War on Terror

It isn’t terrorism if you’re white, part XXXVIII

UK politics, War on Terror
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Last Wednesday I blogged the case of the socalled lyrical terrorist, who had her conviction for “storing material likely to be of use to terrorists” quashed; the material in question being some fairly ropey, anarchist cookbook style “terrorism manuals”. It was another in a long line of dodgy anti-terrorism prosecutions, with lots of media attention and lots of government hype, not justified by the endresults. Every so often another supposed terrorism plot is uncovered, a serious threat averted and it always turn out to be either be no-hoper wannabe-jihadists with no links to real terrorists, mentally disturbed fantasists or just innocent people looking a little bit too Muslim for the Metropolitian Police.

If the suspects are white however, it’s another matter. Remember the terrorism case in Burnley two years ago? Probably not, as apart from some mentions in the local paper, few newspapers or news shows deigned to pay attention to it, despite the fact that the people involved had massed a huge arsenal of weapons and such and were talking about the coming racewar. Unlike the heavy-handed prosecution of Muslim terrorism suspects, the government kept quiet about this case, didn’t whip the tabloids in a feeding frenzy and let the courts do their job. Last Friday, there was another such case, as a Goole Nazi sympathiser went on trial for making nail bombs, amongst other offences:

A Nazi sympathiser charged with terrorism offences after nail bombs were found at his East Yorkshire home has told a court that he made the devices when he was “just sat around bored”.

A jury at Leeds Crown Court heard how police found four home-made nail bombs in a holdall under a bed in 31-year-old Martyn Gilleard’s flat in Goole.

Officers also found “potentially lethal” bladed weapons, 34 bullets for a 2.2 calibre firearm and documents about committing terrorism, including how to make a bomb and how to poison someone to death.

Again, little attention has been paid to this trial, a Google news search finding less than twenty news articles on the subject, but you can imagine the hue and cry had this been a Muslim suspect. It’s not that I want the same hysteria for this case, it’s just that it’s so blatantly obvious how the British government atttempts to create a narrative about terrorism, by spotlighting those cases, no matter how weak, that fit the War on Terror and keeping quiet about those that do not. It’s easy enough to get the media to cooperate on this, as journalists, not to mention their editors, are lazy and under constant deadline pressure; few go out looking for stories that don’t fit pre-determined templates.

The voice of the soft Labour left

Civil liberties, Nu Labour, War on Terror
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Reading David Osler’s blog is always interesting, because he always manages to capture the views of the soft, making excuses for New Labour left, like Polly Toynbee with better writing skills and slightly more self knowledge. A good example is his commentary on l’affaire David Davis. For those who didn’t pay attention last week, shadow home secretary David Davis resigned his seat in parliament to force a by-election after the government won the vote on extending the time terrorism subjects could be held without charge from 28 to 42 days. According to Davis (and I would agree with him) “42 days is just one – perhaps the most salient example – of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms.”

So how did Osler respond to this? By portraying it as an opportunistic stunt of course, sounding little different from Harriet Harman:

Part of me almost admires the gesture he is making. In so far as it will keep up the pressure on the government to rescind the disgraceful legislation that the Commons carried last night, I’d even go as far as to call it a good thing. But a gesture it remains, and a deeply opportunistic one at that.

Myself, I’m with Blood and Treasure:

It seems to me that the choice available over this is to outsmart yourself by trying to uncover the “real reasons” behind his resignation or take him at his word and push the issue. And whatever else Davis might have in mind, and whatever you think of his framing it as “fundamental British freedom” this is the issue.

That seems to me to be a much more productive attitude to take than jeering about how opportunistic Davis is, or how much of a rightwinger. But that’s the soft left for you. A guy like Osler always ends up making excuses for Labour, letting tribal loyalty overrule his disgust of the party’s policies by arguing that the Tories would be worse, even if it’s getting harder and harder to do so with a straight face. That’s why he has to rubbish Davis.

Frank Fields: a noxious kind of stupid

Autoritarianism, Numpties, War on Terror
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The Week in Westminster, BBC Radio 4’s Saturday look back at what happened in politics this week is on right now and the subject at hand is Gordon Brown’s plan to extend the period a terror suspect can be held without charge. Member of Parliament Frank Fields is asked to comment and he made the following comparison, allegedly something a constitutent said to him, whose husband lost his legs in one of the London bombings. Nobody or nothing can give this man his legs back, but somebody who has spent time in prison as a wrongly accused suspect can be adequately compensated for this, so therefore extending the period somebody can be jailed without trial as a terror suspect is not a big deal.

Even when taking this argument at face value, there’s a huge flaw. The idea is that you can compensate for time spent in jail, but compensation cannot bring back legs lost in a terror bombing. However, no compensation will bring back the time spent in jail while innocent either, nor the accompanying lost of reputation.

Apart from that, Field’s whole atrgument is nothing more than hiding behind the righteous halo of innocent victimhood; he’s taking his constituent’s torn off legs and appropriating them for himself, in order to push through his agenda of extending the period you can be held as a terror suspect, without being charged. The one has nothing to do with the other. Locking up innocent people without charge will not prevent equally innocent people from losing their legs in terrorist bombings and guilty people can be charged. The only thing this extension will do is make for even more lazy police work, as they can just throw everybody who looks suspicious in jail and only then start looking for evidence.

Frank Field’s whole argument is based on a noxious kind of stupidity, one that wants us to believe that the price of combatting terrorism is that sometimes the wrong people will be locked up without a charge, that if we want no more legs blown off we cannotafford to be precious about civil liberties. It’s noxious, because so many people want us to believe it. It’s stupid because it’s just is not true.

Our Orwellian world

Autoritarianism, Civil liberties, Law in action, Policing, Security theatre, War on Terror
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Item one: a man is jailed for three-and-a-half years for carrying a blueprint of a rocket through Luton Airport:

British man who was found with blueprints for a rocket in his luggage at Luton Airport has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Yassin Nassari, 28, from Ealing, west London, was earlier found guilty at the Old Bailey of possessing documents likely to be useful to a terrorist.

[…]

Sentencing him, Judge Gerald Gordon said: “I have come to the conclusion that, sadly, like a number of young Muslims, you have somehow been indoctrinated into beliefs supporting terrorism by others.

“I have no doubt you wanted to immerse yourself in this fundamentalist trash, but in the material available to me there is nothing to indicate that any actual terrorist use would have been made of it by anyone.”

Nassari’s hard drive contained documents about martyrdom and weapons training, as well as instructions on how to construct the Qassam artillery rocket – a home-made steel rocket used by terrorist groups in the Middle-East.

So even though there was no evidence that this guy was involved with any terrorist organisation or intended to perform any terrorist acts himself, the mere fact of possessing documents that are a bit dodgy landed him in jail. Really, you don’t need to be an evil terrorist to be interested in the sort of material described in the last quoted paragraph; who hasn’t downloaded The Anarchist Cookbook at one point or another out of curiosity? There are plenty of people interested in weapons, guns, warfare etc. who aren’t terrorists or even terrorist sympathisers; remember Gareth the T.A. nerd from the Office?

Item two: The Metropolitian Police is given real-time access to London’s congestion charge cameras:

Police are to be given live access to London’s congestion charge cameras – allowing them to track all vehicles entering and leaving the zone.

Anti-terror officers will be exempted from parts of the Data Protection Act to allow them to see the date, time and location of vehicles in real time.

They previously had to apply for access on a case-by-case basis.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith blamed the “enduring vehicle-borne terrorist threat to London” for the change.

The thing is, a) the only true “vehicle-borne terrorist threat to London” was organised by the Keystone Cops branch of Al Queda, b) you cannot tell from the outside if a car is a terrorist car c) if you know enough to know which car to track, you also could’ve gotten permission to do so anyway under the old rules. In his science fiction thriller Whole Wide World Paul J. McAuley predicted that ultimately, all of the UK’s CCTV cameras would be linked up into one giant network, controlled by police computers; this seems like a step in that direction. The Met says this capacity will only be used to fight terrorist activity, but once a capability is there, other uses will be found for it, as the internet itself has shown us.

Item three: The association of Chief Police Officers wants unlimited detention without charge, again for the noble cause of fighting terrorism. And again the question crops up, what is the purpose of locking people up if you don’t have the evidence to charge them, let alone convict them?

Item four: the Dutch police can now keep records of anybody who interacts with them — detainees, suspects, victims, witnesses, literally anybody– for up to five years (Dutch). In the first year, any police officer can look into these records, afterwards it’s only accesible to those who have “a good reason” to do so. But that’s not all, as it’s not just the police who can view these records, but also other parties with a vested interest: social workers, housing societies, even shopowners. All in the name of fighting crime.

The menace of Islamic terrorism

War on Terror
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Don’t believe the hype. Reading the recent Europol report (PDF) on terrorism within Europe in 2006 it’s easy to see socalled Islamic terrorism is as much hype as reality:

Altogether 498 attacks were carried out in the EU in 2006.The vast majority of them resulted in
limited material damage and were not intended to kill. However, the failed attack in Germany and the foiled London plot demonstrate that Islamist terrorists also aim at mass casualties.

A total of 706 individuals suspected of terrorism offences were arrested in 15 Member States in
2006. Investigations into Islamist terrorism are clearly a priority for Member States’ law enforcement as demonstrated by the number of arrested suspects reported by Member States.

[…]

Along with the failed terrorist attack that took place in Germany, Denmark and the UK each
reported one attempted terrorist attack in 2006. No further information on prevented or
disrupted Islamist terrorist attacks was made available by the Member States’ law enforcement
authorities.

The London airplane plot and the trolley bomb case of Germany targeted civilians and transportation infrastructure in Member States. The radicalisation process of the suspects in these cases is reported to have been rapid.

The weapon of choice of Islamist terrorists are Improvised Explosive Devices made with homemade explosives. The cases reported by the UK and Denmark involved the use of Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP), a highly volatile explosive the use of which requires a certain degree of
expertise.

Half of all the terrorism arrests were related to Islamist terrorism. France, Spain, Italy and the
Netherlands had the highest number of arrests of Islamist terrorist suspects. The majority of the
arrested suspects were born in Algeria,Morocco and Tunisia and had loose affiliations to North
African terrorist groups, such as the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group and the Salafist Group
for Preaching and Combat.

Yet as the report says, Islamic terrorism is much more of a priority for various countries’ security establishments than more frequent, more mundane threats are. That’s because Islamic terrorism is sexy, is the kind of menace that gets the purse strings opens, that frightens people and hence is politically useful. Focus the population on a swarthy horde of evildoers menacing it both abroad and at home and it will pay less attention to what you are doing… As always, the security state needs its enemies to justify its existence.

As Palau said, over at the other blog: “the facts are being fixed around the policy. While our leaders ramp up the paranoia and suspicion of the Moslems in our midst and present the available data to make it appear our biggest threat is from ‘outsiders’ (thus validating the ‘war on terror’ propaganda and rhetoric we’ve been subjected to since 2001) quietly the wannabe stormtroopers on the inside are regrouping.”