring-do which helps to make not only Israel, but the whole Infidel world safer, and there certainly would be no expelling of Israeli diplomats. A mad world, my masters! where the world's Infidels do not understand their common threat, and their shared interests.
But, let's remember that the British have had national health care since the end of World War II, unlike we primitive Americans.
That's much more important then preparing for the jihad or defending our borders or protecting our liberties. Why do I suddenly feel sick?
How's that student visa system working?
How's that "let's have mahoundians have their fascist, misogynistic, supremacist, racist and intolerant sharia courts" working?
How's that "let's rub the nose of the right in (mahoundian, particularly Porkistani) multiculturalism" working?
How's that "let's import a bunch of Porkistani halal butchers" working?
How's that "let's make the British police more 'diverse' (i.e., mahoundian) and kill it in the process" working?
How's all that PC MC that lets mahoundian police officers know where potential victims of honor crimes are hiding, so that they can tell their families about it in a New-York minute working?
How's that prosecution of Christian hotel owners who hurt a mobile tent's precious mahoundian feelings, by referring to mahound as a warlord, while mahoundians are free to scream "axe the kufr, behead the kufr, butcher those who insult mahoundianism" working?
How's that bullying and betrayal of Israel, as mentioned by Hugh in his comment, working?
And I could go on, and on, and on... The more appeasement mahoundians get from the British Labour Party and the Tories, the greater the threat that they pose and the more numerous their demands get.
Oh, and how could I have forgotten? How's David Miliband's £ 250.000 private-jet ride, from Guantanamo Bay to the UK, for a bogus torture victim that doesn't even have British citizenship working?
Only 100,000 pounds (about 150,000 dollars) was spent on the plane to bring Mr. Mohamed from Guantanamo to his "home" country of Great Britain. The other 150,000 pounds -- about $225,000 dollars -- was mentioned as the probable cost to British taxpayers of supporting him. Of course, he his suing both the British and the Americans for his "torture," which torture did not involve anything more taxing than sleep-deprivation. The NKVD and Gestapo, not to mention every Arab Mukhabarat, would all have a good laugh over that.
Here's the story:
£250,000 bill for return of 'torture' prisoner as luxury jet flies him from Guantanamo to Britain
By Sam Greenhill, Ian Drury and Dan Newling
25th February 2009
Taxpayers will foot an estimated £250,000 bill for the return to Britain of an Ethiopian held at Guantanamo Bay.
Security and surveillance costs covering Binyam Mohamed's life in Britain will add an estimated £150,000 to the £100,000 paid to hire a plane for him.
The 30-year-old was released from the U.S. detention camp on Monday, vowing to expose British 'complicity' in his alleged torture in the seven years since he was arrested in Pakistan.
Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed walks off the plane at RAF Northolt after flying in from Cuba
Back in Britain: Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed walks off the plane at RAF Northolt after flying in from Cuba
He had been in Guantanamo for more than four years, accused of being involved in an Al Qaeda 'dirty bomb' plot. But all charges against him were dropped last year.
The case has placed Foreign Secretary David Miliband under intense pressure to reveal what Britain knew about the torture allegations.
His position was made even more uncomfortable yesterday when it was revealed that the U.S. may release secret files that could show British spies knew Mohamed was being tortured.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1152505/250-000-return-torture-prisoner-luxury-jet-flies-Guantanamo-Britain.html#ixzz0j0fnlrgV
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How much do you think surveillance of Muslim would-be terrorists alone -- never mind the imams who whip up hatred, or the Muslims who slip into positions of authority, in the press (e.g., The New Statesman), or in the BBC, or in political parties, and there burrow from within to promote the cause of Islam, the cause of Jihad)-- in Great Britain, in all of Western Europe, in all of Western Europe and North America, is now costing Infidel taxpayers? How many tens of billions of dollars, with the price rising and rising without stop?
Anyone know of estimates made by the knowledgeable -- for police, lawyers, judges, prison guards, security guards all over the place, for listening devices and other monitoring devices, for payments to supposedly reliable "Muslims" who will report on what is said and done and planned in the mosques and "in the community"?
Any idea?
Speaking of the cost of monitoring mahoundians in the UK:
Posted by Hugh | July 10, 2008 5:09 PM
From a piece in The New Duranty (NY)Times on July 4 that was mainly about another Muslim terrorist figure, not Abu Qatada, who was about to be released:
"The frustration was mirrored in a commentary published after Abu Qatada’s release in The Sun, the hell-raising tabloid that is Britain’s most widely sold newspaper.
“Poor old Osama bin Laden, scuttling around the war-torn Afghan mountains to avoid death or capture,” the newspaper said. “But hope is on the horizon for the world’s most wanted terrorist. There’s one place on Earth where he would be perfectly safe. Britain. Here, we throw nobody out. Bin Laden has every chance of ending his days among peace and plenty.”
British newspapers have chronicled the steep costs of years of court proceedings against those suspected of being terrorist leaders, and what British commentators have described as overly generous welfare payments to them and their families. After Abu Qatada was released, the newspapers said, he was granted a $300-a-week disability payment because a bad back made it impossible for him to work, even though the release order prevented him from seeking employment.
Officials have estimated the cost of maintaining surveillance on Abu Qatada in the four-bedroom Edwardian house in west London where he is confined with his wife and five children at $2 million a year. Welfare payments to his family amount to an additional $90,000 a year, according to news accounts. Similar figures have been calculated for the family of a man with the alias of Abu Hamza al-Masri, a 51-year-old Egyptian-born cleric with steel prosthetics for hands who once ran the main Qaeda Web site in Britain, now serving a seven-year prison term for incitement to murder.
The Hamza case is cited by British officials as one in which the legal system here has effectively stifled an Islamic extremist leader. The British government has agreed to his extradition to the United States, where he faces a possible life sentence on charges that involve being part of a global conspiracy to wage holy war against the United States, and trying to set up a Qaeda training camp in Oregon."
Nota Bene:
Abu Qatada lives in a $1.6 million dollar house on a leafy street in a better part of London. His family receives $90,000 a year from British taxpayers. Those Infidel taxpayers also foot the bill for the approximately two million dollars a year it costs to monitor Abu Qatada.
It's in the story: "Officials have estimated the cost of maintaining surveillance on Abu Qatada in the four-bedroom Edwardian house in west London where he is confined with his wife and five children at $2 million a year. Welfare payments to his family amount to an additional $90,000 a year, according to news accounts."
Think about it. Read it again. Think some more. Think about how many Abu Qatadas there are in Great Britain, yet to be found or to be charged. Think how many of them can claim, and truthfully, that if they are expelled and sent back to their Muslim lands, they can expect treatment far harsher than what advanced Western nations infllict nowadays as punishment. And that argument will be used to allow such people to stay indefinitely, at the expense of local taxpayers, living in astonishing luxury.
This makes no sense. The laws must be changed. Attitudes must change. There must be a change of personnel, so that all those who have mentally acclimated themselves to, and even grown accepting of, this nonsense are kicked out, are driven from power or the neighborhoods of power. An entirely new set of people has to come in, and take control, and bring those who presume to instruct and protect others, because they are in the government, to their collective senses.
A month before before a nuclear security meeting in Washington, three new reports say the UK faces nuclear threats from small boats.
Not to worry though, the 'new' National Maritime Information Centre, the navy, coastguard, police and fisheries vessels are standing by in the event of an attack... plus, police and fire services have been given extra equipment and the Army have been trained in making CBRN weapons safe.
'dads army' anybody? this sounds like a joke.
Face it Britain 'new' ration cards are on the way.
Take pictures of England. It won't be England much longer.
I recommend high quality cameras, to get the depth of detail. There won't be many originals to go back to. There's this 'elective affinity' to destroy the work of other civilizations.\
And no more bangers and peas. At least not pork ones. Halal is good.
So..England..you're going gently into the good night.
Will the last Brit alive (and churchgoer)..please turn off the light...
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill...RIP...thank G-d you didn't live to see the soon final agony of your England, this womb of kings.
So..England..you're going gently into the good night.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but ....
Americans have no reason to feel superior in this regard. We are travelling down the exact same road as the UK, they've just got a head start on us. It's only a matter of time before we are in exactly the same situation here.
I do not believe that we have passed the point of no return yet, but we are rapidly approaching it. The analogy of travelling down a road is appropriate; the closer to the point of no return we get the more drastic the course change required to avoid it.
If I had to make a prediction at this point, I wouldn't give the US better than 50-50 odds, and the UK a lot less.
"Bangers and peas"? Peas? Please. Bangers and mash.
Other news reports have said that the UK is monitoring thousands of potential terrorists. If each of those requires 24-hour monitoring, at a minimum that might mean three full-time people -- one for each of three shifts in 24 hours -- doing the monitoring of each potential terrorist. If each of those three gets only $33,333 a year, that's $100,000 a year just for personnel costs, never mind equipment, computers, administration, etc. Then if we multiply that $100,000 by 2000 potential terrorists (though there are possibly thousands more than that being monitored now), we get $200 million a year. If you then add on equipment, vehicles, administration, etc., then maybe it's more like a couple of billion dollars. The UK is a $ 2.1 trillion economy, and if we assume a government budget of 1/3 of GDP, that's about $670 billion. So, to monitor a couple of thousand potential terrorists might cost about 1/2 of 1 percent of the government budget. That of course does not include many other costs to society of increasing security everywhere.
That Israeli diplomat dismissal is really telling. The Brit Intelligence Services should have high fived the guy instead and taken some lessons from the operation(which they hopefully will).
Really topsy turvey stuff. Kick out the Israeli diplomat, but leave good old Choudry alone to spout his evil hate. Cozy up to the muslims to make sure (ugh) they "behave". It's disgusting. The people in charge are fools, and hopefully things will change for the better in May. I'm not sure how though, since the bad guys seem to have such a foothold now.
The Government is so concerned about the threat that it is setting up a command centre to track suspicious boats.
If it was so concerned it would stop Islamic immigration and start repatriating Muslims.
OTH it is much easier and SAFER to deport an Israeli who was in London at the time when avery active Hamas activist was murdered by persons unknown.
I think most people in the UK are as p----- off with "British resident" Binyon Mohamed as every other sane person in the world. To add insult to injury recent reports say there are about 30 more "British residents" like him waiting for the outcome of the case for their handouts. Even members of my family who are wild eyed Guardian reading liberals think he is taking the p---.
Like everyone else I am sick to death hearing about the mistreatment of "British resident" Binyon Mohammed. When I first heard he was coming to this country from Guantanmo Bay I wrote to my MP asking,
"Why the hell is a man who might the Ethiopian or Somali being allowed into this country considering he had come here from the United States. Lied about his country of origin to claim asylum here. Admitted he attended a jihad training camp (but he was only going to kill Russians) and was picked up trying to enter the US again from Pakistan on a false passport. When he was picked up he was in the company with another man who is serving a time in the US for the same offense having duly been convicted and sentenced".
He said I should not believe everything I read in the newspapers. Well everything I read in the newspapers was true.
I have also asked who are his lawyers, what is his case costing and who is funding it? I just wish we had their names so the public could tell them personally what they think of them and their "client".
What p----- me off even more was a post on the comment column of a national newspaper last month. Someone posted that he knew BM personally and his wife and baby daughter and he was a really nice guy.
Did you get that? He has acquired a wife who is more than likely a fully legal British citizen with a child so we will NEVER be able to throw him out.
I was so PO about BM I forgot to mention that I meet a lot of foreign students in my work and the visa system is a farce. Once they are in the country and attend a couple of weeks lectures they disappear. They do not stay long enough to pay for tuition but the so called universities need them to fill the places at least on paper.
I say "so called universities" because our government decreed just about every educational establishment catering for students of 16 and over was henceforth a "university". A Czech student at one of these places reckoned it no better than a good high school. I have met "university students" supposedly taking higher technical degrees who barely understand let alone read and write English. But why pick on foreign students? I have had letters from English students who cannot write the most basic grammatical English.
But what the hell if it means Nulabour can boast it has got more kids into higher education than ever before.
"But what the hell if it means Nulabour can boast it has got more kids into higher education than ever before"
Yes, that's the plan for America too. Everyone goes to college. And the colleges become like Junior Highs, but it doesn't matter. Everyone will have a college degree, and of course everyone will then expect a certain kind of job, and a certain level of income, and no one will want to have anything to do with those perfectly respectable and honorable prorfessions that do not require college degrees, because those jobs (some of which pay very well, and are immune to foreign competitors, and also much more secure than all kinds of white-collar jobs) will then be "beneath them." It's a fantastic scheme, just now being adumbrated by the Administration, hoping to be "transformative" and, for all I know, likely to be successful as it transforms away.
Israeli diplomat? Oh, please, the UK are old hands at the slight-of-hand black magic of diplomacy/mendacity. It is decided that the UK must be seen to excoriate the Israeli government. It is "leaked" that the person to be expelled is a luminary of Mossad's UK station. This is an acceptable explanation to the press that the diplomat's name will be withheld as a matter of personal security of the diplomat. Now spot the departing Israeli. Is it an imposter, a minory functionary on a long-planned rotation back to Israel (travelling on a UK passport provided by MI6 of course). Is it anyone at all, or "the man who never was", this time without the cadaver? Who is to know? After all, he won't be giving a press conference on the steps of an El-Al jet at Heathrow will he?
As for Anjem Choudary and his Islam4UK (? IslamFUK) / al Muhajiroun crowd. They are thoroughly penetrated and left to smoke out the real and "wannabee" jihadis. Look at what happened to all of the German spies landed in England in WW2. People who are making as much noise as Choudary are not the real threat. Only a journalist would think he is truly significant and that is because he gives sound-bite interviews and they feed each other's ego.
The people in charge in the UK are not fools, because the facade of political "talking heads" who you (and they) may think are in charge are in reality not the people in charge. It's been like that in the UK for centuries. Is the US any different? Was GW really in charge? In Russia, is President Medvyedyev in charge? The real power is cloaked.
If cunning, ruthless, brilliant people who know what's what are really in charge behind the scenes, why in god's name didn't they stop Muslim immigration forty years ago, or thirty, or twenty? And if such people are really in charge, what exactly is the point of having the BBC, and the BBC World Service, continue to sound like Al Jazeera or Al Manar, and to promote, in every way, the Muslim worldview?
And if the cunning, ruthless, brilliant people are really in charge behind the scenes, so we don't have to be alarmed, then why the hell did they waste two trillion dollars on that hopeless farce in Iraq, instead of letting the Sunnis and Shi'a go at it, and the Kurds and the Arabs at the same time? And why are they now wasingt men, money, materiel, morale and attention on Afghanistan and Pakistan, instead of concentrating on the main theatre of war (that war being the world-wide Jihad), that is the countries of Western Europe?
Look at the Michael Coren show tapes. Look at two respectable Canadian worthies, one a journalist (Joan Crockatt) and the other a sometime politician and businessman (Steve Gilchrist). These are the people who run things or influence things. Look at their take on Islam and at their respective confusions and lapses.
That's the real power, in Canada, in the United States, in Great Britain. And meanwhile, those intelligent, cunning, ruthless people who you say are in charge behind the scenes are not, and are one unified voice or vox, a vox clamantis in deserto.