The BBC, yesterday:

Terror police find 'martyr tapes'

Police investigating an alleged plot to bring down airliners have found several martyrdom videos in the course of their searches, the BBC has learned.

An unofficial police source said the recordings - discovered on laptop computers - appear to have been made by some of the suspects being questioned.

Scotland Yard has refused to comment on what officers are finding.

Again, Aunty Beeb:

Terror detectives 'find bomb kit'

Police probing an alleged plot to bring down flights have found a suitcase containing items which could be used to construct a bomb, the BBC has learned.

Officers have been searching a piece of land called King's Wood in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.

A police source told the BBC the case contained "everything you would need to make an improvised device".

As Craig Murray notes sceptically, "everything you would need to make an improvised device" covers the contents of the average residence:

"The idea that high explosive can be made quickly in a plane toilet by mixing at room temperature some nail polish remover, bleach, and Red Bull and giving it a quick stir, is nonsense. Yes, liquid explosives exist and are highly dangerous and yes, airports are ill equipped to detect them at present. Yes, it is true they have been used on planes before by terrorists. But can they be quickly manufactured on the plane? No.

The sinister aspect is not that this is a real new threat. It is that the allegation may have been concocted in order to prepare us for arresting people without any actual bombs.

Let me fess up here. I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and mobile phones. So the authorities could announce - as they have whispered to the media in this case - that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, and potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers the bar, doesn't it?"

The 'evidence' leaked to the press by the police in this case mirrors such recent inglorious episodes as the Ricin Plot, the Forest Gate arrests, the death of Jean Charles de Menezes last year (and that of Rigoberto Alpizar in similiar circumstances in Miami). In each case, the narrative of Islamic terrorist plots placed with accommodating press hacks by the police ultimately turned out to be completely without substance. And Murray (the very same ambassador who blew the whistle on UK collaboration with the people-boiler of Uzbekistan) deals with the unreliability of evidence extracted by torture, an unwelcome slap of reality for torture fans everywhere.

But - and this is the important part - the sense of induced panic from the screaming tabloid headlines always lingers on in the public subconscious; whether as unintentional byproduct or (more sinisterly) by design on the part of the Blair and Bush governments. Which interpretation is correct, we leave up to reader discretion.

And as other people have already observed, the 'discovery' of this alleged plot couldn't have come at a better time for the Bush Administration, what with prominent pro-Iraq war Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman defeated that same week in his party primary by an anti-war candidate. As Murray notes in further posts, treat the narrative being peddled now by the Blair government with a good dose of caution. Why has no police officer gone on the record about these supposed finds of evidence?

p.s. For a detailed look at the reality behind the hype of liquid explosives, The Register provides.

(A close death in the family will continue to disrupt blogging on Free Stater for a couple of weeks. Dickie's threatened solicitor's letter has meanwhile yet to turn up on our virtual doorstep... Rest assured, We Will Return)