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Secrecy. It is all around us. Obviously, governments make deals with each other that have little or nothing to do with what is finally released to the public. These agreements have codicils that remain hidden to the people they will affect. But in this, the agreements and the people who make them are no different than the rest of us. How much of our lives remain secret from even those we are closest to? How many secret gardens do we cultivate as our private retreats, those spaces we won't share with anyone?

Certainly, previous experience has shown that we cannot be open with everyone. We have most likely all had the experience of sharing an intimate thought or wish with another only to have it broadcast to the world, be it the schoolyard, office, or family reunion. Or you express a weakness to a spouse in an intimate moment only to find it being hurled back at you the next time voices are raised.

We learn to keep our real thoughts to ourselves. Sometimes, they may be minor things just to fit in or to not be singled out. If you worked in an office of Bush supporters, you would likely hesitate before talking about Michael Moore, the debacle in Iraq, much less raising the issue of official complicity in 9/11. To do so would mark you for as long as you worked with the same people. It would likely be detrimental to your work and your career. The consequence is that in this situation you wouldn't consider being completely open with these people because you know full well what the consequences would be. You are entirely correct in saying nothing.

But, then again, does the same thing apply if you are a journalist? We see the effects daily of silence in the US news media where the unspoken rule says you don't touch on the really important issues.

Knowledge of psychopaths and organic portals gives us a better understanding of why such personal silence is necessary and such public silence is almost inevitable. You can only be open, honest, and frank with people who have the capacity to return it in kind. In a society of psychopaths, where they set the rules, it is a constant fight to present the truth. Each attempt to speak the truth is an opening to attack. This fact alone should be enough to convince people that the press in the United States is not free, that free speech is a slogan behind which stands tyranny.

Learning and discerning with whom you can be honest and open and truly yourself is one of the basic skills we must all master. Secrecy as we live it now is based upon emotion. We are scared to open up, even in cases where we should. This fear in many cases is unwarranted, the remnant of a circuit laid in the brain at a younger age. In other cases, the fear may be justified. Learning to distinguish between the two takes time and a mastery of the emotions so that the facts can be viewed clearly without the chemical filter overlaid by the emotions. Journalists could leave the confines of the mainstream press and go out on their own, or network with like- minded individuals to work to uncover the reality the press tries so hard to obscure.

But what about those things you keep from the significant other in your life? Isn't the longing for love the longing to be with someone who accepts you for who you are, with all your strengths and frailties? The need to be yourself without the necessity of wearing a mask or watching your words, avoiding the feeling of walking on eggshells with every utterance? And the ability to allow the other the same?

It is hard, almost impossible to be that open, that trusting, but the moment we achieve it is unlike any other. Of course, then it passes, and some new "thing" happens and you lose it. The openness must be rebuilt. We find ourselves inventing excuses for our reclusion. The predator's mind takes over, emotion fueling the negative half of the intellectual centre, and we begin to calculate and weigh and measure everything we do and that is done to us, comparing to see who "wins", who gets the most, who is the better feeder. We withhold information because it gives us a leg up on the "opponent" -- but in this case, our "opponent" is the person with whom we are the most intimate.

A recipe for disaster and suffering.

Most people, we would guess, don't even feel the need for such openness and are happy to live in a world or a relationship where secrets are Standard Operating Procedure. Feeding is their natural state, and they have no need or desire to be anything else.

But what about the others? How can one live openly in a society that with each passing day is under tighter and tighter strictures, where the thought police are actively on the lookout for dissident ideas, where it appears the split between creativity and entropy is becoming more and more marked, and where, therefore, our most intimate relationships will come under its influence?

It should be obvious that in our closest relationships, there is a real problem if we cannot be open. If our spouses aren't ready to accept who we are, then we should question very seriously if we should be in the relationship. With our parents and siblings, it is different. We are there not by choice but through birth. One can certainly speculate that there are karmic lessons to be learned through our choice of families, but here on the ground, our lesson is learning to respect the free will of others and to defend our own. That means not imposing our ideas or offering them when they have not been sought.

But what does it mean to ask? Someone might ask you your ideas only to draw you out for an ambush. Clearly, there is a sincere asking and an insincere asking. Are we being asked because the questioner has a genuine interest in our thoughts and ideas? Will they allow themselves to be touched by our words?

Will we?

Trauma - an emotional wound or shock that creates substantial, lasting damage to the psychological development of a person.

A report in today's UK Guardian newspaper tell us:

Brazilian did not wear bulky jacket

Relatives say Met admits that, contrary to reports, electrician did not leap tube station barrier

Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier when challenged by armed plainclothes police, his cousin said yesterday.

Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Metropolitan police, Vivien Figueiredo, 22, said that the first reports of how her 27-year-old cousin had come to be killed in mistake for a suicide bomber on Friday at Stockwell tube station were wrong.

"He used a travel card," she said. "He had no bulky jacket, he was wearing a jeans jacket.

the original reports that de Menezes was wearing a bulky jacket, failed to respond to police instructions and jumped the tube turnstiles all came from the Metropolitan police themselves and now appear to be completely false, or rather, they deliberately lied to cover their collective ass. So what then is the truth of this most disturbing incident? Well, let's look at a case history.

On January 30, 1972, soldiers from the British Army's 1st Parachute Regiment opened fire on unarmed and peaceful civilian demonstrators in the city of Derry, Northern Ireland. The marchers were demanding equal civil rights in terms of housing, jobs and education for the marginalised nationalist (Irish) population of Northern Ireland. The resulting death toll reached 13 with a number of others wounded. Among the dead were a 17 year old boy and a 65 year old man, most of the victims were shot in the back.

In the years since the atrocity, debate has raged about who to blame for the murders. Naturally, the British government initially carried out a whitewashed inquiry which exonerated the paratroopers and their CO and accepted the soldier's claims that they only responded after coming under fire. Since then, these claims have been proven to be false. A rather less biased inquiry was opened on 3 April 1999 in order to assess new information that had since come to light and is ongoing. The best result that can be expected from the inquiry is that it will rule that the British soldiers were to blame and that due to lack of discipline or the tension of the day or unknown variables, the soldiers lost control and simply opened fire indiscriminately. Most people will probably accept this as closure on the event. Such a ruling however, will leave the truth untold.

The British Paratroop regiment is acknowledged as one of the best trained and most disciplined of the British military. For this reason the idea that such a group of trained killers would arbitrarily and en masse disregard specific orders and fire on clearly unarmed civilians is hardly believable. The only reasonable explanation therefore is that the soldiers were acting on specific orders when they gunned down thirteen people that day - orders that, more than likely, originated in the psychological warfare department of the British military. Simply stated, the aim of such brutality towards the civilian population was collective psychological traumatisation, not only of those directly involved in the march, but also the wider nationalist population of N. Ireland who shared the aspirations of the marchers.

To this end, the operation was more or less successful, with the nationalist population of Northern Ireland left reeling from such apparently state-sponsored savagery in response to legitimate and reasonable demands. A possible secondary or parallel objective was to force the resurgent IRA into an organised campaign of paramilitary resistance to the British presence and stranglehold on the Northern Irish statelet, which is in fact what resulted. Lest we forget, from a military-industrial complex point of view, and despite the beliefs of the average citizen, war is desirable and good business practice. Military budgets must be justified after all.

Coming back to the murder of Charles de Menezes by British special forces on a London train last Friday; in the absence of any valid justification for the killing of this innocent man and taking into consideration that the Metropolitan police have now been exposed as having lied about the details of the murder, the only reasonable explanation is that this was a case of pre-meditated state-sponsored murder, designed to send a clear, if subliminal, message to the British public that they really should be afraid, and the "terrorist threat" may well be the least of their worries.

It is in the deliberate emotional traumatisation of the general public that governments find their greatest resource for the shaping of public opinion and the forcing through of policies which, under normal circumstances, would be immediately and intuitively rejected by the public.

Day 6 of Open Season on those who are “darker than blue”

A sure fire way of keeping the spotlight off a murderous government that is neither believed nor trusted by the majority of the population, is to have a diversion of enormous magnitude caused by an enemy, preferably of an elemental kind (anarchists, communists, fanatics, fundamentalists, terrorists, take your pick).

Once you have a public fixated on this perceived enemy, it is necessary to maintain a constant level of fear and when necessary ramp it up, either though potential events (”not if but when”) or to exploit events that do occur by connecting the elemental enemy to the events, however tenuous the connection. If no real connection can be made, invent the connection. If necessary, invent a multitude of connections that can be announced and discarded at will. Nobody, least of all a complicit media will question why ‘connections’ come and go without explanation, everything is in flux in this world of illusions, where fact and fiction blur one into the other.

Aside from the many still as yet unanswered questions and contradictions surrounding who, exactly carried out the bombings of July 7, we now have the ‘failed bombings’ of July 21 to contend with, about which there are even more unanswered questions. Questions that the corporate/state media are not asking.

As with the July 7 attacks, initial police reports on the July 21 attacks were followed by contradictory police reports as to the exact nature of the ‘bombs’. Initially we were told the July 7 bombs used “military grade” explosives detonated with timers and there was no mention of ‘suicide bombers’ but then this changed to homemade explosives and the sudden appearance of “suicide bombers”. Then it returned to “military grade” explosives and back to timers. The July 21 attacks have gone through the same metamorphosis. Now it’s back to “homemade” explosives but the jury’s still out on the timers (that obviously didn’t work). The point here is that it’s not important how but that it stays in the headlines at all times, the objective; keep on ramping.

And we still have all the issues the police/security services have not adequately explained about July 7 including; why the four alleged suicide bombers bought return tickets, nor why they left explosives and weapons in their cars parked at the Luton ‘Park and Ride’ lot, nor why it took over a week to find the aforementioned weapons, nor why these alleged suicide bombers had ID with them, nor why they had no history of connection to so-called extremists, in spite of every effort to connect them to the aforementioned.

Then we had the ‘Egyptian’ connection, a story that vanished literally overnight. Remember that it was alleged that it was in the Egyptian guy’s apartment that the police allegedly found a bath tub full of acetone peroxide? Within hours of his name surfacing, the Egyptian foreign minister no less, was denying that he had any connection, a denial that was apparently immediately accepted by the British authorities.

I reported here that the rumour in and around Leeds University was that he was a spy keeping an eye on Egyptian and Arab students at the uni. Did he work for the Egyptian government I wonder, and was this why the Egyptian government was so quick to exonerate him? I note that he hasn’t been interviewed either by the police or the media, in fact he has effectively disappeared off the face of the planet, along with his alleged terrorist connection.

Then there was the 900 quid’s-worth of exploding perfume, allegedly purchased by Lindsay Germaine, one of the alleged suicide bombers, another story that came and went just as rapidly. Then there was the Pakistani ‘connection’, another story that came and went equally as rapidly especially after it was discovered that one of the alleged suicide bombers was misidentified by the Pakistani authorities.

Then it was the ‘madrassas’ connection. This too, came and went without any connection being established between the relevance of the madrassas to the July 7 bombing other than the alleged ‘brainwashing’ said to be conducted at these schools. The point here that needs to be emphasized, is that every time Muslim, Islam, schools, indoctrination, Quran, or any other ‘alien’ sounding word or connection is made, it reinforces every stereotype that the government and the media have implanted in the public’s mind about the nature of this elusive, ‘cunning’ and ‘evil’ enemy.

Where are all these allegations originating from? Why do the police insist in putting out one contradictory story after another? Surely, as with any criminal investigation, the police have clear rules concerning the reportage of investigations into criminal acts. We were told that the “largest forensic investigation in history” was being conducted following July 7, yet the rumours, often reported by the press as having a “police source” continued to emerge, only to be found wanting only hours or days later. Who is authorizing the release of this avalanche of disinformation? What kind of forensic investigation is it that puts out such an endless stream of crap?

And I have mentioned only a few of the plethora of stories that have appeared concerning who, how and why the July 7 bombings occurred. I’ve not mentioned the long list of names allegedly associated with the 4 dead men, that later we find, have no connection whatsoever. But it matters not, the damage has already been done. There are no retractions, no explanations.

So too with the July 21 attacks that went through same process. At first they were “nail bombs” where only the detonators went off, then they were “failed bombs” “similar to” the July 7 bombs, possibly made from the “same batch” of homemade explosive, allegedly the highly unstable acetone peroxide (see Wikipedia entry on this stuff). Then they miraculously metamorphosed back into nail bombs but still made with homemade (and apparently past its sell-by date) explosive. Bombs moreover, that are in police possession.

Is it credible that all four bombs failed to detonate? Is it credible that the alleged bombers followed exactly the same pattern, three on the tube and one on a bus if they are indeed part of some international conspiracy? The police then claimed that the (highly unstable, the BBC called it “volatile”) mixture of acetone peroxide (and what, Hugo Boss perfume?) “degraded”. But at the same time, we have been told that the July 7 bombings were planned months in advance by highly sophisticated members of ‘al-Qu’eda’ (Jack Straw the foreign minister on the same day, July 7). So are there two groups of bombers? Apparently not, at least according to the authorities, they are all part of the ‘international terror network’ run by ‘al-Qu’eda’.

Then we have the four photos released by the police of the alleged July 21 bombers, that so far nobody has come forward and identified. Is it credible that nobody can identify these four individuals? Do these people actually exist? Are they the ones responsible for the dud bombs? Will we ever find out? Don’t hold your breath over this or any of the other, dozens of questions surrounding these events.

Not so breaking news: two of the alleged July 21 attempted bombers have been identified and they are neither Asian nor Brazilian, but apparently from East Africa, possibly Somalia or perhaps Eritrea. So now yet another group of those who are ‘darker than blue’ are to be singled out as eligible for getting shot on sight. Apparently their bombs were in plastic sandwich containers, we even know the brand and size. And just in case, should anyone want to imitate them, the police have announced that they used six-and-a-quarter litre, clear, Delta brand family containers, with white lids, made in India. No doubt this announcement will be followed by cries for a boycott of Indian goods.

The media for its part, seems quite content to act as an unquestioning conduit for whatever rubbish the state puts out, not even bothering to correct the record (such as it is) when yet another scurrilous piece of disinformation bites the dust. In fact the media’s role in this entire affair has been, to put it mildly, shameful.

Take for example, the case of the assassinated Brazilian, who according the state and the press was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

Initially the police issued a statement that was quite categorical about the fact that he was “directly linked” (chief of the Metropolitan police) to the July 21 attacks, although how they could know that, is beyond me, the body wasn’t even cold. There was no retraction until it became known that he was in fact a (Christian?) Brazilian, at which point his assassination turned into a “terrible tragedy” but one which the police refuse to apologise for. Had he in fact, been an Asian, then no doubt he would still be a convenient scapegoat for the state’s propaganda campaign to demonise those who are ‘darker than blue’.

The objective is clear; keep ramping up the ‘fear quotient’ in the minds of the public by issuing an endless flood of baseless accusations that keep the stories in the headlines and which have the additional advantage of sowing total confusion when one tries to find out what is really going on.

As long we don’t focus on Iraq, the poor of the planet (remember them?) or our rapidly disintegrating climate, all is well in the corridors of power. They can get on with blowing away people out of sight in distant lands, using really big bombs, safe in the knowledge that the mass of the public will now look at any Asian (or Asian ‘looking’) person wearing an I-pod and either overweight, cold or wearing a rucksack, as a potential suicide bomber, rather than focus on our government of terrorists and mass murderers. Mission accomplished?

Frankly, the July 21 attempts have all the hallmarks of a bunch of amateurs attempting to capitalize on the first and obviously professional outrages. Ask yourself if it seems credible that following the awful carnage of July 7, that such an obviously botched job was committed by the same group?

The point is, given the way the public have been conditioned to accept the idea of a global network of terrorists, out to destroy the ‘Western way of life’ (but not it seems the manufacture of plastic sandwich containers and hence a return to ‘pre-globalised days’ when sandwiches got wrapped up in wax paper), it matters little where they come from, or indeed what their real motives are. All that matters is that they have Muslim-sounding names, dark skins, they all need a shave and that they are enemies of ‘Western civilization’.

Afterthought: acetone peroxide is a liquid, so how come it didn’t all leak out of the sandwich containers? My feeling is that whoever attempted the July 21 bombings were either totally clueless about making bombs or, were set up to fail but frighten, making sure terrorists stayed in the headlines. Either way, the futility of such acts should be clear to anybody genuinely wanting to get the US or the Brits out of Iraq or any other countries the real terrorists have occupied.

A further postscript: I have been getting quite a few letters from readers who, like me, are desperate about the situation that the government has created here and want advice no less, from me on what we can do. It’s difficult to know how to answer such a question, for on the one hand, I don’t want to throw up my hands in abject defeat nor do I want to offer useless platitudes. But one thing is certain; knowing what is really going on and why, is the first step, that’s why an independent media is so vitally important.

Second, we have all been here before, several times in the past one hundred years and we all know what the outcome was every time; slaughter on an unimaginable scale preceded by witch-hunts and the deliberate demonisation of convenient segments of society. There is nothing new about the current situation. When the state itself feels itself under threat it will strike out using whatever means it has to hand. That there are a tiny minority who will resort to the use of acts of individual violence, is actually quite convenient for the state, for these can then be used to rationalise the use of the overwhelming violence of the state in ‘retribution’. Operation Kratos is but one of the inevitable outcomes with the state promising more to come.

There is no doubt that the failed and unpopular invasion of Iraq is a major reason, not for the bombings, but for the state’s reaction and the use of force and repression. But once again, I resist the urge to talk of ‘blowback’ as there is no evidence to directly connect any of the bombings to the situation in Iraq. Rather, the situation started with the concept of a ‘war on terror’ that once initiated set in motion a train of events with each step reinforcing the state’s terrible logic. Revealing the policies of the state as part of a historical process, in defence of capital is the key to understanding the situation.

Once this is accepted, the situation becomes transparent and the solution obvious; get rid of this government like they did in Spain for example. This might sound futile, we have after all, another five or even six years of the monstrosity that is the Labour Party and with no alternative on the horizon, there is no immediate solution.

But another thing history reveals is that situations can change with amazing rapidity. It is conceivable that a sufficiently large section of the public can come to the realisation that in order to avoid yet more July 7s and 21s, we have to abandon our imperial ambitions. Whether this will happen is of course unknown, but it is the only answer I have to the question, what can we do? Taking the first step is the most difficult and speaking out in opposition to the occupation of Iraq and our government’s imperialist policies and ultimately joining forces with others to speak out, is at least a positive step in the right direction.

Editor's note

At present, the London underground has an analogue video network and video transmission at 180 stations. Confirmed by new reports, there are close to two thousand video cameras which monitor London's Underground and mainline rail stations.

It is estimated that "the average Briton is caught on various cameras up to 300 times on a normal day." (The Age, 8 July 2005).

The key issue raised in this commentary refers to videocameras inside the underground carriages. In most European metro systems, the trains are equipped with a videowatch installation, with video cameras inside each carriage. The driver of the train is able to see inside each of the carriages, and the digital video files would be available to police investigators. Ed.

Comment by Dick Fojut

EVERY London bus and Underground train car has multiple Video Cameras!

The Police claim the bus videos malfunctioned, but made no similar claim about the video cameras in the Underground train cars. The Muslim men are claimed to have ridden from Luton to King's Cross where they split up to take separate trains. I've also read it takes about 25 minutes to ride from Luton station to where the bombs were detonated.

Therefore, there MUST be some 25 minutes continuous video of first four men, riding from Luton, then video of each (supposed) "Muslim" Bomber, seated with his rucksack on each of the 3 separate Underground cars, riding from King's Cross - to where the 3 bombs exploded SIMULTANEOUSLY!

If the London Police CANNOT produce those videos they SHOULD possess, the accused 4 men, 3 supposedly with rucksack bombs, were NOT on the Underground train cars, did NOT detonate bombs! And the Police are LYING.

The 3 young men from Leeds apparently were innocent "patsies" used in a "False Flag" phoney Blair Government instigated "terrorist" attack! They weren't suicide bombers, or deceived dupes. They WEREN'T on the trains!

Instead of 3 falsely accused Muslim "patsies," either unidentified "others" must have carried on and detonated the bombs - OR the bombs were ALREADY concealed under seats, or UNDER the subway cars - and detonated by REMOTE CONTROL!

Yet another (!) cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes has weighed in on his execution, and states that he was not wearing a bulky coat, but just a jean jacket, and did not leap the subway turnstiles (these are issues which could and should be answered by the release of CCTV tapes). If he wasn't wearing a bulky coat, and wasn't identified as one of the terror suspects when he left his flat, British authorities are left with no good reason for treating him as a terrorist, and in particular as somebody who could be subject to summary execution.

Letting him get on a bus if they thought he was a potential suicide bomber makes no sense, and then later deciding he needed to be executed in the Israeli style makes even less sense. All the emphasis on Israeli training seems to be misdirection, as they did not follow any of the logic of the Israeli approach. The Israeli method is supposed to permanently incapacitate the bomber before he can do any damage. It is also supposed to protect the police by using a long-distance shot.

Instead, the London police gave him a great deal of time to set off his bomb (after giving him a whole bus ride on which to do so), forced him into an area where the bomb would do more damage, fired shots at close range where the police would be in danger, fired shots that had the danger of setting off the bomb, and fired too many shots if the intent was simply to kill him. If they were learning from the Israelis, they didn't learn very well. The only fact which reconciles their allowing him on the bus, but later shooting him at such close range, is that they knew he in fact didn't have a bomb. If they knew he didn't have a bomb, what was their motive in executing him?

Editor's note

At present, the London underground has an analogue video network and video transmission at 180 stations. Confirmed by new reports, there are close to two thousand video cameras which monitor London's Underground and mainline rail stations.

It is estimated that "the average Briton is caught on various cameras up to 300 times on a normal day." (The Age, 8 July 2005).

The key issue raised in this commentary refers to videocameras inside the underground carriages. In most European metro systems, the trains are equipped with a videowatch installation, with video cameras inside each carriage. The driver of the train is able to see inside each of the carriages, and the digital video files would be available to police investigators.

EVERY London bus and Underground train car has multiple Video Cameras!

The Police claim the bus videos malfunctioned, but made no similar claim about the video cameras in the Underground train cars. The Muslim men are claimed to have ridden from Luton to King's Cross where they split up to take separate trains. I've also read it takes about 25 minutes to ride from Luton station to where the bombs were detonated.

Therefore, there MUST be some 25 minutes continuous video of first four men, riding from Luton, then video of each (supposed) "Muslim" Bomber, seated with his rucksack on each of the 3 separate Underground cars, riding from King's Cross - to where the 3 bombs exploded SIMULTANEOUSLY!

If the London Police CANNOT produce those videos they SHOULD possess, the accused 4 men, 3 supposedly with rucksack bombs, were NOT on the Underground train cars, did NOT detonate bombs! And the Police are LYING.

The 3 young men from Leeds apparently were innocent "patsies" used in a "False Flag" phoney Blair Government instigated "terrorist" attack! They weren't suicide bombers, or deceived dupes. They WEREN'T on the trains!

Instead of 3 falsely accused Muslim "patsies," either unidentified "others" must have carried on and detonated the bombs - OR the bombs were ALREADY concealed under seats, or UNDER the subway cars - and detonated by REMOTE CONTROL!

The London bombers left a stash of 16 unexploded bombs in a car, some packed with nails, it was revealed today.

Security experts believe the July 7 plot, which killed 56 people, may have been planned to be much larger and the explosives intended for a second strike.

The bombs were recovered from a car believed to have been rented by suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer, according to ABC News.

The vehicle was found five days after the attacks in Luton, where the bombers boarded a train to London.

Exclusive pictures obtained by the US network show some of the bombs flat-packed like pancakes, while others were packed with nails to use as shrapnel.

X-ray picture

An X-ray picture of one of the bombs shows nails bulging out of the side of a bottle-shaped bomb.

Security analyst Robert Ayers, told ABC: "Bombs don't kill by concussion. Small bombs, they kill by the blast effects of fragments of glass or metal, and this is designed to kill people."

He said he believed the explosives were left for a second strike.

The first pictures of the bloody wreckage deep in the London underground tunnels have also been obtained by ABC.

The extent of the devastation at Edgware Road station and on the train between King's Cross and Russell Square, where 27 were killed, was shown on World News Tonight.

Mr Ayers said you could see how the bomb had blown out the train's sides, and the roof had been blown to bits.

Police cordoned off the car park at Luton railway station as bomb disposal teams carried out several controlled explosions on the vehicle days after the first attack.

The bombers had reportedly bought a day-long parking ticket and it remains unclear whether they, or others, intended to return.

The photographs represent just the latest in a string of revelations about the London attacks made by the US media.

Most recently, a Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre report leaked to the New York Times revealed that three weeks before the attacks British intelligence officials concluded there was no group with the intent or capacity to attack the UK.

THE fugitive bombers who bungled their attacks on London’s transport system last week returned to their secret cache of explosives to rearm themselves for another assault, Scotland Yard believes.

Immediately after the bombings up to three of the men who tried to blow up three Tube trains and a bus were seen by a neighbour at the ninth-floor flat in New Southgate, North London, that they were using as a bomb factory.

Witnesses claim that some of the suspects made a second trip the next day to the flat where police yesterday found chemicals and bombmaking materials.

The men who lived at the flat, Muktar Said-Ibrahim, 27, who tried to bomb a London bus, and Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, the Warren Street attacker, were described by a neighbour who met them as looking “startled and dishevelled”. They fled shortly before police established last Friday that the flat had been used as a base.

It emerged last night that Ibrahim, 27, was granted a British passport despite a criminal record for violence. It also emerged that his parents identified him to police after CCTV pictures of him were released.

He was jailed by Luton Crown Court for five years when he was 17 for being part of a gang that carried out a series of muggings at knifepoint at Hertfordshire railway stations. One former friend said that he turned to radical Islam while in prison.

He qualified for early release in 1998 and is then alleged to have met Richard Reid, the jailed “shoe bomber”, at two London mosques. Reid, who was also a petty criminal, tried to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic in 2001.

Immigration officials disclosed that Ibrahim and Omar came to Britain as child refugees. Omar came from Somalia as a 10-year-old in 1992.

Ibrahim arrived with his parents in the same year from Eritrea, aged 14. Barely ten months ago, he swore allegiance to the Crown when he became a British citizen. Police are investigating how he was granted citizenship with a criminal record. A key condition for naturalisation is that applicants should be “of good character”. Officers also want to know if he applied for citizenship in order to obtain a British passort.

Nothing has been seen since of the would-be suicide bombers and police believe that they are being sheltered by supporters in London. They fear that they will break cover only to strike again.

Passport checks have been reimposed for everyone leaving the country in an attempt to prevent the four suspects from fleeing abroad. Controls were imposed after the first wave of bombings on July 7 and were back in place only four days after being lifted.

As Britain’s biggest manhunt went into its sixth day, detectives confirmed to The Times that they are convinced that a fifth bomber is on the loose. He is believed to have discarded his bomb in a park near Wormwood Scrubs prison. Scientists say that it contained the same type of explosives as those used in the botched attacks.

Detectives found “a substantial amount” of explosives in the towerblock at Curtis House, in bins and in a lock-up garage on the estate.

So much explosive has been discovered at different sites since the original July 7 attacks that killed 52 people, that police cannot be sure how much the cell possesses.

Armed police seized a car used by one of the bombers, which was found abandoned a few miles from the council flat that Ibrahim and Omar shared.Streets near the North Circular Road in East Finchley were sealed off as bomb disposal teams searched the white Volkswagen Golf.

Police told how Ibrahim was identified by his own parents. His family spoke of their shock at discovering their son’s involvement in terrorism and condemned his actions. “We are a peaceful family, having lived in this country since 1990,” a family statement said.

Police are still checking identifications of the other two men who took part in the attacks.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said that senior officers had come close to allowing officers to fire on terrorist suspects seven times since the July 7 bombings. They had been asked to assess the risk of a terrorist 250 times in the past 20 days.

Doctors in London have been asked by police to alert them if they are consulted by any “young men of Asian appearance” with back injuries

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.

LONDON - British police arrested nine men under anti-terrorism laws on Thursday as they intensified their investigation into two waves of attacks on London's transport system which have left London on high alert.

But a police spokeswoman said the suspects held in Tooting, south London, were not the three suspected bombers they still seek after the botched July 21 attacks on the capital.

Police held six at one address and three at another.

"We are still looking for three men," a police spokeswoman said. "Searches at the addresses are ongoing."

Detectives continued to question one of the suspected bombers in last week's botched attacks.

They hope Wednesday's arrest of Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, who they say planted a bomb on an underground train last week, will provide a breakthrough in the hunt for three other suspects whom they warn could attack again. [...]

Opinion polls show a majority of Britons fear Islamist militants could target their country in a sustained campaign. [...]

Shocking new images have emerged of unexploded bombs, some packed around with nails, which were found in a car left behind by the July 7 London bombers.

In total, 16 bombs were found in the red Nissan car parked at Luton railway station. It is is believed the car was rented in Leeds by Shehzad Tanweer, one of the four bombers who killed themselves and 52 others in a co-ordinated attack on three London Underground trains and a bus earlier this month.

The sheer number of devices has raised fears that the scale of the July 7 bomb plot was much larger than originally imagined.

The presence of nailbombs graphically illustrates that the bombing cell wanted to inflict the maximum possible pain, injury and risk of death on innocent London commuters, security analysts say.

"You see what is bulging on the sides of the bottle are nails. Many, many nails," said Robert Ayers, a security expert who was shown the pictures by the American ABC News channel last night.

"And the nails are put there so that when the bomb goes off, the nails will tear tissue and kill people in the area. Bombs don't kill by concussion. Small bombs, they kill by the blast effects of fragments of glass or metal, and this is designed to kill people."

Meanwhile police were continuing to question Yasin Hassan Omar, named by police as one of the would-be terrorists in the attempted second wave of London bombs on July 21. Omar is believed to have been on the run since a bomb failed to detonate on a tube train at Warren St station last Thursday. Three others, whose devices also failed to go off, are also wanted by police.

Omar was felled with a Taser stun gun after a scuffle with police officers who raided a house at 04.30. [...]

It is also understood that police have recovered a large amount of chemical compounds from a lock-up near the tower block which could have been used to make home-made explosives. Two other North London premises, in Finchley and Enfield, were raided by Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch this morning, although no arrests were made.

The body of the Brazilian man shot dead by police will be flown back to his home country tonight. Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot eight times in the head at Stockwell Station on the London Underground on Friday.

Today his family said in a press conference that the electrician had acted as "training" for the security forces. They said that by shooting dead 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes the police had learned the wrong course of action - and were now using stun guns instead.

Alex Pereira, 27, said his cousin's death had given police a lesson they needed. "They learned, it means that my cousin was training. They killed one person to learn that lesson, I hope they never kill again."

He added: "They would never have learned this if my cousin had not died."

LONDON - The plot for the July 7 transit bombings in London, which killed 56 people, may have been much larger than previously known, ABC News has learned.

Sources familiar with the investigation tell ABC News an additional 12 bombs and four improvised detonators were found in the trunk of a car believed to be rented by suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer. Police believe the bombers drove the car to Luton, where they boarded trains to London.

"I believe that the explosives left in that car were left there for a second strike," said Bob Ayers, a London-based terrorism consultant with expertise in demolition. "But the Metropolitan Police responded so quickly, they were able to get to the car and take control of the car before the second team could get the explosives and leave."

ABC News obtained exclusive photographs, which show the devastation left inside the London subway lines after the July 7 attacks.

"There is considerable damage there," said Ayers, who analyzed the photographs. "You can see it's blown out the walls, it's blown out the sides, it's blown the roof. That was a good size bomb that that man took down there and set off."

ABC News also obtained photographs, which offer a first glimpse of the bombs used in the attacks.

The bombs were made of homemade high explosives. The materials used are widely available products, such as peroxide. Some were packaged like pancakes, and others contained nails for use as shrapnel. An X-ray image of one of the bombs found in the attacker's car trunk shows the deadly concoction. [...]

British authorities are deeply concerned they are in a race against time against people who want to plan another attack.

ABC News' Pierre Thomas filed this report for "World News Tonight."

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will not give Senate investigators access to federal tax returns of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., White House and congressional officials said Tuesday, a break with precedent that could exacerbate a growing conflict over document disclosure in the confirmation process.

Although nominees in recent decades were required to provide their three most recent annual tax forms, the administration will neither collect such documents from Roberts nor share them with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the officials said. Instead, the Internal Revenue Service will produce a one-page summary.

The White House Tuesday began releasing the first of 75,000 pages of documents stemming from Roberts' service as a lawyer in former President Ronald Reagan's administration two decades ago but refused to release papers from his time as deputy solicitor general under former President George Bush from 1989 to 1993. These papers, Bush aides said, concern internal executive branch deliberations that remain privileged.

Senate Democrats and liberal interest groups immediately assailed the decision to withhold the more recent files, sharpening a dispute over the nominee's record.

"A blanket statement that entire groups of documents are off limits is both premature and ill advised," eight Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee, led by ranking minority member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote in a letter to President Bush. The senators attached a list of 35 topics they want to see documents related to, including abortion, civil rights, Bob Jones University, death-squad investigations and school prayer.

The disagreement over access to decades-old government records flared as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested that, if confirmed, Roberts would not be bound by an earlier statement that the landmark 1973 ruling that established a woman's right to an abortion was settled law.

Gonzales told the Associated Press in an interview that "a Supreme Court justice is not obliged to follow precedent if you believe it's wrong."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan dismissed the Democrats' requests for documents as part of a political strategy outlined in media reports even before Roberts was nominated. "I hope Senator Leahy is not trying to demand documents that the president has not even seen as part of their lines of attack against the president," McClellan said. [...]

The change in policy on tax returns could fuel the debate. The Bush administration changed the policy in 2001, no longer requiring judicial nominees at any level to provide tax returns. Instead, the IRS performs a "tax check" of the past three years. "The reason we changed it was an effort to reduce the duplicative paperwork and streamline the process," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Tuesday.

In one of the documents released Tuesday, dated Feb. 16, 1982, Roberts offered suggestions to then-Attorney General William French Smith, who was girding for an appearance before conservatives unhappy with judicial nominations early in the Reagan administration. "It really should not matter what the personal ideology of our appointees may be, so long as they recognize that their ideology should have no role in the decisional process," Roberts wrote.

"We have been children long enough. We must now unshackle our minds and begin acting as independent beings."
– Noah Webster, First American Dictionary

"ICH" - - Two framed pictures hang on my office wall. Each is accompanied by a timely message.

The frame atop holds a portrait of colonial patriot Samuel Adams. (Yes, the beer guy. My hero on so many levels.) Below the picture are his words, written at America's birth: "The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men."

When I look at the framed document and I see the idealized portrait - Sam Adams of the set jaw and steely eyes - I feel as though he is reaching across the centuries and speaking directly to me, admonishing me to beware the artifices of designing men.

Then I lower my eyes. What I see lowers my spirits as well. For immediately below the Sam Adams quote hangs another frame. This one contains a front page from the London Daily Mirror. Above the newspaper's headline floats another picture, this one of a befuddled-looking, newly "reelected" George W. Bush. The headline reads: "HOW CAN 59,054,087 PEOPLE BE SO DUMB?"

Now, while I've asked myself the same question innumerable times since November 4th, I'm not so sure the answer is as simple as the British tabloid would have us think. But think we must. So it is this lower frame, and the many messages and subtexts its simple words convey, on which I cannot help but concentrate my attention and this article.

If we're not dumb, then how can 59,054,087 people – Americans all - appear so dumb?

For what did cause so many of our countrymen to behave so strangely on Election Day, 2004, and thus to appear stupid – very stupid - in the eyes of the rest of the world? We are after all, the melting pot, the world's amalgam. Intelligence distribution is Gaussian.

To understand the Mirror's headline one must understand its readers. The headline is not an indictment of American intellect by jealous Europeans as xenophobic propagandists like Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh would have us think (Forgive the writer's indulgence. I've always wanted to use the words Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Think in the same sentence, if only to prove it could be done.)

No. By judiciously avoiding the word Americans in referring to the 2004 Bush voters, and simply calling them "people," what the Daily Mirror's headline does is articulate what seems an enigma to our foreign earth mates. To most of them America is smart enough, like it or not. America is the most commercially and scientifically advanced society on Earth, like that or not too, and ours is the only society we know that's made it off Earth as well. So, to them, the sheer unexpectedness of our apparent and hopefully temporary stupidity is what has the thinking world reeling – not our actual stupidity. Our countrymen's behavior has proven particularly vexing to Europeans. But they see this not as an American failure of intellect, but a human failure, thus the word people. So – unlike many of us - they're asking legitimate questions, so is their press.

Look at the 2004 election from their point of view. The vast majority of Americans are descended from European families, even those Americans who trace their heritage to Mexico, the Caribbean, Sout