So, let’s get this straight. Jack Straw was told last December that Labour MP Sadiq Khan was in a spot of bother (Khan, was bugged by the police during a visit to a prison). But didn’t ask why or what for.

In a statement to Parliament, yesterday, Straw said:

I was aware, in December, of press inquiries from a newspaper concerning visits by my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting to Babar Ahmed, but at no stage before last Saturday was I aware of any information that the press inquiries concerned any covert recording or anything like that.

What an incurious soul he is, the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. At no point did it occur to him to ask just what kind of trouble Mr Khan might or might not have been embroiled in with Ahmed, a man ‘accused of running websites supporting terrorism and urging Muslims to fight a holy war’.

You would have thought that Straw’s sense for trouble might have been a little keener considering the nightmare his government has had in the last few months, but no. To think he studied law at univerity. He must have missed the lectures on the question of motive. He’s clearly unfamiliar with the concept of ‘why’.

Whether this is a quality (or lack of) we should be welcoming in our cabinet ministers is for higher powers than me to decide. It certainly seems odd behaviour in a human being, particularly one at the centre of one the most paranoid and media-manipulative political parties in recent memory. But then if Jack said he didn’t ask, then he didn’t ask.

It must be heaven being him, blithely unaware and unassaulted by the reasons behind the harsh realities of life. ‘One of our MPs is in trouble, Jack.’ ‘Hmmm? Is he really? Oh, well.’ ‘We have to bomb Iraq, Jack’ ‘Hmmm? OK.’ ‘I’m leaving you, Jack.’ ‘Hmmm? Bye then.’

The Counter-Terrorism Bill 2007-08 is 90 pages long with 56 pages of accompanying explanatory notes. By the time you’ve managed to wade through it, deciphering its many sub-paragraphs and exclusionary language, the bloody thing will be law.

I’d be very interested to know how many MPs - the loyalists and placemen at least - will or won’t read all 146 pages before debating and voting. Under the whip system, I don’t suppose they really need to, voting largely being a matter of being simply allowing oneself to be herded through this or that door.

One thing of interest about the bill is that the government’s definition of terrorism is the one laid out in the Terrorism Act 2000. That is, before September 11 2001. It’s interesting to say the least that, despite the supposed changing nature of global terrorism, the government have resisted the temptation to tinker with this one fundamentals.

The BBC give a useful breakdown of the bill which is just as well because I for one am otherwsie completely defeated by the structure and wording of the bill in the raw. I wonder how many people could make a positive engagement with this legislation directly even if they wanted to.

Yet another reason to resist the hammering of the BBC. In this instance at least, it’s a valuable buffer between the public and an enforced, institutionalised ignorance created by the state.

(More on this, maybe, later…)

There’s been some talk in the media about us getting another bank holiday each year. But for what reason? To commemorate the founding of the NHS, suggest some. How about Remembrance Day, say others. Or St George’s Day and others.

I’d like to suggest Counter-Terrorism Bill Day. These bills come round with frightening regularity (much more so than terrorist atrocities) so it seems only right we should mark the day each year.

That way, all of us can sit around in our pyjamas and wallow in the mendacity, sophistry and stupidity wheeled out by the Home Secretary of the day with which to defend his or her case for further authoritarianism. We can relax and reflect upon the contribution made by the people who have made this country the freak of the civilised world it is today. Us bloggers could just change the date on the same blog post and republish it annually - the arguments never seem to change, after all.

Who, for instance, has had the time to luxuriate in Jacqui Smith’s squirming and squirm-inducing appearance (RealPlayer required) on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning? Hardly any of us will have had the time to revel in the hearty yet bitter and scornful laughter that her performance deserved.

She couldn’t or wouldn’t answer the question of why she wants 42 as the number of days the police can hold a person suspected of terrorism. Even a child could tell you that that figure was arrived at by a thought process no more sophisticated or analytical than haggling. The government, for reasons they can’t or won’t explain, want a higher number but know they won’t get it. They’ve gone high to lure their opponents away from their lower figure. Any move upward away from 28 days is a victory for the government - they’re that little bit closer to their magic number and get to portray the rest of us as appeasers of terrorists. Which is a hell of a lot of people when you see the simply massive coalition of opposition ranged against the government on this.

And how about this feat of rhetorical contortionism at the 3m 30s mark in the interview:

Jacqui Smith: If in the future, in exceptional circumstances, a case could be made that there is an operation, an investigation, a number of multiple plots, a really difficult situation in which the police and Director of Public Proscecutions want to be able to apply to a judge to decide whether or not they could hold somebody for longer, that we need to find a way to facilitate that in those circumstances.

Sarah Montague Carolyn Quinn: If that’s not a hypothetical case, then what is?

Jacqui Smith: It won’t be hypothetical if and when it occurs, that’s precisely the point. We are not legislating now on the basis that we’re bringing it in now for something that might happen in the future. We’re putting in a provision for if it becomes unhypothetical. If unfortunately I and many other experts and right and we do need it in the future it is in place in legislation.

Listen for Sarah Montague Carolyn Quinn laughing. We’re not legislating against the hypothetical, we’re legislating against the hypothetical becoming ‘unhypothetical’. I think. ‘Unhypothetical’ is not a real word incidentally. Smith is quite literally making it up as she goes.

How about this from, not-all-scare-mongering Home Office minister Tony McNulty:

As an extreme example, imagine two or three 9/11s. Imagine two 7/7/s. Given the evidence we’ve got and the nature of plots so far disrupted, such scenarios aren’t fanciful.

Imagine, imagine, imagine a story. Where are these plots? Where’s the evidence? The government and police haven’t been shy in coming forward when they’ve discovered these plots in the past (even if most of them turned out to be unfeasible bollocks dreamt up by halfwits and the deluded).

If, if, if, if, if. Take a look at a dictionary definition of ‘if’ and tell me if that isn’t a word firmly rooted in the hypothetical. ‘The rules of the game have changed,’ Tony Blair famously said. He was right, not least in the underpinnings of how the English language actually function.

Forty two days. Six weeks. Does anybody have a job with a holiday entitlement that runs that long or a boss willing to hold your job open for such a time? What about a bank manager or creditor whose patience will run to that? And you must have heard of Parkinson’s Law by now. We are, need it be stressed, talking about locking up people who are suspects. You know, that quaint concept of innocent before proven guilty? Prefixing ’suspect’ with ‘terrorist’ is merely an attempt at implying guilt where it may or may not exist in order to plant a prejudgement in the public consciousness. Nobody gets locked up for six weeks if they’re innocent, do they?

And it continues to get worse. According to The Guardian:

The detailed legislation is expected to be tougher than originally trailed, with no legal definition of the seriousness of the alleged offence that could trigger an exceptional period of detention beyond the current 28 days without charge.

They can’t even tell us exactly what they want to lock people up for. Sure, we’re clinging onto the values that we hold dear in the face of implacable terrorism. It’s just that these values seem to be from the 12th century or thereabouts. Why not just throw Muslims in a pond and see if they float? Talk about sinking to Osama’s level.

I’ve said this before but most people in Britain will roll along with this due to a failure of imagination. They cannot picture themselves falling victim to these laws. They think these laws are designed to trap unknowable, generally brown-skinned, cranks and murderers and not used against nice Christian white people. That may or may not be true, if you’ve never heckled a political rally or read aloud the names of the dead at the cenotaph, but the lack of empathy for others still has the power to disgust even a cynic like me. The innocent get released without the fanfare of their arrest, so we don’t have to feel too bad.

All this would be (slightly) easier to swallow if we were treated as having any degree of intelligence. You have to come to the conclusion that the government’s argument can’t be put in any other way than patronising illogicality because it falls apart when subjected to even the most cursory of intelligent scrutiny. So, it’s got to be hyperbole and stonewalling, obfuscation and contempt, and all the other ingredients needed to make the laughing stock palatable.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Home Office had a cage full of Sun readers and X-Factor viewers who every policy has to be run past before publication. If the proposed legislation doesn’t cause the subjects to shit themselves in terror and bash their screaming heads against the bars then it has to be reworded until it does.

What a day it will be when a government minister can sit down and talk to us like we weren’t dropped on our heads as children. An adult debate held between adults with at least an attempt at mutual respect. That’d be worth a bank holiday.

Tim Ireland outdoes himself once again. I think you’ll go a long way to find a better demolition of the idiotic ban on protesting around Parliament[1].

* And not just because I have a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo.

One of the biggest threats to US security may now come from within Europe, US Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff has told the BBC.

Yes, but does he have a dossier cut and pasted from the Internet? Without one of those, all this is just so much wind.

When you think about it though, this could be a way out of trouble for Peter Hain. All he need do is defect to the Americans and spill the beans on our weapons of mass destruction programmes, our burgeoning nuclear ambitions and our links to rogue states in return for a pile of CIA cash and certain assurances.

Then, the humanitarian intervention going off without a hitch, the British people welcoming their American rescuers with open arms and flowers, and our natural resources (minor celebrities and buy-to-let landlords) liberated eight ways from Sunday, Hain can head the new puppet government.

It’s perfect. We’re saved from terrorism (one way or another), Hain salvages his career and the likes of David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Melanie Philips, along with their attendant keyboard battalions and armchair artillerymen, can finally shut their big yap.

Update: Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Chertoff’s gut:

Thanks to pro_tempore in the comments.

Sunday just keeps getting better and better for Muslims:

In an attempt to stop young Muslims being seduced by Al-Qaeda, women will be sent on training courses designed for FTSE 100 managers to give them the skills and confidence to confront fanatics.

(The comments under this news story are a joy, by the way.)

You’ll never guess whose ideas this is. Go on, have a guess. Oh, all right then…

Amid fears that extremists are becoming more sophisticated in their recruitment, Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, has concluded that a key way to stop extremist ideas further permeating Muslim communities is to give “the silent majority” a stronger voice.

It’s an excellent idea, fully thought through - naturally - and right up there with chain gang uniforms and ethnic rebranding. Although the article fails to mention it, no doubt there will first be sessions for those Muslim men reluctant to let their wives, sisters and daughters attend these courses with ‘business leaders and top athletes’.

So why Muslim women? Well, the squeakiest wheel gets the grease, as they say. And Muslims are the squeakiest of all wheels when you’re a weakening government with a right-wing vote to court.

The thing is, the groaning machinery of UK Plc has so many, many squeaky wheels. So, I’m sure we can be confident that, once this pilot is deemed successful, it will be rolled out to the rest of Britain’s women:

In an attempt to stop young men being seduced by violence, women will be sent on training courses designed for FTSE 100 managers to give them the skills and confidence to confront wife-beaters.

The possibilities are endless…

In an attempt to stop young men being seduced by alcohol, women will be sent on training courses designed for FTSE 100 managers to give them the skills and confidence to confront public drunkenness.

And how about…

In an attempt to stop young men being seduced by speeding, women will be sent on training courses designed for FTSE 100 managers to give them the skills and confidence to confront Jeremy Clarkson.

What better way to combat the pernicious, evil multiculturalism that Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester and many others say threatens to sweep us all away on a tide of hatred? We don’t want to entrench multicultural attitudes by exclusively singling out Muslim women. Let’s spread this horseshit around some.

In case you’d forgotten, the Home Office is holding a public consultation into the right to protest outside Parliament as curtailed by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. You’ve only got until January 17 to make yourself heard so get on with it.

The consultation document (PDF, 31 pages) makes for interesting reading. As Beau Bo D’Or has discovered, Mark Thomas‘ (and everyone else’s) Mass Lone Protests haven’t gone unnoticed…

So they want 58 days. When you’re trying to sell something, always go with your highest price first. It’s the first principle of haggling. Who doubts they’ll settle for less?

Last week the Home Secretary claimed she didn’t have a clue how much they were going to ask. It didn’t take long for her to calculate her profit margins as it turned out - they saw last time that at 90 days demand was too elastic.

Now it’s a question of who bottles first, the government or those who don’t want to move beyond 28 days detention. If it’s the latter then we get into the horsetrading to see how far both parties are prepared to move.

Any number between 29 and 58 is a victory for the government. They get an increment and, like last time, get to smear their oppenents as appeasing suicide bombers. When it’s actually the other way around.

They can then come back next years and the next and the next to demand another increment. They’ll go with the highest price first, 72 days maybe. Under this process they’ll eventually get their way - and why stop at 90?

(See also Parkinson’s Law.)

Why the hell have we got a ‘simple sailor‘ in charge of our anti-terrorism strategy? Were all the complicated ones busy?

Simple sailor Lord West is a man in two minds. At 8.20 this morning he was emphatic:

Lord West said he still needed “to be fully convinced that we absolutely need more than 28 days”.

“I want to be totally convinced because I am not going to go and push for something that actually affects the liberty of the individual unless there is a real necessity for it.”

‘I want to be totally convinced’. Well somebody convinced him because an hour later he was as equally emphatic, just from a different angle:

[A]t 0930, after a half-hour meeting with Mr Brown, the peer told the BBC he was “personally convinced” that the 28-day limit needed extending.

“I personally, absolutely believe that within the next two or three years we will require more than that for one of those complex plots,” he said.

He later issued a statement in an attempt to clarify his position saying: “I am quite clear that the greater complexities of terrorist plots will mean that we will need the power to detain certain individuals for more than 28 days.”

‘Maybe being a simple sailor and not a politician, I didn’t choose my words very well,’ was his excuse, bless him, as he insulted 37,500 members of the Royal Navy. I bet he gets into all kinds of hilarious scrapes with that shortcoming. We should write a sitcom. This week Lord West doesn’t choose his words very well and ends up hiding naked in a cupboard when the vicar comes for tea.

Still, it’s a rags to riches tale of such a simple sailor becoming the First Sea Lord. There’s hope for us all, on this showing. What odds on John Prescott being the first man on Mars? West’s given schmucks all over the country a reason to carry on. Then you think, it’s just as well he wasn’t asked to fight a major sea battle during his time as head of the Navy. What with him and his inability to choose his words carefully we could have been in real trouble.

It’s either that or, after going off-message on the radio, Lord West was told to get out and debase himself on national television in an ‘ee, am right daft me’ style. Actually stupid or told to act stupid in order to keep his job? Who would you prefer in that position, an idiot or a puppet? Is there another explanation?

Anyway, must dash. I’m making dinner and I’m convinced it’s going to take no longer than 28 minutes. The directions on the pasta packet say 14 but I’m telling the kids it’s going to take nearly an hour. Because I’m convinced.

Via Alex again, we have this excellent analysis from The Register’s mighty John Lettice on the events leading up to Jean Charles de Menezes getting his marching orders.

This jumped out at me:

The report notes that the ground surveillance team all appeared to believe that they did not have a positive sighting, while the control room believed that they did. It looks very much as if faulty filtering and Chinese whispers effectively manufactured this situation, helped along by individual officer’s fears of the consequences of making a mistake. This would tend to make them extremely cautious of saying that it definitely wasn’t Nettletip [the police codename for Hussain Osman], meaning the possibility that it was him was pretty well embedded in the system. These doubts would be filtered upwards, and the same fears would lead superior officers to give undue weight to a single claim of ‘might be’ over half a dozen of ‘probably isn’t’. The claims of CO19 [the firearms officers] that they heard “definitely” illustrate that direct monitoring in the control room isn’t the answer either - nobody admits to saying that, and they may simply have missed the word “not”.

Now, I’m no expert on counter-terrorism, but when I was at journalism school, we were given a handy tip to avoid getting into trouble when reporting court cases. At a case’s conclusion, it’s deemed sensible not to use the terms ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ in a dictated or written report.

The person taking the dictation might miss the ‘not’ or a harassed and on-deadline sub-editor, busily cutting and pasting at your copy might accidentally remove the ‘not’. Then you’re in trouble because you’ve given the not guilty person in your report an action for libel. Much better to use ‘acquitted’ and ‘convicted’.

So, the next time the Met have a team of tooled-up Bodies and Doyles hurtling towards an identified or unidentified target, instead of saying it’s ‘definitely’ or ‘definitely not’ him, why not try, say, ‘affirmative’ or ‘negative’? Why it hasn’t been considered before is something of a mystery. I know I’m a mere blogger and not London’s top cop, and it’s a crazy plan, but it might be worth considering. They could even ask ’should we convict or acquit?’ for that snappy action-movie dialogue vibe if they like.

Alex Harrowell on the IPCC investigation into the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting:

Here we hit the damning detail; nobody ever identified Jean Charles de Menezes as the bomber, but this information never reached anyone in a position to act on it. Yes, several of the surveillance officers were at different times of the opinion that he might perhaps be; but no-one who thought so had seen his face. The only member of the surveillance team who did thought he wasn’t.

Read the whole thing and appreciate why Sir Ian Blair really has to go. Alex can help you there as well.

Those Muslims. They’re a worry, aren’t they? We worry about them integrating. We worry about the books they read. We worry about the religious premises they attend. We worry about the library stock dedicated to their religion. We worry about offending them. We worry about how some of them talk in funny languages called “Arabic” and “Urdu”, whatever they are. We worry about what they’re thinking. We worry about whether some of them are AS WE SPEAK plotting our demise, brainwashing children, and writing poems about the joys of beheading infidels. We worry about whether the anti-terrorist legislation which is clearly targeted at “them” is tough enough; the home secretary doesn’t know how much longer the pre-charge detention limit should be, but she does know that it isn’t long enough.

To add to all of these existential problems and threats, the Sun today cheerfully informs us of another problem with Muslims. Apparently, the numbers of Muslims behind bars has risen by 120%. This undoubtedly means that BRITAIN’S jails risk becoming breeding grounds for Islamic extremists…

read the rest

Not much to add right now to the de Menezes verdict that hasn’t been already said by Beau, Jamie, Alex and particularly Septicisle.

I’ll just say that there’s something badly wrong when a public investigation into the shooting of a man by police in public has to be orchestrated via the back door of health and safety legislation.

Also, I know I’m naive and not terribly worldly wise on such matters but aren’t organisations and companies human constructs? They’re created and controlled by human beings. Humans perform the input to the organisation, they consume its outputs and are involved in every step of the process in between.

When something goes wrong, say for instance, an innocent man is shot in the head seven times and then smeared variously as a terrorist, drug dealer and rapist, how is it nobody’s fault? How can you blame an organisation as if it suddenly gained sentience and moral agency? When people stand up and say ‘It wasn’t me, it was the organisation’, isn’t that a tacit admission that something is broken, radical changes must be made or that, in the face of logic and common sense, the organisation has broken free of control of its human masters? The latter seems to be the fashionable excuse in an age of personal irresponsibility whether it be to do with train crashes, corporate manslaughter or hired guns like Blackwater.

It seems to me that the de Menezes verdict is being interpreted by some as if New Scotland Yard had risen off its foundations like some kind of crazy Japanese robot, went striding down to Stockwell and robbed a man of his life. Are we talking some kind of cybernetic sick building syndrome here? Or, rather, the simple fact of nobody having the balls to take responsibility for the 19 ‘catastrophic’ errors that killed an innocent man?

King Abdullah’s crass intervention has also revealed a greater truth about the relationship between Britain and Saudi Arabia, often described in a lazy piece of diplomatic shorthand as a “partner in the war on terror”. If these two governments failed to co-operate in the months running up to 7 July 2005, then what exactly is the point of this relationship?

read the erst

The Home Secretary has admitted that there has not been one single case since 9/11 when police enquiries would have been aided by holding a terror suspect for more than 28 days.

read the rest

Shock horror:

The government has officially confirmed it will not hold a public inquiry into the 7 July London bombings.

Write to them. Sign the petition.

Press release begins

Survivors and relatives of the people killed in the July 7th London bomb attacks have warned the Government that they will seek a Judicial Review into its continued refusal to grant an independent enquiry into the attacks.

They will outline their legal case in a letter, which will be presented to the Home Office at noon on Wednesday 15th August 2007.

Graham Foulkes, whose son David Foulkes, 22, was murdered at Edgware Rd said:

“We were very disappointed that the Government rejected our call for an independent enquiry. We believe that our country can only benefit from an independent investigation into the largest ever terrorist attack on mainland Britain.”

He continued:

“There have been reports into the bombings. None of these have been independent. And as time has gone on it has become obvious that much of what we were told was untrue. For instance, we have gone from being told that the bombers were unknown to the authorities (”clean skins”, as Charles Clarke, the then Home Secretary said in the wake of the bombings) to finding out through the “Crevice” trial that at least two of the bombers were known prior to July 7 th 2005 and that one of them, Mohammed Siddique Khan (the Edgware Road bomber) had been followed home by the authorities.”

This concern has been supported by the Greater London Assembly who, on May 28 th 2007, passed a motion calling for an independent inquiry following the conviction of the Crevice Defendants “given the conflicting accounts of what happened in the months leading up to 7th July 2005″.

The legal case for an enquiry rests on Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This requires the state to protect life and to undertake an independent and effective investigation of the issue if the article is breached. Even if the requirement to protect life was not breached, the Article allows for an enquiry because of the obvious need for public protection.

Rob Webb, whose sister Laura Webb, 29 was murdered at Edgware Rd said:

“The drip feed of information since the attacks probably doesn’t give the whole story. But it is now clear that the security services knew far more about the bombers and the possibility of an attack than we had originally been led to believe. So the state looks to have breached its duty to protect life. We all – Government, Security Services, survivors, bereaved and of course the public at large, who remain at risk of terrorist plots, need to learn all we can about the 7/7 attacks. We need to know what could have been done to help prevent them and so help prevent innocent people from suffering the fate of all those who were caught up in the awful events of that day in July 2005.”

Should the Government once again turn down the request for an independent investigation, the signatories of the letter will seek a Judicial Review into the decision.

Rob concluded:

“We don’t wish to take our Government to Court. But we need to ensure that everything is done to prevent further attacks. We believe that an Independent investigation will help do that, which is why we are prepared to go to Court to ensure that one happens.”

Press release ends

Signatories to the letter to the Home Office include:

• Nader Mozzaka, bereaved. Nader’s wife, Nazy, died at Kings Cross
• Graham Foulkes, bereaved. Graham’s son, David, died at Edgware Rd
• Rob Webb, bereaved. Rob’s sister, laura, died at Edgware Rd
• Paul Mitchell, survivor. Paul lost part of his leg and had serious hearing injuries at Kings Cross
• Thelma Stober, survivor. Thelma lost her left leg and had other serious back injuries at Aldgate
• Kirsty Morrison, survivor, King’s Cross. Kirsty developed debililtating PTSD.
• Elizabeth Alderton, survivor, Aldgate
• Ros Morley, bereaved. Ros’s husband Colin died at Edgware Rd
• Lesley Ratcliff, survivor, King’s Cross
• Michael Henning, survivor, Aldgate. Michael had facial injuried and developed PTSD
• Judy Mallinson. Judy’s husband, Ross, suffered serious head injuries.
• Ema Plunkett, survivor, Tavistock Square
• Elizabeth Kenworthy, Aldgate. Survivor and first responder
• David Gould, bereaved. David’s step-daughter, Helen, died at King’s Cross
• Angela Iouannou, survivor, King’s cross
• Fiona Crosbie, survivor, King’s Cross
• Mark Elding, survivor, Tavistock Square
• Andy Brown, survivor, Aldgate. Andy lost both legs in the explosion.
• Janine Mitchell. Janine’s husband Paul was seriously injured at King’s Cross
• Janne Palthe, survivor, Edgware Rd
• Thomas Ikemi, bereaved. Thomas cousin, Anthony, was killed in Tavistock Sq
• Ross Mallinson, survivor. Ross suffered serious head injuries at Aldgate
• Sarah Stow, survivor, Tavistock Sq
• Tim Coulson, survivor, Edgware Rd
• Rachel North, survivor, King’s Cross.

As I’ve said before, in the absence of any official support, some survivors have had to, by themselves, fend off voracious conspiracy theorists and journalists. Survivor Rachel North has become a focus, via her blog, of much media attention. She has had to deal with a stalker and a legion of conspiracy theorists who simply refuse to take the facts at face value. Some of them have even imaginatively accused her of being a team of MI5 disinformation agents.

On the question of a public inquiry, the government’s refusal to hold one gives tacit approval to the investigation into the bombings being conducted by gossip. The inquiry into the intelligence failures in the run up to the bombings, along with their causes and ramifications, have been left to the media via anonymous police and MI5 briefings and leaks.

This serves to stoke even more resentment and paranoia while eroding further the Government’s vestigial reputation as a straight dealer and fuelling the not unreasonable suspicion that it has something to hide. And that’s before we even arrive at the vital conclusion that getting to the heart of this atrocity might just prevent another one. The survivors don’t want glory or publicity or revenge; it’s a matter of sparing others what they themselves have been through over the last two years.

Helping the victims’ families and the survivors, and preventing future atrocities, is about simple compassion, reaching out to those in pain. Honour the dead and comfort the living - demonstrate in all the ways we can that we’re better, higher, more civilised beings than the creatures who took their rucksacks to London on July 7 2005 and those who might choose to follow them.

Demand a public inquiry. Write to your MP. Sign the petition. Spread the word.

Update: Rachel North has more.

…

The letter to the Home Office is a 25-page legal document. A summary of its contents can be found under the fold:

(more…)

Armed police will use anti-terrorism powers to “deal robustly” with climate change protesters at Heathrow next week, as confrontations threaten to bring major delays to the already overstretched airport.

Up to 1,800 extra officers will be drafted in to prevent an estimated 1,500 people disrupting the airport over the period of the camp for climate change, which is due to begin on Tuesday. The police have been told to use stop and search powers against the protesters, who have pledged to take direct action on August 18 and 19 but not to endanger life.

read the rest

Simon Hoggart:

[I]t was left to the much-derided Ming Campbell to make the best intervention about the prime minister’s statement on security. “Consensus,” he said, “cannot be achieved at the cost of principle … of course the public has a right to security, but that includes security from the power of the state.”

There’s no answer to that, and he didn’t get one.

Tim W:

So they’re going to change the law again, so that if some policeman doesn’t like the look of you, you can be locked away for more than the current month. Given that as yet no such suspect has had to be released after 28 days of questioning, it’s a little hard for them to come up with a justification.

The thing is, until they’re rounding up nice white middle-class people instead of shifty brown people with their peculiar rituals, who really gives a sod?

We’re all Ruth Turners and Lord Levys at the end of the day. As long as the police aren’t banging on our doors at dawn they can do what they like.

Why 15 years? Why not try and bring a project in under budget and ahead of schedule for a change?

I’ve marked July 8 2022 in my diary as ‘VT Day’ and the champagne is on ice. But who do we blame if it takes 16? The street party invites have already gone out.

Muslims, non-Muslims, the SWP, MI6, lefties, righties, soggy wet liberals, feral libertarians, believers, atheists…one thing I’ve never seen mentioned about the big antiwar march before the Iraq war took place is the fact that it was the most politically representative gathering in British history. It wasn’t a gang of fanatics out there; they were on the other side. It was we-the-people, including us-the-Muslims. If integration is the basis of your counter-terrorism strategy, you couldn’t build from a better starting point than acknowledging that we were right.

read the rest

Genius.

(Via Chris. I want one of those t-shirts too.)

Oh, the Piccadilly fireball would have blown the car’s windows out, and popped its doors open, and sent various bits like mirrors and so forth into the air at velocities possibly fatal to people nearby. It would have looked really cool, that’s for sure. But an explosive event…a detonation? Not in a million years. Sorry lads: you failed car bombing 101; you did not attend a single lecture; you did not even open the textbook.

Some stupid people did a stupid thing. Yes, they might have injured or killed one or two passers-by, but any body count would have come in spite of them, not as a product of their efforts. You and I are more likely to have been killed accidentally by the lousy driver than intentionally by his Beavis and Butthead car bomb.

read the rest

(Via Tim)

Reaction to John Reid’s plan to radicalise another generation of the British population has been mixed if predictable.

Peter Hain, for example, disinterring his heroic anti-Apartheid past that he’d so successfully buried during the Blair years, used the word, ‘Guantanamo‘.

Predictably, in her role of attempting to win back Labour’s hitherto unheard of disenfranchised quasi-fascist supporters, Hazel Blears said the plan was ‘sensible‘.

The only question left to ask is this: ‘Does Blears shit in the woods?’.