Terror and internment

As I write, there has recently been yet another terror attack in Britain – the third this year.  Westminster and Manchester have both been targeted, and now the area around London Bridge as well.

It is reported that Prime Minister Theresa May has announced four tough new measures to deal with Islamic terror, which are:

• Continue military action on ISIS in Syria and Iraq;
• Make it harder for terror attacks to be planned online;
• Tougher prison sentences for terrorists;
• Persuade Muslim extremists that pluralistic values are superior to their own ideology.

I have already outlined in previous posts why the first measure is – to put it mildly - illogical.  The second measure makes sense, but time will tell how effective it will be in practice.  The third measure does not make much sense, unfortunately.   Three recent terror attacks have ended with the perpetrators dead.  One was killed by his own bomb, and the others were shot by the police.  If you plan to carry out a terror attack in which you expect to die, then you are unlikely to fear a prison sentence.

As for the final measure, I would be interested to know in what way the government intends to persuade Muslim extremists that they are wrong.  It would of course help matters if they could start by identifying who the Muslim extremists actually are.

A recent commentary by Katie Hopkins also takes the Prime Minister to task on this issue, but is also rather short on solutions.  Hopkins goes further than the Prime Minister, by arguing that all people suspected of being sympathetic to ISIS should be interned.  A commentary by Ross Clark argues a similar case, and notes that:

We certainly did not leave things to chance at the outbreak of the Second World War when 80,000 enemy aliens and fascist sympathisers were rounded up and put before special tribunals to assess the risk they posed to the nation.

Most were released but not before the authorities could be sure that they were not planning to assist the Nazis.

True, internment gained a bad name at the start of the Northern Ireland Troubles, when 2,000 suspected terrorists were rounded up – but failed to stop many others conducting a campaign of bombings and shootings.

But the difference then was that the suspects were held without trial.

We do not have to intern without trial Britons who have travelled to join IS because what they have done is a criminal offence.

This may be true, but surely the Britons who have fought for ISIS abroad are only a part of the problem.   So far as I am aware, not one of the five men who carried out the three recent terror attacks had ever fought for ISIS abroad.

I also wonder if either Hopkins or Clark would be keen on the idea of internment if they themselves were likely to be interned.  Let’s be clear about this.  The British government in the 1940s interned people they considered to be politically dangerous.  Hitler’s National Socialist regime also interned people they considered to be politically dangerous.  The difference was what exactly?

Comments are welcome.

Related previous posts include:

Terror in Manchester
The insanity of a war without frontiers

Terror in Manchester

As I write, it is being reported that Jeremy Corbyn has blamed the recent terrorist attack in Manchester on the foreign policy of the present government.  I will not comment further, as I am not sure what exactly Mr Corbyn has in mind.

Almost exactly four years, I wrote this comment on my blog:

While I do not condone the murder of the soldier, I utterly condemn British involvement in illegal wars.

I was not at all surprised when the Manchester bomber was revealed to have been Libyan.  David Cameron as Prime Minister ordered the bombing of Libya, and Theresa May served in his government in a senior capacity.

Britain bombed Libya, and killed innocent people.  A Libyan man detonated a bomb in Manchester, and killed innocent people.  How hard is it to perceive a logical process at work here?

The British authorities are responding to the terror attack with typical uselessness.  The police are busy arresting people who may or may not be involved, but for every arrest they make, they probably miss at least one potential future suicide bomber.

MI5 have been reported as saying that they have five hundred active investigations, and I cannot help but wonder how likely any one of them is to be successful.  After all, they completely failed to prevent the Manchester terror attack, despite warning signs.

Putting troops on the streets is close to pointless, as the list of places where the next suicide bomber might strike is extensive.

There are two sensible reactions to what happened in Manchester.  The first is to accept that Britain should stop making war on other countries.  The likelihood of such a war being visited upon Britain in the guise of terror attacks is too great.

The second is to recognise that a lot of violent crime is linked to drug use.  It has not yet been reported that the Manchester suicide bomber was ever a drug user, but I would be surprised if he had never taken any illegal drugs.

It is unlikely that any government in this country will ever achieve a significant reduction in violent crime unless it first gets tough on illegal drugs.

As I write, we are approaching a general election, in which I plan not to vote.

Related previous posts include:

Terror in Westminster

Here the words of a killer - and learn

Terror in Westminster

A sufficient amount of time has passed since the terror attack in Westminster for me to feel confident about sharing my thoughts.

The facts are that a fifty-two year old Muslim man with a known history of violence drove a car onto the pavement while crossing Westminster bridge, deliberately ploughing into numerous pedestrians.  He then got out of his car in the precincts of the Houses of Parliament, and stabbed a policeman before being shot by another policeman.

The attacker – identified as Khalid Masood - died of his injuries, but by this point had killed four people and injured around forty others.

Unsurprisingly, the Prime Minister has publicly stated that Islam is not to blame.  It is also not surprising that she did not blame her own failings.  Prior to becoming Prime Minister last year, she served for six years as Home Secretary, and I have no problem in describing her as the worst Home Secretary this country has ever had.  Masood might not have perpetrated this attack had he been imprisoned for some of his previous acts of violence, yet we live in a society in which far too many violent criminals escape with non-custodial sentences - assuming that they are even prosecuted in the first place.

It is also not surprising that Mrs May has not blamed the belligerent policies of successive British governments.  She happily served in the government of the warmonger David Cameron.

The Mayor of London has received a lot of criticism for saying that terror attacks are part and parcel of living in a large city.  There are in fact around twenty cities in the world with a larger population than London, plus another fifteen or so of similar size.  How many of those cities experience anything like what happened in Westminster?

It appears that Londoners are now living their lives very much as before, and proudly so.  This is important, because terrorism normally affects us in two ways.  First, the incident itself causes death and injury and destruction; second, the aftermath is that everyday life is to some extent disrupted as a consequence.  In fact sometimes the disruption is the only consequence.  The Provisional IRA used to explode bombs in central London, but then they experimented with planting bombs at railway stations and then informing the police by telephone.  The station would then be closed, and the bomb would be located and made safe.  No one would be killed or injured, but the disruption to the rail services served as the triumph of the terrorists.

It is reported that a leading media figure has spoken sneeringly of the dead attacker, and has referred to London as the city that stood up to the Luftwaffe, but the comparison is naive.  The Luftwaffe sent aeroplanes which could be identified and shot down, and which were not easily replaced.  Masood’s deadly rampage may not have been as devastating as a Luftwaffe bombing raid, but it was achieved with very little in the way of resources.  Quite simply, almost any car in Britain could be used tomorrow as a murder weapon.

There is of course a link to immigration, and I cannot resist quoting Richard Littlejohn on this subject:

The politicians have opened the floodgates to mass immigration without insisting on integration.

They pretend every culture, no matter how medieval and barbaric, is worthy of equal respect.

This is the same Richard Littlejohn who to my knowledge has never once made a positive comment about any political party which seeks to end immigration, or about any political party which seeks to put pressure on immigrants to integrate with the wider community.  (If I am wrong about this, please leave a comment.)

The United Kingdom continues to wage war against Islamic countries, and is currently doing so under the pretence of fighting ISIS.  The downside is that ISIS has a fifth column operating in this country, and the next ISIS-inspired terror attack could happen tomorrow.  A Muslim man (or woman) driving a car could easily mount the kerb, and where will you be when that happens?

I find it astonishing that so many police officers in this country are happy to persecute anti-establishment politicians.  I have long since lost count of the number of incidents I have come across where members of anti-establishment political parties have been arrested or mistreated by the police without good reason - including the instance of a parliamentary candidate who was removed from a hustings by police because a Labour councillor did not want him there.

I do not blame anti-establishment politicians for the murder of PC Keith Palmer.  Does anyone?

Update: it is now being claimed that Masood was not linked to ISIS.  Even if no formal link can be established, then this does not eliminate the possibility that Masood saw himself as striking a blow for ISIS.

Does the EU maintain peace?

As I write there is less than one week to go before Britain votes on whether or not to remain in the European Union.  Many years ago I read a profile of a man called Madron Seligman who at the time was a Member of the European Parliament for the evil Conservative Party.  He was also a close friend of Ted Heath, who was the Prime Minister who took Britain into what is now the European Union.

Seligman recounted how he and Heath had holidayed in Europe shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.  They knew that war was imminent, and felt that something should be done to prevent the outbreak of another such war.  To cut a long story short, the European Union was viewed by many people as a way to ensure that there would never again be a war in Europe.  In addition, Germany passed a law banning any political party from associating itself with Hitler's regime.

I decided many years ago that the whole idea of the European Union preventing another war was absolute nonsense.  One of the main effects of the EU has been to undermine national identity.  This has had the effect of increasing what might be termed nationalist sentiment in many of the EU's member states.  This has been confirmed by a recent study by the University of Leipzig, which reports the following:

• One third of people in Germany think the country is dangerously overpopulated by foreigners.
• More than twenty percent think that Germany needs a single strong party which embodies the national community as a whole.
• Twelve percent believe that Germans are by nature superior to other people.
• Ten percent want Germany to be led by a fuhrer - the title adopted by Hitler while serving as both the president and chancellor of Germany.

None of the above implies that anyone in Germany wants another war in Europe - or does it?  I hope not, but I have been wrong before.

Related previous posts include:
Britain First and the fiction of a free country

Mutual defence is evil

The Polish government wants NATO to help defend it against possible Russian aggression.

NATO was founded in 1949 as a mutual defence organisation.  Mutual defence is fundamentally wrong, although I can't think of anyone other than the fictitious Edmund Blackadder ever saying so.

Is there any evidence that mutual defence discourages wars from happening?  I can't think of any, although comments are welcome.  What I do know is that the past twenty years have witnessed wars in such countries as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria - and neither NATO nor any other mutual defence arrangement prevented a single one of those wars from happening.

Rather than preventing wars, mutual defence treaties tend to make wars - when they occur - much larger and far more destructive than would otherwise be the case.  The two world wars would not have happened had it not been for the insane and immoral belief in mutual defence.  Wars would still have happened, but they would not have been grotesque calamities on a global scale.

I often wonder what right the United Kingdom - or any country for that matter - has to go to war against another country which every other country in the world does not equally enjoy.  For example, Britain took part in the bombing of Libya in 2011, shortly after David Cameron became Prime Minister.  If Libya were ever to bomb Britain, then David Cameron would either have to condone the bombing, or else be guilty of monumental hypocrisy.

Of course we are often expected to believe that certain countries have not merely a right but also a duty to go to war.  Maybe the people who hold to this point of view could explain in what circumstances another country might have a duty to go to war against Britain.  For example, should any country have gone to war against Britain in 2011 in order to punish the British for waging war against Libya, and murdering Libyan civilians?

Related previous posts include:
George and Baldrick
What is a patriot?

France, Russia, Turkey

My most recent post on this blog was written just as the terror attacks in Paris were being reported in the national press.  I decided not to write about these attacks at the time, however, as I had already decided to write about student finance, and because I felt it proper to learn more about the terror attacks before writing about them.

One of the first questions which occurred to me was whether or not the attacks were a false flag.  The attacks may have been - as is widely reported - the work of Islamic terrorists linked to ISIS.  They may also have been - as the columnist Peter Hitchens has suggested - the  work of Islamic terrorists unconnected with ISIS.  The atrocities might have been the work of the French government, just as the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers was almost certainly the work of the United States government. Another possibility is that the attacks were an elaborate hoax with nobody actually dead, as happened with the Sandy Hook school shooting.

I watched some videos on Youtube which argued for the Paris attacks as being a hoax, but found them lacking substance, and so I will proceed in the belief that the attacks were indeed the work of Muslims, although I will concede that Peter Hitchens might well be correct about there being no link to ISIS.

The President of France has used the terror attacks to justify air strikes against ISIS positions in Syria, which reminds me of the Renaissance writer Niccolo Machiavelli who argued that a prince who is unpopular at home should start a war.

Russia has already been attacking ISIS positions for some time, and recently suffered the loss of an aircraft shot down by the Turkish army for allegedly violating its airspace.  It is widely reported that the Russian aircraft would have been in Turkish airspace for maybe ten seconds at most, whereas the Turkish government has claimed that the Russian jet was in its airspace for around five minutes during which time several warning were issued.

Some commentators have even gone so far as to argue that this incident could trigger World War Three, but I will believe that when I see it.

The facts as I understand it are that ISIS is funded in large part by oil revenues.  Oil companies are expected not to buy from ISIS however, and so ISIS sends much of its oil in tankers into Turkey, where it can be sold on the international market as if it had been sourced in Turkey.  In other words, it appears that the Turkish authorities are helping to fund ISIS.

Predictably, Turkey objects to the destruction of ISIS oil tankers in Russian air strikes, and so it has been argued that they decided to hit back by taking out a Russian military aircraft.  Obviously, however, the loss of just one aeroplane makes little difference to the Russian bombing campaign, which leads me to conclude that either the Turkish government is planning to shoot down yet more Russian aircraft, or else that the Turkish government is in fact telling the truth about the five minute violation of airspace.

Related previous posts include:
The insanity of a war without frontiers
A war against ISIS would be savage and pointless

The insanity of a war without frontiers

I rarely condone war, and the ongoing international war against ISIS must rank among the most stupid wars in history.

As I write, the consensus in the press appears to be that the Russian Metrojet aeroplane which crashed in the Eyptian desert killing all 224 people on board was destroyed by a bomb.  The British government, in the person of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, has responded by arguing for Britain to launch bombing raids against ISIS.

I have previously made some positive remarks on this blog about Russian president Vladimir Putin.  This was not because I regard him as in any way a hero, but because he is a renegade among world leaders who plays his own game while refusing to bow to pressure from other countries.

The Russian armed forces has recently been unleashing one devastating attack after another against ISIS fighters in Syria, and I expect Putin has enjoyed being able to play the tough guy.  Nevertheless I was not remotely surprised when I read that a Russian aeroplane had crashed in a country with a majority Muslim population.

Quite simply, the war against ISIS is a war without frontiers.  There is no reason to think that there are not ISIS fighters in every major country in the world.  Amost any ISIS supporter anywhere in the world can perpetrate an act of murder, possibly on a large scale, and we must expect aeroplanes to be the prime target.

An ISIS supporter in the UK, for example, could explode a bomb in the centre of London.  Such a bomb might kill a hundred people or kill nobody.  By contrast, a bomb on an aeroplane can reasonably be expected to leave not one survivor.

I was not at all surprised to read that a Thomson flight from Stansted narrowly avoided being destroyed by a missile on 23 August.  David Cameron is well known for his support of war in Syria, as a result of which no British aircraft is safe.

If Britain steps up its illegal war against ISIS, then the main impact will be to increase the danger to the British people, not reduce it.  A war against ISIS cannot be won through armed aggression.  If every ISIS fighter in the world were to be killed tomorrow, then the organisation could be resurrected by the end of next week.  This war is ideological, and needs an ideological solution.

Related previous posts include:
A war against ISIS would be savage and pointless
Emma and Chris are veritaphobic
A triple murder in Syria

What is a patriot?

Jeremy Corbyn has received a lot of negative press coverage this past week, and in particular a lot of people are questioning his patriotism.  This is related partly to his being a pacifist, and partly to his failure to sing the national anthem at a service to commemorate the Battle of Britain.

I consider myself to be a patriot, by which I mean that I care deeply about my country.  Being a patriot is not the same as being a monarchist.  Jeremy Corbyn is a republican, but that does not make him not a patriot.  I can understand that someone of a republican persuasion may not want to sing the British national anthem.

To be fair, a lot of people who are not republicans also dislike the British national anthem.

Another issue of contention is that Jeremy Corbyn does not want Britain to maintain its non-existent stock of nuclear weapons. He has also opposed British involvement in various illegal foreign wars, and has even called for Britain to leave NATO.

Being a patriot is not the same as being an apologist for war.  If anything it is the opposite.  I will not vote to send British troops into illegal foreign wars, partly because I respect the right of every country on earth to determine its own affairs.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is a murderous organisation which interferes in the affairs of other countries.  (On reflection, that seems to be rather a silly thing to write, given that it appears to imply that NATO is itself a country, which it is not.)

At least one political commentator has compared Jeremy Corbyn with George Lansbury, who led the Labour Party from 1932 until his resignation in 1935.  Lansbury was a pacifist who believed that world peace could be achieved through nation's disarming rather than rearming - a point of view I find hard to take seriously.

But of course Lansbury was a communist, and so presumably wanted the forces of the Soviet Union to be able to invade Britain without encountering any military opposition.

If you are a patriot, then you love your country.  If you love something, then presumably you seek to protect it.  I want my country to maintain a high level of military capability so as to discourage other countries from going to war against us.  That is not the same as saying that I support war.  I support the defence of my homeland, and not the wanton destruction of other countries.

There is however little point in maintaining our armed forces if we are just going to sit back while immigrants take over our country.  I understand that, but Jeremy Corbyn appears not to.  On that basis, he comes across to me as no more of a patriot than David Cameron.

Related previous posts include:
A reasoned approach to war

The murder of Jeremy Corbyn

As I write, Jeremy Corbyn has recently been announced as the new leader of the Labour Party.  His victory was decisive.

Many people have argued that he is unfit to lead Britain, but consider some facts.  Many MPs on both sides of the house have lined their pockets at the public expense to a quite shameful extent, whereas Jeremy Corbyn has practised more restraint than most.

Also, Prime Minister David Cameron - like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before him - is obsessed with Britain taking part in illegal foreign wars, regardless of the cost in human life and in taxpayers' money.  By contrast, Jeremy Corbyn has for many years been fairly steadfast in his opposition to foreign wars.  If Britain were to stay out of illegal wars, then it could save us many billions of pounds, and yet I don't see the Conservative front bench urging restraint in this particular area.

Criticism of Jeremy Corbyn often revolves around his welcoming attitude to asylum seekers, but it is fair to point out that the Conservative Party also supports open door immigration.  Also, the huge levels of migration currently being experienced in Europe have a lot to do with the illegal wars which Jeremy Corbyn professes to oppose, and also to the free movement rules of the European Union.  It is worth noting that Jeremy Corbyn claims that he voted no to Britain's membership of what has become the European Union in the referendum of 1975.

And so to the question of murder.  Recent opinion polls show the Conservatives ahead of Labour by a margin which is not huge, but nevertheless impressive for a party in government.  At the moment therefore it does not appear likely that Jeremy Corbyn will be our next Prime Minister.

Nevertheless, public opinion can shift, and support for Labour may increase in the next few years.  However I cannot see Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister, as I feel confident that he would be murdered if he ever looked set to lead his party to victory in a general election.

Not content with being opposed to war, he has also hinted at the possibility of Tony Blair being prosecuted as a war criminal.  Tony Blair has many rich friends, and I can easily envisage one of them hiring an assassin to dispose of Jeremy Corbyn rather than let him become Prime Minister.  Also, David Cameron must be worried that he too might be prosecuted as a war criminal under a government led by Jeremy Corbyn, and it would be very easy for him to arrange for the security services to have him murdered.

To make matters clear, I do not support the Labour Party.  Nevertheless I do not condone the murder of politicians by people who want their evil friends to avoid justice for their crimes.

Update: at least two former leaders of the Labour Party have died while serving as Leader of the Opposition.  Hugh Gaitskell died in January 1963 aged 56, and John Smith died in May 1994 aged aged 55.

It has often been suggested that Gaitskell was murdered, possibly by agents of the Soviet Union who wanted someone else to lead the Labour Party.  I am not aware that anyone has ever claimed that John Smith was murdered.