Terrorism

This week brings to a close an absurdly overblown cause célèbre. The Court of Appeal ruled that David Miranda’s detention at Heathrow three years ago under the Terrorism Act was lawful. He had been part of a professional operation leaking classified information to the Guardian, which compromised British and American national security. Yet the judgement was hailed as a victory for Miranda because the court also noted that the Terrorism Act didn’t include sufficient protection for journalists carrying sensitive information. It asked Parliament to look again, in order that it be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights — even though, in this case, there was no breach. This

Happy New Year. Sorry about my absence. I’ve been away for a couple of weeks and then, when I returned, there was no internet access and those hardworking people from BT spent ten days mulling over the problem before they tried to put it right. What a wonderful organisation. So, anyway, well done Lutz Bachmann – a German politician from the Pegida party. He tweeted that all those Germans who had said ‘refugees welcome here’ should make their way down to Munich station – closed on New Year’s Eve because of bomb threats. He has been criticised for linking the arrival of refugees – described by the increasingly deranged Angela

As the row over David Cameron saying that the Joint Intelligence Committee estimate there to be 70,000 potential anti-Islamic State fighters in Syria showed, the big question mark about the West’s anti-IS strategy is who will provide the ground troops for it. The Kurds will only fight in their own area and so far, there is little sign of a credible Sunni force emerging to take on Islamic State. While working with Assad has its own drawbacks. (In many ways, the existence of IS–albeit, in weakened form–suits his interests.) David Ignatius details just how wrong US efforts to train up Sunni fighters have gone in the past year in Washington