I was awoken just before 8am this morning by LBC asking me to contribute to the Nick Ferrari show. I had time to brush my teeth and then I was on. I greatly dislike these formats that give you a minute to express a view, and I frequently turn down LBC requests. However they generally contact you the night before, and the poor researcher sounded desparate to find anyone who would defend the release of Ibn Qatada.
I made a couple of points. A Tory MP whose name I did not catch referred as always to unelected judges in Strasbourg. This is a standard Tory catchphrase and rather ignores the fact that all our judges are unelected. But I also pointed out that Qatada has not been convicted of anything in this country and that if, as Nick Ferrari was claiming, he had been calling in this country for the killing of Jews, that would be an offence for which he could rightly be tried and jailed. Because the tabloids say something doesn’t make it true. In the six years he had been held in jail, the state had found no evidence against him that would stand the scrutiny of a court.
The Tory MEP (whose name I did not catch) then interjected that our anti-terrorism laws were not that strong, because there had not been a single conviction for terrorism last year. I did not have a chance to return, but that seemed to me to reveal the very heart of the problem. For those in power terrorism must exist. It is a justification of much of their power and a great deal of state apparatus, not to mention a great deal of private profit. If nobody is being convicted, it is not because there is no terrorism – despite the fact that, plainly, there isn’t, nobody has been killed by a terrorist in mainland UK for seven years – it is a sign that the system is not working.
Now if nobody had been convicted for burglary last year, I would worry. There are lots of burglaries. But that nobody has been convicted for a crime that did not happen, seems to me a good thing. What is deeply, deeply worrying is that we have politicians who think there should be a regular flow of convictions for terrorism, whether there is any terrorism or not.
On which subject, I am troubled by the current large terrorism trial in Woolwich. The defendants entered a plea of guilty after being told that they would then face a maximum fifteen year jail sentence, and would probably serve just another six. If they pleaded not guilty and lost, they could serve twenty five years.
Forget that the charge is terrorism – I deeply resent the effective introduction of plea-bargaining into our justice system, with the obvious danger that innocent people will take the less risky course. For what it is worth, my impression from the evidence in this case is that these were fantasisers about terrorism who were unlikely actually to become dangerous, but were rightly pulled up. It is very wrong that they were dissuaded from having the evidence against them tested by a jury. There is a particular danger that more detached individuals were induced by group psychology or pressure to join the others in this guilty plea, but may have been cleared.
I heard someone on the radio – I fear it was a government spokesman but I caught only the end of the broadcast – complaining that unelected judges ought not to interfere with and undermine the authority of the state. That really alarmed me – how have we reached a point where someone can proclaim that the state should be above the law and make such a pronouncement unchallenged?
*applause*
There’s another issue in here, though. Active dissent is now considered extremisim by definition.
Peaceful protesters, the Occupy guys, environmental and sustainability activists and bloggers like the editors over at Police State UK are now officially defined as ‘domestic extremists’, and grouped alongside international terrorist threats in Met Police memos on Olympic security. The definition of ‘terrorist’ has been deliberately made very porous, and I suspect the Tory MEP is objecting to the fact that none of this horde of terrorists he’s hearing about (i.e. the very real numbers of ‘domestic extremists’, i.e. political dissenters) are actually being locked up. After all, they’re domestic extremists, right? Clearly, they should be being arrested for terrorism. Right? Right?
Give it two years, and a sufficient shift in the public discourse may well have occured to allow precisely that outcome.
‘The Tory MEP (whose name I did not catch) then interjected that our anti-terrorism laws were not that strong, because there had not been a single conviction for terrorism last year. I did not have a chance to return, but that seemed to me to reveal the very heart of the problem. For those in power terrorism must exist.’
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The problem I see is that evidence should make convictions, not laws. Any law that lowers the threshold of evidence to get convictions…strong is not the word I’d use for it.
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Nice piece about Syria by the way – w
Look at this from the very start of the BBC report:
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“A group of men decided against becoming suicide bombers because they wanted a “long-term future” as terrorists, a court has been told.”
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It is constantly implied that the most deadly danger we face is from suicide attacks. Except when it isn’t, and then there’s the danger of “long term” terrorism. So each is more deadly than the other. Brilliant.
Terrorists are so vital to the fake threat to modern Western civilization, which enables corporate fascism and militarism to flourish, that when they don’t exist they have to be invented. Dig behind any major modern terrorist organisations and invariably they are run by the same state actors who claim to be fighting them.
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It a fact that Martin McGuinuess worked for MI5/MI6 and and that Gerry Adams is deeply suspect due to his constant promoting within the IRA of known informants. Most will not accept that the IRA was run by the British and may experience cognitive dissonance, they may even rationalise it by saying it was just some rogue elements in the security services. The trouble is these ‘rouge elements’ have been running Western foreign policy for the best part of 60 years.
I am sure all the comments in the link below will be of great interest to readers of this blog, the last comment in the link caught my eye.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/feb2012/corr-f04.shtml
The propaganda from the BBC against terrorism is constant. Here is Frank Gardiner on the ‘lone wolf’ threat.
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7 February 2012
‘Lone wolf’ terror threat warning
Budget cuts are likely to extend to counter-terrorism operations, the think tank warns .
Related Stories
MPs fear far-right terror threat
Met terror role should end – MPs
UK’s terror threat level reduced
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The UK could face a growing threat from “lone wolf” terrorists returning from fighting overseas in the next few years, a think tank has warned.
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The Royal United Services Institute estimates about 50 Britons are fighting with Somali extremists Al Shabaab.
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They and others returning from conflict in Yemen and Nigeria could use their experience on UK streets, RUSI said.
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The Home Office said its security arrangements would reflect “the nature of the terrorist threat we face”.
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It is also feared that the return of Britons from overseas could coincide with the release of people convicted of terrorist charges over the last decade.
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BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the think tank is warning of “a perfect storm of combined threats coming together in the near future”.
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The UK terror threat level was reduced from “severe” to “substantial” in July last year, but RUSI warned that the threat from jihadist terrorism had not diminished.
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/…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16920643
This same video was shown last night on the BBC News. Today it has a different commentary from Abu Abdou. Dated today 11.12.
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‘Buildings shaking’ as Homs attack continues
7 February 2012 Last updated at 11:12
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The city of Homs is once again coming under heavy attack from Syrian forces, who have been pounding the rebel stronghold for days.
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Speaking to the BBC, resident Abu Abdou, said many buildings were shaking from the force of the bombings.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16927023
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‘Pounding’ is one of the BBC’s favourite words. You can often hear it used in news bulletins and in the weather forecasts!
[NB When I posted this a couple of hours ago it was instantly (ie sans moderation) rejected a Spam. What did I do wrong?]
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An excellent post (and a good comment by Willyrobinson). The last thing anyone needs are elected judges (one might as well have elected referees and umpires for sports). We also need to have decent evidence to support extradition; and that only when the indicted crime is one that exists in the UK; and that the UK is not an appropriate place for a trial because key witnesses would be unable to present their evidence to a UK court.
Most of the terrorism lobby is rooted in vested interests. But a considerable contributor to irrational policies is the systematic ways in which instead of educating the public about risk, most of the media exploit the natural human tendency to place greater emphasis on risks for which we are not individually responsible than on those for which we do see a link with our own actions: as, for example, when we smoke, engage in risky sports or have a diet that causes high blood pressure.
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There is however a classic counter-intuitive counter example – that we have a greater chance of being hit by an asteroid than of winning the National Lottery. The reason of course is that for such impersonal risks (including terrorism) we envisage ourselves as the victim who needs protecting rather than appreciating that in the case of an asteroid the chances of death are so much less because of the numbers who would die; while in the case of Lottery tickets, we often have a superstitious belief that we can “choose” lucky numbers.
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In any case, the root cause of most terrorism is generally bad policies rather than bad people. And even with people who are so deranged or deficient in human empathy that they are ready to mow down a group of schoolchildren and their teachers, contributory factors are probably poorly monitored gun laws and how the media make school massacres appear an easy way to be sure that the atrocity hits the headlines.
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Ministers would give up a lot of their personal security if they had to pay ten percent of the cost themselves. Elective politics is a relatively high-risk sport that no-one is obliged to take part in. My own experience of terrorist risks is that when I was a First Secretary in the UK Embassy in Dublin in the immediate aftermath of the Bobby Sands inspired hunger strikes, I was the most senior member of the embassy not to have a bullet-proof car. When I did have such a car – when deputising for a senior colleague – I ran a far greater risk of death or injury because the weight of a bullet-proof car and the distortions of the thick glass combine to make the vehicle far harder to drive safely. Several times I nearly ran up the rear of the car in front, skidding as I did so.
So here’s another from Mary’s link very similar to the one I mentioned above:
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“The UK terror threat level was reduced from “severe” to “substantial” in July last year, but RUSI warned that the threat from jihadist terrorism had not diminished.”
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So the threat level can rise, but when it falls, it doesn’t really fall. I think we call this “ratcheting up”.
Iain Orr, I’ve had a look for that comment but can’t find any sign of it. Sorry. Things are a bit quirky here sometimes.
Clark refers to RUSI.
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I have posted this link before. It is the Advisory Council of RUSI where you will see the usual suspects including Norton Taylor of the Guardian and the Duke of Westminster.
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The David Abrahams listed is the Labour party donor who used other people’s names to hide his identity. He actually has a RUSI link on his website. He writes, ‘As a Jew I am strongly affiliated to Israel.’ He calls himself the vice President of RUSI!!
{http://davidmartinabrahams.co.uk/home/doc.aspx?mCatID=88}
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http://www.rusi.org/about/council/
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The Board {http://www.rusi.org/publications/journal/info/ref:I44CF71AF4AEEE/}
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I see that they have an address in Doha.
Kathz, they all seem to think they can do what they like. Politicians don’t like the judiciary interfering. G’OD wants to cut the FoI’s bollox and judges, this establishment clique only accountable to their own navelfluff, see nothing of making an example of people.
A long standing campaigner for the legalisation of cannabis, Winston mathews, was jailed by Judge Mathews in Horley for 16 month for growing his own at home, within his own private sphere and only for himself. He is in constant backpain from an accident years ago and walks with a stick. The police harrassed the man six times, smashing his door in, and every time he told them that he would carry on self medicating, still they wasted our time and money narresting this sick man. Now they jailed him.
Those of you who feel that the misuse of drugs act is pants and want to support his case, please visit http://www.facebook.com/groups/327222800656077/
Forgive for diverting the thread, Craig, this callous terrorising of a small margin of society is part of the equation, we should do better in the 21st century.
I hate to add to all the gloom, but I think this is heading for the uk very soon (if its not already here)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29121
‘the very heart of the problem. For those in power terrorism must exist. It is a justification of much of their power …’. Let’s turn this around. For those that hate power, for those that must see power as root cause of all their problems, for it is easier sometimes, terrorism must not exist, and power must be making it all up.
Hi Lloyd. Is it your position that the law has been insufficiently applied to Ibn Qatada, or that further new laws are required to deal with potential terrorists? Should there be a special process (maybe with a lower standard of proof) for terrorism charges, in your view?
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That (a) there is a great deal of political capital to be made from a deportation or conviction, together with (b) the fact that this chap hasn’t been found guilty of anything in six years, in my view speaks volumes.
In answer to the question you posed, ‘power’ could well be making things up. I should think it is naive to think it never does! Do we *hate* power on this blog? Well, I certainly distrust it, and I think it is a healthy position for everyone to view power with suspicion. ‘Power corrupts’ seems to hold true everywhere, except where it is held strongly to account.
Does anybody know how many of those detained and arrested for ‘Islamic’ terrorism actually go before a judge and are convicted of the said offence? I suspect that the percentage is miniscule.
Of course, ‘Christian’ right-wing terrorists like the nail bomber, Copeland and others are rarely, if ever, labelled as such.
“I deeply resent the effective introduction of plea-bargaining into our justice system, with the obvious danger that innocent people will take the less risky course.”
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A disturbing reality of US influence and a severe weakening of British justice, already compromised by a lack of so called ‘Secret evidence’ routinely used to claim public interest immunity at preparatory hearings.
Lloyd. If you’re going to ‘turn something around’, try and do it faithfully.
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Where you’ve gone wrong is when Craig says ‘terrorism must exist’, he is not disputing that it *does* exist.
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It’s about 1) what quantification of the terrorist threat is postulated by the state, ie: fear-mongering (as Clark points out, a simple tactic that is logically inconsistent)
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2) when domestic terrorism arrests occur, how many of them are a result of a) honey traps (the FBI’s magnificent 100% record of busting terror cases its plants help assemble) and b) as in the Qatada case, arresting somebody, and then declaring him to be somehow too dangerous to release, but somehow not capable of being charged and standing trial for anything.
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3) the equation of people fighting an illegal occupation with being terrorists/insurgents. As the leaked report on Afghanistan even acknowledged, the Afghans don’t want *any* foreign presence there, ‘whether from Karachi, Cairo, or Kansas’ – however, the terrorism label must keep being applied to skew what little debate there is.
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You sound like you’re trying, with limited capacity, to dig up Nietzche’s notion of ressentiment – a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one’s frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the “cause” generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one’s frustration. The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability.”
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Your point doesn’t really compute, but perhaps you’ll figure it out yourself.
‘the very heart of the problem. For those in power terrorism must exist. It is a justification of much of their power …’. Let’s turn this around. For those that hate power, for those that must see power as root cause of all their problems, for it is easier sometimes, terrorism must not exist, and power must be making it all up.”
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Why not turn it around again and say power is terrorism then?
” For those in power terrorism must exist. It is a justification of much of their power and a great deal of state apparatus,”
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As we Yanks say; BINGO !
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” I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want everyone to remember *why* they need us! ”
Adam Sutler (V for Vendetta)
Noting the “hastily” drawn up laws concerning the terrorist offences in UK, and elsewhere, that in effect are by and large designed to counter any kind of political expressions rooted in political Islam. This repression can only be attained through classification of these expressions as “terrorist activities”/”terrorism”.
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The fact that the controlled media along with their masters the political classes have come to reinvent terrorism that used to refer to a tactic, as to denote an ideology ie terrorism has become to be an end in itself, and associated with Muslims, and not a means. The same dynamics can also explain the blurring of the concept of separation of powers, ie; legislative, judiciary, and executive, which evidently is not understood even by those practitioners involved, as reflected in their remarks; “unelected judges, …..”, or “unelected Euro/bureaucrats ….”. Although this tactic is a kind of honest gov. its not me its the boss lines of an argument/defence, however clearly shows the paucity of the levels of civic literacy of the constituents involved, that is not a healthy sign in any so called democracy.
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Finally recalling “operation Gladio” and its links to various terrorist attacks/activities/cells in various parts of Europe, we can compare and contrast the current state of affairs in UK with the said “operation Gladio”, and draw our own conclusions. However, given that six years in any concentration camp that ends in deportations of the inmates to hostile destinations is not a sign of a healthy jurisprudence either, and it smacks of rushing to bury the inmate/mistake is in fact telling of unhinged and dislocated justice that is elected in haste, and in-spite of the need for accountability of the executive branch for holding the inmate for such a long time incarcerated, without so much as obtaining a conviction for writing graffiti and or section five of the criminal justice act.
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The grandiose notions of democracy, somehow ring hollow once faced with the scurrilous attempts in deflection of responsibility, that ultimately culminate in unaccountable conduct of the political operatives, these are further helped by the unstinting efforts of controlled/embed media.
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The extent of the cover up and misdirection/disinformation in the controlled media can be discerned from the references to Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, not once is he referred to as a “terrorist” (only Muslims are terrorists), instead he is labeled as; killer, gunman, crazed gunman, etc. this kind of blanket effort gives rise to the question will we witness in the WWII movie genre the excision of scenes of brave British Tommies strapping anti tank mines and crawling under the German Panzer to blow these up? In case the cultivated image of “suicide bombers” takes a confusing turn?
I may be wrong but think not – my understanding is that “plea bargaining” has been relatively quietly going on for donkeys years.
The Tory MP’s comment about “unelected judges” seems to indicate some form of American influence on the framing of the talking points. In the U.S., judges are most definitely elected.
And have election campaigns.
It is a very odd system we have here, in the U.S.
The pressure on Assad is being increased.
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Syria crisis: Gulf Arab states expel Syrian ambassadors
BBC’s Paul Wood, in Homs, says Russian-made tanks are firing on residents
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Continue reading the main story
Syria Crisis
Under fire in Homs
Diplomacy strain
Plan in tatters
Homs: ‘Capital of revolution’
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Gulf Arab states say they are expelling Syrian ambassadors in their countries and recalling their envoys from Syria.
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The Gulf Cooperation Council said Syria had rejected Arab attempts to solve the crisis and end 11 months of bloodshed.
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The US closed its embassy in Syria on Monday, and several European countries have recalled their ambassadors.
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The moves came as Syrian government forces continued their fierce assault on the restive city of Homs, and Russian officials visited Damascus.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16932556
what many uneducated Tory’s don’t seem to realise is that most of the legislation now underlining the EU was written and statuted by British Judges.
To terrorise means to rely on inhumane and ilegal practises, whether it is state or undertaken by other groups. Terror can thrive in any society were there is an underclass, inequality, or cohersion.
If torture is used to perpetuate the state of terror for the sake of power, an illegal means, then that is self defeating. Using state terror to further one’s aims when one has signed up to Human rights legislation, effectively placating one’s own societal rights to suit the situation then this will diminish our own human rights situation in society, as nobody will believe in what we have signed up to, on follows a deteriorating situation.
Ingo
Actually most international human rights law was written by the Brits. And the President of the ECHR is British. A self-hating Brit according to the Tories, no doubt!
Just political theatre.
Meanwhile, real bombs are found or explode on the streets in Northern Ireland.
Brevik is judged clinically insane by psychologists for his murderous rampage which killed 78 or 83 so what does that make Blair Straw Hoon Cooper Powell Goldsmith etc: for starving and slaughtering 3 million Iraqis? I almost forgot the usual sick assasins but as it is clear they are all genocidal pschopaths in Washington I took that as a given.3 cheers to the Russians and Chinese for giving the M.I.A.finger at the UN over Syria..
Those who deal in terror should avoid opening mouths with bloody boots in or some such….