Had it gone ahead, or so police say, the alleged plot in Britain to blow up US-bound airliners in mid-flight would have resulted in "mass murder on an unprecedented scale."
But it did not go ahead -- and in its place, some bloggers and newspaper letter-writers have laid bare a degree of public cynicism about this latest, and still inconclusive, chapter in a never-ending worldwide war on terror.
"Funny how they know there's a threat that they've been monitoring for months and yet they have a scatter-gun approach in disrupting every airport," wrote one John Byng on BBC Online's "Have Your Say" blog.
"While I appreciate there may be terrorist threats I remain very skeptical -- the tactics seem more a ploy to keep the public in fear rather than a genuine attempt to stop an atrocity," Byng wrote.
Byng's posting was the single most-recommended entry about the terror plot to appear on BBC Online as of Saturday, but it was by no means exceptional in tone.
ORWELLIAN OVERTONES
"Has anyone else read 1984 and it's perpetual state of fear?" wrote Obe from Coventry, near Birmingham, where one of the alleged masterminds, Rashid Rauf, 25, who was arrested in Pakistan, hails from.
"The way in which this crisis is handled seems to be designed to instill maximal fear in the population," concurred a contributor to BBC Online, using the moniker "gwcomment."
"The timing of the discovery of this plot seems very convenient for both [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair and [US President George] Bush," chimed in Elizabeth Church from Toronto, Canada.
"What does it say about our trust in our politicians that that was the first thought to cross my mind!!" she wrote.
SCEPTICISM
Informing such scepticism, political observers say, has been the ongoing conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Lebanon, as well as a number of embarrassing setbacks that the police in Britain have yet to live down.
Few people have forgotten how, in June, police raided a house in east London and arrested two brothers -- one of whom was shot and wounded -- in an anti-terrorist operation that ultimately turned up nothing.
Trust in the British police has also suffered from the point-blank shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a young Brazilian electrician wrongly presumed to have been a suicide bomber, in the tense days after the London bombings in July last year.
Many have meanwhile recalled Blair's insistence, on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2003, that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime had a stockpile of deadly weapons of mass destruction -- weapons that in fact no longer existed.
Of the nearly 900 people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 since the Sept. 11 attacks in the US in 2001, a majority -- nearly 500 -- have been released without charge, and only 23 have been convicted.
HYPE AND SPIN
In the Independent, letter-writer Damian McCarthy from central London condemned the "hype and spin" and "terrorism porn" surrounding the alleged airline plot, stating that "no chemical or bomb making equipment has been found."
In his letter to the daily he lashed out at the police for having "created a media circus to assist the ailing credibility of themselves and their political master John Reid, the home secretary" who has been trying to bring order to his scandal-dogged ministry.
Writing to the editor of the Times newspaper, Richard Horton of Purley, south London said the decision to shut down British airports on Thursday "just proves that you can inflict any amount of inconvenience and humiliation on ordinary people as long as it is in the name of security."
"Presumably the next step will be to insist that passengers change into orange jumpsuits," Horton said, alluding to the outfits worn by Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
RSS