Right to Dissent

For many the acts or terrorists are so heinous, such a threat to civilised society, that any measures  that might thwart their evil deeds is fully justifiable. Under this blanket of fear the Government gets a free ride to introduce its innocuous sounding IPB, Investigatory Powers Bill, better and more correctly known as the snoopers charter. A Bill which grants powers that the European Court of Justice has already stated contravene basic human rights. The Government is granting itself the right to open, read and store any electronic communication it chooses, from anyone to anyone. A blanket right to listen to phone calls, read EMails, anything sent electronically is open book to them.

Totally justifiable you might say if it stops another terrorists attack that we have been warned to expect any minute. Except of course a terrorist to one party is a freedom fighter to another party. All depends on your point of view. The Establishment, the upholder of the status quo, gets to label all dissent against it. Any group of people that gather and agree to disagree with the Establishment will be labelled but that label can range from 'protesters' to 'pickets' to 'mob' to 'uprising' to 'revolution' and so on all the way out to the extreme fringes. What we do know is that the Establishment will always seeks ways to supress dissent, any dissent. The only possible restraint will be their perception of public support and how far they expect to be able to 'manage' it. By manage we mean of course to bend, swerve, falsify, distort events and news to shift perceptions.

With this snoopers charter the Establishment, our Government elected to serve us, has given itself powers which enable it to monitor all dissent from what ever source and for what ever motive. Anything that suggests it is contrary to Government intentions, will be flagged. Once flagged, all participants, all associates of participants, all previously contacts of participants will be scrutinised for possible intents. All their past and present actions and comments will be reviewed in the light of possible threat, signs of contrary thoughts, evidence of lack of support for the Government aspirations and will be re-examined for assumed indicators of future actions. The data mining, the algorithms, the 'Case Officer'  will be working with so much information there will no scope for subtleties, for nuances or even common sense. So that jest, that floating of an idea, that game of devils advocate, that day dreaming, that idle speculation are all at risk of being taken out of context, just bundled up as proof against you. Just remember you cannot ever prove innocence. 

With the power to collect and interpret as they choose ideas at their very point of inception the Government gives itself the ability to step in and take avoiding actions. Actions that can range from isolating individuals, surveillance, planting of decoys, warnings all the way to arrest search or other life disruptions. They put themselves in the position to totally control any developments as the initiating ideas and membership grows. They are all seeing, all hearing and only they get to decided on the rights or wrongs.

If it stops another terrorist its okay then? Any dissent? You may not agree with the Coal Miners actions to save their industry.  You may not agree with the sit-in at Greenham Common. You may not agree with the HS2 protests. You may not agree with collect actions against the Single Past the Post system. You may not agree with the discontinuation of the Monarchy. You may not agree to bring an end to Party Politics and reinstate direct and accountable democracy. But you must agree the right to dissent from the Government is paramount. Dissent which can only be by collective action, actions that may fly close or even beyond what the Government of the day decrees legitimate. We should never ever give up our right to revolution as a final resort. Our right to collective action should be free of Establishment intimidation. Our friends and all the people we come into contact with should never be put under the microscope of suspicion just because we choose to dissent. Any more than our own innocent pasts should never be subjected to prejudiced retrospection just because we shared an EMail with the parent of our daughters friend who just happened to be radical. Dissent is what keeps us safe not the Snoopers Charter.

Radicalised Youth

Way outside of my comfort zone but it strikes me that this current pre-occupation with extremist radicalising our youth is yet another twist on the old familiar gang culture. Teenage boys, boys with low self-esteem, boys with a disconnect from their local culture, boys without hope seem to seek out other like minded youth. It just takes some alpha male to offer identity, some, just any purpose, some bonding ritual, something that makes them special to stand out (as a group) to be taken account of. Within this special elitist (in their minds eye) group they achieve status, recognition and respect of their piers. Back turned to the society that nurtures and supports them. Their own secret group rules now are all that matter, nothing else is of any account. Whether it is a Jhad, fighting the next door gang, doing the Mod's in Clacton, it is just what Gangs do.

Once the answer was conscription, put them in the Army, let the Army act as a quasi Alpha Male Gang leader. At least there they were given identity, fellowship and some degree of  security, depending on how warmongering the times were, until they grew up enough to put silly boy gangs behind them and join the real adult world and look after their family. But we don't have the Army anymore. We do have an awful lot of disaffected youth with time, no aspirations in the their hands and no hopes of a better future. How do we go about giving these youths a sense of purpose, how do we connect with them on their terms in their language using their blinked view of the world?

No answers to offer except that without hope, without any sense of being able to better themselves, never losing this over-arching sense of unfairness, nothing will change. So our increasingly unequal society is just going to have to change instead. Stop the rot of only boys of rich families, who go to very good schools are the only ones to succeed, to get a job and a nice home and do all those things that nice people do. All boys should have that hope and chance to succeed. Without it I am very much afraid even more gangs, even more radicalised youth. Not even if every other adult was recruited into a snooper service are you going to be able to it stop. Simple. Give boys, and girls, hope.

My island person

I had always understood that my one inviolate sanctuary, where I had to account to no one, were the thoughts in my mind. It seems that just because they can our Government have decreed that our personal thoughts are too important and must be monitored. Not just monitored of course, but reacted to should they imply what they consider to be inappropriate. Over any period a gamut of thoughts surge through my mind, shape shifting, getting stronger, weaker, changing focus, convolving to tangent ideas, narrowing down to a focus then off again. To manage my thoughts, to challenge them to see whether there is any substance in them, to consolidate them so they can be subjected to review, I need to try to set the more important ones down. Many people need to share ideas, to test the air, to see where the consensus lies, to confirm a mutual concurrence, to reassure a commonality of experience. Whatever, people chatter, nowadays they bounce words around, just a flux of ideas bouncing around responding to or creating stimuli for other ideas or tired old just going round doing the rounds. Our Government have given themselves the tools and taken the right to monitor all this electronic chatter, shifting for data trends, hotspots and of course making judgements on inappropriate ideas, who might be making them and jumping to (informed?) guesses on possible outcomes.

It is crystal clear to me that there are three key distinct stages, the initial thought which then translates into an intention and finally becomes an idea that is implemented. That tip over point, no longer an abstract thought but an actual observable committed deed that can be held up, scrutinised and the perpetrators of it held to account, for good or bad. So amongst the medley of thoughts that rummage around in my head are the concern about the homeless, hankering for expensive kit and annoyance at a prominent role model so shamefully brushing aside any self-restraint. These shapeless thoughts morph into ill-defined intentions; to donate 10% of my income to charity; to become a millionaire and to proactively promote a Republic State when Prince Charles gets to succeed. 

With their routine surveillance of all us, our government monitors may well pick up on all these intentions of mine and flag me as a person who needs to closely watched. Pre-emptively, so they can get their water cannon in place before any protest kicks off, for the security of the greater good, of course. But intentions can be all, or more often, nothing, anything from empty boasts, still born at inception all the way to imminent implementation over a timescale of immediate to never in a million lifetimes. Logistically how are our government monitors to evaluate me, along with all the other huge number of daily potential targets? No matter how sophisticated their data mining is in identifying hotspot, fluxes of interest there is no algorithm to convert an averaged potential into an actual tipping point of action. Knowing with statistical certainty what the median of that personality profile may do, does not translate to the actual behaviour of any one individual in that sample. Whilst we may all conform to some stereotype or other we are each unique individuals with our own unique set of reactions and triggers. We are not interchangeable, I may be similar to you in shared interests but my responses will produce a different outcome to yours. 

Now my ill-defined intentions may spark off a search for information to firm up my intentions into plausible courses of action. Still no commitment, still on the fence, open minded just looking around to see what options are out there. My wish to donate to charity might take me from the usual frontline providers to looking into the politics of poverty, how it arises and how others think Society needs to change to minimise poverty. My intention to become a millionaire may take me quickly from evaluating all the free-ride tickets games of chance, to assessing the distribution of wealth and who controls access to it, to spending a lot of time in my local Banks getting to know all the front office staff on familiar terms. As only a tepid monarchist I will easily find all the other dissent groups who oppose the monarchy and very easily become familiar with all the alternate society models together with all various routes, tacit to active dissent, as ways of changing the status quo. With such an array of potentially highly suspect contacts and potential alliances with groups out to thwart government authority I must surely pose a security risk? With all those alarm bells ringing how is any risk analyst going to know with any credence whether I have become radicalised or remain aloof to counter cultures? A presumption of guilt unless proven otherwise can only have one outcome, a ballooning of potential targets followed by a ever burgeoning security monitoring service increasingly hyper-active and hyper-sensitive. 

The only reliable safety valve we have, is the community we live within. That community has a past knowledge, a current expectation and a fairly robust future prediction of where I am and what I might be capable of at any period of time. No amount of data trawling can get anywhere near close to that level of community introspection. There is a catch, of course, as being one of us, part of their community, the community will cut me slack and make allowances for me, if challenged by Them (the Them of an outside of the community authority), for some transgression. A level of latitude that would not have been offered had I transgressed against the Us of the Community. An insider Us is protective of the outsider Them, (think again about a Locally Based Policemen being one of us as versus a visiting Policemen coming in from Them of the outside).

Intentions are ephemeral, to chase the ephemera of electronic chatter is as mindless as the Inquisitors chasing down Witches. Instead of yesterdays Witches we have the now current bogey of the Terrorist. Prove to me you a not a Terrorist is just as inane as proving I not a Witch! Only tangible discrete actions can be examined, challenging intentions leads to only to the morass. Anything that distracts or diffuses from that key transition point when an intention morphs into an action is to be deplored. When my charity intention is translated into actual action, dropping a 50p coin into a tin; hoisting a republican flag in my garden or strapping on a pretend body bomb to hold a Bank hostage, then you need to stay alert, to be on your marks. Not wasting resources chasing fantasy ghosts of your own creation. What we do all have to fear and remain ever vigilant to is the maverick loner. The loner living beyond reach of the community he lives within. Rather than expend wasted resources monitoring all electronic chatter, far, far better by miles is to trust in the local community. For the community to know and police their members. Do everything conceivable to reinforce, encourage and dissipating culture barriers so the connections within any community between its members, can flourish. 

In the end, this is the only reliable safety net we have. Meanwhile I must have the freedom to think the unthinkable, so I can arrive independently at my own moral judgements, yet safe, with the knowledge that the community I live amongst will keep me rooted in what is acceptable. No amount of electronic eavesdropping while ever provide a better secure safety net.

the Bogeyman cometh

The recent serious loss of service experienced by many social network site, I include Google in this, could simply be due to the paranoia of nations states as they try to syphon off the ever increasing chatter, within their own country and equally that of friendly or foe states. The secret state surveillances that we know are taking place may be failing top keep up with the traffic growth. It is possible that their collective snooping has crashed the very sites they are so desperately keen to snoop on.

All for our own good and safety of course. If it was not for their constant vigilant monitoring we would be overwhelmed by all those terrorists out there for ever creating ever more sophisticated plots to overthrow us. On the scale of probabilities I am most likely to die in a car accident than encounter anything even peripheral to terrorist action. Set aside the probables in life and let us look at more extreme scenarios. I am much more likely to be raped or knifed in a street brawl than suffer even a minor graze resulting from a terrorist action. The collective paranoia and the accumulative hype about terrorism far exceeds the capacity of the terrorists to action. They do not have any super-powers, they do not have laboratories with highly skilled technicians dreaming up ever more complex devices, they do not have a highly organised and covert secret organisations able to baffle and confuse, no. They are relative simpletons, bumbling along making it up as they go along, limited to a few devotees and preying on the disaffected, disillusioned and despairing youth who are willing to commit suicide by strapping bombs to themselves. This is the true cost of the social inequality that is being so vigorously promoted, disaffected youth beyond hope.

We live with the awareness of unimaginable horrors, large numbers of people dying unexpectedly in dreadful circumstances, but we get on with life, we dont freeze up and cancel life. Not just natural disasters either, but man disasters. Planes do fall out of the sky, from time to time, we carry on flying, learn the lessons, but life carries on as normal. A few extreme acts of terrorism have been carried out, no one can forget the shock of 9/11, shocking but isolated, yes and in the scale of daily events exceptional. Sometimes through our own inefficiencies they get in their view, lucky. But terrorist acts are not the norm, they are not a constant in daily life. Despite what our security services would have us believe. This motley incompetent collection of the disaffected, that talk big, boast about their 'elaborate' plans but seldom have the nonce to succeed, are talked up by the security services. They promote them to arch enemy status and invest in them all the skills needed to justify the ever more elaborate defensive screens the security services think would be nice to employ. The Government, being the government, have to be seen to act, so can only support the only advice they can turn to, and up the security screen to the next level. There by confering on the bumbling terrorist the prize of being taken seriously and more credible than they are in reality.

The collective fear that has been talked up is just a later day version of the witch hunt. The Inquisition were on the hunt for witches, our Security Services are on the hunt for terrorists. The Inquisition were on the look out for covens, our Security surveillance seeks out terrorists cells. The Inquisition duck boarded witches to prove their innocence, we water-board our suspects to prove they are not terrorists. The Inquisition had to protect society from the evil spells cast by witches, the Security Services have to protect us from being radicalised. The Inquisition required everyman to denounce his neighbour, the Security Service listen in to all our gossip and speculations. The Inquisition looked for trademark features of witches, the Security Services check suspects against their radicalised muslim profile. The Inquisition and our Security Services justify their actions for the safety and peace of the State. We are degraded by their actions in our name. We are intimidated into giving up precious freedoms and rights for fear of the dire consequences that otherwise will arise, or so we are told. The terrorist wins the long game when we close down every day actions in anticipation, when we abandon cherished high ideals because of what they might do. When fear enters the mind and displaces rational thought, the terrorists have won.

Hiding behind words

It is so disengaged, remote, coldly clinical, the descriptions 'surgical strike', 'precision targeting', 'terrorist threat', 'neutralising a real risk', but setting aside the contrived and deliberate detachment of the words, the end result is still the same, a person, a human being, is to be killed. A person with parents, relatives, maybe a spouse probably with their own children has been selected to be killed.

Man facing man with comparable weapons it could be seen as, almost, a glorious and honourable trial of strength, both with an opportunity to overcome the other and to be the victor. But we have moved a long way from man against man. The weapons have led to increasing distance between the men confronting each other. Now the opposing men do not even see it other and it has been, for a long time, not a matter of one man skills pitted against another, but simply who has the best weaponry and tactical support.

Now a man sitting in a room three thousand miles away, in front of a bank of screens can control a drone that picks out it target and then kills it. No chance to retaliate, the target probably even unaware of their imminent death. Back across the world the man goes home to hugs with family, settles infront of TV with a cold beer and life is very normal. Selective targets with known terrorists links, only picked out for death after the most serious of cross checks and only after Presidential authorisation. This not a casual killing campaign but very carefully premeditated and double checked. Sure there is the odd co-lateral damage. That is to say unintended bystanders, men or women or children also are killed but that is their risk for associating with known terrorists. It is essential for the security of the USofA that these people are killed without further risk to American personnel. Except there is a higher overriding concern. Justice.

Our system of Justice, flawed and rough edged that it is, has evolved over centuries to balance all the complexities of human actions with that need, by us all, that the guilty should be exposed and shown for what they are. The Justice system recognises that you cannot not simply take one side of the argument. It has to be challenged by the opposing version. It is not even simply totting up all the incontrovertible evidence on one side as against the other. Even evidence can be skewed, depending on your point of view. It is not even who is the most believable and presents the most likely account of events. It is all that plus the intangibles, of people, how we as an individual perceive and have a sense of their trust and worthiness. That is why in the more complex cases we bring in twelve decent men off the street and leave the outcome for them to decide. Flawed because even unimpeachable evidence can turn out to be just wrong and seemingly good decision can be eventually shown to be wrong. The wrong person judged to be guilty. There simply are no absolutes, guilty or not entirely depends on your point of view, where you choose to place the emphasis, where you decide credence of truth best fits. At least, with the abolition of the death sentence, it is possible to make retribution for those persons who suffer the rough edges of our Justice System.

The Terrorist is our later day Witch where the ducking stool has been replaced with a death drone and all the hi-tech mumbo jumbo wrap arounds to reassure any waverers that this is all clinical, precise, beyond doubt or question. Except it is still based on 'Prove you are not a Witch/Terrorist' on pain of death. Except the selected target is not give any chance to protest their innocence. At least when the executioner looked the condemned in the eyes he was able to reassure himself, by the demeanour of the condemned, that they accepted their fate and guilt. Not with the remote controlled drones. The victim is killed without any chance to protest, to set out an alternate chain of events to the ones assembled by his judge, jury and executioner. All is fair in the cause of a 'War on Terrorism'. As if that expression defined a tangible cohesive body of people who were united, armed and seeking confrontation. Just as in the War of Witchcraft, it justifies all means and ends. History tells us otherwise. For all the hundreds of witches slain for failing to prove they were not witches, witchcraft was not eradicated. Instead their pursuers were besmirched by their abandonment of all basic rights and restraints. Evil continues on as ever but just pops up under another label with other objectives.

When Mr President of USofA next reviews the daily list of people to be killed by the death drone, he would do best to pause for thought. Is this justice I am administering here or just sanctioned slaughter?

Justifiable Ends

It is not a frequent event when you stare at the TV, jaw dropped, in utter disbelief. It happened recently during the Andrew Marr Sunday interview with Condoleezza Rice. Without a blink, any hesitation, the least demur she said, stony faced to the camera, the US of A government used all possible legitimate and lawful means to 'treat' suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. Not a moments hesitation contemplating the paradox that as the US of A makes up its own rules, does not allow anyone else to hold it to account, it can make whatever rules it likes and therefore legitimatise any conceivable action. Clearly for the US of A government this readily included the indefinite incarceration of suspects (conceivably innocent) whilst subjecting them to a sustained, deliberate, destructive, dehumanisation programme. A programme specifically designed and calculated, in its use of sensory and social deprivation, denial of cause or hope of relief, with the intention to rob that individual of any sense of self-worth and identity. Rendering these objects, held under their jurisdiction, to the base animal form, stripped of any sense of human normality. In contrast a casual indifferent bullet to the back of the neck would seem, in comparison, almost humane.

A chink just to indicate, looking back, there was, in the full heat of that moment, an over-reaction, a lapse from the normal standards, then she might of saved the day for her and for the US of A, that she put herself out to represent. But no, she was defiant, there was no wrong doing! Just another proof that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts completely. Why our leaders lose all moral and ethical sensibilities as they reach the peaks of authority, I have no idea. What is clear is that by resorting to the tactics and the justifications of your enemy, you give up on your right to judge and inevitably subject yourself to others judgement. When our government subscribes to deception, entrapment, if not outright support and encouragement, in order to infiltrate political activists, as recently seen on Confessions of an Undercover Cop, then they too give up the moral high ground. They are no better than the 'extremists' they seek to control and contain. There are no shall I, shan't I positions, no middling degrees, either you stand by the moral standards you choose to run your life by or you don't. Our government is supposed to reflect the higher standards we all aspire to, not the gutter. They, our representatives, presumably were chosen because of their high moral viewpoints, viewpoints we can all share and applaud. Nothing ever justifies the abandonment of those standards, not by individuals filling out expense forms and certainly not by our government acting on our behalf. Okay, technically the police, but obviously working within the framework prescribed by government and of course, budget cuts will reflect on their ardour in achieving stated government goals, that is, the limiting of political activists freedom to stage events. It amounts really to the same thing.

When terrorist are in the gun sights then all ethical standards fly out of the window. The tight rope walk, when dealing with political activists, of keeping close to the line of public goodwill and support can be totally ignored. Our government, inquisitors in modern robes, loses all reason and see it right and fitting for middle of the night raids. Tearing 'suspects' from home, family support, shattering any career hopes and incarcerating them beyond contact for upto fourteen days at some one else's pleasure. Giving free reign to institutionalised racism, because who ever heard of a white middle-class englishman as a radical terrorists? These raids to root out and discover 'suspects' are based on no more than 'intelligence' which can be gossip, innuendo, grudges or simply mischance, wrong face at wrong time or place. These, our latter day witches hunts, places, as it ever has, the onus on the radical 'terrorists suspect'  to prove the impossible that they are not as named and shamed.

Amongst the hundreds of witches that were burnt, or drowned or worse, for the sake of society at large, no doubt there were one or two that actually tinkered in the black arts. Not every radical is a terrorist, not every terrorist carries out an act of terrorism. By descending into the gutter, demonising all terrorists, (see also my post, War on Terrorists ) and treating them with less than the respect due to any human, no matter what contrary creed, race, beliefs or professed objectives, we ourselves become terrorists against civilised society.

What, as a civilised society, we know full well is that in the end you have to sit down with your sworn enemy and make pragmatic arrangements to live alongside each other. It is so much easier to reach that concord when you have not vilified each other nor have not radicalised their followers by inhumane treatment under your hand. In the end we all have to talk to each other, so keep to your high morals and you have less to repent at your leisure.

Secure in Fantasyland

Just come back from touring around a number of european countries and the absence of the surveillance cameras was very noticeable. Yet I did not feel threatened at any time even in public spaces with crowds gathering, nor did I feel my safety was compromised. Maybe surveillance cameras are just a reflection of a society that is insecure within itself and distrustful of its citizens. Without consultation or prior public consent, they are installed at the whim of authorities. Safe in their uncontested defence that the public welcomes all cameras as they protects them from acts of violence and no innocent has anything to fear!

That protection is of course an urban myth with very little substantive evidence to support it. The increasing numbers of installations are self-defeating. Every camera needs a person to sit and monitor it, for every 525599 (or 527039 in a leap year) minutes of a year. Just incase something is about to kick off. Other than that, your security is just a factor of luck. Is your particular monitor being watched at the moment you are under threat? Chance are so long against it you would stand more chance winning the european lottery! So cameras are next to useless protecting from an event but can have use after an event. As you lie unconscious on the floor, with luck, you might get spotted within half an hour if, of course a caring passing citizen does not respond first!

These cameras promote an entirely false sense of safety. They are of course of great interest to authorities wanting to control a submissive society. They gather vast volumes of data tracking each and everyone of us. With face recognition software they can, when they choose, track a person for their whole active day or life. All in the interest of our greater security of course. Such resources would only ever be employed against known national threats, like terrorists. It just does not add up. They do not know the terrorists in adavance, there are too many cameras for such a focussed need. No, they are used routinely to monitor you and I as we go about our every day lives. To make judgements about our actions and compile dossiers of citizens with behaviour patterns deemed suspicious. Nothing to fear as I live within the law. Yet your behaviour is being judged every day by you know not who. Software designed to pick up on nervous behaviour or by a low paid psychotic with a warped sense of normality. You have absolutely no idea nor any rights to know. Yet if by some mechanism you are placed in the suspect pile, your life can be change dramatically. To prove innocence is impossible. Once you are deemed a witch, or in this day and age, a terrorists, you are beyond help. Your cries of innocence merely confirm your guilt to those judging you.

No, let us get it straight, surveillance cameras are a weapon to be used by an authoritarian state against it citizens that are too submissive and indifferent to care.

Whilst I am at it of course the other aspect are speed cameras. Went through far too many road works when abroad and not a single one had an average speed camera let alone a fixed camera during the works. The organisation of the roadworks were far less controlled and organised than over here. If anything the risks were far higher there, but no cameras. Traffic density could be equal to or exceeding that here. I simply do not believe, and the evidence of my own eyes supports it, that we are not worst drivers. So why such a different reaction? Average speed cameras tightly controlling traffic speed through roadworks and even reducing the speed through the works arbitrarily down to 30 or even 20 mph, compared to, no cameras.

If the accidents rates were remarkably different between one country and another there would be an public outcry in the country at variance. No I suspect that accident and or driving death rates, one country to another, are more or less on par. Even in Germany where they still have unlimited speeds on parts of the autobahn I doubt whether there is a significant difference. So why does this country have such an obsession with speed cameras. It has to be distrust and control. Distrust by us the citizens of ourselves and the willingness of others to behave and an authority that leaps at that permissiveness, to exercise more control over its citizens that is never contested. All muddled and muddied up with good aspirational goals that allay social concerns, the need to save fuel in equal measures with doses of all speed kills. Twaddle but self-righteous twaddle so not easily dismissed.

At the heart of all this is a conundrum. The conundrum is that strong leaders are expected to be seen to act and be decisive and in times of threat, action is expected. In response to those expectations those in control publicly tinker. It matter not what they tinker at so long as it tickles the public's expectations of what is thought to be effective. In reality those tinkerings have very little actual impact on events other than massaging the public's concerns. There are no reliable studies to prove efficacy but they accumulate building up into a mythology of effective reactions to events. Just fantasy solutions for a submissive public that has given up on caring, thinking or protesting at self-evident bad decisions. It is up to you, have surveillance or speed cameras been proven to actually work? Get off your butt and do something.

Gung-ho Politics

The decent society that I live in does not need or want our civilian police armed with automatic weapons. Their role is the civil control and moderation of us in and about our normal life. That does not entail rapid fire-fight to see off suicidal terrorists intent on mayhem where the only conceivable outcome can be large numbers of 'collateral damage', that is slaughtered husbands, wives, children, neighbours and friends to you and me.

If it comes to that neither do I want to be part of a society where it is normal and appropriate for policemen, armed with automatic fire weapons slung in their arms as they, patrol our crowded civilian airports. After weeks and weeks of doing nothing, how do you imagine they could or would respond to a sudden threat within the airport lounge? One single shot to resolve the situation and all returns to normal, or is general carnage a more apt expectation?

There is no disagreement, we do have a need to be very concerned about the rise of terrorism but the answer is not follow the american macho gung-ho approach of massive weapons and over-kill fire power. It is all very dramatic, it appears to be decision action and total control of a challenging situation. In reality this is just a media placating hype. A hail of bullets, even if yours are bigger, faster and more explosive power per bucks than your opponents, really does not answer the terrorist threat. If anything it actually makes it worse and just spreads the consequences wider. We do not want an arms race with terrorists. Nor do we do want to encourage them to target softer and more vulnerable mass gatherings. We actually need to play down our reaction and responses to their threats, to minimise our concerns, to allay their anticipation and preparations.

The police's daily expectation is not that of going out for another days gun fight, their mental preparation leaves them singularly unsuited to respond appropriately and accurately should they have to respond to fire. No matter what training they get in the use of weapons, once the school room is left behind within hours outside of real combat situations, time will dull the lessons of control and disciple. The adrenalin kick-in will inevitably lead to over-reaction, reflex firing with low target selection and accuracy threshold. A million miles away from a controlled careful sighted shot to 'take out' (kill) an armed threat that we are presented with, to reassure our nervous concerned citizen selves. That is not the way it happens in real life, setting well aside the fantasy movie images we are all weaned on. Bullets kill in a brutal haphazard way. We do need containment of any threat but not enlargement. Actually our old image of the policeman, quiet, determined, firm and fair, prepared to sacrifice himself for the public good, is a far better role model for resolution of a terrorist threat than the frenzied testosterone driven macho over-kill techniques promoted by the singularly unsuccessful american role. Quiet containment, diffusion, appeasement is a better and more measured response. It does not make for heroic kill headlines but is more likely to be successful in the longer term.

War on Terrorists

Since ancient times it has been the practice of institutions to demonise the enemy. They then can play on our primitive fear feelings and the need to protect our wife and children from molestation, to justify their actions against this terrible enemy. This primitive fear response supplants any normal rationale or questioning, so the enemy are all equally evil and we don't pause to consider whether all individuals are the same, whether there may be other moderate or conservative opinions and we certainly don't empathise with vulnerable groups within that enemy stronghold.
So currently our diffused enemy we are told are vaguely the Taliban or Al Qaeda or Afghanistan with Pakistan thrown in for reserve or Usama Bin Laden or any mix or combination depending on the latest news. These terrorist put all our lives and families we care about at risk. So we are at war with these evil people.
Trouble is there isn't a hilltop, or a flag, or a strategic place or a town, river crossing, or army front line or airport or harbour that we can capture and say , yeah, we beat them. We have won. There is no identi-kit terrorist that you can instantly recognise by their speech, clothes, hairstyle, colour of skin as unambiguous give-aways. We live in diffused societies and no long, (for a very long time) do we live among kin that we know, recognise and can relate to. Praise be for the diversity it brings but the downside is our enemy is no longer definable.
Worse our enemy is now ideological. So that person sharing the seat on the bus, or on the train or that car coming towards you, may now be an ideological terrorist.
Institutions ascribe authority, control and technical competence to their actions which we, having or chosen to follow their lead, are happy to accept without too much questioning. So we accept the calm assertions that the State's surveillance, intelligence gathering, law enforcement and containment measures are more than adequate to curb any rogue terrorists cells that may exists within our communities, all we have to do is to grant even more extraordinary powers so they can get the job done.
No.
Because their competence is an illusion only matched by the bungling stupidity of those 'artful' terrorists we are told to live in fear of.
No
Because the only way to answer the ideology gap is by demonstrating, day to day, that democracy works, that free-speech is vital and that the State trusts and respects its citizens.
No
Because the only successful attack that can be made on terrorists and terrorism is for each one of us to engage and talk with that neighbour we are sharing space and time with. Not the State, not by more surveillance or more body checks, only by talking directly with them will we get to discover their extremists views.
Only by engaging in non-confrontational dialogue can we get them to expose and recognise for themselves the inadequacies of their ideology and by engagement can we hope to persuade them that there are real alternate strategies to achieve their goals.
That is the only hope for beating the terrorists that lives within us.