Howells Goes On-Message
Having briefly showed faint signs of independent intelligence by calling for an immediate Israeli ceasefire about, er, four weeks ago (so that was effective, wasn't it?), our favourite FCO dimwit Kim Howells has gone right back on message in the best Blair tradition of refusing to listen and ignoring reality. A perfectly reasonable request from the Muslim community to stop the UK's immoral and counterproductive foreign policy met with this response from the clown:
Those four Terrorism Acts were just for fun, then? Governments formulate policy, or should formulate policy, based on the exigencies of the current situation and that of the foreseeable future. The current situation is that there is a threat from terrorists, in the main British terrorists rather than grand global conspiracies, but nonetheless real enough. Not to formulate policy based on this would be rather bizarre to me and I suspect most rational people, but not to Mr. Howells. I don't think he's thought this one through, but he's got form for that kind of thing.
He's actually doing a classic bit of New Labour conflation here - the act of suicide bombing is 'irrational', therefore everything else connected to it, like suggesting that invading Iraq might have produced an increase in the terrorist threat is also irrational and can therefore be discarded. Quite apart from anything else, suicide terrorism isn't irrational, it's immoral and murderous, but not irrational. Secondly, analysing the causes and drivers of terrorism isn't irrational, it's exactly what politicians both sides of the Atlantic have been falling over themselves to praise the police for since last week's raids.
Presumably if MI5 had gone to Kim Howells and said 'we've got good evidence that a bunch of people who've become increasingly secretive and extreme since the Iraq war are planning some sort of attack on aircraft, although they're clearly brainless and fountaining SIGINT around the place, shall we go and nab them?' he'd have tried to convince the spooks that they were being irrational. Even worse, if by some miracle MI5 had got the Sidique Khan 'I did it because of Iraq' video before the 7/7 bombs went off our Kim would have stuck his fingers in his ears, closed his eyes and gone 'lalalala' until they got fed up.
Everyone knows that Iraq has increased the risk of terrorism. The current events in Lebanon have increased the risk of terrorism. Guantanamo has increased the risk of terrorism. Afghanistan, it seems, has merely moved al-Qaeda sideways into Pakistan and given them a large income from drugs. MI5 and the police seem to have proved that old-fashioned police work combined with better resourcing (as many of us wet liberals have said repeatedly when previous bouts of Home Office bollockslation appeared) is the best, only way of combating terrorism, which is a serious crime rather than a military enemy. Everyone, that is, except Tony Blair, George Bush and their acolytes, who still stick to the bizarre idea that cluster bombing people into democracy will magically defeat the bin Laden ideology. Nonsensical. Do what bin Laden doesn't want you to do and start behaving like human beings.
And Margaret Beckett seems
And Margaret Beckett seems equally on-message and detatched from reality, although I agree with the last sentence:
She added: "This is part of a distorted view of the world. Let's put the blame where it belongs - with people who wantonly want to take innocent lives. And let's try to deprive them of the power."
With regard to the latest
With regard to the latest 'ter'rr outgrage'. it seems increasingly likely that what we have is a bunch of disgruntled young men (and who isn't disgruntled about UK foreign policy) sounding of on internet forums.
Anyone who posts here knows it can be quite cathartic to off-load a bit of anger and frustration with a carefully worded message. So these guys may have taken it a bit further with some extreme rantings.
There is still not a shred of physical evidence of bomb making equipment, airline tickets being purchased or anything else revealed by the security (sic) forces, other than intercepted 'internet and text message traffic'.
So the most likely case they have is consiparcy and not the 'imminent threat in the next few days' that is being reported.
One of the 19 (or is it 22?) has already been released without charge and I fully expect most of the others to be release with a ferw being held for show.
I'm inclined to think
I'm inclined to think there's a bit more to this than, say, Forest Gate or 'ricin' (which isn't hard, if you think about it). The plot, such as it is, is entirely conventional and there seems to be actual signals traffic being intercepted (legally, one presumes, thus neatly proving the argument that the laws are already on the statute book to disrupt terrorist operations). However, the sheer amount of traffic being reported, all in the clear, no attempt to hide it is either evidence of extremely stupid amateur would-be terrorists or a plot given a bit of shape and encouragement by an undercover man on the inside.
None of which supports the spin being put on it by both the US and UK governments - Bush's crowd are using it to justify illegal surveillance, despite the fact that it appears to have been legal surveillance. Why lie about a *successful* operation?
"Quite apart from anything
"Quite apart from anything else, suicide terrorism isn't irrational, it's immoral and murderous, but not irrational."
If it is the context of a "just war" according to the just war principles of st Thomas Aquinas and very few conventional weapons are available and, most importantly, it is targetted at military rather than civillian targets, then wouldn't the use of suicide bombing, like any other weapon of war, be morally justified-and isn't this the case when a sovereign state such as Iraq or Palestine is occupied by another state?
John Reid talks more
John Reid talks more shite:
"at least four major plots" have been thwarted since the 7 July attacks.
Oh really, so why did we not hear abouth those? Seeing as the security services/polics constantly rush (prematurely) to the media are we expected to belive this?
"terribly inconvenient regime" of restrictions imposed on carrying hand luggage
More like public humiliation - no toothpaste, aftershave, baby's milk. For goodness sake!
"highly likely there would be another terrorist attempt"
Yeah, because no one's buying this crap. We also have the US congressionals - expect something in October.
"dreadful misjudgement that foreign policy of this country should be shaped in part, or in whole, under the threat of terrorism activity".
Complete and utter nonsense. You tread on someone's neck they'll want to get back at you.
the government also believes the first al-Qaeda plot in the UK was in 2000
Again, why no mention until 6 years later? Complete and utter nonsense. The use of the word 'believes' - WTF?, either they did or they didn't.
Dr Death (aka John Reid) was
Dr Death (aka John Reid) was good friends with indicted Serbian War criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic in the early 90's, at the height of the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian moslems.
This man has some serious anti-moslem form. What a nice character.
http://blogs.salaam.co.uk/article.php?story=20060605200626612
'"at least four major plots"
'"at least four major plots" have been thwarted since the 7 July attacks.
'Oh really, so why did we not hear about those?'
It's not inherently improbable; if you've got a long-running investigation, you probably wouldn't want to publicise the 'fact that you know you've averted various things along the way. For example, you might learn, from your sources, that there's a plan afoot to bomb a particular event. You don't know the details, and you don't want to start arresting people because you probably haven't yet got enough evidence, and, in any case, you certainly don't want to compromise your investigation because you think it'll yield further information along the way. So, as a result of what you have learned, you change your security arrangements for the event and your source later tells you that these changes averted the attack.
Or, of course, you learn later on that precautions you'd put in place just because they seemed a good idea did, in fact, prevent someone from doing something unpleasant.
I don't agree with him about much, but the right-wing Mr Eugenides here makes a very valid point:
'There is little in the track record of this government, frankly, that inspires any confidence that my fear of a further kneejerk crackdown will turn out to be unfounded. Simply put, I do not believe what Dr John Reid says, and this is because he has shown a remarkable propensity, in every Cabinet job he has occupied, to play to the gallery rather than actually tackle the challenges of government.
'But at the same time I have no desire to fall into the trap of those on the left, particularly the "Stop The War" mob, who continually warn that our policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on, as well as the plight of the Palestinians, will lead to more terrorism not less, and "forces" young Muslims into the arms of the radicals, but then flatly deny that there is any threat whenever these alerts happen.'
I think the recent "tewor"
I think the recent "tewor" alerts are a hoax perpetrated by the British and US government.Google some of the suspects names and see what you come up with.