BRITAIN is facing 30 current known terror plots a report from the first ever National Security Strategy warns. Intelligence services are monitoring 200 terrorist networks and 2,000 individuals.

There is a 'serious and sustained threat' from extremists. Many want to cause 'mass casualties without warning' using suicide attacks. Some 'aspire' to use chemical, biological and radiological weapons.

Terrorists also seek to attack key sites such as power stations and shipyards by electronic means.

It also says the legal system should be strengthened to ensure more prosecutions and deportations.



**
So much for panic and scaremongering. I don't think so - just reality checking. Brits never panic.

Oh come on you can do better than selectively quoting 2006 news reports.

Here I will do it as well just to show how easy it is:

Alarmist?
Bill Durodie, senior lecturer in risk and security at the U.K. Defense Academy, said high-profile speeches and headline-grabbing numbers risked exaggerating the scale of the threat facing Britain.“It’s easy to pull out alarmist headlines,” he said. “What we’re seeing here on the whole are lone individuals (and) small groups.”

But I will go one step further and post the report I took the information from...

British MI5 tracking 30 terror plots Head of Britain’s MI5 spy agency says many tied to Al-Qaida in Pakistan
The Associated Press
updated 12:31 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2006

LONDON - British authorities are tracking almost 30 high-priority terrorist plots involving 200 networks and 1,600 suspects, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency said, adding that many of those under surveillance are homegrown terrorists plotting suicide attacks and other mass-casualty bombings.
Prime Minister Tony Blair backed his spy chief’s assessment and warned that the terrorist threat facing Britain “will last a generation.”
In a speech released by MI5 Friday, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said her agency had foiled five major plots since the July 2005 transit bomb attacks in London.
Speaking to a small audience of academics in London on Thursday, Manningham-Buller said officials were “aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy.”
“What do I mean by numerous? Five? 10?” she said. “No, nearer 30 that we currently know of.”
She described those as "Priority 1" plots, saying they represent a caseload increase of 80 percent since January.
By contrast, the United States says its caseload has remained steady. FBI Director Robert Mueller said in September that the number of overall domestic terrorist investigations has remained fairly static for the past two years, after spiking immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Al-Qaida in Pakistan cited
Manningham-Buller added that “today we see the use of homemade improvised explosive devices, but I suggest tomorrow’s threat will include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology.”
She said MI5 and the police were tracking 200 cells involving more than 1,600 individuals who were “actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here and overseas.”
The threat includes “mass casualty suicide attacks in the U.K.,” she said.
Manningham-Buller, who has headed MI5 since 2002, said the plots “often have linked back to al-Qaida in Pakistan, and through those links al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale.”
Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said Manningham-Buller had given “a very sobering warning.” He said, however, it was essential that “British Muslims are seen as a partner in the fight against terrorism and not some sort of community in need of mass medication.”
“Holding a community responsible for the actions of a few would be counterproductive,” Bunglawala said.
Alarmist?
Bill Durodie, senior lecturer in risk and security at the U.K. Defense Academy, said high-profile speeches and headline-grabbing numbers risked exaggerating the scale of the threat facing Britain.
“It’s easy to pull out alarmist headlines,” he said. “What we’re seeing here on the whole are lone individuals (and) small groups.”
Senior anti-terrorist officials have previously said that they have foiled several plots since the July 2005 attacks, but Manningham-Buller’s speech provided the first public estimate of the threat by the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency.
She warned that radicalization, especially of young people, was one of the biggest problems facing anti-terror investigators.
On July 7, 2005, four suicide bombers killed 52 people on three subway trains and a bus in London. Three of the four bombers were British-born.
This August, police said they had foiled a plot by a British terrorist cell to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners in mid-air. More than a dozen people, all British, are awaiting trial in the case.
On Tuesday, a British Muslim convert, Dhiren Barot, was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to attack U.S. financial landmarks and blow up London targets with limousines packed with gas tanks, napalm and nails.
'With us for a generation'
Manningham-Buller said some of the plots MI5 was tracking could be less serious than the one that ended in the 2005 attack, but that they still must be investigated.
She said the threat from international terrorism “is serious, is growing, and will, I believe, be with us for a generation.”
“It is the youth who are being actively targeted, groomed, radicalized and set on a path that frighteningly quickly could end in their involvement in mass murder of their fellow U.K. citizens,” Manningham-Buller said. “Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers.”
Blair told reporters at his Downing Street office that Manningham-Buller was “absolutely right that it will last a generation.”
“We need to combat the poisonous propaganda of those people that warps and perverts the minds of younger people,” he said.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15646571/

Oh dear, Oh dear. Silly old me. There I go again, publishing the truth. Trust me to do that. I really should stop doing it , seeing as how it does upset certain people so!

QUESTION - Ref your opening quote - Just when did Bill Durodie say that and in response to what? Date?
Is this also a piece of your outdated 2006 stuff?

Tell us if it refers to the report which follows it.



BEFORE I bother to respond - why do you assume that this 2oo6 stuff is the same report as today's?

How easy is that? Looks like you are the one going straight to collect the 2006 stuff! 'Cos I ain't; you are obviously confusing me with some guy who is the Wiki Kid.

I never seek to dig back to make points. It is all happening here, living it day to day.

OK -Waiting here boss.

Mueller, John. "Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawaii, Mar 02, 2005 Online <.PDF>. 2008-02-24 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p70917_index.html>

ABSTRACT It has been common to exaggerate and to overreact to foreign threats, something that seems to be continuing with current concerns over international terrorism. This paper assesses threat exaggeration and overreaction from Pearl Harbor to the post-Cold War period and applies that experience to post-9/11 fears of, and policies toward, international terrorism. Alarmism and overreaction can be harmful, particularly economically. And, in the case of terrorism, they can help create the damaging consequences the terrorists seek but are unable to perpetrate on their own. Moreover, stoked by the terrorism industry, many of the forms alarmism has taken verge on hysteria. The United States is hardly likely to be facing an existential threat in the sense that it will be toppled by dramatic acts of terrorist destruction, even extreme ones. The country can, however grimly, readily absorb considerable damage if necessary, and it has outlasted more potent threats in the past. A reasonable policy might be to seek to reduce fears about what may well prove to be quite a limited problem.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~
Real world Intelligence agencies play their cards very close to their chests and any real threats are not heard of until the arrests are made.

We are talking real world here. I am only putting up day to day fact s of life here, as it happens.

I have asked for some info ,in my last post, from Monty , and when that has been answered I will put the matter to bed.

There is no exageration here, far from it. We are constantly keeping a lid on things, as the most tolerant people in the world. Only a few days ago, an East London vicar was attacked outside his church by muslims, battered and kicked and left in a heap in the road, to shouts of ' our f****** church should be a mosque'. Just another everyday incident that we have to live with. But I guess that vicar brought it on himself by being here. He is in a sad state. As far as I know, this has never happened yet to an Imam here.

Regarding the approach of academics to the subject, and their individual agendas, I prefer to judge by what I see, what I hear, what I know is going down in my corner and on my watch. Just like a soldier in the field has to.

I have no interest in alarmist or exagerated themes, only in sticking up the facts as the unfold, for interest and discussion.
I can hear what the extremists tell us they want, and what they are going to do, they make no secret of it.

Tell those who have been bombed around the world that they are crying wolf. Absolute nonsense that would be.

Facts, reality, facing up. That is all that counts. The books about it can be written later.

I prefer to listen to our security services, who have served us well. They are very experienced and not given to over-cooking.
We know something of living with terrorism you know, but they haven't been able to terrify us yet, and they won't now.

But that doesn't mean we should not mention it or act as tho' it is not happening. Only complete idiots would try that as a policy.

Like I said if these threats were even vaguely real, you and I would not know of them until the Police made the arrests. Unless of course our intelligence agencies are trying to tip them off so they can change their plans,... which is hardly likely.

The most effective weapon that the terrorists have in this war, is terror itself, most ably disseminated by those whom that they terrify. Panic is a powerful weapon used by a cunning enemy, some of us don't fall for it.

Did you know that more people have drowned in their own toilets than have been killed by terrorism in the USA in all years other than 2001.

Well, there is one current threat greater to Britain than terrorism, and that is a flu pandemic, which could wipe out 750,000 people here, and of which we are aware , but that is not the point.

Our own particular situation is that we would be barmy to not recognise that we are in the front line of such terrorist ambitions as I have outlined, and here we are striving to find a solution but staying on our toes at all times. I have no political agenda whatsoever, other than the successful peaceful absorption of our immigrant population, as always in the past.

This is entirely unrelated to racism or panic, rather the opposite, as an effort to overcome the growing threat of division by multi-culturism. God forbid we should ever have culture fighting culture, as is common in the middle-east and Asia.

So - we have to bite the bullet and face reality; for far too long we have remained silent and frightened to mention the subject for fear of being branded racist. The time for that is past.

In this respect my first post could be seen in the context of a pat on back, a congratulation of our security services for looking after us so well.

Being aware of the danger goes without saying and needs no reinforcement, especially in a country such as yours where terrorist acts have already been perpetrated. Anyone not specifically certified insane is already aware of the threat. Those who are, are a lost cause.

Stuff such as you quoted in your first post is most often little more than a poorly disguised attempt by one body or another to squeeze more money from the public purse in the never ending pursuit of empire building, nothing at all to do with genuine attempts at winning the war.

I feel that further quoting of this propaganda is little more than aiding and abetting the enemy in the dissemination of terror, their singularly most effective weapon.

Yep it'd be a secret wouldn't it?
By exposing such information they are giving enemies clues as to where they have human intelligence sources. I wouldn't do it. I don't think they would either.
And yes, the most desirable outcome of a terror attack is the spread of FEAR. That is what they want. In America, I can see that the terrorists have gone leaps and bounds. They have managed to plant so much fear that everyone thinks everyone who's not white is a terrorist, have locked down so many things for security reasons that it's even affecting the economy in a VERY negative way.
I'd say the terrorists are winning in America. And America's doing all the hard bits.
Remember guys.... ALWAYS consider, "what outcome does my enemy want?" And DENY it. The enemy doesn't necessarily want to just kill the people in the bus... or the building.... no, that's a means to an end. He wants to spread fear. He wants to make things grind to a halt. And they couldn't have asked for a better outcome.

Yes Redneck it most certainly would be kept very confidential.

There have been many arrests made on persons who have planned terrorist activities in the US, UK, Australia, and no doubt many other places. But were the public made aware of these threats before the arrests,... NO!

The last thing we should be doing is helping the enemy by sowing the seeds of fear.