terror[ism]

Nicholas Kollerstrom has responded to our outing of him as a holocaust denier and his subsequent dismissal from UCL. Notably he attacks Rachel North rather than ourselves, but that is all apart of the conspiraloons bullying and intimidation of her as a woman and an inconvenient witness to the July bombings.

In his response he identifies the people responsible for his dismissal; the Jews.

Nicholas Kollerstrom is a holocaust denier, a Nazi apologist and an anti-semite. We are fully prepared to defend our views in a court of law, should he be foolish enough to carry out his threat to sue us.

Nicholas Kollerstrom's threatening legal action against us and Rachel North.

Nick, just get your solicitor to put his letter in the comments and we'll get right back to you.

Since our revelations about Kollerstrom, the conspiraloons have been running around trying to hide away their dirty little secrets. The fact is that many such people are also holocaust deniers and revisionists. We take the view that this tells you all you need to know about their research abilities and judgement.

For people obsessed with bringing the truth into the public arena, they certainly don't practice what they preach.

They have private forums that they now admit exist after denying it. They hide away writings on holocaust denial. Some forums are now banning discussion of the holocaust, not because they accept it happened, but because they realise that this stuff doesn't go down well with the public. Frankly it makes them look like anti-semitic loons. To be honest, an uncomfortable number of them are. For example the thread just linked describes holocaust denial as a 'Mossad trick'.

Entering the conspiraloon world is like entering a parallel universe where logic is warped beyond all recognition and self-reinforcement and name calling is paramount.

Since our expose we've been called agents of Mossad, MI6, part of a government cover up. And Nazis. Ho hum.

The loons have spent the last couple of days in cabal trying to handle the results of our expose and even the loons are conspiring against each other. Indymedia reports that they are "currently deleting threads as quickly as people can post them showing their real attitude to the truth. What has become clear is that Kollerstrum is not the only so called truth activist who shares these opinions."

We've occasionally been targeted by 9/11 and 7/7 conspiraloons over our coverage of terrorism and strategies to deal with it. At one level it's just a small group of deathly boring obsessives, at another it's something disturbing.

One fact that keeps cropping up is the links between these self-professed truthers and Holocaust deniers and Nazi apologists.

Update: This linked thread has now been 'hidden' according to the board hosts. Seems like they demand everyone else to make everything public but hide away their anti-semitic crap. They've also banned discussion of holocaust denial becaue it's - you guessed it - 'a Mossad trick' This is a cynical PR move, not from any conviction.

We've just found another conspiraloon, Nick Kollerstrom aka astro3, who's been pestering 7/7 survivors as they offer an inconvenient witness against his ludicrous theories. Although he specialises in that ultimate conspiracy theory, crop circles, he's not afraid to take a deep bath in Nazi apologism and Holocaust denial:

As surprising as it may sound, the only intentional mass extermination program in the concentration camps of WW2 was targeted at Germans.  From April, 1945 five million Germans were rounded up after surrendering, and deliberately starved until well over one million had died

He also likes to submit quotes to White Supremacist sites: According to my teenager's homework, it seems to be Holocaust week at school again, so all the non-Jewish kids will be learning the Jewish version of it. What do you do when a public institution teaches something is a fact that you believe is not a fact? Well, you can always call the teacher or write a letter, which will have no effect other than to get you a reputation as a dangerous nut. No school will change its policy on this because of any information you cite to them; even if they secretly agree with you, they do not have the courage.

Nick likes to put on his boots and goosestep over history by denying the holocaust and acting as an apologist for Hitler. How does he picture Auschwitz? Death camp? Extermination centre? Nope. It was like Butlins.
Let us hope the schoolchildren visitors are properly taught about the elegant swimming-pool at Auschwitz, built by the inmates, who would sunbathe there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons while watching the water-polo matches; and shown the paintings from its art class, which still exist; and told about the camp library which had some forty-five thousand volumes for inmates to choose from, plus a range of periodicals; and the six camp orchestras at Auschwitz/Birkenau, its the theatrical performances, including a children’s opera, the weekly camp cinema, and even the special brothel established there. Let’s hope they are shown postcards written from Auschwitz, some of which still exist, where the postman would collect the mail twice-weekly.

Where does he get his vital research and evidence? It's ordained in the stars!

So that's why the tedious drivel these conspiraloons put here gets deleted. Because it's rubbish. It's boring. It's the product of Nazi apologists.

UPDATE

In the comments one noted conspiraloon, Bridget Dunne, seems to have taken this a bit personally and claims we're talking about her. Interesting.

It was also noticeable that, despite her claims not to have anything to do with holocaust denial, she refused to enlighten us with her views.

She challenged us to look at her site for evidence of holocaust denial. That turned out to be difficult as they have private/hidden forums. Bridget said they 'Just for the record, we don't have a private part of the forum'. This is not true as following a referral link from their site leads to a error: You do not have permission to view this topic. So much for their 'everything must be public' stance.

It wasn't too suprising to see that Nicholas Kollerstrom has commented on Blairwatch, using astro3 and giving his website as... any guesses, people? Yes, Bridget Dunne's site!

One key aspect of an anti-terrorism strategy is to deradicalise those who were drawn to extremism. There have been several interesting projects on this that I have heard positive reports from, including a Saudi initiative to train theologians and one in Iraq dealing with potential suicide bombers. In Today's Times Rachel North interviews Musa Ahmet on the eve of the launch of The Quilliam Foundation, a counter extremist think tank, set up by by former activists of radical Islamist organisations. Their website also has some links to interviews with Blairwatch's favourite Islamic scholar, Sheik Hamza Yusuf that are essential viewing.

We've contacted Quilliam and look forward to learning more about them.

Rather than comment on this, it's best if we link to the coverage of the trial by Rachel North in her post 'I have to do this thing for our future'.

It must be a difficult and painful experience for her and her fellow survivors and those bereaved to sit through this and we would like to send them our appreciation for their strength and for giving us their thoughts and experiences.

Hmm, interesting.  BBC is reporting a previously blacked-out story of a 'major' (their words) anti-terror trial in London, ending with a partial guilty verdict.  However, one thing strikes me as slightly out of whack in what is apparently a tale of...

one of the most important recruiters for Islamist extremism in the UK
...
a key figure in extremist networks.

...to whit:

Hamid told the arresting officer he was "Osama bin London" and armed with a bomb.

Now, slap me with a haddock if I'm going out on a limb here, but isn't this a bit of a stupid thing for a Fiendish Islamist Masterbrain to do?  Or is he another thick fantasist muppet, like Dhiren Bharot or the Glasgow firebugs, dearly wishing to be a Great Warrior but not having a clue?  No doubt as he's led away he'll be kicking himself, saying 'you idiot, Mohammed, you should never have told that policeman you were Osama bin London, now our plans for world domination lie in ruins'.  Prat.

[Obviously, with only the result and prosecution case reported, this is another sad day for British justice, too.  I'd like to know why he was acquitted of some of the charges, given the recent record of the CPS in trying to pin unstickable stuff on people]

What a terrible place. The nearest we have to a Hell on Earth. Education about the holocaust is vitally important, especially as we will soon be in a world where there are no survivors left, no people who could say, "It happened, I was there".

The holocaust was the moral low point of humanity and although it took place over a vast area, forests and clearings, homes, streets, towns and villages over Europe, the death camps stand as a symbol of the horror that hatred, extremism and bigotry can do.

At the recent conference I attended there was much discussion of what makes an extremist, a terrorist. The process it takes is complex and hard. It's not easy to turn a human into a murderous extremist. Humanity wants to live in peace and tolerance. We are the overwhelming majority but the extremists have one great advantage over us; they are utterly dedicated to their cause.

Listening to these discussions and looking back over the reading and other experiences I've had, one question came to mind. We think of extremists as other people, but, under different circumstances, in a different place and time, could I have become a murderer? A terrorist?

If I'd been born in the Falls road, could I say that I would never have walked down the path of intolerance? If I was born in Germany in the 20's could I have become a stormtrooper? A concentration camp guard? The honest answer is a chilling one for me; I don't know.

I don't know. I used to think the holocaust was a German thing, something that happened in some sort of historical anomoly, but that was wrong. Many nationalities contributed to the deaths, the suffering.

When I look at a photo of the approach to Auschwitz I can sense the dread, the bland horror of the railway lines heading to the chambers. It's a deeply uncomfortable image and it should be.

About a year ago one of the most intelligent men asked me a question. He was well off and about to retire. He said that he wanted to devote the rest of his life to a cause, the most important issue facing the world, but what did I think that cause was?

I didn't know, I stumbled around it confused. That question has resonated with me but I think I'm coming to an answer, at least for myself. I'm coming to the view that conflict resolution and countering extremism is what I want to concentrate on.

Auschwitz isn't just a symbol of horror but it is also a beacon, a calling to us, asking us to prevent it happening again, and holocausts do happen again and again. In different forms and scales, certainly, but mass violence through dogma, bigotry and hatred have been a feature of history. The amount of human suffering caused by these impulses is incalculable.

Earlier I wondered if we at Blairwatch could work effectively in this area but I have to say that I don't think we can. We need to reach out to others, to work with them.

If you have any ideas I'd like to hear from you. No, I need to hear from you. Please email me.

Last year's conference was a revelation to us. It was then that we realised the views we hold about Iraq, Afghanistan, civil rights and the war on terror were mainstream. Blairwatch isn't an extreme organisation but one that is loudly proclaiming what many are whispering.

What did I learn this year? To be frank very little in the short term. The sessions were too similar, had too many speakers, too little time for questions, far too focused on Arab suicide bombers, full of interminable digressions on how do we refer to terrorists, especially those with origins in the Middle East and Asia.

The use of language is very important but I have two points about this frustrating aspect of the conference:

1. Is the use of language so important that it overshadows a conference like this?

2. What's more important, finding a description of the bad guys or discussing how to stop them?

I didn't see much that was new. In fact I heard a lot that was old and discredited. For example, poverty isn't a major factor in turning an individual into a terrorist (as explained last year by the excellent Louise Richardson author of the essential book "What Terrorists Want") but some speakers repeated this. Many prescriptions to reduce violent extremism were too vague and trite to form any useful contribution, such as “democracy, human rights, and education”.

A lack of a global perspective meant that most speakers were purely speaking from their own perspectives and national experience. Not always a bad thing, certainly there were a couple of examples of working methods to counter extremism, such as the Indonesian use of scholars and internet forums. However most stuck to what they knew from their own experience and the conference suffered from that.

It was too comfortable. I don't think anyone heard anything that was especially challenging or something that got us to think beyond our comfort zones.

Technophobia. The organisers and many of the participants just didn't understand new technology and new media. I can't remember attending a conference where so many people have asked me 'What is a blog?" for many years. The concept of the rise of citizen journalism only rose above a couple of people's radar and certainly was no part of anyone's presentations or thinking. The idea that citizen journalists could help counter extremism seemed to be new, indeed many seemed to be wondering what on Earth I was talking about.

In many arenas, al Jazeera has won the battle over the slurs on its reputation and I wondered if people knew al Jazeera now has an English language channel (populated by ex BBC, Sky and CNN staff). The organisers seemed to be proud that their New Exciting Idea to have a forum for journalists and editors from CNN, FOX, BBC, al Jazeera etc to get together and discuss journalistic ethics.

This session was illustrated by several news organisations coverage of events in Iraq that showed the futility of such a conference.

The media reporting is often NOT decided by an editor but by the political policy of the MEDIA OWNER. Therefore it doesn't matter an iota what an editor thinks in this reality.

The role of Op-Ed pieces in the media wasn't raised and these can often be the very worst of media reporting.

The forthcoming conference is not going to deal with the underlying causes of the rot in mainstream media values. I asked if the media can throw away it's ethics and become a mouthpiece for government policy over something as important as Iraq, how can they claim to have any ethics or values whatsoever? What are they misrepresenting today? Tomorrow?

Needless to say not one of my points was properly addressed. Thankfully several delegates and speakers told me of their approval of my lines of comment, albeit privately.

The East West Institute is about to launch an internet platform to counter extremism. To be honest, I'm concerned about this. I don't think they 'get' the internet and how it can be used and they could easily stay in their comfort zones, within their think tank concepts and circles and defer from doing something innovative and radically disruptive. That said there is an aspect to EWI that does encourage thinking out the box and this project might just fly.

The conference was inspirational and thought provoking. Not so much from the platform, but from the wide opportunities for lively discussion in the halls and foyers, and the discussions were lively and fascinating. This was not just coincidence, but something EWI deliberately built into the programme.

EWI is also a very open organisation, one that encourages critcism and comment and welcomes challenges to their perspectives and thinking. Importantly they seem devoid of the intellectual arrogance and superiority that can so often be found in Brussels institutions.

There were some good contributions from the platform, but many speakers had too little time.

I certainly have a lot to think about, not least on countering extremism. Could Blairwatch - or Son of Blairwatch be in a better position to use the internet to examine counter-extremism, conflict resolution than a think tank? Or is it just too big a project for us?

It sounds arrogant and possibly unrealistic, especially as we have no resources, but we do have things on our side; we know the medium, we have plenty of contacts and although we might not be focusing on policy statements and the like, could we play a role in bringing and connecting the experiences of individuals and those that are under the radar of large NGO's?

Further comment on the Conference is on the Demos Blog - Wow! Two whole bloggers out of 750 people at the event! What does that say about the conference that was supposedly looking at the future?

Finally, I would like to make a suggestion. Next year we, with our colleagues could host an interesting and challenging session on the role of weblogs and new media in the struggle against extremism.

How about it?

I'm going to do a full report on the conference over the weekend but thought I'd run through some highlights here.

First of all I need to explain some of my frustrations.

1. Semantics. It is important to get the use of words, especially those used to describe violent extremists. However almost every session has included digressions on this - sometimes at great length, and these digressions are often contradictionary. The use of words is important, but is it so important that this conference has to discuss, for example, how to address 'moderate muslims' or 'jihadist', and not the topic of the session on how to counter extremism?

2. The sessions are too similar and too broad. Here is a list of some of the 90 minuite sessions:

a. How good have we been at protecting people, economies and infrastructure from terrorism? Where is the threat going? How do we counter it?

b. How good have we been at countering extremism? How is the threat changing?

See what I mean? how about another couple:

a. Building a new global architecture to counter violent religious extremism and radicalisation.

b. Building a new global architecture to counter terrorism and organised crime.

c. Measures to channel support away from extremist groups.

I attended the session on violent religious extemism and radicalisation. The Russian ambassador gave a speech and recommended firm astion - but didn't explicitly recommend bombing Chechenya to hell and back. A stand-in speaker made the most telling point - that 80% of countering extremism is local. Any strategy, especially one developed by global strategic policymakers needs to remember this.

The second session I went to was the previously mentioned 'Talking to terrorists?' with our little neo-con on the platform.

Claudia Rosett has the air of Wendy Craig in a hefty dose of Prozac and gave us the benefit of her wisdom. As a neo-con, she naturally said we shouldn't talk to terrorists, in fact there were quite a few states neither we or anyone else should be talking to. Naturally she didn't go into who decides which states are pariah's, or which landmass should be sent to Coventry. Bless.

Richard Dalton, a former UK ambassador to Iran and Libya gave a fascinating insight into the arts of negociating with terrorists and advice on when and when not to. He followed this up with a detailed description of the process he used to bring Libya away from pariah status and back into the international community.

Caludia jumped in as soon as he finished with her version of how Gadaffi came in from the cold; "But he's just seen pictures of Saddam being dragged out of a hole and saw himself being in the same position".

Dalton looked around in shock, remembered where he was and concentrated on staring at the ceiling with a pained expression, seeing his long hard work being so glibly cast aside.

Finally I attended a session on the role of the media. This was imaginitively led. Yonah alexander concentrated on media preperations for a future large scale terrorist attack - a concept I had some concerns about as I would rather see chaotic reporting than pre-planned reporting. I was tempted to ask if he thought we should wheel out all those 'Protect and Survive' films.

Bill Silcock from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism gave an interesting talk on journalism and the pressures on stations for ratings etc.

I raised the question of US pre-war Iraq reporting that allowed a propaganda war to go virtually unquestioned and the role of a narrowing band of media owners in countering independent journalism for their own agendas. Finally I mentioned citizen journalism and how that could be a valuble resource in countering extremism.

Bill explained that his students were making and using media in a very different way and that citizen journalism was a major force.

Nevertheless, I have has the feeling that for many of the speakers and participants, they simply don't get bloggers and citizen journalism yet. They are just not aware that we exist, how many of us there are and our potential to support their causes. Perhaps it's a generational thing but we're below everyone's radar here and that is bad for the conference and for the causes they, and we advocate.

The East West Institute is organising a get together for journalists from BBC, SKY, CNN , Al Jazeera and FOX to get together. Shouldn't be too hard as many of them have worked together before - most of al Jazeera came from CNN, BBC and Sky. What would be interesting is to get the people who own these stations together.

The conference has been very good. My comments are meant as constructive criticism of a worthwhile and fascinating conference. I've had a lot of good chats with some fascinating people and we'll have some interesting features coming soon on Blairwatch. It's also important to understand that networking/ free discussion is a big part of the programme and although this doesn't appear in the halls, it allows for excellent interchanges in the corridors and foyers.

I am just about to set off and thought I would give you all a preview.

Last year they invited Claudia Rosett of the 'Foundation for the Defence of Democracies' who gave a frankly batshit off topic rant on how the UN was a major supporter or terrorism and should be disbanded.

Ah, these funky neo-cons. I did say in my write up that the Neo-Cons were part of the problem and not the solution so why are we giving space for their bizarre world view?

EWI didn't reply, but they did airbrush her out of the conference report and I thought they were suitably embarrassed.

But no! She's back - to the surprise of quite a few delegates and EWI staff. Even better, she's on a panel entitled 'Talking to Terrorists?'. Oh boy this is going to be good.

Want to see how nuts she is? Read her blog or an article or two or three,and make your own minds up

Meanwhile here's some background on the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies and on their founding (source American Conservative)

In early 2001, a tightly knit group of billionaire philanthropists conceived of a plan to win American sympathy for Israel’s response to the Palestinian intifada. They believed that the Palestinian cause was finding too much support within crucial segments of the American public, particularly within the media and on college campuses, so they set up an organization, Emet: An Educational Initiative, Inc., to offer Israel the kind of PR that the Israeli government seemed unable to provide itself.

At first, Emet floundered, without an executive director or a well-defined mission. But that changed after Sept. 11, and Emet changed too, into what is now the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The name is different, but the goal of influencing America’s opinion-forming classes remains. More

Alternatively, perhaps they just invited her as a caberet act?

The opening session gave a state of play and also showed some of the problems in counter terrorism. Cemil Cicek, Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey appealed for more cooperation but failed to discuss some of the Turkish army's more contraversial actions against the Kurds, not least shelling Iraqi villages.

General Ehsan ul Haq, former chairman of the Pakistan Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a somber analysis of the success of a military based response to terrorism in Afghanistan, stating that al Qaeda has survived 6 years of military assaults and the difficulties terrorism has caused Pakistan.

Funnily enough he didn't mention Pakistan's building up of the Taliban and support for the training camps etc. He probably ran out of time.

The first session asked how good we have been at protecting against terror, where the threat is going and how to counter it.

Gilles de Kerchove, EU Counter Terrorism Coordinator said there havd been improvements in border security etc and called for more databases of personal details in cluding telecom, ISP records etc and the enhanced sharing of such databases throughout the EU. Possible downsides and impact of civil liberties weren't touched upon.

However he did point out that the current wave of potential terrorists were 'post Iraq, inspired by but not directed by al Qaeda.'

The second session asked how good have we been at countering extremism.

Basically the answer seems to be not very good at all and events like Iraq, Abu Graib have encouraged people to move towards extremist groups. It appears that the next wave of terrorists will be less coordinated, more spontaneous and Iraq, Abu Graib and Gitmo are events that may have tipped large numbers away from mere radicalism and into actual terrorism.

At this point I was tempted to ask why on earth the East West Institute decorated Tony Blair as Statesman of the Decade!

An interesting contribution was made by J Rami Mroz, about how terrorists use the internet. I asked how people could use the internet to counter extremism and how this could widen people's participation. After the chairman's 'pardon, Blair... what?' had elements of Lady windermere. The question was met with the promise of a whizz-bank jolly supper 'platform' they were developing.

I think it still might be a bit 'think-tanky' but there is a potential for widening it past policy wonks and bringing in global bloggers etc and using our networking skills to make this into something interesting and useful. I'll be discussing this more with them after the conference.

The third session was divided and I went to a presentation of a policy paper on the Security of Pakistan's Nuclear Facilities. The paper is short but concise and informative. I'll discuss it later, but if you can't wait grab it here .

The fourth session on measures to channel support away from extremist groups was disappointing, to put it mildly. The panellists were good, including Nasra Hassan from the UN information service and Mohammed mohammed Ali who is involved in reconstruction work in Iraq. I will cover him in more detail later.

Sadly the subject narrowed down to dealing with Arab suicide bombers and the session sufferred greatly for this.

I asked a question, posing a scenario of a town with mixed population and economic depravation, with immigrant communities feeling isolated after the 9/11 backlash and withdrawing into fuzzy froups and extremist preachers appearing. Against this I posited a white population increasingly voting for far-right groups, essentially the scenario unfolding all over europe - the pannelists nodded at this - and then said I am against this divisiveness and growing extremism, not for the 1% who might go on to terrorist acts but because of the effects on the 99%. I have a million dollars, how do I spend it?

No answer.

Sadly  one pannelist seemed obsessed with the micro-semantics of referring to islamic extremists, another on resolving the Palestine problem - as if this would have had any effect on the Shining Path, IRA, Ayran Nations etc.

Blairwatch has been invited to attend the East - West Institite's annual conference on security and countering violent extremism.

To start the conference a number of publications have been released:

Countering Violent Extremism - Videopower and Cyberspace by J Rami Mroz is a well written examination of how extremists use the internet and responses to this.

Although it does provide a good run through of activity and tactics used with case studies of al Qaeda and the US Christian Identity movements use and tactics for internet operations, some aspects worry me.

Firstly it calls on government and civil society to promote peace building and support initiatives to counter extremism. Fine, but do certain governments have any credibility with disaffected youth who may be targeted for recruitment by etremists?

It also looks at MEMRI, and whilst noting that they have a too heavy bias to have any real credibility, suggest that it does offer a model of a media watchdog that could be replicated in more neutral hands.

Finally it asks ISP's to suppress websites that directly promote terrorism but not other expressions of extremist thought.

I think they've missed something - weblogs aren't even mentioned in the pamphlet, and weblogs - or a meta-blog could be a real asset in noting individuals and groups of people involved in building a more peaceful world through conflict resolution and bridge building between communities.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting and thoughtful publication that our readers will find interesting.

Curious how these things work.  In the week the Leader of the Free World threatens us (implicitly) with more 7/7s if we don't follow the lead of the Japanese Empire, the Spanish Inquisition and the Republican Party and sign up to torture, we learn that our Saudi friends were in the habit of threatening the British Prime Minister with 'another 7/7' if we continued with the SFO fraud investigation, leading to the withdrawal of Saudi intelligence co-operation (something jamie is of the opinion would be more a problem for them than us, particularly given that our homegrown bad boys are more likely to come from Rotherham than Riyadh).  As far as I know, the mere victims of 7/7 haven't been asked what they think about being used as an excuse for advocating torture and protecting the corrupt, but Rachel has let us know anyway:

I divine that she's not happy.

Prince Bandar, who amazingly turned up for a private meeting with Tony Blair in London shortly before the SFO dropped the case, is known as 'Bandar Bush' for his close personal friendship with the Decider.  The rest of the story is as inevitable as it is outrageous, but keep an eye on the court case - the judges include Mr. Justice Sullivan, more commonly found acting as Judge Dredd opposite the perpetual perps at the Home Office.

Just a quick update to the previous buggers story - Nick Robinson is claiming that it was Thames Valley Plod, not the Met, who bugged Mr. Khan and Mr. Ahmad.  Probably reasonable given the location of the prison, so apologies to the incompetent murderous mendacious bastards at the Yard.

However, given that it seems to have been initiated by a TVP copper acting on his own initiative, it's quite possible the Met and indeed every other force in the country is happily reaching for the RIPA 2000 and bugging anyone and everyone without bothering to inform a judge or the Cabinet.  This leads to the following bit of speculation:

If you or I went round blabbing details of anti-terror surveillance operations we'd be in Paddington Green trying to remember Gareth Peirce's phone number* before too long.  Doesn't seem to apply to the Sunday Times and the Tories, however, who evidently both received this information, so who leaked it?  Whose noses would be put out of joint by a lot of ordinary coppers getting in on the domestic surveillance game?  Whose paper is the Sunday Times?  Answers on a postcard (left in a dead letter drop in the Brompton Road) and addressed to 'MI5, Thames House, London'.

OK, so what would the spooky calculation be?  Let slip that the fuzz are bugging MPs and suddenly Straw and the boys (and the Tories, hence the leak to them) are put on the back foot, realise what a monster they've created in allowing the police unchecked surveillance powers, put uppity Plod and his Acme Listening Kit back in his box and go running back to the professionals.  Perhaps.  All seems rather neat, really, but there's a plausible case here to say that genuine MI5 anti-terror surveillance operations (which I'm certainly not opposed to, see Shami Chakrabarti's comments) could easily be badly compromised if there's a police operation unknown to them going on.  If that's the case, the leaker's done us all a favour.

The only unanswered question is what on earth TVP thought they'd pick up - Sadiq Khan MP isn't a terrorist, he's Jack Straw's PPS FFS.  I suggest they did it because they could and because there's no accountability *at all*.  Thus are police states run, you don't have to have a reason to be arbitrary.

Talking of which, Olbermann is in fine form (via ChickYog).  There's more from SpyBlog too, and Tony Benn makes the obvious, if paranoid, point that the Wilson Doctrine never meant that much anyway.