I’m sure elsewhere in Blogistan the wags are enjoying the news that all the recent terror arrestees worked for the NHS. No doubt someone will suggest that working under Patricia Hewitt was enough to drive anyone to extremism; no doubt others will quip that the doctors turned to terrorism after failing to secure a job through MTAS. Some might try to suggest that the obvious ineptitude of the terrorists proves what poor quality personnel the NHS is employing these days…
Listening to the radio reports just now, I noticed the repeated use of the phrase ‘linked’. Usually, we hear it as part of that nebulus catch-all, “groups linked to Al-Q’aeda”. To hear instead that the men were “linked to the NHS” manages to portray our Health Serivce in a rather sinister new light.
Perhaps the NHS should be more like Al-Q’aeda. Many people have been saying for many years that the individual hospitals and trusts need to behave in a more autonomous fashion. They should be set a target and left to reach it in whatever manner they see fit. Not unlike a terrorist cell.
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Tag: Terrorism (Page 11 of 15)
After the terror attacks in London and Glasgow, there’s obviously been a lot of analysis and opinions flying around, from the mainstream media, security analysts, bloggers and the general public. Its interesting to see how most people are adhering to the idea that life should go on, and that these attempted suicide attacks should not provoke a draconian curb in civil liberties. To do so would hand the terrorists a victory.
For what its worth, I think Gordon Brown, Jacquie Smith and Alex Salmond have hit the right note, with their calls for unity and calm. Dave Hill seems to agree.
Over at the Devils Kitchen, Nosemonkey makes an interesting, if flippant point in the comments:
I believe in taking the piss when they cock up, and diminishing the status of the terrorist bogeyman. Terrorists exist to spread terror – make them a figure of fun, they fail, even if the occasional success does manage to kill a few score people and freak us out for a bit.
I’m not sure about making jokes about the attack, although I would suggest that the “life goes on”, “I’m not bovver’d” attitude also contributes to the diminishing returns of terrorist attacks in the UK.
A group of Human Rights organisations, led by Amnesty International, have published a list of 39 ‘ghost prisoners’ that have been detained by the US Government as part of its War On Terror.
The US has the duty to detain and bring to justice anyone responsible for crimes but it must do so in a manner that respects human rights and the rule of law.
A few months ago, I saw Clive Stafford-Smith from Reprieve talk very eloquently about this issue. You can read my account here.
A couple of London’s evening papers yesterday published pictures of Yassin Omar, alleged terrorist, caught on CCTV as he escaped London… dressed in a burka.
In the two versions of the story I read, in the Lite and the Evening Standard, there’s a detectable but unspoken subtext, which is that these garments somehow undermine the ability of the security services to keep us safe.
No more than other head coverings. Yet “criminal flees justice dressed in hoodie” (or motorcycle helmet, or baseball cap, or Halloween mask) is not front-page news, because pretty much every criminal will conceal his identity from CCTV cameras in such a way.
If the Burka is sacred to some people, then it is they who should be outraged in such a stunt. Indeed, Omar’s insensitivity suggests that his ideology (whatever it may be) is far removed from mainstream Islam. But “terrorist disrespects Islam” is not the message I get from either the Lite or the Standard.
Racism in the Big Brother house is of course important. It is admirable that 20,000 people have complained about the alleged bullying, that the Indian Government has expressed concern, and that Labour MP Keith Vaz has raised the issue in the House of Commons. We can only hope that the £300,000 appearance fee Shilpa Shetty has received goes some way to cushioning the hard times she has endured.
Big Brother is an illusion. The contestants could click their fingers, and the nightmare will end. This is not so for the housemates at Guantànamo Bay, who wake each morning to a genuine Orwellian nightmare. They have no plush chairs in the diary room in which to relax. Their only solace is the blissful ignorance of sleep, or a final release through suicide.
“It is not ‘suicide’ anymore,” says Clive Stafford-Smith. “It is called ‘manipulative injurious behaviour’ now. That way, the politicians and military men can claim that there are no suicide attempts at Guantanamo.”
Stafford-Smith is speaking at the offices of Clifford Chance at Canary Wharf, on behalf of the Mary Ward Legal Centre. The title of his talk is Secret Prisons and Ghost Prisoners, about the 14,000 people detained without lawyers or a trial in the name of the ‘War on Terror’. There is apparently a certain chauvinism in the military, and it is assumed that women are not militant. Stafford-Smith only knows of three female detainees, but there may be more. Most of those imprisoned remain unidentified, beyond the reach of the media, legal aid, and the rule of law. Guantànamo is the tip of a sinister iceberg.
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