Anti-terror

Oh dear! Just a couple of days after airline bigwigs talked sense about the ridiculously OTT airport security along comes manna from heaven for the security industry. Two ink refills were found with explosives in them. What an opportunity for the doom-mongers and vested interests to get their twopennorth into the supine media. First out of the blocks was notorious bully and former Home Secretary John Reid. He used the incident to pooh-pooh the airline chiefs. Well he would wouldn't he, he works for the security industry. 

As Julian Glover reported in yesterdays Guardian, "Jack Straw has given the game away. In the Observer on Sunday, he let slip the secret of the war on terror. "Never, ever, downplay the possible consequences." Ghouls under the bed, germs in the kitchen and al-Qaida's out to get us all: this is alarmist, and the coalition shouldn't fall for it. The telling word in Straw's statement is "possible". 

Any quote from the egregious Straw should be treated with extreme caution. He too is involved in the arms trade.

Glover went on, "There is another danger we need to be aware of too: the symmetry of self-interest between the would-be bombers and the security services assembled to stop them. Both have a tendency to magnify serious but isolated incidents into one great interconnected global battle. The American military likes to describe the arc of terror that supposedly runs from Afghanistan through Pakistan into Yemen and down through Somalia. The British security services warn us, as Sir John Sawers did in a generally wise speech last week, about "the plotting of terrorists who are bent on maiming and murdering people in this country".

These people aren't making it up. But they are part of a mentality that encourages us to believe there really is a clash of civilisations under way and that if we don't give them the tools to destroy the other side first, they will destroy us."

Years ago, a retiring President Eisenhower warned that the greatest danger facing the world was the arms-industrial complex. And so it came to pass in the Cold War. 

How convenient for the Soviet Bloc to be replaced by terrorism.

Jobsworths and pompous little prats at airports and in local authorities across the country have relished (and abused) the authority given to them by Parliament. MPs alarmed by the consequences of their disastrous Iraq War vote reacted to the warnings of the security services with alacrity. The self-same security services who assured us and them that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction…..

Many MPs were incapable of comprehending that to bring in all these security measures reinforced the terrorists and accorded them a power they do not merit. Handing over long-held freedoms is not the way to win the absurd 'war on terror.' Last week it was reported that the Police used anti-terror laws to stop and search over a thousand black and asian men without there being one follow up charge.  

The LibDems and the Tories said they would repeal and revoke the many anti-civil liberty orders pushed through by the last government and declared as such in their Coalition Agreement document.   Andrew Rawnsley said in his article in the Observer that the siren songs of the security services were weaving their spell over the Coalition. He concluded, "if they cannot hold true to their pledges on such fundamentals as justice and human rights, it will be hard to resist the conclusion that they can’t be trusted with anything".