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August 9, 2006
Be afraid
Be afraid, be very afraid. A classic quote from David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. And with MI5 spending record amounts on anti-terrorism, that would appear to be exactly what the Government wants us to be.
The Times - MI5 diverts record amount of budget to fight terrorism
To cope with the terrorist threat, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the Director-General of MI5, has now switched another £16 million of her annual budget of £200 million towards fighting international terrorism. A record 87 per cent of the MI5 budget is now spent on counter-terrorism.
So we're now spending somewhere in the region of £174 million a year fighting terrorism in this country.
The thirteen foiled suspected international terrorist plots include one in November 2000, four in 2003, two in 2004, four in 2005 and two this year. The suspected plots this year do not include the police raid in Forest Gate, East London, conducted on June 2 after an intelligence tip-off raised fears that there was a chemical device in a house. Nothing was found.
The suspected plots also do not include a mass of overheard and uncovered conspiracies still in full flow with which the security services are trying to keep pace as more intelligence is gleaned daily.
Notice how things escalated after we commited ourselves to standing shoulder to shoulder with the US on Iraq and the War on Terror? It just goes to illustrate the dishonesty behind Blair's claims that our involvement in Iraq had done nothing to increase our exposure to terrorist attack.
Referring back to the aforementioned film, the original tag line could apply to John Reid; Half man, half insect ... total terror!;
The Guardian - Britain facing 'most sustained threat since WWII', says Reid
In a speech to Demos, a London thinktank, the hyperactive home secretary - who will mark 100 days in the job this Friday - confirmed that a terrorist attack on the UK was "highly likely", as signalled by the current "severe" warning on official government websites.
He also called for a "Darwinian" approach to the legal system, saying that it must be "responsive to change" in order to protect the nation against terrorism.
Now I hate it when politicians use the term Darwinian to describe their approach to policy making. Because instead of evolutionary, what they are really describing is a suck-it-and-see approach to matters. Now what Reid proposes as a constructive way forward is less of a policy and more a spasm, an uncontrollable jerking abour guaranteed to do more harm than good, and with any benefits that may result being more by luck than anything else.
He complained that as home secretary he was "in a very difficult position", unable to always prosecute individuals due to the difficulty of obtaining "sufficiently cogent admissible evidence for a criminal trial", while facing legal bars against deporting or detaining them.
And such marvellous doublespeak, giving the impression that the problem is not with inadequate evidence, but rather with the law placing an unreasonable burden of proof upon the state. Yet these are laws that New Labour placed on the Statute, including too many pieces of anti-terror legislation to mention. All the same, Reid is saying, it's not our fault that we can do nothing with these obviously guilty people. So what does he propose?
"Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms."
Short term presumably being for the duration of the War on Terror. But given how sluggish performance has been so far in Afghanistan, Iraq and - for the Israelis - in Lebanon, short term could be a very long time indeed. And again we have the doublespeak - "..modify some of our own freedoms..." - the reality being closer to sacrifice than adjustment.
And the piece-de-resistance?
Mr Reid also pointed out that European-wide human rights - such as freedom from detention, forced labour, torture and punishment without trial - had been formulated in the wake of state fascism, but were now threatened by what he dubbed "fascist individuals".
There you have it. The solution to the threat from "fascist individuals" is to effectively reintroduce state fascism, the very evil which human rights legislation was supposed to protect us against. Marcus Aurelius said that "The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.", something our leaders would do well to consider as they take us inexorably down the path to oppression, becoming that which they claim to be struggling against.
And it is incumbent upon us, as civilised individuals to do all we can to oppose the few who would lead us down this path and the more numerous who condone such a course of action.
The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all. - Tacitus
Posted by Clive on August 9, 2006 9:14 PM in the category Terror