The London Blasts: Media Review

DAY 45: 21 August 2005 Part 2 Realism And Denial

Part 1: 'Shoot To Kill - Dizzying Twists'

Part 2: 'Realism And Denial'

Contents

Part 2: 'Realism And Denial'

Snippets

Semi-Denial - William Pfaff

SNIPPETS

PERCEIVED RISK OF TERROR DECLINES

Or so says the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, based at the MI6 building Thames House:

'The threat level was reduced from "critical" or Level 1 - its highest state - to "severe general" or Level 2G because intelligence sources do not have any specific information relating to imminent attacks.'

'... Although the "threat" level has been lowered, the "alert" level, which runs in parallel and is also decided by the centre, remains at its highest rating. It governs how buildings and transport systems are guarded and affects police manpower and use of resources.'

The Sunday Telegraph reports this under the front-page headline, 'Fury as officials secretly downgrade terror threat'.

The Sunday Times is somewhat more measured: 'Britain lowers terror alert' (page 2).

What does this mean? It means that we are back on the 6 July. The authorities have been warned that we are at serious risk of terrorism because of the policies we are following in Iraq and elsewhere, but have no specific knowledge of who might be putting together the next attack, or when it might happen.

Fury is appropriate, but not over the secrecy of the risk evaluation process, but over the far from secret policies that produce the risk of terror here, and which impose terror on the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and many other nations.

700 DETAINEES NOT GUILTY

The Sunday Times reports: 'Home Office records show that 182 — or one in four — of the 717 men and women detained as terror suspects since 2001 have claimed asylum in the UK.' The newspaper goes on to stir up hatred and resentment of asylum seekers.

The following sentence is typical: 'A number of those charged in a plot to target Britain with the deadly poison ricin were asylum seekers, including Algerian-born Kamel Bourgass, the gang’s ring leader.'

No mention is made of the fact that eight out of the nine men charged walked free after the Bourgass trial: four were found not guilty and the other four had the charges dropped against them. No mention is made either that Bourgass himself, the alleged al Qaeda mastermind-assassin was convicted only of a conspiring to cause 'public nuisance'. (See JNV Briefing 79.)

What about these 717 suspects? 'The Home Office says many of the 717 suspects detained have now been released. Few were charged with terrorist offences and only three have been convicted, although more than 20 are awaiting trial.'

So, out of the 697 cases which have been dealt with, three suspects have been found guilty of terrorism-related offences. 694 people have been arrested on terrorism charges and been found not guilty or released for other reasons. So 0.430 per cent of the detained population has been found guilty of terrorism-related activity. (This 0.430 per cent includes Bourgass and his 'public nuisance' conspiracy, which had no power to kill anyone, on the prosecution's own evidence.

Assuming for the sake of argument that all 20 of those awaiting trial are found guilty of terrorism-related charges (and this must be a heroic assumption, given the Bourgass case), that would make 23 out of 717 detainees found guilty. 3.2 per cent of those arrested on suspicion of involvement of terrorism.

Worth a story, and perhaps a headline, in an honest press. An opportunity to question the policing of the 'terrorist threat'. Here, the statistics are instead used to attack asylum seekers fleeing repressive regimes supported to a greater or lesser degree by the British government.

SEMI-DENIAL - WILLIAM PFAFF

MULTI CULTI

Veteran US columnist with the International Herald Tribune William Pfaff contributes a confused piece on the 7/7 and 21/7 bomb plots to the Observer today. The title and subtitle give an indication: 'A monster of our own making: These British bombers are a consequence of a misguided and catastrophic pursuit of multiculturalism'.

Pfaff argues that the Bush position on the 'global terrorist threat' 'ignores or implicitly denies the cultural and social sources of Islamic extremism in the West.' He suggests that 'the primary aim of the Islamic extremists is to radicalise Islamic society in order to purify it. Their main concern with the West is to expel it and its influences from the Islamic world. The radical leaders have no imaginable reason to want to conquer and try to rule the infidel West, even if they could.'

This can go two ways. One can examine and discuss the nature of the Western 'presence' and 'influence' in what is referred to as 'the Islamic world'. Or, presuming a certain notion of this 'influence' and the features that the 'extremists' find objectionable, one can concentrate on the 'cultural and social sources' of al Qaeda-type violence.

Pfaff's main concern is the 'well-intentioned but catastrophically mistaken policy of multiculturalism, indifferent or even hostile to social and cultural integration', which has allegedly produced in Britain and much of Europe 'a technologically educated but culturally and morally unassimilated immigrant demi-intelligentsia.'

Demi? As compared to?

Multiculturalism has been a catastrophe, in that it has not succeeded in inculcating the values of human rights and international law into the general population,or into ruling elites. The general population in Britain and other Western countries, and the political elites certainly, have failed to 'integrate' culturally and socially into the world community and world legal institutions such as the World Court.

WITHDRAW?

Pfaff gives conflicting signals. He gives the impression of being in favour, on balance, of a withdrawal from Iraq, despite the political costs involved - for the US:

'The argument that terrorism is an organised global menace continues to be put forward in Washington, although with fading conviction. It is necessary as the justification for the Bush administration's war in Iraq. It is essential for Bush and Blair to be able to say that staying the course in Iraq can disable or end the terrorism practised by young Muslims in Europe and elsewhere. The argument ignores or implicitly denies the cultural and social sources of Islamic extremism in the West.'

'Few today would seriously deny that the war in Iraq generates terrorist sympathies among members of Western Europe's Muslim communities, as the Palestinian intifadas did. The war clearly provides a continuing obstacle to the integration of these communities into the larger society, in Britain as elsewhere.'

'Ending the war would remove the obstacle, but today would, quite rightly, be interpreted as defeat for the coalition. Despite the fact that the Iraqi resistance seems predominantly nationalist in motivation, the radical Islamists would claim credit for forcing the coalition's withdrawal.'

'Military withdrawal none the less is perfectly possible, since the evidence is overwhelming that foreign military occupation and the resistance are in symbiotic and symmetrical relationship, each reinforcing the other.'

'In any case, American public opinion has taken a sharp turn against the war, and finding a plausible exit is now the Bush administration's priority. Without one, the government will eventually confront the dire choice between conscription, politically ruinous to the Republicans, and a smokescreen-covered defeat, as in Vietnam.'

'This "defeat", however, would transfer the problem of Islamic fundamentalism back to where it belongs, inside Islamic society itself. There, the myth of a return to a glorious past will eventually be discredited.'

Pfaff concedes that the occupation is feeding - 'reinforcing' - the Iraqi insurgency. He admits that withdrawal from Iraq is 'perfectly possible', and that it would assist in eliminating the risk of terrorism from Western Muslim communities. He is most concerned to transfer 'the problem of Islamic fundamentalism' from the West to the Middle East 'where it belongs', which withdrawal would achieve.

BIN LADEN'S DEMANDS

Pfaff's final sentences:

'Like the anarchists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, these people [young Muslim "extremists"] have no realisable goals and make no meaningful political demands, only Utopian ones. Thus, like the anarchists, they must be called nihilists.'

'For that reason, they present a profound problem to governments accustomed to dealing with rationally manageable threats, enemies and demands. Reason has no answer to nihilism.'

Reason certainly has no answer to nihilism. The question is where this 'nihilism' can be found.

If 'these people' have no realisable goals and make no meaningful political demands, how is that their figurehead, Osama bin Laden, has clearly put forward one goal for their actions which is both realisable and meaningful?

A month ago today, we reprinted the Osama bin Laden truce offer to Europe, made after the Madrid bombings:

'it is in both sides' interest to curb the plans of those who shed the blood of peoples for their narrow personal interest and subservience to the White House gang...'

'... in order to deny war merchants a chance and in response to the positive interaction shown by recent events and opinion polls, which indicate that most European peoples want peace, I ask honest people, especially ulema, preachers and merchants, to form a permanent committee to enlighten European peoples of the justice of our causes, above all Palestine ...'

'.... I also offer a reconciliation initiative to them, whose essence is our commitment to stopping operations against every country that commits itself to not attacking Muslims or interfering in their affairs - including the US conspiracy on the greater Muslim world.'

'... The reconciliation will start with the departure of its last soldier from our country.'

'The door of reconciliation is open for three months of the date of announcing this statement.'

(This is a BBC translation)

It is impossible to evaluate the seriousness of this offer, but at the very least, the fact that the offer is made, in return for a specific foreign policy objective, is inconsistent with a picture of irreconcilable 'nihilism'.

JNV welcomes feedback.