Bring me EVERYONE!!!

So, another terrorist dawn raid...

Two hundred and fifty plus police, a no fly zone, full hazmat procedures, the works...

Bring me EVERYONE!!!

And another round of newspapers screeching out demented headlines and quoting ‘unnamed sources’ saying things like

"We're 100 percent certain that an attack was being planned. If we haven't stopped it, it could take place very soon"

or

Police believed suspected militants had made a "dirty" chemical device -- a conventional bomb surrounded by toxic material that could be set off by a bomber wearing a suicide jacket. "We are absolutely certain this device exists and could be used either by a suicide bomber or in a remote-controlled explosion"

Hmmm, a suicide vest that incorporates both a bomb AND toxic material.

Sounds fiendish

It also sounds like bollocks

Of course, no one is going to come out an say that because there just might be such a thing and it just might work. Welcome to the Post 9/11 world where you can make a good living hypothecating about poisoned toothbrushes, plans to topple Big Ben onto the Houses of Parliament and any old crap you can come up with and absoutely no-one will call you out for being a wanker.

Mind you, the Metropolitan Police have apparently refined their anti-terrorism procedures and dispensed with the requirement to have their Commissioner go onto television and tell lies within hours of a shooting. Sir Ian has been uncharacteristically quiet this time round

How much of the coverage of the latest raid is based on truth, fantasy or downright deceit is still unclear and, based on previous experience, it will remain unclear indefinitely. Last night, a couple of news shows drew parallels with the ‘ricin plot’ in North London a few years ago. Conveniently neglecting to mention that there, er, was no ricin and that the accused plotters were found not guilty by a bemused jury; some of whom went on the record to quote their disgust at the pisspoor quality of the case against the accused.

Part of me wishes that I wasn’t so sceptical about the whole business. My world would be a lot simpler and I wouldn’t get freaked out by every new law and government or police initiative that comes our way. Part of me wants to believe.

But the problem is that there is a strong whiff of bullshit about the whole War on Terror thing. And it doesn’t help when every high profile terrorist raid, like the one in London yesterday, merely results in a lower profile release of the suspects a few weeks later. The handful of people who have been put on trial have either been found not guilty or are patently mentalist loner nutcases who’d claim to be Napoleon in the right circumstances.

Nope, not convincing at all.

And, yes, I haven’t forgotten last July and the reality of the bombs exploding in my city.

But almost a year later, our police and government still haven’t explained why a guy wearing a thin denim jacket and carrying no bag was executed as a suspected suicide bomber

Or why no evidence worth the name has been released into the public domain to support the official narrative of 7/7; no CCTV footage, no proof of the supposed bomb factory, nothing.

Or why there is to be no public investigation into 7/7

… if for no other reason than to identify and formulate a response to the reasons why people would choose to do such a thing

These are not trivial questions. A pile of cash is being spent on the War on Terror, people are being killed in far off lands, our laws are being changed. Personally, as a citizen of this country, I want to be damned sure, 100% sure, that we’ve got everything straight before embarking on all this nonsense. Nonsense that is almost certainly going to increase the risk of terrorism.

But, to date, the only reason I have to believe the story we are being told is that it is difficult to believe that hundreds of public employees would play along with some form of deception without saying anything.

But, as somebody reminded me last week, the British do ‘jobsworth’ better than any other nation on Earth. So, if you think about it, it wouldn’t be that hard to keep people in the dark or in line.

Anyway, we’ll see. Maybe we’ll get some answers this time. And maybe I’ll become a Believer.

I’m not wholly optimistic