'We'll Gas Bertie' The Sun - Front Page

by Sound Hack Sat Apr 24, 2004 15:00

24th April 2004 – Page 2

Headline: GARDA’S MAY DAY DIRTY BOMB FEAR - By Declan Fahy

Defusal experts on high alert to counter threat

Army Bomb experts will be on high alert for an al Qaeda “dirty bomb” attack at next weekend’s May Day protests.

The specialist teams will be on standby at two barracks in Dublin to counter any terrorist threat to the capital.

The soldiers have extensive training in combating chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks.

A city centre strike by a dirty bomb, a conventional explosive along with nuclear material, would cause carnage.

The bomb experts are among the 2,500 Defence Forces personal deployed to support a 4,000 strong Garda security operation.

A Defence Forces spokesman said: “There will be enough teams to deal with a number of incidents around the city.”

Ireland is due to host ceremonies next weekend to mark the accession of 10 new countries to the EU.

Security sources suspect hardline left-wing anarchist groups could cause mass riots in the city. Heads of State from around the EU jet in for a ceremony in Farmleigh in Phoenix Park, which the authorities have closed to the public.

The military and Garda plans are just two of the biggest emergency response operations ever mounted in Ireland.

It’s believed 4,000 gardai will be on duty over the weekend and two water cannons have been borrowed from the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Other aspects of the massive operation include:

- Dublin’s hospitals have been put on full alert to care for potential casualties.

- A TEMPORARY Garda station within the Cloverhill prison complex to deal with arrests.

- FIVE hundred troops in riot gear will back up the Garda public order units. A military contingent will remain in the background at Farmleigh estate where the EU leaders will mark the accession of 10 new countries.

- MORE than 500 other troops will be deployed at Dublin Airport and Casement aerodrome, Baldonnel.

Unarmed gardai will form the front line of defence should rioting break out. while plain clothes armed officers will mount covert operation in the crowds.

Additional bomb experts will be on stand-by at McKee and cathal Brugha barracks while Navy patrols will guard Dublin bay.

The Garda air support unit will patrol the skies above Dublin. Soldiers will also support gardai charge with the protection of key installations around the capital, include the airport.

The 2,500 troops will provide back up to gardai at Farmleigh and Aras an Uachtarain, both in Phoenix Park, where the accession EU ceremony will take place.

Chief of staff Lieut-Gen Jim Sreenan said last week that the May Day operation would provide the Army with their biggest “aid to the civil power” role in recent years.

The Another Europe is Possible Alliance had intended to march from the city centre to the Phoenix Park for music and a carnival to celebrate multi-culturalism.

But they were told at a meeting with Pearse Street Garda that the park would be closed off to the public.

Carnival organiser, Rory Hearne said: “There’s no reason why peaceful protester can’t have a carnival, which addresses war, racism and corporate greed in front of the leaders of 25 EU states.

“We should be able to hold our carnival in the Phoenix Park. This isn’t finished yet.”

Green MP Patricia McKenna said the closure was unacceptable and was made to “isolate those who want to send out a signal to the EU”.

by Jolly? - roger? Sat Apr 24, 2004 15:19

Bertie. you know yourself.
some day there's going to be a rain,
and it will wash all the filth off the street.

This week is tourist nonce target week.
what a tight little place you got yourselves into.
So make up your wills, Oxfam international "OI" and intermon Oxfam "IO" are appealing for funds to make right the legacy of sexual slavery amongst children from Africa to Asia and end the white slave trade that saw youg boys and girls dissappear from most notably Belgium, sweden and indeed Ireland.

It took as I've said too long to get a nine year old out of Saudi, and it took too long to get a Brixtonian Muslim girl out back from the Taliban. And it will take long enough to remember all those we couldn't get out.




"OI/IO" has been campaigning now for many years and is getting well practised.

by David Sat Apr 24, 2004 15:41

Its nonsense. No anarchist group would do anything like theis, nor would they ever be able to get 250 litres of battery acid into Farmeligh estate never mind the house or keep it from being discovered.
the threats, even if they're real, which i very much doubt, are so over the top that they dont deserve any kind of attention. And why would any anarchist send its warnings into the irish Sun? of all rags, its total bollox. Why would anarchists use these weapons on the same day that most of the cities anarchists will be out in the streets in the vicinity of farmleigh?

The worst consequence of this scare story is that lots of screwed up people now know exactly how to build a chlorine chemical weapon. The ultra right are far more likely to use such weapons than anybody protesting in favour of global justice.

by pc Sat Apr 24, 2004 16:28

one can only hope the more stupid stories they make up, the more they expose there lies

by Noise Hacker Sat Apr 24, 2004 16:31

.......

by Slarti Sat Apr 24, 2004 17:23

I'm impressed. Yesterday's Irish Times had a story which included the fact that the army NBC teams would be on standby and today two tabloids run the hysterical versions (chemical and nuclear espectively). Chances of the Sunday Star having a Anarchist Bioterror Threat story?

It's nice to see that they're at least having to put some proper effort into spreading this nonsense now

by Fred P. Sat Apr 24, 2004 17:57

“This warning is issued to alert the Irish people to stay well away from Farmleigh and the other venues including the airports during the EU Celebrations".

NEED I SAY MORE?

by % Sat Apr 24, 2004 18:21

.

by BS Spotter Sat Apr 24, 2004 20:10

It is absurd for anyone publishing a 'newspaper' to automatically give any credence to an anonymous e-mail making a threat of this magnitude. Even Ql Quaeda would be hard put to mount such an operation. The only organisation capable of mounting it would be the CIA or one of their fronts within the western security services. And certainly no anarchists I know would be capable of getting it together, even in the unlikely event that they wanted to.

If I sent you an e-mail, whether anonymously or otherwise, claiming that I had invented a perpetual-motion machine, would you splash that across your front page?

Methinks the scaremongers are getting desperate.
= How about publishing the IP numbers, Mr Sun person??
= ALL e-mails are traceable.
= Did it come from the 'security services? or even from your own newsroom?
or from some mental hospital? (is there a difference?)

by Tom Sat Apr 24, 2004 22:39 anotherwonder at hotmail dot com 0863398706

I'd like the point this out:
"He confirmed the gas would be deadly.
“This gas COULD be fatal to people if it’s inhaled in an ENCLOSED AREA,” said the source"

Unless this protest is taking place in someone's garage, or another small space, i don't see how fatal it can be to protesters outside.

by the sun are sick fucks Sun Apr 25, 2004 00:24

an english newspaper setting irish against irish in one of the most cynical fascistic media manouvers seen in recent memory. Dangerous GWB style bullshit.

by NeoRepublican Sun Apr 25, 2004 00:45

That craaaazy Murdoc

by Dr. Goebells Sun Apr 25, 2004 01:51

I haven't gone away you know!

by Fifth International Sun Apr 25, 2004 02:08

This is clearly CIA work. Funny, they closed down Moqtada Al Sadr's paper yet this stuff is even worse.

by Chekov Sun Apr 25, 2004 03:16

A few points about the shoddiness of this journalism.

1."The terror group calling itself An@rky sent a series of sinister messages to our Dublin offices." The only source for the story is an email. Anybody (eg journalists themselves, cops, teenage pranksters) can sign up to an email account like [email protected] and send an email to the sun. In fact it would be a trivial matter to make the email appear to come from a real address like "dublingrassroots@...." . When I have worked in internet companies, it was common to get emails from [email protected] or [email protected] as pranks.

2. The group mentioned does not exist. As a person with a train-spotter's interest in International anarchist groups, I am quite certain that no such group exists. Even a google search for the word "An@rky" reveals that the only mention of the word on the Internet is as nicknames in computer gamers' forums (and there are only a couple of these).

3. " Last night they were being investigated by cops." If this were true, the provenance of the emails would be established very quickly. There is a record of all traffic on the internet. Although, it is possible to conceal one's exact location, this requires a high level of technical sophistication, but you can always pinpoint the exact server (or internet cafe for example) where the mail enters the internet. It could be a good idea for any journalist to ring up the gardai and ask them about their findings into the source of this email. If "the emails were being taken seriously"and were "threatening the world’s biggest terror strike" then it would be the most shocking incompetence by the gardai if they could not trace the source of the messages. (by the way, if the gardai are indeed taking the emails seriously then it reveals the most shocking incompetence in the fields of technical and intelligence services within our security forces.)

4. The emails declared that a "warning is issued to alert the Irish people to stay well away from Farmleigh". This just hours after an anarchist, a spokesperson for Dublin Grassroots, which includes all known anarchists in Ireland, had appeared on the late late show to urge as many people as possible to get as close as possible to Farmleigh. This is surely universal amongst anarchists. I can't imagine that there's an anarchist in the world who doesn't want as many people as possible as close to Farmleigh as possible.

This sort of journalism, so farcically divorced from reality, is a real cause for concern. After all, the protestors have played a blinder on all fronts and managed to nonsense the scare stories on every occasion that they've been given a voice. If the crazy scare works and people are intimidated away from protests, we have to become deeply worried about the 1984 type thought control that is possible in our society. We have to take the streets on Mayday in large numbers.

by Sun Sun Apr 25, 2004 04:09

Ah come on lads don't do it. I read the stuff in the Sun a well respected newspaper. Why would you anarchists want to kill innocent Irish people? Maybe the Grassroots Network or the WSM have been infiltrated by Al Qaeda? They should be easy to spot at your meetings - mad look in their eyes, blabbing about imperialism, paranoid about the state and the cops, secretive. Sorry that could be anyone of you.
If any trouble hapens on May Day then Murdoch should be up on charges after all his number one rag has done its best to set it up.

by kevinhuntfanclub - none Sun Apr 25, 2004 12:22

with the media proclaiming us all to be lunatics bent on terror its tough being an anarchist these days. the media want to put you in abox.

so imagine my surprise at the following comment from chekov

"This just hours after an anarchist, a spokesperson for Dublin Grassroots, which includes all known anarchists in Ireland"

a very surprising and very disapointing comment. you think that your group wsm / grassroots are the only anarchists in ireland? take a hike!

this smacks of organaisation building lefties trying to declare themselves the "real" reveloutionaries.

smell the coffee , the wsm may represent a strand of anarchism, grassroots may have anarchists in it but you are not the only strand of amarchism not are you all the anarchists in ireland.

maybe this is how you think in the wsm, that others are not "proper anarchists" cause they dont agree with your posiiton papers? im surpised if thats the case as your monthly paper doesnt come across like that.

oh and theres a world outside dublin - imagine that.

after twenty years you may think wsm are where its at and with all the attention that grassroots is the activist group but you do not own the term anarchist and there are many people out there other than you who have anarchist beliefs but arent members of your dublin grassroots group or the wsm.

very surprising comments from you at a time when you'd think unity would be important.

maybe you were just caught up in replying to the media stuff but the doubtless many in grassroots are not all the anarchists.

oh well, maybe im not anarchist enough for you.

cheers

by Chekov Sun Apr 25, 2004 12:29

I was merely saying that I do not know of any anarchists in Ireland who are not involved in the grassroots in some way. I was definitely not saying that the grassroots is all anarchist - it's not - or that the WSM are the only anarchists - they aren't. Just that I don't know of any anarchists in Ireland who would see themselves as 'outside' the grassroots. Maybe there are but I don't know of them.

by TT Sun Apr 25, 2004 18:42

Shure who would want to gas Bertie anyway? Is it actually possible to gas a gasbag?
Seriously though, this has a marked similarity to the type of stuff the Italian secret services were involved in in the seventies. It was called 'the Strategy of Tension', and involved terrorist acts carried out by bogus left-wing groups, and aimed at getting the public to accept any counter measures carried out by the state.
In other words "agent provocateurs".
Someone should explain it to Pat Kenny, he seems a little confused.

by Haggy Ragsbottom Mon Apr 26, 2004 00:28

Indeed, Grassroots certainly does NOT contain all irish anarchists. It's more of a liberal mishmash of folks-mostly in dublin/cork/galway- and the main 'anarchist' organizations also do NOT speak for the anarchists in ireland. I've no probs with Grassers at all, but if I know DOZENS of anarchists who've never even heard of it, then it hardly CONTAINS us all..
However I hope we can all stick together in the face of this stateterror campaign. peAceout xxx

by 1 of grassroots.. Mon Apr 26, 2004 00:51

We can't even claim to speak for other members of the grassroots without first seeking permission (as indeed it should be). Personally i don't think as a collection of people, we are arrogant enough to assume that all anarchists on this island must be afiliated to us, to fully support us, or to even be aware of our activities.

by ohmickeyyouresofineyoublowmymindheymickey Mon Apr 26, 2004 01:37

"Propaganda too has a system. It cannot be made any old way. In the long run, it can only be effective in the service of great ideals and far-seeing principles. And propaganda must be learned. It must be led only by people with a fine and sure instinct for the often changeable feelings of the people. They must be able to reach into the world of the broad masses and draw out their wishes and hopes. The effective propagandist must be a master of the art of speech, of writing, of journalism, of the poster and of the leaflet. He must have the gift to use the major methods of influencing public opinion such as the press, film and radio to serve his ideas and goals, above all in an age of advancing technology."

by Mimber of deforce Mon Apr 26, 2004 15:00

He really looks in his element!
Nice of him though to be willing to model the new Garda uniform. Not many previous Ministers For Justice would have done so, very 'hands on'.

by It could happen in Dublin? Tue Apr 27, 2004 11:05

April 27, 2004 -- Diabolical al Qaeda terrorists confessed yesterday to plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan with sophisticated chemical bombs that could have wiped out 80,000 people.
Azmi al-Jayousi, leader of the terror cell, said the fiendish plan also targeted the headquarters of Jordanian intelligence and the prime minister's office.

The plot aimed to use trucks loaded with explosives and chemicals to unleash massive poison clouds, Jordanian officials said.

The authorities said a group of 10 suspects planned to pack the truck bombs with deadly cocktails of 71 lethal chemicals - including blistering agents, nerve gas and choking agents - and then simultaneously crash them into their targets.

A Jordanian government scientist said the well-trained terrorists - who had acquired 20 tons of chemicals - had planned to combine just the right amount of explosives to spread the lethal clouds without destroying the poisonous chemicals.

In a confession aired on Jordanian state TV, al-Jayousi, the head of the Jordanian cell of al Qaeda, admitted he was schooled in explosives and poisons in Afghanistan, then plotted in Iraq with Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of Osama bin Laden.

"I took explosives courses, high level, poisons, then I pledged allegiance to [al-Zarqawi], to obey him without any questioning," said al-Jayousi, who had marks on his face and neck.



Another suspect, car mechanic Hussein Sharif Hussein, said al-Jayousi recruited him and asked him to buy and modify trucks so they could crash through gates and walls.

Upon exploding, the truck bombs would have released a toxic cloud that would have extended for three miles over Amman, the capital.

Al-Jayousi said he received $170,000 from al-Zarqawi via messengers from Syria to finance the truck-bomb plot and used part of it to buy tons of chemicals.

"According to my experience as an explosives expert, the whole of the intelligence department will be destroyed," al-Jayousi said.

The headquarters are within a mile of a large medical center, a shopping mall and a residential area.

In raids last Tuesday, Jordanian officials said they seized 20 tons of chemicals and explosives as well as three trucks with specially modified plows designed to crash through security barricades.

The chemicals included sulfuric acid, a powerful blistering agent that can also be used to increase the strength of explosions.

In other developments yesterday in the region:

* A building in Baghdad, which may have been used to make chemical agents, exploded in flames as U.S. troops and WMD inspectors broke in to search it. Two soldiers were killed.

* In Fallujah, U.S. troops came under a heavy attack a day after officials decided to extend a cease-fire. One Marine and eight guerrillas were killed.

* Outside the holy city of Najaf, Shiite militiamen in cars fired rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S. position. U.S. troops and Apache helicopters opened fire, setting the cars ablaze.

* CBS News reported last night that the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, is "worried" and "down" about what he says is "a deteriorating situation" without any good options.

With Niles Lathem and Post Wire Services

by (-) - (-) Sat Jan 01, 2005 01:03

How many of you can remember the names of even ten of the 10,000 people in Dublin who were gassed by the anarchists?
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=64558#comment70796

Oh sorry, I forgot it never actually happened.

So, someone got it wrong then?

by Indy Freedom Sat Jan 01, 2005 01:45 indifreedom at eircom dot net

you can start with Michael Moore.... give me Mel Gibson's movie about Christ any day. At least it is based on fact and not fantasy like Moore's amateurish effort.

by Nighthawk Sat Jan 01, 2005 05:31

Forgotten your medication again Tonore? You do not seem to be able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.