Terrorism

Brown’s Pointless Victory

It’s a measure of Gordon Brown’s weakness that he’s come so close to losing the vote on 42 Days. But, as Ben Brogan reports, he’s done it: The DUP are on board, Diane Abbott has been spoken to by Gordon Brown for the first time in 20 years, cash for sick miners and help for Cuba has been whistled out of nowhere, and so the vote is won. I spoke to David Davis earlier, who knows a thing or two about whipping and numbers. The 54 Labour rebels he knew about on Friday were down to 44 last night, and the DUP will support Mr Brown. At that rate the

42 Days: The View from Scotland

A heartening, very interesting – and highly unusual – intervention by the Lord Advocate: Scotland’s top prosecutor has said the case has not been made for extending the length of time terror suspects can be detained without charge to 42 days. BBC Scotland has learnt that Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini gave her opinion in a letter to the Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael. She said the change from the current 28 days was not supported by “prosecution experience to date”… “While there has been a limited number of cases in Scotland which were investigated in terms of the Terrorism Act 2000, I am not aware of any case where an

Adopting Mencken’s Definition of Democracy

The government’s proposals for incarcerating suspects for up to 42 days before being required, however inconveniently, to produce a charge are, naturally, appalling. How can you be so sure? Well, they must be: 65% of the public supports them. In other poll news, ICM puts the Tories on 42%, Labour 26% and the Liberal Democrats on 21%. This is extraordinary: how can one in five Britons be prepared to vote for the Lib Dems?

Former PM Offers Sanity (Obviously it ain’t ACL Blair)

I suspect that MPs are sufficiently craven – and willing to put the government’s political prospects ahead of any petty concerns about principle or, god help us, justice – that they will endorse the government’s appalling proposal that terrorist suspects can be held for up to 42 days before the state need produce a charge. In a better, more sensible world, all MPs would read John Major’s article in The Times yesterday. For good measure Major, who of course survived an IRA assassination attempt himself (a mortar attack on Downing Street that blew in the windows during a cabinet meeting), decries the illiberality of the government’s ID card proposals and

The Trials of Guantanamo

From a WaPo dispatch from the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed: Mohammed appeared to have equal disdain for the process, but he only briefly mentioned his “torturing” at the hands of U.S. officials, something he acknowledged he was warned not to mention in open court, lest a security official hit a button muting the audio to observers in the courtroom and at a media center nearby. That button was pushed at least a few times on Thursday when detainees appeared to discuss elements of their early captivity in secret facilities or the way they were treated. Embarrassing, yes? And doesn’t this “mute” button give extra credence to KSM’s claims, while

Tales from the Security State

Great. Travelling to the United States from western europe (and other countries that are part of the Visa Waiver Programme) just got made more complicated and more of a hassle than it already is. Brace yourselves for horror stories starting in August… Note too that toddlers will also have to register online 72 hours before boarding their plane: Accompanied and unaccompanied children, regardless of age, will be required to obtain an independent ESTA authorization and determination of eligibility. True, you only need do this once (they say now) every two years, but still… Tedious.

Tales from Labour Britain: Illegal Document Department

Via Samizdata, this seems to be a quite appalling story. The Guardian reports that: A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the “psychological torture” he endured in custody. Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website for his research into terrorist tactics. Mind you, I don’t think

The End Is Not In Fact Nigh

Gordon Brown flies to Washington today (where, inter alia, he will have meetings with McCain, Clinton and Obama) so, naturally, this is the cue for fresh fretting over US-UK relations. Nile Gardner, currently exiled at the Heritage Foundation, duly volunteers for duty: Divine intervention might be required to improve the state of U.S.-UK relations, which have deteriorated since Blair left Downing Street last June. While the Anglo-American “special relationship” continues at many levels behind the scenes — from intelligence cooperation to collaboration over missile defense — significant signs of strain are beginning to show over the handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the broader war against Islamist

We already have the NHS, do we need a DHS too?

Earlier this year Con Coughlin argued in The Spectator: Clearly there is a need for the government to get a firm grip on all the various security challenges that might come our way, which is why there has been much talk at the Cabinet Office, which is overseeing the review, of establishing a National Security Council along the lines of the body in Washington that advises the White House on security policy — both short-term and long-term… A better alternative might be to set up our own Homeland Security Department — represented by a minister of Cabinet rank — which would have responsibility for ensuring proper protection of our borders

Exceptions don’t prove the rule

Marty Peretz writes: Torture is a repugnant practice, and especially so if it becomes a habit.  It may have become that, although I don’t know.  No one outside the alleged practitioners does.  But, believe me, I’m not trying to shrug the matter off.  Andrew Sullivan has persuaded me of its centrality to a humane society. So far so sort of good. Then, alas, he concludes: One last point.  The two prisoners the tapes of whose questioning were destroyed by the C.I.A. were certifiable monsters: Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda planner of the 9/11 atrocity, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the Aden bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. 

Belfast on the Euphrates?

Matt Yglesias sees walls going up in Baghdad and wonders if the US Army is using Northern Ireland as its template: I believe this technique comes to the US Army’s counterinsurgency theorists via Belfast, where I believe they have been effective in helping the British maintain a degree of order. To some extent, this brings us back to the question of strategy. If tactics employed in Northern Ireland can be made to work in Iraq (and maybe they can) even though Iraq has ten times as many people as Northern Ireland does and even though Iraqis don’t speak English and even though the sectarian violence in Iraq is undergirded by

If you only see one documentary this year…

Public Service Announcement: the news that the CIA has taken to destroying videotape of its interrogations depresses but does not surprise. It also reminds me that you really ought to see Alex Gibney’s new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side when it is released in January. It’s a dispiriting, devastating indictment of the Bush administration’s detention and torture policies that have done so much* to destroy the United States’ reputation around the world (as well as, of course, increasing the dangers faced by captured US servicemen). Anyway, loony tunes conservatives will be able to ask why the Academy Hates America whe the movie is, as I’d bet it will be,

First they take Canberra, then they take…?

Melanie Philips, I’m afraid, continues to show signs of becoming Britain’s answer to David Horowitz. Her latest salvo culminates in this absurdity: Annapolis is America’s Munich — and Israel is the new Czechoslovakia. Previously Philips, unsurprisingly, lamented John Howard’s defeat in Australia. For myself, I rather think that 12 years in office is long enough and, absent an entirely hapless opposition, it’s important to turf incumbents out of office, regardless of which party they happen to be. (It is not a good sign for Gordon Brown that Labour will have been in power for 13 years when the next election is held). Still, none of that matters. Philips concedes that

As America Welcomes Jihadists With Open Arms…

Of course, it is too late for Tom Tancredo’s presidential ambitions. And yes, he’s a loon. But still, this advertisement he aired in Iowa repays watching. This sort of thing is terribly unpopular – and vulgar – in Washington, but there are plenty of people who will agree with the guts of what Tancredo has to say here. And not all of them are Republicans. [Thanks to Garance for the spot].

Spook chief’s craven surrender to voices of appeasement? Which means, of course, that he’s speaking sense.

I’m not quite sure why Marty Peretz seems so invested in the idea that many New Republic readers believe, as he puts it, “that the notion of an Al Qaeda threat to the West is a hokey fantasy of the Bushies”. Perhaps Mr Peretz’s blog has a cadre of leftist readers who rarely crop up at TNR’s other blogs or on the magazine’s letters page. Anyway, Peretz then says that everyone should pay attention to what the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, had to say recently. If you don’t believe me, Marty says, perhaps you’ll believe him: The Post quotes Evans: “Terrorist attacks we have seen against the U.K. are 

Rudy Giuliani, the Terrorists’ Worst Enemy?

Well, not always. From the New York Times, September 29th 1994, less than a month after the declaration of a (temporary as it proved) IRA ceasefire: Artfully casting off his old role as official outcast, Gerry Adams, the political spokesman for the Irish Republican Army, beamed from the steps of City Hall yesterday as New York politicians vied to be at his side and hail him as honored guest and newborn statesman… …A relatively small lunch-hour crowd of a few hundred cheered him, but the domestic political value of Mr. Adams’s official turnabout was demonstrated by the throng of local politicians who crowded about Mr. Adams. They pressed him to

Why does John McCain hate America?

John McCain tells ABC’s This Week that – shockingly! – torture is ” a very important issue to me” and consequently that he can’t guarantee that he will vote to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General if the nominee continues to fudge on the question of whether or not he believes waterboarding constitutes torture. McCain, noting yet again that it was a favourite method of Pol Pot’s happy warriors, would, one senses like to vote No but there’s the problem that… well, let’s go and see what the GOP blogs are saying. Here’s Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, confirming that supporting the use of waterboarding would indeed seem to

Thompson’s not so shocking brief for terrorists

Chris Orr wonders why Fred Thompson’s work – albeit just a handful of hours – on behalf of the Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing is not receiving more attention. Fred Thompson, Terrorist Lawyer! Well, OK. Thompson says his opinion was sought on the venue question, leading Chris to say: Thompson’s mention of “venue” issues, too, is a little misleading. We’re not talking about whether someone is tried in Manhattan or Queens here. As far as I can tell, we’re talking about whether two indicted terrorists would be extradited from Libya to face justice. (It took years, but in 1999 they were finally handed over for trial in the Netherlands.)

Alex Massie

Pseud’s Corner

Via Prospect’s blog, here’s Matin Amis: “…my principal objection to the numbers [”9/11″] is that they are numbers. The solecism, that is to say, is not grammatical but moral-aesthetic—an offence against decorum; and decorum means “seemliness”, which comes from soemr, “fitting”, and soema, “to honour”. 9/11, 7/7: who or what decided that particular acts of slaughter, particular whirlwinds of plasma and body parts, in which a random sample of the innocent is killed, maimed or otherwise crippled in body and mind, deserve a numerical shorthand? Whom does this “honour”? What makes this “fitting”? So far as I am aware, no one has offered the only imaginable rationale: that these numerals,