Metropolitan Police Intelligence rated at 69

OK, the botched anti terrorism raid at Forest Gate has been done to death now but there’s one aspect of the story that, as far as I can tell, hasn’t really been covered by blogs and the alternative press.

It’s cardinal rule of faith on the Internet, and one that I largely share, that our governments are up to ‘something’. ‘Something’ that, with the collaboration of corporate media, they go to great pains to keep from us.

And, hand on heart and honestly trying to be objective as possible, when I look at events like 9/11, 7/7 or the Invasion of Iraq I believe that there really are a heap of unanswered questions that need answering.

People on my side of the room suspect that key questions remain unanswered because there was an element of complicity or foreknowledge on the part of our governments.

People on the other side of the room blow-off the unanswered questions as being merely the result of ‘human’ factors such as incompetence or bureaucracy. They conclude that if there are any cover-ups going on they are quite mundane and exist merely to obscure the fact that some senior people have fucked up. Senior people who’d like to keep their jobs.

The division of opinion largely corresponds to whether you believe that the people who run things are either predominantly deceptively wicked or plain stupid.

One line of thought that is regularly trotted out to discredit what have been perjoratively described as conspiracy theories goes something like

‘When something world shattering and horrible happens there are many people out there who feel the psychological need to create meaning out of that event. They cannot come to terms with the fact that the world is essentially driven by random, meaningless events and accidents. So, they weave conspiracy theories instead of facing up to reality’

There is, of course, some truth to that. Just after the December 2004 Tsunami I came across some websites and blogs that swore blind that the tsunami was deliberately triggered by nuclear or scalar weapons and that warnings were deliberately withheld.

It goes without saying that there was biff all evidence, or proof of suppression of evidence, that supported any of this.

So, yes, some people do make up paranoid fairy stories to account for major events. No doubt.

Having said that, wars, terrorist bombs, dubious car crashes and suicides are not the same thing as tsunamis and hurricanes. They are acts of Man, not of God. So, the suggestion that a hidden human hand or two may be behind some of them is logically more possible.

And I am more than a little suspicious of people who dismiss the more credible, evidence-backed ‘conspiracy theories’ by lumping them in with all the crap out there. At the very least, it is intellectually lazy. Unless, that is, you believe that abrogating your responsibility to make sense of the World and leaving the task to journalists and politicians is intellectually hard work.

And let's not forget that the entire Al Qaeda thing; including the official accounts of 9/11 and 7/7 are themselves nothing but government-sanctioned, credibility-stretching conspiracy theories

And, if you need confirmation of how bent and unrepresentative the mainstream media is on these matters just consider how uncritical the press is of something like the War on Terror. The media may whine about the occasional balls up here and there but it has never critically questioned the thinking behind the overall paradigm. The central myths are taken as an unchallengeable 'given'.

Anyway, back to the Forest Gate raid.

If there’s one thing about the Forest Gate raid that really stands out for me it’s the complete lack of any widespread conspiracy theory associated with it. The raid happened weeks ago now, which is a lifetime on the Internet and, so far, about the only things that pass for a conspiracy theory I’ve heard are…

• the suggestion that the raid was timed and staged to pre-empt the publication of the report on the Jean Charles de Menezes execution. The idea being that a successful high-profile raid would neutralise any bad publicity associated with the shooting
• that MI5/6 slipped the Metropolitan Police duff information to make them look stupid

Meagre fare indeed

What this all means is that even the most hardcore conspiracy theorists out there have been unable to weave an alternate narrative concerning Forest Gate. When confronted with the question ‘Were the Metropolitan Police being deceptive or stupid?’, stupid is winning-out, hands down. As in...

• The Met really believed there was an explosive chemical vest in Lansdown Road
• They threw in 250 officers because they were expecting a headline success that would look good on television
• They shot an unarmed civilian in his jimjams because they really thought he was a terrorist lunatic
• They kept the suspects under lock and key for as long as they could and spent a week searching a small terraced house because they really could not believe they had got things totally wrong
• Yes, it is really possible that they are that fucking stupid

And if last weekend’s story that the ‘reliable intelligence source’ that triggered the huge raid really was a former pizza waiter with an IQ of 69 who’s been in prison for a few years on a bullshit terror charge is true that is really, really bad news.

Our senior police officers really do appear to believe in the full-fat version of the War on Terror; no matter how hyped-up and hysterical much of the narrative appears to be. And they’re so committed to it they’re willing to grasp at straws in the process.

This is a recipe for an unending stream of fuck-ups; resulting only in increased ethnic division and plummeting police credibility.

Well, if that's the game plan I think the Met should get their hands on one of those $2,000,000,000+ nonnuclear missile armed submarines I mentioned in my last post and stick in the Serpentine (conveniently located near to the London Central Mosque). They could then directly wire up the fire control system to half a dozen imprisoned people with 'educational issues' and, based on their ramblings, automatically target and launch a first strike on any terraced house filled with bearded men in the Northern Hemisphere within minutes.

It’s the only way to be really sure.