Suicide pigs fly to support Blunkett's War on Terror

[R.A. Hettinga]

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<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/23/terror_scare_spin/print.html>

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 Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/23/terror_scare_spin/

Suicide pigs fly to support Blunkett's War on Terror
By John Lettice (john.lettice at theregister.co.uk)
Published Tuesday 23rd November 2004 11:44 GMT

In an amazing coincidence, news of a thwarted 911-style terror attack on
the UK emerged just hours before the Government was due to unveil a
legislative programme chock-full of security-related goodies. The strangely
fact-free story, available from the Mail,
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=
328011&in_page_id=1770&ct=5)
ITN (http://www.itv.com/news/index_957889.html) and The Scotsman,
(http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1346532004) among others, is attributed
to a "senior authoritative source", and Downing Street, the Home Office and
the Metropolitan Police "declined to comment."

As journalistic constructs designed to distance government from
responsibility for the junk the spin doctors are handing out go, "senior
authoritative source" is pretty esoteric. It's not 'Home Office sources',
nor is 'sources close to the Home Office' - maybe it's not even 'informed
sources', and our confidence in it is further undermined by the apparent
need to say in the story that the source "who has no axe to grind, said
that the threats were real and were not deliberately exaggerated for
political purposes." When you have to put in your story, 'look, I know
you're all going to think this is junk made up by the Government to
coincide with the Queens speech, but it's not, OK?', you are in bad shape.?

The Government's intention now will be to let this one lie (as it were),
and just smugly decline to comment. David Blunkett, who heads up the
newly-merged Ministries of Fear and Truth, has however had trouble
controlling his mouth on previous occasions. Earlier this year the man who
is not running a fear-inspired campaign to justify his terror measures
cited (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3607141.stm) a thwarted
chemical bomb plot as justifying them. The chemical in question was, even
in the views of the terror rentaquotes,
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3603961.stm) a peculiar choice for a bomb
that would do anything apart from, er, inspire terror, and it later
transpired that nobody had actually been arrested
(http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA4C2.htm), and that none of
the strange and ineffective bomb-making chemical osmium tetroxide may even
have been acquired.

There were actual arrests in another chemical bomb scare
(http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/11/17/tube.terror/) (although in
that report John Prescott seems weirdly off-message). Unhappily, as this
valuable sweeping up
(http://www.salaam.co.uk/themeofthemonth/january03_index.php?l=52%82%22=0")
of terror-scare aftermaths reports, none of them was ever convicted of
terrorism-related activities. One of the three was sentenced to three
months for possession of a fake French passport. What percentage of fake ID
holders are terrorists, Mr Blunkett?

But back to today's events. Among the 'sensible preemptive measures' to be
announced today we have the ID scheme bill, and just last week David
Blunkett was pre-spinning the matter in his speech to the IPPR. The
transcript of this now available,
(http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/identitycards_041118speech.htm) and we
note with some interest that David, who assures us he does not use terror
scares to sell repression, says: "Now people say to me that they don't
believe for a minute ID cards would actually help in terms of being able to
track or prevent terrorist activity and they say 'It didn't stop the
terrorist attack in Madrid in March, did it?' And the answer is: 'no it
didn't' and I have never claimed that it would have done."

A little research provides an example of trustworthy and truthful David not
saying that very thing. In the Breakfast with Frost
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/breakfast_with_frost/3657219.stm)
interview in April, which is rapidly acquiring 'seminal' status, he said:

"Firstly because we've got biometrics, I mean, people say to me you
couldn't stop the World Trade Center attack, you couldn't stop the Madrid
bombing with ID cards. Well, you couldn't with, of course because the
Americans although they have an insurance system, do not have an ID card as
you know."

"The Spanish do. But it isn't a foolproof biometric card with a database,
with the ability to test not only the card vis-a-vis the database, but
actually the person and the card they hold. That's what will be potentially
possible."

Which, we'll grant, is not saying the ID scheme would have stopped Madrid,
but it does look a bit like saying Madrid happened because the Spanish had
the 'wrong kind of ID card', while we, of course... More later, after the
rich lady sings, no doubt... B.


- --
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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