The timing of that post about NETCU has worked out quite nicely.
Over the last couple of days there have been two letter bomb attacks on a couple of company offices in London, including a Capita office.
Hmmm... Capita
Even though I'm a big Fight Club fan, the stupid lunatic bastard who sent those bombs this week is just that, a stupid lunatic bastard. Maiming the poor sods responsible for opening their employer's mail is not big and it's not clever.
If the connection between outfits like NETCU and a nutter parcel bombing Capita isn't immediately clear a brief outline of how 21st century British democracy works might help -
Stef's four point guide to 21st Century British democracy:
- An ever-declining number of people vote in local and national elections
- One of the competing political parties comes to power for a set term
- During which time, for the price of a couple of blow jobs, the ruling party's elected officials sign over much of what they are supposed to do to large corporate monopolies on very long-term contracts
- So, even if the ruling political party gets voted out of office the corporate monopoly remains
The result being that we all end up being bitches to faceless, privately owned corporations, with deliberately bland names like 'Capita' or 'Vantis', that wield the kind of monopolistic powers and privileges we used to only ever grant to publicly accountable individuals.
And we can't vote them out. Even if, Heaven forbid, we somehow managed to elect an incorruptible group of politicians they couldn't do fuck all about it either.
The recent history of Capita and its staunchly New Labour supporting former chairman Rod Aldridge is one of the most blatant examples of the genre. Capita Turnover in 1996 = £112m. Capita Turnover in 2004 = £1,285m
The penny hasn't quite dropped with the British public yet. For the moment, the kind of companies at most risk from non-lunatic direct public action are still the old favourites in the defence and animal research industries.
However, there's a good chance that a wider range of companies will be targeted in the not too distant future by people feeling let down by their supposed democratic institutions and taking matters into their own hands. The first group of companies that comes to mind are those involved with administration of speeding fines, parking tickets and congestion charging. They are pissing an increasing number of people off and have already had to beef up their security accordingly.
All of which makes the creation of organisations like NETCU, their emphasis on protecting corporate interests and willingness to promote a loose definition of terrorism that includes anti-corporate activism just a little bit scary.
And business is booming in the acronym-heavy world of corporate-friendly, 'domestic security' outfits
Five minutes spent flicking through the NETCU site and plugging in some of the acronyms listed there onto Google yields a plethora of working groups and specialist police/ MI5 units...
- The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) aka CO11 - i.e. those guys who turn up at demos laden with camera equipment dressed-up like Darth Vader
- The National Domestic Extremism Team (NDET)
- The Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI)...
The CPNI's an interesting one...
"CPNI provides integrated (combining information, personnel and physical) security advice to the businesses and organisations which make up the national infrastructure. Through the delivery of this advice, we protect national security, by helping to reduce the vulnerability of the national infrastructure to terrorism and other threats.
CPNI works closely with the National Technical Authority for Information Assurance (CESG)"
The CPNI was recently created through the merger of the National Infrastructure Security Co-Ordination Centre (NISCC) and the National Security Advice Centre (part of MI5). Even though it is now absorbed, the NISCC (pronounced ‘Nicey’) homepage can still be found in Google's cache...
'In the UK the majority of the CNI (Critical National Infrastructure) is run by the private sector and NISCC works closely with a wide range of companies many of which have strong international links or are foreign-owned. CNI issues transcend geographical borders and problems can strike anywhere in the world. NISCC therefore operates in a global context.'
Nice ... y
To your average person in the street the expressions 'War on Terror' or 'Terrorism' have specific, Muslim-centric connotations but it's clear that our government and security forces are well-prepared to cast their nets much wider than that.
And I'm not even scratching the surface. The number of official, quasi-official, and privately run organisations making a very tidy living off the back of, whose very existence is dependent on, the horseshit fantasy narrative known as 'The War on Terror' is mind boggling.
And even if you do buy into the tWoT narrative, as is currently given, one thing you can be damned sure of is that the more nonsense organisations and committees that are created the more threats they will dream up as they compete with each other. Terror is their raison d'etre and turkeys don't vote for Christmas.
On the subject of horseshit, how about this site...
An original composition of mine entitled - 'Sunset over horseshit in Whitehall'
Secure Your Fertiliser (no acronym given) is a part of, wait for it here's another one, the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (Nactso)
Connossieurs of dodgy terrorist attacks will be delighted to discover that SYF quotes the Oklahoma City and Omagh bombings as prime examples of attacks undertaken by, um, terrorists using fertiliser.
Anyway, there's a special prize to the first person who can:
a) figure out which, if any, of these organisations is a fake (I currently believe all of them to be genuine)
b) puts together a flowchart that explains how they all relate to each other
-
Right, that's enough of me courting ridicule and/ or MI5's attention I'm going to find some knob gags to link to
.
6 comments:
CO11? Look at this example from Austria!
The serious point being (in the UK at least) that employment will be forbidden to those who for whatever reason are on the black list....people who post blogs saying waht a lot of wankers ther are in the Plod etc.,
Ther was an organisation that did the work for the car industry and Midlands Engineering which someone with a better memory will rember who used to circulate nformation about Union shit stirrers.
With modern IT, access to State databases via these quasi state Alphabetti spaghetti names - plus the incredibly lengthy recruitment processes that is so common today, and the use of 3rd party companies the awkward squad will be sidelined, harassed - with the rsult that they will revolt in small but nonetheles alrming ways.
The paradox is that in the 70/80/90' s we had real terrorism in the UK , much of it funded from the US,and in the 80/90's bomb threats everywher every day, especially on the tube.
Having erected these self important bimbos, we will need a revolution to get rid of them and their State Apparatus.
What is rilly,rilly sinister is the clandestine nature of them and the secretive links they have forged between, the Police, the state security apparatus MI 5 etc., the mil /industry complex ... Qinetiq , the private armies, Aegis, Erinys, and big businesses especially pharma via the animal rights and anti hunting lobby which the buffoons of RUSI in ST James will be hapy to see shot like foxes in standing corn.
BTW Brian Haw is CH 4's POlitical Aninal of the Year or whatever.
@tony - A nice example of strapping things to legs. Very S&M
Stef, can you ever imagine a scenario when letter bombs may be acceptable, even if it means 'maiming the poor sods responsible for opening their employer's mail'?
@anon
FWIW My personal opinion is...
As well being indiscriminate, actions like that serve the ends of the manipulative few and validate their agenda - as evidenced by the OTT response to the recent spate of letter bombs.
'They' love this kind of stuff
That is why, historically, 'They' have been behind much of it
I'm a big fan of the power of civil disobedience - the problem being that it is so easy to keep the majority of people duped or distracted for a very, very long time.
Better to find an effective way to show people the light rather than a better way to blow their hands off AFAIC
Of course, there have been people in the past who have tried to precipitate civil unrest by encouraging state repression by launching a terror campaign. So I can imagine a scenario but not one I would personally find acceptable
Would you?
"Would you?" At some point, yes. The question is when? Going to extremes we have the Warsaw ghetto: one can hardly blame people for fighting back but that example is easy. We have hindsight. Could it have been avoided with a campaign of disobedience including letter bombs and other acts of calculated violence?
This dialectic isn't easy to participate in, especially in recent legal environment but it should be addressed somewhere.
(First they came for the Muslims and I did nothing etc etc)
ps Just happened upon ...
"The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself is beneficial, but there is a great difference between peace and servitude. Peace is freedom in tranquillity, servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death. -- Cicero"
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