alleged plot to use explosives at JFK airport

Round and round she goes.

One of the alleged terrorists was a former cargo worker at the airport, while another was a US citizen but had lived in Guyana and served as a member of that country's parliament. Another was from Trinidad.


Guardian




Guyana and Trinidad?

The axis of evil!

Don't know about anywhere else, but in Tranna, the Guyanese community in particular, has a strong fundamental Muslim core.

That's interesting. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about demographics:

Demographics

The present population of Guyana is racially and ethnically heterogeneous, composed chiefly of a native Amerindian population together with the descendants of immigrants who came to the country either as slaves or as indentured laborers. The population therefore comprises groups of persons with nationality backgrounds from Europe/Portugal, Africa, China, and India, with the Amerindians as the indigenous population. These groups of diverse nationality backgrounds have been fused together by a common language, i.e., English/Creolese.

The largest nationality sub-group is that of East Indians comprising 43.5 percent of the population in 2002. They are followed by persons of African heritage (30.2 percent). The third in rank are those of Mixed Heritage (16.7 percent), while the Amerindians are fourth with 9.2 percent. The smallest groups are the Whites (0.06 percent or 476 persons), the Portuguese (0.20 percent or 1496) and the Chinese (0.19 percent or 1395). A small group (0.01 percent or 112 persons) did not identify their race/ethnic background.

The population distribution in 2002 by nationality background. The distribution pattern has been similar to those of the 1980 and 1991 censuses, but the share of the two main groups has declined. The East Indians were 51.9 percent of the total population in 1980, but by 1991 had fallen to 48.6 percent, and then 43.5 percent in 2002 census. Those of African descent increased slightly from 30.8 to 32.3 percent during the first period (1980 and 1991) before falling to 30.2 percent in the 2002 census. With small growth in the population, the decline in the shares of the two larger groups has resulted in the relative shares of the ‘Mixed’ and Amerindian groups. The Amerindian population rose by 22,097 persons between 1991 and 2002. This represents an increase of 47.3 percent or annual growth of 3.5 percent. Similarly, the ‘Mixed’ population increased by 37,788 persons, representing a 43.0 percent increase or annual growth rate of 3.2 percent from the base period of 1991 census. The Whites and Chinese populations which declined between 1980 and 1991 regained in numbers by the 2002 census by 54.4 percent (168 persons) and 8.1 percent (105 persons) respectively. However, because of their relatively small sizes, the increase has effectively a zero effect on the overall change. The Portuguese group has declined constantly over the decades.



And CIA fact book:


CIA view

Muslims in Guyana

I need to be careful, I'm too close to the Tranna community to be objective.

Oh?


Care to explicate?

I wonder if this so called plot was perpetrated by extremists rather than muslim extreemists.

Now there's a good point.

Informant critical in terror probe
BY ANDREW STRICKLER
[email protected]
He is known in court documents only as "the Source."

The simple title does little to convey the importance of a man who federal officials say infiltrated a group of would-be terrorists working in three countries to blow up networks of jet fuel tanks and pipes at Kennedy Airport.

At a news conference Saturday at the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Mark Mershon would describe him only as an "agent" working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.

But the criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn against a retired Kennedy cargo handler and three others offers a peek over the shoulder of a man officials say spent a year and a half pretending to be a willing participant.

According to the court document, the informant was convicted on federal drug trafficking and racketeering charges in the Southern District of New York in 1996. In 2003, he was again convicted of drug trafficking in a New York State court. His sentence on that charge, the document states, depends on his agreement in 2004 to cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

The document states that he expects to serve a reduced sentence in exchange for his cooperation and receives unspecified financial assistance. link

"So-called?"

What would you have it called?

"Playful fantasy?"

I'm interested, why did you feel it necessary or appropriate to use the term "so-called?"

I can certainly see the the propreity of "alleged," but I have to think the use of "so-called" flow from politics rather than accuracy. Perhaps I'm wrong.

You might also wonder if the alleged plot was hatched by angry nuns or puzzled aborigines.

I suggest that it is perfectly rational to believe that any plot to blow up an American airport was hatched by muslim extremists. It could be wrong but based on recent history, it's a pretty safe bet.

Interesting.

"You might also wonder if the alleged plot was hatched by angry nuns or puzzled aborigines." Or the FBI. The twice convicted drug trafficer "agent" was the chicken or the egg that hatched this plot? It's so hard to tell with these "plots" these days. In the 1993 WTC bombing the FBI infiltrater was in charge of supplying the gunpowder which he was supposed to switch to fake gunpowder at the last minute. But the FBI decided to ditch that idea and allowed the real gunpowder to be used. The rest is history. link

Firstly because I tend not to believe everything I read/hear in the press especially first reports.
Secondly law enforcement agencies get things wrong all the time.
Thirdly I'd like to see/hear some kind of concrete evidence of a "plot" Thoughts alone do not constitute a crime. Nor does idle discussion of how commit a crime.




The tendency to associate Muslims with extreme acts is not valid. there are millions of Muslims who do not support such extreme action. The tendency to draw an association of Muslim automatically equals extremist is a result of over exposure. I repeat most Muslims are not extremists.

How to Foil a Terrorist Plot in Seven Simple Steps
by Nora Ephron
1. In order to foil a terrorist plot, you must first find a terrorist plot. This is not easy.

2. Not just anyone can find and then foil a terrorist plot. You must have an incentive. The best incentive is to be an accused felon, looking at a long prison term. Under such circumstances, your lawyer will explain to you, you may be able to reduce your sentence by acting as an informant in a criminal case, preferably one involving terrorists.

3. The fact that you do not know any actual terrorists should not in any way deter you. Necessity is the mother of invention: if you can find the right raw material -- a sad, sick, lonely, drunk, deranged, disgruntled or just plain anti-American Muslim somewhere in the United States -- you can make your very own terrorist.

4. Now the good part begins. Money! The FBI will give you lots of money to take your very own terrorist out to lots of dinners where you, wearing a wire, can record yourself making recommendations to him about possible targets and weapons that might be used in the impending terrorist attack that your very own terrorist is going to mastermind, with your help. It will even buy you a computer so you can go to Google Earth in order to show your very own terrorist a "top secret" aerial image of the target you have suggested.

5. More money!! The FBI will give you even more money to travel to foreign countries with your very own terrorist, and it will make suggestions about terrorist groups you can meet while in said foreign countries.

6. Months and even years will pass in this fashion, while you essentially get the FBI to pay for everything you do. (Incidentally, be sure your lawyer negotiates your expense account well in advance, or you may be forced -- as the informant was in the Buffalo terrorist case -- to protest your inadequate remuneration by setting yourself on fire in front of the White House.)

7. At a certain point, something will go wrong. You may have trouble recruiting other people to collaborate with your very own terrorist, who is, as you yourself know, just an ordinary guy in a really bad mood. Or, alternatively, the terrorist cell you have carefully cobbled together may malfunction and fail to move forward -- probably as a result of sheer incompetence or of simply not having been genuinely serious about the acts of terrorism you were urging it to commit. At this point, you may worry that the FBI is going to realize that there isn't much of a terrorist plot going on here at all, just a case of entrapment. Do not despair: the FBI is way ahead of you. The FBI knows perfectly well what's going on. The FBI has as much at stake as you do. So before it can be obvious to the world that there's no case, the FBI will arrest your very own terrorist, hold a press conference and announce that a huge terrorist plot has been foiled. It will of course be forced to admit that this plot did not proceed beyond the pre-planning stage, that no actual weapons or money were involved, and that the plot itself was "not technically feasible," but that will not stop the story from becoming a front-page episode all over America and, within hours, boilerplate for all the Republican politicians who believe that you need to arrest a "homegrown" terrorist now and then to justify the continuing war in Iraq. Everyone will be happy, except for the schmuck you shmikeled into becoming a terrorist, and no one really cares about him anyway.

So congratulations. You have foiled a terrorist plot. Way to go.

And, of course, there is nothing new about the culprit. The story is always the same: radical Islamic terror. The storyline is the same, too. But an element of Western opinion always wants to obscure it, turning a blind eye to the ideology of hate that motivates these would-be murderers. The root-causes crowd has little interest in that root cause. No, it must be poverty (even when the terrorists turn out to be comfortable, well-educated, and fully employed); or the Palestinian issue (even though organizations like al Qaeda have barely mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and some terror targets, like Bali, had no rational connection to it); or, it goes without saying, George W. Bush and "his" war in Iraq (no matter how many attacks occurred before his presidency).

The Editors of The National Review

Well, now that they've chimed in, I guess it's settled? Not so much.



Barely mentioned? It was listed by Bin Laden as one of the top reasons for his formation of the Al Qaeda group in the first place. And support for Israel has been mentioned many times by AQ operatives sending messages.

Not accurate

Cycloptichorn

JFK Airport Plot Has All The Hallmarks Of Staged Terror
Near-retarded "ringleader", paid government provocateur mirrors legion of previous cases
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, June 4, 2007

An alleged plot to blow up fuel tanks, terminal buildings and fuel lines running beneath Kennedy International Airport has all the hallmarks of being another staged terror alert, having never advanced beyond a rudimentary planning stage while being prodded and provocateured by a paid government informant.

In every single major terror sting we have researched in the west since 9/11, not one single plot has been absent the ingredient of a government provocateur, save the cases that were outright manufactured by imaginative government propagandists in alliance with the corporate media.

In this case, the provocateur was "An informant with a criminal history including drug trafficking and racketeering agreed to work with investigators on the case, in exchange for payments and a reduced sentence," according to the New York Times.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2007/040607stagedterror.htm

And you advocate staged stupidity?

Next time, make sure the Govt waits until they actually blow something up then you can complain about the lack of security.