I’m kidding, right? Wrong…

…because that would be the effect of introducing a new criminal offence of providing or receiving terrorist training, which the Beeb suggests is being considered by the government.

Let’s just take a brief look at few excerpts from the CIA’s ‘rap sheet’ when it comes supporting terrorism, insurgency, military coups and, of course, propping up right-wing dictators around the world.

Iran (1953) - Orchestrated the overthrow of democratically elected Mossadegh and restored the Shah to power.

Guatemala (1954) - Supported a military coup which overthrew the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz Guzman and placed Colonel Armas in power.

Cuba (1961) - Directed the Bay of Pigs invasions but failed to overthrow the Castro government.

Indonesia (1965-67) - Implicated in events leading to the installation of Suharto as President.

Chile (1973) - Orchestrated a coup, killing President Allende who had been popularly elected. Helped to establish a military regime under General Pinochet.

Angola (1976-92) - Backed South African rebels fighting against Marxist Angola.

Afghanistan (1979-1988) - Supported/trained Afghan Mujahideen - amongst the groups who received training were the Taliban and Al-Qaeda

El Salvador (1981-92) - The CIA plus US troops and advisers aid in El Salvador’s war against the FMLN.

During this period the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador published a 165-page report on the Mariona men’s prison which documented the routine use of at least 40 kinds of torture on political prisoners, and that U.S. servicemen often acted as supervisors.

Nicaragua (1981-90) - The CIA and NSC directed the Contra War against the Sandinistas.

The fact is that when it comes to training terrorists and insurgents, the US, and particularly the CIA, has a track record second to none.

Luckily for our allies from across the pond, this new legislation would no include retrospective powers, so any CIA operatives and US ’spacial advisors’ who were involved is, say, the training of Al-Qaeda members in insurgency techniques back in the 1980’s will be completely in the clear.

‘In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.’
Albert Camus

No prizes for guessing the hot topic of the week – yeah, terrorism.

And if ever you needed proof of the adage that ‘opinions are like assholes – everyone’s got one’* you need look no further than the blogosphere over the last week.

*Note – a quick google shows the line ‘opinions are like assholes…’ has been attributed to a variety of sources, from Art Blakey, through golfer Arnold Palmer to Clint Eastwood [in ‘Dirty Harry’] which suggests that its likely to be one of those ‘folk’ sayings best attributed to Anon.

So much has been written on the subject over the last week that its difficult not to find yourself going over ground that’s already been well an truly raked over by everyone else. There have been a few ’stand out’ pieces of commentary which I’ll link to at the end of this piece but otherwise the general tone has been very much along the lines of:

‘What about those bombings in London… [insert your per theory here]’

I suppose, on a human level, this is entirely understandable. Natural even. When faced with atrocity, whether its a terrorist attack or something slightly more prosaic like a particularly heinous murder, its only natural that people will cast around trying to make sense of things, trying to find an explanation which fits with their personal weltanschauug – the very idea that there may not be a rational explanation being too nihilistic for most people’s comfort, making the search for meaning a necessity.

The search for meaning is, however, not necessarily a search for understanding of what may motivated four young British Muslims to carry out a suicide attack on London but a means of differentiation. People look for meaning in atrocity only inasmuch as any meaning that they may be able to identify enables them to eject the act, its perpetrators and their motives from their own world view, a way to place such events into the context of ‘us and not-us’. On a psychological and sociological level the question of ‘how could this happen?’ is far less important that the question of ‘how are those responsible different from us?’ - to fail to address the latter question being a source of deep discomfort as it forces us to confront out own capacity for atrocity rather than place those responsible safely on the outside of our existence and into the safe realm of ‘not-us’.

Hence we run through the usual process of attributing to the event, and those responsible for it, a range of qualities which mark them out as being different.

Those of a religious bent will fall back on the concept of ‘evil’ meaning that which has the quality of being inimical towards everything that is ‘good’ – whatever ‘good’ might be from their perspective - and if the assailant does something so inconvenient as to claim to be motivated by their religious beliefs? Well then they either follow the ‘wrong religion’, or they interpret the ‘right’ religion in the wrong way, or they are ‘politically motivated’ and so aren’t really religious at all. Not really.

If religion is not really your ‘thing’ then perhaps psychology might offer a little personal comfort – ‘They’re not evil, they’re ill. Its all the work of psychopaths/sociopaths/whatever…’

And if that fails, try simple xenophobia – ‘Its all these blaaady foreigners, innit. Never should ‘ave let ‘em in the country in the first place…’ - never, ever, underestimate the power of ignorance in difficult times.

And, of course there’s ‘fanaticism’ and ‘extremism’ – both handy utilitarian terms which can be applied to pretty much any particular interpretation you want to throw into the ring for consideration with equal effect.

Alternatively it could be a matter of ‘ideology’ – the ‘wrong’ ideology, an ‘extreme’ ideology or, playing mix and match, now, an ‘evil’ ideology… no doubt in BNP circles the talk will be of an ‘evil foreign ideology’ just to compound things even further.

Whatever understanding one arrives at, the purpose of seeking that understanding is same. It is a means to disavow those responsible, to separate them out of the wider mass of humanity and, in order to preserve our own personal sense of well-being, mark them as being ‘not like us’.

Only they are like us, in fact they are us – all of us.

What drove these young British men to become suicide bombers is what as always driven young men - and women - to espouse, follow and sometimes die in the name of their own chosen cause. This is not an unusual phenomenon, nor does it, as the Observer blog suggests, silence the imagination. Strip away the theories, theology and ideology and what we are left with is the age old mix of youth and/or idealism/alienation which has driven people to such acts throughout the course of human history.

In terms of the mindset there is little intrinsic difference between those four young men and the young men who decamped to Spain in the 1930’s to fight in the Spanish Civil war…

Or the many thousands of young men who took the “King’s Shillingâ€? between 1914 and 1918 and were left lying in mud and squalor of the battlefields of the Somme and of Ypres…

Or that of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two young men who, on April 20th 1999, walked calmly into Columbine High School and shot dead a teacher and twelve of their fellow students…

Even the Women’s Suffrage movement spawned it’s very own martyr, Emily Davison who died having stepped out in front of the King’s horse during the 1913 Epsom Derby.

There is nothing unusual in young people dying for a cause they profess to believe in, nor indeed in finding the causes that society has to offer so unmoving that they descend into alienation and nihilism, into self-harm, suicide and sometimes murder – both are facets of human nature which are open to exploitation.

Nor is it there anything unusual in finding that there are those who are willing to exploit this facet of human nature to their own ends – the young have always made for the best foot soldiers and followers in any movement whether it that movement is driven by religion, ideology, nationalism or, more rarely by compassion and a sense of injustice.

The current campaign to ‘Make Poverty History’ is no less dependent for its support on the beliefs and ideals of its supporters than is Al-Qaeda on theirs and such differences as exist between to the two are very much in the eye of the beholder. The difference between a terrorist and a freedom-fighter, between a martyr and a murderer is a matter of perspective, distinguishable only when, as observers, we make a moral judgement about whether believe a particular cause to be right or wrong. There are no moral absolutes here, much as we might to wish to believe there are. How can their be after Dresden and Guernica? After Hiroshima and Srebrenica. After Nánjīng and Rwanda. No society, no country, no culture, no religion can claim absolute innocence – did Samson give a moment’s thought to ‘thou shalt not kill’ before laying into the Philistines with an asses jawbone?

Without moral certainty we are left only with the judgement of our times, and eventually of history, but history, of course, is written by the winning side and with victory comes moral justification and trite aphorisms – ‘the end justifies the means’, ‘ the needs of the many…’ and ‘we were only following orders’.

We only have to look at our own present leaders to see this in action.

We were told, before the invasion, that Iraq presented a clear and present threat, that they had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and that these could be ‘deployed’ in a mere forty-five minutes – none of it was true.

No we’re told that none of that matters, that we were justified in removing an ‘evil dictator’ because it was for the benefit of the Iraqi people – anyone remember Bush, Blair or anyone else speaking at length about their concern for the Iraqi people before the plan started to go pear-shaped and it became apparent that the UN weapons inspectors we going to turn up nothing which would justify going to war?

The Iraqi people, so we’re told, are better of without Saddam and the Ba’athist regime, they have – or rather will have – all the benefits and freedoms that democracy provides. And, who knows, maybe they will be in the long run. Maybe when history comes to judge the invasion of Iraq, many years from now, its judgement will be that we did the right thing, that the Iraqi people really will be better off…

… as soon as they can get past the fact that the invasion turned the place into a terrorist’s playground.

Hey, but what’s another Lebanon between newly found ‘friends’.

None of this, however, makes Iraq, Afghanistan or even the on-going situation in Israel/Palestine the reason why these young men chose to carry out a suicide attack on our capital city, as some have suggested. They are a reason – one of many – and would certainly feature highly on Al Qaeda’s list of ‘motivational speeches for the recruits’. Social conditions in West Yorkshire will also, almost certainly, have played their part in ‘preparing the ground’ for the handler who recruited these young men to his ’cause’ – 20% unemployment amongst young Muslim men and the pig ignorant racism of BNP on your doorstep are just what’s needed if you’re looking to feed the alienated youth, your ‘target’ audience, with dreams of eternal paradise and a sizeable supply of willing virgins, and in return for ‘just carrying this rucksack full of explosives’.

However even this is insufficient to explain fully why these young men chose ’suicide bomber’ as a career choice despite the lousy prospects for advancement the position tends to offer.

Why did these four young men carry the bombs which took their own lives and those of their fellow citizens?

You might just as well ask why people join the Labour Party or the Armed Forces or the Church of Scientology’ or the Women’s Institute – there is no simple, single, absolute reason other than that in their chosen ’cause’ they found something in which they could believe.

Ultimately, they acted as they did because they were young, idealistic and pissed off – which makes them no different to many other young people here, and across the globe – and that’s what really ’silences the imagination’,

When we think of these four young men, if we really think about them without taking the easy way out and simply writing them off as ‘not-us’, then we’re forced to recognise that whatever it was that made them a terrorist and not a lawyer or a doctor, a shopkeeper or bus driver, a husband and/or a father, is there inside us all, lying dormant and waiting for the right opportunity, the right situation – the right’ cause’…

…the one which lifts the moral restraints.

And that, sad to say, is both a simple and a complex as human nature at work.

You know — we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that the wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freashly shaved faces, it was a shock. ‘My God, my God —’ I said to myself, ‘it’s the Children’s Crusade.’
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

—-

As for other commentary’s worth reading, I’d recommend a few of these…

Phil at Actually Existing on responding to terror - also at The Sharpener

Blood & Treasure with a take on confronting extremism which falls somewhere between Kafka and Bill Gates.

John Nichols from The Capital Times on how we pissed off the ‘hawks’ over in the US by not getting in a flap and demanding revenge at all costs - look guys, there’s no great secret here, you just drink the fucking tea not dump in the harbour…

Small Town Scribbles - just read…

Scott at the Daily Ablution sets the world to rights with the help of a few Indy readers…

And last, but by no means least, the Militant Pine Martin invokes the sad spectre of Pyrrhus and Charles the Safety Elephant in the same post

If anyone’s got a few minutes I could do with a bit of help with something.

A little while back I decided to work on a bit of new project, a website around the general theme of democracy but with something a slant towards online democracy, blogging, etc.

What I have in mind is something that’s part commentary, part resource, part ‘how to’ guide and part gateway to the world of politics and democracy as it exists and develops online. I’d also quite like to it evolve over time into something of collaborative project, one that’s open to anyone who’s interested in pitching in.

I supposed if there’s a question I’d like it to at least partially answer it would be along the lines of…

‘I’m interested in democracy/politics, etc. How do I get started?”

So, in between everything else I do, I’ve been working away to get the template for the site looking the way I want it and thinking about some the things I’d like to include from the outset.

One of the things I thought would be pretty useful would be a repository of ‘core’ political texts, the kind of classic stuff that you’d consider a ‘must read’ for anyone with a genuine interest in politics and democracy. So over the last couple of days I’ve started tracking down and collating various texts from variety of sources, which I’ll compile into PDF documents before putting together a starter library.

And that’s where, hopefully, you may be able to help.

So far I’ve tracked down a fair few of what I’d think of as the ‘essentials’, things like Magna Carta, The Prince, Leviathan, Wealth of Nations, Rights of Man, Communist Manifesto and a fair few others going back as far as Plato (The Republic) and Sun Tzu (The Art of War). The issue is that left to my own devices, this collection will inevitably reflect as much on my personal tastes as aything else - you can’t help but be biased - which means that with me being me there’ll be a bit of left wing slant to things.

So the question is what would you regard as the ‘essentials’, the ‘must read’ political and related texts?

I’m really looking ideas as to what to include in the library, assuming that I can source the full texts, of course. What are the classic political texts that everyone should read?

So, over to you… you tell me what should be included and I’ll do the scut work of tracking down and compiling them into a resource library.

Just one thing to note, though. We will need to stick to the classics, in the sense that everything will have to be out of copyright and in the public domain but apart from that, anything - more or less - goes although I probably would draw the line at ‘Mein Kampf’ unless anyone can come up with a good argument to persuade me otherwise.

I you can think of anything, just drop me a note in the comments and even if it something seems so obvious to you that I must have thought of it, mention it anyway - I’d rather be pointed to stuff I’ve already got than miss out on something important.

Thanks

Been busy today so bloggage time has been very limited. Still I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to comment on the BCC reporting that the leaders of 100 Black churches will be staging a rally against the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, which gets its third reading in the House of Commomns, today.

According to the BBC its not so much freedom of speech they’re worried about as ‘freedom to preach’ and they’re worried that might end up being prosecuted for proselytizing to non-believers if it cause them offence.

Having read the Bill, while it is rather loosely written, I don’t recall seeing anything in it which would suggest that anyone would get themselves arrested for knocking on doors and offering to talk to people about god…

… although the more I think about it the more I’m coming around to the idea that this may, in fact, be a significant omission from the Bill - there being something rather seductive about the idea watching JW’s getting hauled off to court for knocking your door on a Sunday morning.

The other that caught my eye is Julie Morgan’s comments on the same subject which note that:

Much correspondence has centred on the idea that members of one religious grouping will not be able to evangelise or to criticise other religions; for instance, some Christian constituents have said that they will be at risk of prosecution if they say “Muslims will go to hell”. I listened very carefully to the Second Reading debate a few weeks ago, and to the Home Secretary. He repeatedly gave assurances that people like my constituents will not face prosecution.

Apart from noting that its a piss-poor religion that has to resort to threats of hellfire and enternal damnation just to put one over on the competition, isn’t it also the case that maybe this kind of irrational, pig ignorant ‘you will go to hell if you don’t do what we say’ kind of bullshit is exactly what we should be trying to rid ourselves of with this Bill.

I’m sorry but peddling the line that Muslims, or anyone else for that matter, are somehow inferior or due less regard as human beings becuase their beliefs are different from yours seems to me to be no different to the foul bullshit being spewed out by Nick Griffin and the BNP. If we are to have this law then it must apply equally to everyone and the fact that your own personal brand of hatred is based on religious rather than political belief should be no defence if you cross the line between legitimate comment and spewing hatred.

And while we’re on the subject don’t you also think that if we are going to outlaw religious hatred in this way we should also outlaw hatred of other groups in society - say the gay community, for example - on exactly the same basis…

…or would that also be an unwelcome restriction on the freedom to preach.

Panic on the streets of London
Panic on the streets of Birmingham
The Smiths - Panic

So Morrisey’s two for two so far on which case it’ll be - in order - Carlisle, Dublin, Dundee and then Humberside next…

So maybe its not Al Qaeda after all, just a bunch of disgruntled Mancs who’re pissed off because their flowers have wilted in the recent heatwave - look guys, the secret’s nothing more complicated than a bit of John Innes No.1 in the back pocket of your jeans, right. There’s no need to take it out on us…

Birmingham City Centre’s been evacuated and cordoned off on thre back of ‘credible intelligence’ and now there’s talk of there having been controlled explosions heard.

Is it hoax? Some sort of copycat attack? Or is the same cowards who struck at London on Thursday.

I guess we’ll know by the morning.

But if it is an attempted terrorist attack and if those same bastards who bombed London hold any thoughts that we may somehow be different from Londoners, that maybe we’ll be the one’s to give in to fear then let me tell you, whoever you are, that you are in for one big fucking disappointment.

When you enter this city you enter the heart of this country, a heart forged in coal, iron and steel and in the sweat and toil of the ordinary working class people who built this nation of ours.

Do you really think that our resolve is any less than that of London?

Do you really think that that same spirit shown by Londoners on Thursday evaporates no soon as you get north of Watford?

No fucking way. Not in the past. Not now. Not ever.

Still, if you are in the Midlands, feel free to take a trip to the fine old cathedral city of Hereford while you’re here - we’ve a few lads there who would, I am quite sure, like a word or two with you.

Virus writers have created a Trojan which poses as London terrorist attack news footage. Infected emails harbouring the Trojan pose as a CNN Newsletter which asks recipients to ‘See attachments for unique amateur video shots’ (example below).

From the Register

So if you do get an e-mail which reads…

From: breakingnewsATcnnonline.com

Subject: TERROR HITS LONDON

Filename: ‘London Terror Moovie.avi <124 spaces>
Checked By Norton Antivirus.exe’

Then stick it where it belongs, in the spam bin.

Hey, hey, hey. Our dear friends at the Safety Elephant’s department have produced a nice little guide to the ‘benefits’ of introducing identity cards

I’ll rip this apart take a look at this in more detail later, but just on a cursory look this document is of much interest for no other reason than it begins to confirm, at last, many of things that opponents of the scheme have been saying for quite a while.

Take this bit for starters…

“Many of the strategic benefits derive from the use of the National Identity Registration Number (IRN) which will be a unique number that will be unequivocally linked to an individual. The use of this number will revolutionise efficiency in public and private sector organisations alike. Realising these benefits does not require the centralisation of service entitlement information on the ID Cards Scheme database – the National Identity Register. Service entitlement data would be retained by service providers on their own systems but their systems would be able to make use of secure identity check provided by the ID Cards Scheme to make sure that they were accessing the correct record. This will ensure that the scheme will enhance individuals’ privacy.”

What they’re admitting to here is that your Identity Registration Number will definitely used across the whole of the public sector to identify all the records relating to you…

…all of which means that those records can readily cross-referenced to compile a complete picture of your life - see here

Back later on with more…

Dear oh dear.

With so much going on of late, I’ve managed to neglect to mention that my former colleague, Stu - you know the one I mentioned had been suspended by my former employer, Sandwell Council of Voluntary Organisations is now starting his sixth week of suspension.

Now to put this perspective, SCVO, at most has around 25-30 employees of whom I’d be surprised in more than six to eight are likely to have any relevant observations regarding the allegation of bullying made against him. So unless they’re interviewing people at a rate of one a week, the whole thing should have been done and dusted by now - or so you might reasonable have thought.

In the mean time, of course, that’s another £3,000 of taxpayer’s money, maybe £3,500 and rising by the day, that’s been pissed away on paying the guy to sit at home and do nothing.

Oh, and I just thought I’d point out that, as far as I’m aware, the one person who hasn’t been formally interviewed or asked to give his side of the story is…

…Stuart.

Anyway, that’s not why I’m posting this today, the reason I am posting is because at the time I first commented on Stu’s situation one of the questions I was asked was whether the Chair of the organisation was aware of what’s going on there, to which I replied by offering the opinion that it was likely that not everything would be reported to her and that what she was told would be likely to have a particular slant on it which favoured certain people, especially some of those in management. However, I did go to say that, in my own experience, given an accurate account of what was going on, the Chair would invariably deal with matters fairly and equitably, even if that did mean overruling decisions taken by the organisation’s Chief Executive.

So with that in mind I was to say the least rather interested to discover that SCVO is currently consulting its employees on a number of changes to its internal employment policies, including its procedures from dealing with disciplinary proceedings, grievances and bullying and harassment, ostensibly to bring its procedures in line with a number of recent changes to employment law.

Now, apart from noting that their proposed grievance procedure is incomplete inasmuch as as it neglects to make provision for the modified form of the statutory procedure which came into force last year, the one thing that all these procedures clearly have in common is that they more or less remove the Chair of the organisation from any direct involvement in decisions relating to employment matters including where a decision is taken to dismiss an employee and also any appeals related to such a decision.

In fact the only occasion on which the Chair would be involved is in the case of a grievance against the Chair of the organisation’s personnel subcommittee - and then only if that grievance resulted in an appeal against an earlier decision.

I think that probably answers the question of the extent to which the Chair of SCVO faces opposition from within the organisation when, having one two occasions, ruled against the Chief Executive in employment matters what follows is their almost total excision from any further involvement in dealing with the organisations employees.

It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world.
Tony Blair, 7th July 2005

I think we all know what comes next.

Tommorrow’s tabloid editorials pretty much write themselves. After the condolences, after the near obligatory reference to indomitable spirit of Londoners, the same spirit which “saw them through the Blitz”, all will demand that ’something must be done’, even the girl with her tits out on page three of the Sun - she’ll probably demand the restoration of capital punishment for terrorists.

That’s tabloid journalism for you - never miss an opportunity to trot out a well-worn cliché, especially one that might allow you to namecheck Winston Churchill or Vera Lynn…

…and never, ever, miss an opportunity to demand that ’something must be done’.

—- Pause —-

I started to write this yesterday evening, then took a time out to think through what I really want to say about what happened yesterday.

Since then, the tabloids have hit the news stands and the editorialising by numbers exercise has started.

The Scum, as is ever it wont, throws Hitler, the Blitz and Winston Churchill into its usual desperate rabble-rousing style and demands vengeance and justice. I guess that all we can expect from a newspaper owned by an Australian American, a complete lack of understanding of the British people and their character - justice will do us just nicely, we’re too civilised a nation to go in for simple bloodthirsty revenge.

As for the ’something that must be done’ well The Scum has its own take on that as well…

“Britain is crawling with suspected terrorists and those who give them succour. The Government must act without delay, round up this enemy in our midst and lock them in internment camps.

Our safety must not play second fiddle to their supposed “rights.�

…to which all I can say is that if you genuinely believe that then you are a bigger bunch of fucking idiots than even your already abysmal reputation suggests.

The Scum doesn’t get it. It doesn’t get the basic fact that ‘their supposed rights are also OUR rights. That you can’t take those rights away from them, whoever they might be, without taking those same rights away from us all.

That’s the price we pay for living in a free and open society; one in which we tolerate and even cherish dissent, in which we allow freedom of movement, of thought, religion and conscience, one in which we try as hard as we might to preserve the rights of citizens to live their lives in privacy and without the constant and overbearing scrutiny of the state.

Yesterday we paid that price in the blood of our own citizens. It’s a price we’ve paid many times before and its a price we’ll no doubt pay again. It’s what our parents and grandparents fought for and it would be the deepest possible betrayal of their memory and their sacrifice were we to allow that freedom to be taken away from us because there are those in this world who would take advantage of and abuse that freedom to visit mayhem and destruction on the ordinary citizens of Britain.

Yes, something must be done, but that that something must be to do simply what we always do when faced with atrocity. We pick ourselves up. We get on with our lives and we show the world, and especially the terrorists who visited this attack on our capital city that no matter what they do, no matter where they attack and no matter how many lives the take, they will neither take away our freedom nor will we allow those who govern to take it away in the name of protecting us from them.

And because we live in a free society, because we cherish that freedom, we give even the terrorists who attacked London yesterday certain rights and privileges, not least of which is the right, if captured, to due process.

To be arrested and charged only the basis of the evidence and not on vague and unsubstantiated suspicions.

The right to legal counsel and representation acting under a duty to defend them to the best of their ability.

The right to a trial before a jury of their peers.

And, if convicted, the right to life, albeit a life incarcerated in a British prison.

Why? Because it is from those rights, which are common to us all, that we derive the moral authority as a society to sit in judgement of these people. Because without those rights, given freely to all, we become no better than them.

What bitter irony there is when, in the same editorial, The Scum manage to invoke the memory of Britain’s greatest fight against tyranny while demanding the return of internment and the concentration camp.

“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
William Faulkner