Monthly Archives: June 2007

UK Terror Threat at Highest Level – Critical – Attacks Expected Imminently

Sky News reports:

The Government has raised the national terror threat level to “critical” after a burning Jeep was rammed into the terminal building at Glasgow airport.

The country is now at its highest threat level and means further attacks are expected “imminently”.

Authorities haven’t said if there is specific intelligence that points to another attack, for example information gained from the two subjects arrested in the Glasgow incident, or if this is just the wisest course of action given the events of the past few days. You can’t argue with it either way.

Glasgow Airport Attack – Local Resources

The airport’s official update:

At 15.11 today (Saturday 30th June) a vehicle drove into a front door at the check-in area of Glasgow Airport’s terminal building.

The vehicle caught fire on impact with the building and is currently outside the terminal building. A police investigation is underway and emergency crews are at the scene.

Glasgow Airport is now closed and a motorway cordon has been established by the police. We are advising passengers NOT to attempt to travel to the airport. All flights are suspended until further notice.

Following the incident, the terminal was evacuated in line with our emergency procedures and those people still on campus are sheltering in buildings near the airport. Further details will be provided over the course of the day.

Media
BBC News Scotland
The Evening Times
Scotsman.comThe Daily Record
The HeraldGuardian Unlimited
Sky News

Burning Jeep Driven Into Glasgow Airport Terminal

Terrorism seems certain:

Hundreds of shocked holidaymakers were in the area at the time, and witnesses said some of them removed gas cylinders from the jeep before it caught fire.

There are reports the occupants – described as Asian males – were trying to pour petrol on the flames.

Scott Gleeson said he saw the jeep speed up and swerve towards the terminal at an angle to hit the door.

“They were obviously trying to get through to cause as much damage as possible,” he said.

Holidaymaker Stephen Clarkson said he knocked one of the men to the floor before police intervened.

He said: “There was an Asian male. He was lying on the floor and he was on fire, the Jeep was on fire as well.

“The fellow got up and started fighting with police. I managed to knock the Asian fellow to the ground and four police officers got on top of him.”

He added: “His whole body was on fire. He was quite a big fellow and was disorientated otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to knock him down.”

What next? Is this a coordinated series of attacks that will span days or weeks? Will we see similar attacks, in the near term, outside of the UK? Is this recent activity tied to early June’s al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation? The situation doesn’t look good:

“One has to conclude … these are linked,” Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of Britain’s joint intelligence committee, told Sky News. “This is a very young government, and we may yet see further attacks.”

The good news here is that the forces behind this wave apparently have limited resources. These are not impressive devices or methods. The bad news is that DIY low-grade terrorism is even more difficult to detect or prevent. You can keep terrorists out of commercial airline cockpits. You can’t keep them from acquiring Jeeps and petrol. These resource-limited attacks probably say something about post-9/11 security efforts but the long-term trends are actually in the terrorist’s favor.

The most surprising part of this story, and I’m including the unexploded cars in London, is that it’s obvious that people are still shocked by this. As if it’s truly unexpected when it most certainly shouldn’t be. Brace yourselves because, details of these recent events aside, the situation in Europe is going to degrade significantly over the next decade and beyond – think Israel or even Baghdad.

Father’s Day Email

cole Fathers Day Email

 
Michael “A.J. Sparxx” Illions, of Conservatives with Attitude, writes about his son Cole:

Cole will be 2 years old next month and this year, thankfully, was a lot better than his first year. On September 9th, 2007, we will be holding a Walk-A-Thon in New Jersey to benefit the Hydrocephalus Association to help find a cure for this illness. Right now there is only a treatment.

I’ve created a fund-raising page for Cole and would really appreciate whatever the blogging community can do, $5, $10, anything to help me reach my personal goal of $500.00. (I hope you will post this and share the information with the readers of your blog).

We proved the Doctor’s wrong when they advised us to terminate the pregnancy because our child was going to be “very sick” and “incompatible with life.”

We chose life when the Doctor’s offered death.

Cole’s story can be found here.

Need to Know Weekend Edition – Hamas, Gaza, Arafat, BBC Bias, Sarkozy’s Suprise, Nifong Bashing, and Father’s Day Weirdness

Need to Know is a short roundup of key stories that shouldn’t be missed on your cruise through the blogosphere. The number of links in the roundup may vary but if you find it here you can trust that it’s must-read

Brutally Honest | Those who self-identify as fathers day
In the world of the Polically Correct, one must work hard to ensure that a particular celebration is not in any way offensive to anyone… so… here we have the redefining of the term father for the victimized.

Tim Blair | Tim’s new children’s book
Being a teenager isn’t easy at the best of times, but 16-year-old Amal has decided to do something that will complicate things further: stop wearing her hijab. Her parents and brothers try to talk her out of it – she was born and raised under fundamentalist Islam – but she’s made up her mind, and she doesn’t want to back down. So they kill her.

Cheat Seeking Missiles | On being Muslim and Christian
Redding has found friends among intellectual Muslims who think it’s fine that she’s a Muslim and a Christian. None have invited her to visit Egypt, where Christians are often murdered for their faith, even if (I suppose) they may have a bit of Islam wrapped up in the package. And there are many Muslims who don’t curry to her little spiritual adventure at all.

Cold Fury | Trent Lott and friends
This is indeed a struggle between the governing class and the governed, and is illustrative of many crucial truths beyond the parameters of the specific issue at hand. Maybe the best thing that could possibly happen is for our Congresscritters to continue hurling their arrogance in our teeth; maybe then, enough of us will become angered by their contempt to make a positive difference.

Noah Pollak | Excellent Gaza roundup
No Middle East crisis is complete without awful media coverage, and so Melanie Phillips is outraged at how the BBC has been grotesquely twisting its reporting on Gaza in order to blame the crisis on Israel. Allow me to take this opportunity to concur and add that Great Britain has become the most anti-Israel country in Europe, and the BBC has been merrily pushing the nation down this nihilistic road for quite some time with its daily injections of what can legitimately be called propaganda.

La Shawn Barber | Court makes Nifong’s assholishness official
Nifong, desperate to win election in a heavily black city, used the only ammunition at his disposal: a phony, high profile gang rape case bubbling over with race and class tension. If I were Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and Dave Evans, I’d sue Duke University, the Durham Police Department, and Mike Nifong.

NewsBusters | BBC – The B stands for biased
The BBC likely has done two things no major American media organization would dare: go through an internal investigation of its reporting biases, and; share conceivably unpopular results with the public.

Redstate | Sarkozy’s surprise
There has been a lot of talk about how Republicans can learn lessons from Sarkozy’s Presidential victory this year. Just as Republican Presidential candidates are running to succeed an unpopular Republican President, Sarkozy ran to succeed an unpopular fellow Gaullist in Jacques Chirac. (The two were of different parties, but of the same political ideology.) And just as Sarkozy contrasted himself heavily with Chirac, a future Republican Presidential candidate can contrast himself heavily with George W. Bush in order to win the Presidency. So goes the thinking.

Right Wing Nut House
You’ve got to hand it to Bashar Assad, Syria’s gangster President. Even though he has more blood on his hands than Al Capone, the James Bakers and Nancy Pelosis of the world still want to treat this street thug as if he were head of a sovereign nation and carry on some kind of “dialogue” with the brute. Judging by the above blood soaked list, it would appear that Mr. Assad’s idea of dialogue is somewhat different than ours. At the very least, it makes answering bombs and assassin’s bullets with rational conversation problematic in the extreme.

The Bullwinkle Blog | Hamas actually rights a wrong
Arafat looted the Palestinian’s money for decades, reportedly taking billions from them. Since either the ability to steal or lie are all it takes anymore to win the Nobel Prize the Hamas thugs that stole Arafat’s medal earned it the same way he did.

DJ Drummond | Thoughts on the Republican field
I could be content with a Romney, a Giuliani, or a Fred Thompson in the Oval Office, provided their answers remain consistent and direct as we move on in the primaries. What the press continually fails to grasp, is the need for a good person, not a clever media-savvy one, to serve as President.