A Tale of Two Bomb Plots. posted by Richard Seymour

One was without explosive materials, funding and knowledge. The other was with a huge cache of chemical explosives, the largest haul of such materials ever found on UK soil, a rocket launcher and a nuclear biological suit. One was widely reported, and the other one wasn't. One has been splashed across every television news programme and every newspaper in the country, while the other one was "played down" by police.

From The Register:

Dhiran Barot admitted planning a radioactive "dirty bomb" explosion which it was claimed would have caused "injury, fear, terror and chaos", and/or "fear, panic and social disruption". Barot also planned a coordinated series of attacks in the UK and US, with the "Gas Limos Project", involving three limousines filled with explosives and gas cylinders placed in underground car parks, being allegedly the principal attack planned.

The "mastermind" is claimed to have planned the attacks between 2000 and 2004, but the prosecution accepted that there was no evidence that he had obtained money to finance the plot, or that he had acquired bomb-making material, radioactive substances, limos or gas cylinders. Nor does there appear to be any indication that he knew where to source radioactive materials, how to build a dirty bomb, or how to set off sufficient gas cylinders in an underground car park to make a skyscraper collapse. Or indeed what the limo parking deal might be in the bowels of the World Bank HQ or the New York Stock Exchange, which were among the cosmopolitan list of targets.

Dhiren Barot's neighbours are shocked, not least at how "a nice Hindu boy" could have turned Muslim. Robert Cottage's neighbours are shocked because, although he is a fascist, he is also "good with the children", and drives a yellow bus taking handicapped children to school.

A bomb factory that isn't a bomb factory, a man with a rocket launcher, a nuclear biological suit, widely touted extremist connections, and a "master plan" who isn't a terrorist; and a terrorist "mastermind of a major conspiracy" who has no bombs, no funding, no knowledge of bombs, no proven extremist connections. Only a couple of the logical absurdities that we are expected to become inured to.