Resisting the Temptation to Blame the Police

Of course the Norwegian police did some things wrong on Friday, and of course there are crucial lessons that could be taken from Friday's atrocity. Making sure police commando boats actually work would be one such lesson. But the desire to blame the police seems to be to miss the point of what actually happened last Friday and who is actually to blame.

Breivik may be insane (surely the most accurate description of his motivations to date, and from his own lawyer to boot) but that doesn't make him stupid. And he knew exactly what he was doing. The general feeling seems to be that this attack was planned over several years, and during those years what Breivik set up was a massive distraction designed to get the attention away from his real target - the youth camp on Utoeya. He knew - just as almost every now knows, in retrospect - that if you plant a massive bomb in the heart of a country's government district then what will tend to happen when that bomb goes off is that the police, and the other rescue services, will rush to both investigate and carry out search and rescue operations in the area affected by that bomb.

Which is precisely what this evil man wanted. The rescue services were distracted, giving him more time. That distraction allowed him to turn up in his police uniform on the island, apparently a figure representing what was at the time a very welcome form of security. Which then allowed him to start his murderous operation on Utoeya. And the very fact that the youth camp was on an island made him even more effective in his rampage - his victims had the option to hide and potentially die, swim away from the island and potentially die, or just plain die. The island location also made it immediately more difficult for the police to reach him and to save his potential victims. Yeah, a boat didn't work and a helicopter crew were on holiday. But take any relatively remote island in this country and ask yourself if something similar happened on that island how quickly the armed response units could reach that island.

I dare say the next time a bomb goes off in the Western world, the word will go out to all vulnerable areas and meetings (such as a youth camp of the party leading the government) that they should only let those with identification or who are already known gain access to those areas/meetings. And if this lesson is understood and actioned, then there can be no doubt that it was a lesson learned in possibly the most horrific circumstances possible. But the truth - the dark, malign truth that many people would do anything to avoid - is that this sort of thing cannot be stopped. Especially when the perpetrator is willing to use and abuse the uniform of a police officer to complete his murderous agenda.

Yeah, the police could have done things differently last Friday - I have no doubt that this will be the general conclusion. But the very fact that their attention was deliberately distracted by a madman from Utoeya by a bloody great bomb in Oslo should be acknowledged. After all, only one man truly knew that the carnage in Oslo was only the start, and that the eight people murdered there was only a distraction from a much wider atrocity about to start on an idyllic looking island elsewhere in Norway.

Conspiracy Theory Loons

Whenever we are faced with a mix of tragedy and terror, two things tend to happen. Firstly, the government of the nation concerned flexes its muscles and - by intention or otherwise - suppresses freedom in an attempt to make the land safer. Secondly, the conspiracy theorists flex their limited intellectual muscles, and see the atrocity as part of a wider government led conspiracy to control the citizens. To date, the former hasn't happened in Norway. But in relation to the events of Friday, the latter certainly has - as some of the comments on this Orphans of Liberty post so ably demonstrates.

See, it isn't enough that a man might have gone a bit mental and killed loads of people. No, that isn't ghastly and terrible enough. Instead, we need the spurious and completely farcical notion that the governments of the nations concerned have run lethal operations in order to inflict draconian policies on their people. So the conspiracy nuts won't see Breivik as working alone or with one of two accomplices in the manner of Timothy McVeigh. No, he's a cipher - part of a "false flag" operation run by the government and/or its associates.

Of course, this is utter horseshit with no real grasp of reality. I mean, most governments are incapable of lacing their own fucking shoes without a government leak and the accurate accusation of incompetence. Look at the Watergate scandal - a genuine attempt by a government to create a conspiracy around a pointless fucking burglary. And the conspiracy unravelled within months despite all the power of the imperial presidency leading Nixon - who had just won one of the most stupendous electoral victories in US history - to resign. If a government runs a conspiracy, it will probably be the worst conspiracy in the world.

Yet this sort of analysis is not good enough for a conspiracy theorist. And so JFK was murdered on the orders of LBJ, just as the US government destroyed the Twin Towers with help from a Jewish Cabal. The fact that no government would be capable of the sort of secrecy involved in this sort of conspiracy is irrelevant. Instead, the conspiracy loons see malign shadows that are, at best, tricks of the light for the terminally naive. They are adding 2 and 2 and getting not just 5, but 55.

But why does this matter? Why not let the loons babble their nonsense without passing comment on it? Well, the answer is twofold. When so-called friends of liberty start spouting this shite, it reflects badly on us all. We cannot credibly point out the draconian knee-jerk reactions by government to terror attacks when so many of our numbers are unconvincingly accusing the government of having commissioned that atrocity in the first place. It obliterates what little credibility we have.

And then there's the creation of paranoia in the minds of the loons. For the most part, this is harmless. But the Norway killer seems to have believed in one of the increasingly popular conspiracy theory bollocks - that of cultural Marxism. And that may well have motivated his carnage. Of course, it is more than possible that the motivator for the killing spree is irrelevant since Breivik would have found an excuse for his killing anyway. But the more people believe in this non-existent underworld of absolutely non-existent conspirators, the more they lose connection with reality and with that the ability to respond to reason. Everything feeds their paranoid theories; nothing can be disprove those theories. It makes trying to debate with them like trying to debate with a block of concrete - completely pointless.

As an advocate of free speech, of course, I don't want to suppress the loons, even if the bollocks they spout has all the connection with reality as an episode of the Teletubbies. But I will use my right to free speech to call them on the shite they vomit forth, and in the process hopefully elucidate an analysis of the threats to freedom that actually has a connection to the real world.

The Norway Attacks

The terrifying and tragic events in Norway are still being played out. I would be surprised if the death toll does not continue to rise, and if by the end of the rescue operations more than a hundred haven't lost their lives at the hands of what now looks like being one evil man*. As such, any comments made may well be contradicted by what happens in the near future. Nonetheless, I'd like to make some observations of the events that started to unfold less than 24 hours ago.

Like most, I suppose, when this first happened I thought that it would have been an attack (and then attacks) perpetrated by Islamic Fundamentalists. Indiscriminate mass slaughter has tended to be the watchword and the calling cardss of the Muslim militants. A couple of things nagged at me, though. Because while the terror attacks of Islamic Fundamentalists tend to be abritrary on the surface, certain key things do emerge as themes when you study them. Firstly, when al Qaeda and its myriad of off-shoots and tangentially linked jihadists attack the West in the West, they tend to attack ordinary people. As such, they tend to attack mass transport systems. They also tend to time their attacks for the morning rush hour - in part to kill as many as possible and in part to get their attacks at the top of the media cycle and therefore in the faces of the public for as long as possible. This was an attack later in the day against the PM, the government, and the ruling party in a coalition. So the fact that this appears to be the work of one right-wing, Christian fundamentalist is not a total surprise. This may be Norway's Oklahoma City bombing rather than their 9/11 - although I have no doubt that this distinction will offer scant comfort to the newly bereaved.

After any terror attack, there is that burning temptation to blame certain freedoms for allowing it to happen. Any such actions - especially since it tends to end up in legislation - needs to be left until a calmer time for Norway; for a time when the initial panic, rage, fear and deeply felt loss are all a little less raw both for individuals and the mass psyche. There will be a temptation to adopt something like the Patrior Act or 42 Days Detention in the aftermath of this slaughter for some in Norway; the country as a whole would do well do resist that temptation. Good legislation happens after debate and thought, not after the jerking of a knee.

Likewise, there is the temptation to stigmatise the (more often than not minority) groups who are associated with the crimes. Witness the rise of Islamaphobia in the West after 9/11 - a rise that missed the point that it was not Islam that committed that crime, but a small bunch of Islamic fundamentalists with a clear political as well as religious agenda. So again there may be a temptation in the aftermath of these attacks to stigmatise conservatives, Christians, individualists, libertarians. Any such stigmatisation is likely to misrepresent all four positions. Furthermore, and far more importantly, any such stigmatisation is like to increase the radicalisation of affected minorities, and make further attacks more, not less, likely.

Finally, it is easy for those watching this drama from afar to get caught up in the political ramifications and the hysteria around it. However, this is not just the political - this is personal as well. Because with nearly 100 people dead, there are hundreds of people now in mourning. Family and friends, spouses and lovers, brothers and sisters have all lost someone through the brutal attacks of yesterday in shocking circumstances. So as fingers points and people pontificate, let's try to remember the appalling personal tragedies that also occurred yesterday, and the heart-breaking grief that so many must now be feeling.

*Although whether it is logistically possible for one man to carry out such slaughter is still understandably being questioned by some.

With most promotions you might get a lot of warm congratulations and people wishing you well for the future. With this one, you get a target sign on your head in perpetuity (or at least until trigger happy Americans find you) and a deeply held wish from sane people the world over that you do really, really badly in your new job.

On the Death of Osama bin Laden

So, Osama bin Laden is dead. Make no mistake about it, I don't mourn the passing of that vile, murderous fundamentalist. But equally, I don't see that there's too much to get over-excited about. And I certainly don't think that this news will will make the world safer. Let's look at why:

1. Al Qaeda has never been, and almost certainly never will be, an army in the conventional sense. Consequently, the death of its supposed leader will make little difference to what its myriad offshoots are doing at the moment. The most powerful illustration of how al Qaeda works I've come across is that it is like a venture capitalist firm; it offers funds to those operations it thinks will be most likely to succeed. Just as the demise of a leader of a venture capitalist firm doesn't end capitalist investment, so the death of the nominal leader of al Qaeda won't stop Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

2. Besides, was bin Laden really in control of al Qaeda when he died? I find it hard to believe that he was. Being the world's most wanted man is probably a full-time occupation, and it would make controlling and communicating with a disparate and loose network of people next to impossible. So bin Laden was little more than the figurehead of al Qaeda, and a poster boy for Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Killing him won't have stopped the fundamentalist terrorists already out there.

3. What it has done, though, is make him into a martyr. Much of what constitutes Islamic fundamentalist is a reactionary response to supposed American imperialism - cultural and otherwise. And what could be a better symbol of US imperialism that the gunning down of bin Laden? Of course, I know that the US wants to send a particular message to Islamic fundamentalist (fuck with us and we'll kill you) but I rather think those fundamentalists will have got a different message from this murder (and I use that term deliberately). That message is "the war's hotting up, and we don't want to be seen to be losing". I've read that across the world security measures are being tightened and threat levels raised. I'm not surprised. If there's one think Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are good at, then it's revenge.

4. And let's be clear: this wasn't justice; this was revenge. Justice is where you take a suspect captive, put them through a fair trial and then - if found guilty - they are punished (with the death penalty, if your country happens to have that draconian punishment and deems state-sanctioned murder appropriate in this particular case). Therefore, bin Laden's death wasn't justice. It was a summary execution. It was murder. And by all means say he deserved it, but make sure you get your terms right. Not justice; this was revenge, pure and simple.

Osama bin Laden's dead. Good riddance. But only the terminally naive would think that this actually makes the world safer. bin Laden's death is simply another moment in the ongoing revenge spiral between the US and fundamentalist Islam. The fundamentalists aren't going to give up now bin Laden's dead. In fact, if anything, they will become more determined and more resolute. This murder will simply lead to other murders.

Four Lions

I'm a big fan of the work of Chris Morris. As far as I am concerned he is one of the few people who actually gets what satire should be - topical, biting, true to life and, if need be, cruel. So it was with some anticipation that I sat down to watch his film on suicide terrorism - Four Lions.

The basic idea behind is both striking and spot-on. The reality is that jihadists are not the sort of robotic, fundamentalist warriors depicted in many TV shows and films. They are often inept, shallow and very human. More often that not terrorism - and not just Islamic terrorism - succeeds more through luck than judgment. This is what Four Lions showed in detail - the contradictions of the bombers, their inability to agree on just about anything, and the fact that their bombings were a farce from beginning to end. In a country where many see an ruthless army of Islamic militants waiting to be awakened, this film depicts a scenario far closer to reality - a bunch of incompetents, largely ignorant of the religion they are meant to be fighting for, succeeding in creating death and confusion only after their hastily conceived plan goes wrong.

The odd thing about the film, though, is just how tame it is. The first half of the film - right up until the suicide bombing of a sheep - feels a lot like an episode of Last of the Summer Wine with added cussing and nail bombs. Yes, I get that it is meant to be exploring the mundanity of those involved in the plot, but the end result is that the film seems very sedate and, at times, almost meandering and unengaging. The fact that these people are incompetents doesn't mean that their attempts to produce bombs should be devoid of tension. See Zero Day for a film that deals far more effectively with people both living normal life and simultaneously gearing up for a killing spree.

The film only really comes to life in the final third, as the "plan" (such as it is) goes into action, and then almost immediately falls apart. The heavy handed, lethal policing, the general incompetence of the bombers and the fact that their attack ultimately ends up being confused and unable to hit their actual targets makes for a very watchable piece of cinema - simultaneously tense, funny, uncomfortable and an accurate representation of the idea that neither terrorists nor police are ever truly in control of these sort of events. Its a shame that the rest of the film couldn't have been like the final third.

It is also a shame that the biting edge to much of Morris's work is missing here. It is almost as if he has decided that making a film about suicide bombing is enough - the controversy is a given, and therefore he doesn't have to raise his game. Which makes this, overall, a bit of a missed opportunity. This film didn't - and couldn't, really, given its structure - provoke the sort of reaction and debate as his paedophile Brasseye special did. What would have been far more effective is to do the whole thing as a Brasseye or The Day Today news flash about an ongoing terrorist incident occurring on the day of the London Marathon, complete with inappropriate media observations, ghoulish reporting, nonsense emerging from the police and garbled videos emerging from the bombers - amateurishly shot and utterly confused as to the actual motivations behind the bombings. That would have been edgy, clever and controversial satire. That would have been vintage Morris. Which, sadly, Four Lions - as good as it was in places - was not.

Terror Threat Levels

OMG! OMG! The terrorist threat level has been raised! Stock up on the canned goods, and avoid contact with other human beings.

Alan Johnson:

"We still face a real and serious threat to the UK from international terrorism, so I would urge the public to remain vigilant and carry on reporting suspicious events to the appropriate authorities and to support the police and security services in their continuing efforts to discover, track and disrupt terrorist activity."

The facts:

The home secretary stressed there was no intelligence to suggest a terrorist attack was imminent.

Right, so the terrorist threat level has gone up despite there being no intelligence to suggest that it should go up. I can't be alone in seeing the absolute insanity in that. But the facts don't really matter, do they? Because the headline is "UK terrorist threat level raised to 'severe'", not "UK terrorist threat level raised to 'severe' for no reason whatsoever". And the raising of the threat level is intentional, but its intentions have very little to do with protecting us against terrorism. No, this sort of thing is about creating and maintaining a certain level of panic with society, that can then be used to suppress civil liberties, and to justify attacks on the way minorities live in this country. If you want proof that it isn't about fighting terrorism then just remember - there is no evidence to suggest a terrorist attack is imminent.

"It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party." Well, Orwell was right - to some extent. In that the ruling elite will always try to shape reality in order to meet their own ends. But it only becomes impossible to see reality except through the prism of the ruling elite if you let it, and if you don't challenge what they say. So the next time you hear that the terrorist threat level has been altered (which, lest we forget, it went down just before the London bombings of 2005) ask why that has happened, and whether there is any evidence that the situation has actually changed. I can almost guarantee there won't be.

Staggering, isn't it? That even in 2010 a bit of snow can do to great swathes of Britain what terrorist campaigns and the Blitz failed to do - bring them to a shuddering halt.

You're safer with strip searches

Oh, what fresh hell is this?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has given the go-ahead for full body scanners to be introduced at Britain's airports.

Presumably this is to make us feel safer. Except, you know, it probably won't actually make us safer:

Experts have questioned the scanners' effectiveness at detecting the type of bomb allegedly used on Christmas Day in an attempted plane attack over Detroit.

Plus, the rollout of these machines - if they are going to make such a valuable contribution to aviation security - does beg the question why didn't it happen earlier?

The government's move has been largely welcomed by the Liberal Democrats.

But home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne did say the scanners could have been rolled out sooner as they had been kept in storage since being trialled.

Right. So we have machines - that do an effective strip search of passengers, lest we forget - that won't combat the type of bomb that failed to blow up an aircraft recently being rolled out after being in storage for God knows how long. You'll have to forgive me, but I suspect that this has fuck all to do with making air travel safer. This looks and feels like the sort of knee-jerk reaction from a panicked, beleaguered government desperate to avoid the charge of being soft on security. The outcome of this move won't be increased security, but rather increased costs and increased delays.

Ooo, and it also shows that even failed terrorist attacks can provoke panicked reactions from governments. Which is exactly the sort of message we want to send out...

Gordon Brown and The War On Terror

Gordon Brown:

"We've got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September the 11th, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden, nobody's been able to get close to Zawahiri, the number two in al-Qaeda."

Yes, we should ask the question. And then note the very obvious answer. Which is that both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri aren't going to be advertising their presence. They won't be in the phone book. They are not going to have an e-mail account. They are terrorists on the run and they are on the run in an area of the world that is pretty close to being in a state of anarchy. Finding bin Laden and the other members of the al-Qaeda is never going to be easy. For some reason - like the fact that they are amongst the most wanted people in the world - bin Laden and al-Zawahiri aren't going to make it easy.

And I also fail to see why finding al-Zawahiri and bin Laden is supposed to make that much difference to the so-called War on Terror. Al-Qaeda is not structured like a traditional terrorist group. If you decapitate al-Qaeda, then you aren't going to end the threat from Islamic terrorism. It just isn't the way al Qaeda or the extremes of Islam work.

But of course bellicose words are always tempting for a beleaguered Prime Minister, particularly when said bellicose words are a call for someone else to do something. However, we shouldn't be fooled by Brown's crude tactic for one moment. His demand directed at Pakistan is nothing more than a distraction tactic. He is using the out-of-date rhetoric of the War on Terror - a spurious campaign against a concept rather than a meaningful war against a tangible enemy. Pakistan is fighting a terrorist foe that increasingly resembles an insurgency in parts of its domain. The very last thing they need is the endless prattle of a discredited British Prime Minister trying to claim some sort of authority in his final months in power.

Quote of the Day

"There is less to fear now, but the fear is greater. Those who have never heard a gunshot, who live far from the centers of power, fear a terrorist attack. They believe they see enemies on every side. The measures they take to protect themselves place their lives, their liberties, their honor in danger."

Anne Norton

Quote of the Day - On the Lockerbie Bombing

From John Mosey, whose daughter died in the Lockerbie bombing:

"What we are forgetting is there were 270 people on that plane who have been killed and we have had no proper inquiry, no serious answers."

Quite. Because we still don't really know what happened to Pan Am Flight 103. We don't know whether al-Megrahi was actually guilty or not, and we don't know - despite the release of the Lockerbie files - why the government chose to release the man convicted of all those murders. This whole issue - this murder of 270 people - is still a mystery without any sort of a conclusive answer.

I can remember the news reports about the demise of Pan Am Flight 103 back in 1988, despite being just 9 at the time. I'm now 30 years old. Surely, after over two decades, it isn't too much to ask for some genuine transparency and some genuine clarity about what happened on that terrible day? And what's happened in relation to this case, across those two decades and up until the present day?

The Daily Mail on a racist loser with a hard-on for making bombs:

Lewington was said to have an unhealthy obsession with Unabomber Timothy McVeigh

Well, Lewington - the sort of moron who would idolise terrorist maniacs - may well have been a fan of the Unabomber. And of Timothy McVeigh. He wouldn't have been a fan of the "Unabomber Timothy McVeigh" since McVeigh wasn't the Unabomber.

Still, never mind the facts when you've got pictures of bomb components to pad out your article...

The Police State

Quote of the day, from Stella Rimington, former Head of MI5, on the state of Britain today:

"It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism - that we live in fear and under a police state"

And that is not some tinfoil hat wearing member of the conspiracy brigade; that is the former head of MI5.

Over the past few years we have seen laws come into place that will allow the state to detain you without charge for long periods of time; we've seen them give themselves the right to monitor you internet and mobile communications; we've seen them push a version of thought crime onto the statute books, and we've seen our government act as the lapdog to a US regime that thinks nothing of torturing those it suspects of being terrorists. We've seen innocent people gunned down on the tube and in their own homes, and we've had ID cards - abandoned after the war for serving no purpose - foisted back onto the statute books and heading towards your pocket at a great cost (both financial and otherwise) to you. We have seen the state grow and grow - and increasingly worrying behemoth exponentially enhancing its powers over its people using the politics, language and ideology of irrational fear.

And we have had all the above happen, with more to come. So my question is this: with a increasingly draconian state giving itself power after restrictive power over you, does anyone actually feel any safer?

Glorifying terrorism

A thought that hit me as I browsed over the Christmas TV guide:

We were raised with a story that glorifies terrorists. Every year as children all of us sat down to watch a film that showed a bunch of self-appointed anarchists kill, maim and destroy government property. The state they railed against had its bad apples and certainly committed murder, but it was legitimate, enforced peace and the rule of law, and its leader came to power democratically, whereas the terrorist group was entirely self-appointed, monarchist and, when it did come to power, had no intentions whatsoever of seeking a democratic mandate.

Star Wars. The Rebel Alliance are terrorists. It's just hit me. When they blew up the Death Star they must have killed thousands of civilians. What an odd thought. Luke Skywalker was a galactic mujahideen.

Shit!

I knew things were bad in the NHS. But not this bad.

The message is...

...in the face of terror to "Carry on as usual".

Fine, wilco. Mainly because I've never had any reason to go near Glasgow airport, and wouldn't go to Tiger Tiger if you paid me. By default, the terrorists aren't disrupting my life.

Dunkirk spirit and all that...

Amazing

Apparently one of the 21/7 alleged would-be suicide bomber and mass murderers has claimed that he did not want his bomb to explode. BBC news reports:

"Mr Ibrahim has admitted making the homemade hydrogen peroxide and chapatti flour devices, but insisted none of them were capable of causing injury."

A frankly rather startling claim, I am sure you will agree. Well, Hans Michels, Imperial College Safety Professor certainly does:

"If he tested something which had 2kg of explosives and he wanted to survive that, he must have been very, very sure that it wasn't going off."

And he goes on to describe Ibrahim's claim as "amazing".

Quite. I'd go a little bit further than that though. I would best define Mr Ibrahim's claim as "total toss". I would say, that if you don't want a bomb to go off and you don't want to hurt anyone, then your best strategy would be not to build the bloody bomb in the first place. I am fully committed to not blowing up other people, and can attest from personal experience that my success in this area has been based around my refusal to make explosive devices.

Fuck me, it is not rocket science, is it?

“And I won’t open letter bombs for you…”*

It is difficult to see what the person or persons behind these letter bomb attacks hopes to achieve. Attacking the likes of Vantis and the DVLA really isn’t going to achieve a great deal other than giving the media outlets a story to speculate on in a slow news period when the weather is the only other major news story. I wonder whether the aim of the letter bombs is to kill or simply to create fear and disruption - although mail bombings can be fatal. I reckon this will prove to be the angry loner, our equivalent of the Unabomber. And it is tempting to see the letter bomber as a latter day Robin Hood, fighting back against our bureaucratic and increasingly dictatorial government. But all bombs – be it rucksack bombs on tube trains or letter bombs in Crapita’s office – are indiscriminate things and tend to end up hurting and killing people who are utterly detached from the real target of the attack. And it is tinfoil hat time if you really think sending fireworks in the mail is going to keep Blair awake at night (although this is a good example of one of the many things that should keep Blair awake at night).

Whatever the motive, these letter bombs represent an act of terrorism – maybe not with the same level of carnage and destruction as July 7th 2005, but still terrorism. And as much as I hate to use an act of terror to make a political point, it is difficult to see how ID cards could stop these letter bombs just as it is difficult to see how ID cards could have stopped 7/7.

*A line from the song “Career Opportunities” by the Clash (“I hate civil service rules/And I won’t open letter bombs for you”) – although also a fairly sensible sentiment in its’ own right.

Stevens on airline security

Interesting piece in yesterday's News of the Screws from Lord Stevens. By interesting I mean frustrating and irritating, but with one good idea in there.

The head line (IF YOU ARE A MUSLIM - IT'S YOUR PROBLEM!) is needlessly controversial but that is the Screws for you. But read the article, as there is some jaw dropping stupidity and igorance within it. Let's start with the opening lines:

When will they declare, loud and clear, with no qualifications or quibbles about Britain's foreign policy, that Islamic terrorism is WRONG?

Erm, a lot of them do.See here for a start. But he goes on -

Most of all, when will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is THEIR problem? THEY own it. And it is THEIR duty to face it and eradicate it.

Uh-huh, it is the problem of the Muslim communities. But it is also our problem. After all, it was not just Muslims who died on 7/7. And I think the Muslim communities could do with some help from the government - ie by addressing the cultural and economic issues that force young British Muslims into the hands of the extremists.

And there's more -

If only they would follow the lead of Home Secretary John Reid, whose tough, pragmatic, clear-sighted approach has been a breath of fresh air. Only then can they properly work out how to tackle it.

I'm sorry, what? Pragmatic and clear sighted? John Reid?!? We are talking about the same person here, right? The scottish thug who has done nothing other than claim his department is crap? Jesus, if this is a breath of fresh air to you then you must have been breathing some fetid fucking air.

He jabbers on -

Interestingly, it was Catholic revulsion over republican terrorist atrocities such as Enniskillen and Omagh that fuelled that change.

Yep, that is interesting. Not neccessarily true though. The IRA was crippled in 9/11 after the US realised terrorism wasn't that much fun anymore and the Americans stopped funding the Irish militants.

And he ends, as you knew he would, by crudely shoving in a plug for ID cards -

Another must is to reconsider ID cards. The importance of knowing whether someone really is who they say they are has never been higher.

Sweet Jesus give me strength! How would ID cards have helped last Wednesday? In the name of all that is holy, I can't figure that out. And the assertion that the importance of knowing whether people are who they claim to be is wrong on two counts - one, ID cards will be forged, just as driving licences and passports are, and two, I think it was fairly important to know that people are who they say they are was also pretty important in World War Two and in the long war against the IRA.

However, credit where credit is due - he does say something interesting -

I'm a white 62-year-old 6ft 4ins suit-wearing ex-cop—I fly often, but do I really fit the profile of suicide bomber? Does the young mum with three tots? The gay couple, the rugby team, the middle-aged businessman?

Actually, there is some wisdom in that. Those who have carried out successful suicide attacks in the West in the past have been young(ish) Asian males. Not being funny, but I'm guessing that pattern will continue. But it is the racial nature of the profiling that is wrong. Because if you search every young Asian male it will be the young Asian female who has the liquid explosives in her hand luggage. Or the white recent convert to Islam. So profile based on age more than anything else - martyrs tend to be young (say, 15-35). In a nutshell, airline security should be based on common sense. The 91 year old granny with the walking stick and the crooked smile is unlikely to be a suicide bomber. So is the young, Asian male - but crucially, there is more chance of the latter blowing a jet out of the sky than the former.

We win the War on Terror (if it is actually winnable) by taking sensible, although sometimes unpleasant, security precautions and by helping the ethnic minority communities to deal with the radicals amongst them. We do not win it by abdicating all responsibility and throwing it to the Muslim community and by nonsense policies like ID cards.