The Cat crept into the Crevice, crapped and crept out again

A few of the things about the Crevice trial and its treatment in the media that are bugging me...

• The scanty coverage given to the defence case
• Virtually no mention of the fact that the jury set a new record for the time it took to reach a verdict and that, eventually, the judge decided that he would accept a majority verdict
• Little reporting and absolutely no investigation into the possible validity of claims made by the defendants that testimonies were extracted under torture and that the ISI was involved in the 'plot' somehow and exerting pressure via defendants' families
  
• The sheer all-pervading dodginess of the prosecution's 'star' witness
  

Basically, there's been a total absence of rigour in the treatment of the Crevice trial. At least two or three members of the jury may have anguished about passing a guilty verdict but our media has displayed no such doubts

Which, in a sane world, would be surprising given the frankly awful record of recent terror trials...

• The Ricin Plot that never was and a prosecution case so lunatic that several jury members subsequently went on television to express their disgust and concern
• The conviction of Dhiren Barot - now serving a minimum of 40 years, basically for being a nutter
• A personal favourite - that Iraqi cab driver accused of driving around London whilst listening to 'hypnotic music' and planning terrorist jihad
• Insert your own personal favourite here - there are plenty to choose from

Does this mean that I am alluding to some vast establishment conspiracy? A conspiracy designed to perpetuate the War on Terror myth through a series of high profile trials of idiots, nutters and patsies.

Maybe, but it would not have to be as vast as some people who mock 'conspiracy theories' would like to pretend.

It would only take a few people to get the ball rolling. After that, the kind of unimaginative jobsworths and gauleiters who have always found employment and favour in the machinery of state will diligently identify terrorists, whether real or imagined, till the cows come. Aside from that all you need is a morally weak and plain ignorant general public and you're away. After a while, the myth will take on a life of its own and you'll even find there are some lunatic bastards out there claiming that they really are part of some huge, shadowy, non-existent network

Alternatively, you can reject the notion that the World really does works like that sometimes. You could also prefer to believe, along with the Al-Qaeda myth, that Europe really was overrun by witches in the 17th century and that organised Satanic Ritual Abuse continues to take place, nationwide under our very noses.

Waterboarding - 17th Century style. We've come a long way since then ... and golly gee whizz now we're going back again

Personally speaking, there's something moderately ironic about how not buying into the Al-Qaeda conspiracy theory can be scornfully discounted as being itself a conspiracy theory. Like treason, what is or isn't an acceptable conspiracy theory very often seems to be a matter of dates.

And the fact is that, as with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British security services are intimately involved with many of the supposed Jihadist terrorists. So much so that it is absolutely impossible for anyone, including I suspect members of the security services, to tell the terrorists, agent provocateurs and dupes apart.

Of course, that's not how the story has been spun this week.

After the Crevice trial had ended it was claimed that MI5 had identified two of the 7/7 bombers associating with the alleged Crevice terrorists but decided that their role was insignificant. Later on, after the 7/7 bombings, MI5 claimed that it had no prior involvement with any of the alleged 7/7 bombers.

Which in technical terms is what is known as a lie.

And the reason being given for MI5 not keeping an eye on the two soon-to-be-alleged 7/7 bombers was because it was short of resources.

Maybe

But the reason could also be because MI5 is crap at what it does

Alternatively, maybe MI5 had other, altogether spookier, reasons for letting the two suspects go about their business unmolested and, supposedly, unobserved

Who knows? One thing I do know is that if I were to catch someone out in a lie in my personal life I wouldn't be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt in anything else they were claiming. However, different rules apparently apply when it comes to the media's treatment of MI5's output.

And it's unlikely that any independent public inquiry into the events leading up to 7/7 will shed any meaningful light on the subject. Independent public inquiries in the UK are now subject to some spiffy new legislation that ensures that they will be neither independent nor public. On top of that, those members of the public calling for an inquiry who are given the most coverage in the media don't seem to have a problem with that.

It's looking like there will be some kind of inquiry eventually and my awesome psychic powers tell me that the line 'tragic failure of intelligence' will be used at some point and that the key conclusion will be that resources allocated to state security need to be increased significantly.

It's easy to forget in the wake of the massive coverage of the Crevice verdict that this has been just one story amongst a spate of terrorism-related arrests, speeches and news stories that have taken place over the last few weeks. The timing of all these could, of course, just be coincidental, though personally I doubt it. The timings of arrests, speeches or leaking stories to newspapers are the result of conscious decisions not chance.

It is possible therefore that the stage is being set for some kind of major event. I sincerely hope my concerns are unfounded. Having said that it's not just me who is fearful for the future. The undisputed king of jobsworth gauleiters, the head of UK police counter-terrorism said as much just over a week ago...

"Nevertheless, we suffered the appalling attacks of July 2005, and the only sensible assumption is that we shall be attacked again."

"We have nothing to Fear but Fear itself ... and, of course, rag-heads armed with Tupperware"

Or to put it another way 'Give us a free hand and the resources to do what we want to or you will die. Come to think of it, you'll die anyway'




Now the thing is when our own senior policemen take to competing with the terrorists in boasting about the fearsome capabilities of those terrorists I start to have a real fucking problem telling the police and the terrorists apart

...and what are claimed to be warnings start to sound very much like a threats.

.