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*Warning – this is an outrageously long post and quite possibly contains nothing you already don’t know. Please feel free to skip it.*
sorenson - I think the economic costs associated with this particular scare alone are enough to suggest that the government didn’t manufacture it – governments care a lot about money.
MattShepherd - As much as it's tempting to think that people stage this for political gain, the repercussions of being CAUGHT faking something like this would be so ridiculously huge that I can't imagine even politicians throwing the dice on it.
Stoat - But they can't NOT respond, or they'll be accused of laxity.
Evil Scientist - Considering the massive amount of fire that the British Government has been under in the past four years for it's part on GWOT I think it would be pretty risky for them to pull an illusory victory out of the hat. Especially considering the amount of scrutiny this most recent anti-terrorsim raid has pulled from media sources.
Okay – my position is that personally, I think there was probably some kind of genuine threat but that the situation has been exploited, most likely greatly exaggerated, for political and security service gain. I believe that there are extremist groups and individuals that would do harm to people in the UK, including those on planes.
However, what’s most been troubling my little brain is the oft-cited notion of accountability and consequence. Immediately following the raised terror alert, an opinion which seemed to dominate much discussion was that the government/security services were ‘damned if they do, damned if they don’t’.
The comments above, which all come from this thread, either support that or suggest that the government wouldn’t dare fake this threat because of the consequences.
What I want to know is, what consequences? Let’s look at the record – the government took the UK into a war on Iraq based on the lie of WMDs. That has been revealed for the falsity it was. The government has subsequently been re-elected. Consequence for deceiving the British public and forcing the country into an illegal war with massive loss of civilian life in Iraq – none.
Police shoot dead an innocent man in a Tube station in London. They then deliberately release misinformation about the individual and his actions to make him appear to be a threat when he wasn’t. Following investigation, no individual is to be charged in relation to this shooting and the Met Police will be prosecuted under H&S rules. Consequence for deceiving the British public and killing an innocent man – largely none, although Met P might face a fine which as a publicly funded body we all, effectively, pay.
Armed police raid a house in Forest Gate and shoot an unarmed man in his pyjamas. No member of the family in the house is subsequently accused of any crime and no evidence of any terrorist activity was found in the house. Following investigation, no individual is to be prosecuted and indeed some of those involved in this travesty of a raid have since been promoted and received honours. Consequence for wrongly labelling a family as terrorists, raiding their house and shooting one of them – none.
So it seems pretty clear to me that they are not damned if they do, even if they are completely wrong, never apologise, are not accountable and face no consequences.
On the damned if they don’t front – Stoatie’s ‘accusations of laxity’, I have not seen any examples of this happening and I can’t see why it would happen because we simply wouldn’t know.
The flow of information when it comes to ‘national security’ matters is generally tight and controlled on a one-way flow basis. It was reported that at least one of the July 7 bombers had 'entered the radar' of the security services well before the incident but for whatever reasons he was not being scrutinised at the time he blew people up.
Yet unless I’ve missed something, and I work in media and consume far too much of it every day, I have not seen accusations of laxity, negligence or maladministration levelled at security services. I have not seen people losing their jobs or being charged with anything relating to a failure to protect the public.
Maybe they shouldn’t be, but how would I know because they aren’t going to tell me, are they? In addition to this, it is paramount to treason, up goes the cry of ‘the terrorists have won’, if someone suggests that maybe, you know, the government/security services failed in some respect. We’ve all got to stick together, you know. This is not the time to be undermining the government/security services by making allegations against them. Etc.
If enough time is allowed to pass between the arrest of people on various shady allegations and their subsequent quiet release into the public when no charges have actually been brought, these things tend to slip under the public consciousness. See, oh just about any of the many cases of arrest and release of Muslim people, mostly, in Britain over the last five years. I can cite some cases if required but I honestly think most people will know of a situation that fits.
Evil Scientist mentions the ‘massive amount of fire’ the government has been under during the last four years for its part in TWAT. Sorry, when was that? So that was before, during and after they were re-elected? Did I miss the resulting wave of public apologies and ministerial resignations? Maybe there have been some in the press attacking them, but I for one don’t see a single damn consequence of that.
Sorenson, and many media commentators, point to the economic impact of this. That’s a complex one, but personally, I’ll be interested to see at the end of the day who ends up bearing the real financial cost of this. So far I’m seeing lots of reports about the fact that most people weren’t aware that their insurance policies don’t cover them for this, so it won’t be the insurance companies. The airlines make obscene amounts of money and I am fairly confident can soak up flight cancellations lasting a few days – no doubt they will be considering some kind of compensation claims against someone (the government, ie taxpayers, perhaps?).
And, interestingly, this hit people flying OUT of the UK. If the worst-case scenario is that a certain percentage of the people who would have taken their holidays abroad, spend them and their money in the UK instead, how’s that going to hurt the economy? Reports from people who flew into the UK during this period indicate that with the exception of the US and a couple of other countries, no-one faced any restrictions/problems flying into the UK throughout the entire ‘crisis’.
In addition, people flying in from the US and even those caught up flying back to the US (the most economically important tourist group for the UK), seem more willing than many Europeans to appreciate the work of the security services and to believe that a threat has been foiled and they should feel grateful. I realise this is a generalisation and is not applicable to every American flying between the US and the UK, but I’d be happy to discuss what I base this opinion on if people would like to. I sincerely hope that it does not offend anyone to read this opinion.
I could go on about how I think Tony Blair no longer cares about the potential future political consequences of his actions, even if these could be demonstrated, and has emasculated his government to the extent that the majority of his MPs cannot or will not do anything about it, but I glance back up and realise I have gone on quite enough.
In short, I do not trust this government, and unlike many others I don’t see why they would not grossly exaggerate and exploit this situation for their own ends. I think they are too smart to have completely and utterly fabricated every aspect of the alleged threat, but quite what might have been at the base of it remains to be seen.
I’m not meaning to pick on any of the people I’ve quoted, it’s just that they have used lines of argument which I think represent many people’s opinions. Sorry for going on… |
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