Uponnothing.co.uk

Head of visitor tracking program wants global ID system (4/25/06)

The head of the Homeland Security Department’s visitor tracking program on Tuesday called for the creation of a “global ID management system” to make travel easier while enhancing security…

Williams said he wants to join forces with several DHS agencies to develop a global identification system that would cut wait times, reduce government fees for travelers, fight illegal immigration and, perhaps paramount, better defend nations from terrorists.

‘All options — including the military one — are on the table’

Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary

‘There is only one thing worse than military action, that is a nuclear armed Iran’

John McCain, Republican senator for Arizona

‘Obviously we don’t rule out any measures at all’

Tony Blair

The recipe of war is well proven, take a large dose of irrational fear, add to the international press to simmer for several months, sprinkle same press with half-truths, mis-truths, and outright lies, then allow public to stew on a low heat for several months. Once they have developed the correct taste for fear, add hysterical threats of weapons of mass destruction, mix with war on terror, and garnish with rotten diplomacy.

However, is this all really neccesary? How much does the public actually care what the government does?

There is no sign of intelligence or accurate reporting on Iran in the newspapers, on television or even over PBS radio. It is never made clear that Iran’s “defiance” is one orchestrated by the U.S. government, or that the “defiance” is limited to Iran’s development of nuclear energy, not a weapons program. When Americans hear “nuclear defiance” over and over, they conclude that Iran is making nuclear weapons. Instead of informing the people, the media drive them toward acceptance of another war.

This quotation may be about America, but it is equally apt to describe the standard of reporting here in the UK. The simple fact is that newspapers appeal to the base instincts of the UK populous, the public are not the passive receivers of any given news message, they are the active seekers of a message that matches their own outlook. The sad thing is people want drivel, they want trivia, they want a political outlook that is clearly defined in black and white, good and bad, with us or against us.

For the average person, admitting that black and white can mix to form numerous shades of grey, is to question their whole existence, and they’d rather just shove their fingers in their ears and watch another program on celebrities’ ice-skating/ballroom dancing/trapped in jungle/trapped on an island/trapped in a house. The majority of people in Britain don’t care, and they never will.

It is only the government and social elite who stand to profit from war, and therefore it is the role of the media to justify and glorify Britain’s involvement in foreign countries. Papers such as the Sun have become virtually a state controlled paper, whilst papers such as the Daily Mail may dislike the government, but they have a rabid distaste of anything foreign.

Americans are in many ways more in tune with the media message, more interested in war. Americans do care, but for all the wrong reasons. Patriotism in America fuels the ignorance of the masses that have to make all the sacrifices when Bush and friends decide to go to war. It is easy to get the American public excited and backing a war, and each speech Bush gives goes through all the basics:

mention that America is a ‘great nation’

praise the armed forces, and the sacrifices they make to ‘protect’ this ‘great nation’

pretend that America is under attack

say it will be just like the Second World War

and finally god bless America

Americans care about being Americans, and more often than not patriotism serves to deflect any criticism of the state that they might be pondering deep down.

However, these are of course sweeping generalisations, each country has its share of lights in these dark times, and some people are prepared to speak out, although this is usually in vain. The main problem is that war is so sanitised; the war on terror is fought in distant lands, and this foreign interventionism that is so rife today (but has always been a staple diet of power politics, and economic dominance) is seen as taking the war further away, protecting the homeland.

The only link that Blair and Bush will identify is that the war abroad ‘secures’ our ‘freedom’ at home: every sacrifice made, every innocent foreigner dead is justified as being necessary to secure the rights of the people living in the ‘free world’. The majority of us won’t have to fight this war; the majority of us won’t even know anybody who has to fight this war. As far as we are concerned the only sacrifice we have to make is accepting the loss of a few civil liberties.

It is this that is the real irony of the ‘war on terror’; the whole war is based on protecting the civil liberties that we all come to expect; yet the basis of the war on terror is the restriction of civil liberties. We have therefore been left with a war that is fighting civil liberties, in the name of protecting them – something so idiotic, so unbelievable, so very ‘Bush’, that of course the majority excepts that this is just the way things are.

The main thing is that the people who supported the war in Iraq - and those that still do - believe that we have some higher moral purpose, that death and destruction can be justified if it is in the cause of freedom and hope. But have they considered what freedom and hope actually is, and whose freedom and hope it is that we are actually fighting for?

The war in Iraq started in order to protect freedom and hope in the West – as Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction and was just 45 minutes away from killing us all. So we went to war to protect ourselves. Then of course we realised that the reasons for going to war were entirely false, so a change of tack was needed – and provided. We now realised that we weren’t going to war to protect ourselves, but rather to give freedom and hope to the oppressed Iraqis – never mind that it was Western politics that had enslaved them to Saddam Hussain in the first place (or that it was Britain that originally drew up the very borders of Iraq as we know it).

So in the end we had to fall back on the belief that the greater purpose was a war to export democracy, freedom, and perhaps even a little bit of Western modernity to those poor desert dwellers. This gave the enormous benefit of being a justification for further wars, if you export democracy once, then you can export democracy again and again and again.

But the truth is we only export violence, and we will only get back violence in return. Most rational people realise this, but rational people are firmly in the minority, and definitely are not involved in running the world. 9/11 cost the lives of over 3000 people; its response has cost the lives of over 100,000 people.

This is the tragic demonstration of the real value of human life in this world, we value our own lives immeasurably, a mixture of racial arrogance, and blind ignorance. Whilst we view the ‘unpeople’ – that is anyone not Western, not one of us, them – with contempt, if we even consider them as part of the equation. We view them largely as the enemy, millions of people that need to be placated in order that we may live our lives, rich, greedy, increasingly obese, and evermore paranoid.

The war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, still ongoing with fierce fighting, and many deaths and casualties, has led to Tony Blair and George Bush’s constant downplaying of the economic cost of the war. An estimation as to the economic cost of war has been made in a study by Linda Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, who estimate that the conservative figure (including direct costs and macroeconomic costs) of just over $1 trillion, with a moderate estimate of over $2.2 trillion. Taking the conservative figure that means that if 3000 people died as a result of 9/11 each one of those lives is now valued at $342,000,000.

Or put another way if 100,000 innocent people have died as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then we have spent $10,260,000 to kill each one.

Perhaps life is not so cheap after all. It will be even more expensive, yet paradoxically more worthless, once Iran is attacked; and most of us will be too busy watching shit TV to even care.

Diplomacy. What does this word actually mean? Is it the process of sorting out national and international problems through rational, peaceful, inclusive, arguments? Or is it the gunboat, or nuclear threat curtailing any arguments against largely Western nuclear hegemony?

Whatever it is in recent times it has been paid largely lip service by Western governments who have already decided on policy, but want to appear that they tried ‘everything they can to avoid using force… blah blah blah’, before sending in the Airforce and destroying yet another Nations sovereignty.

Still, when it comes to ‘other’ nations, i.e. anyone not ‘conducive’ to the continuation of ’stability’ in the Westo-centric vision of American dominance - with the larger EU countries acting as groupies - then they should use diplomcay to resolve all problems, and be grateful if we even give them a chance to talk round a table.

Diplomacy, such as Iran for example, a country that wants nuclear power, something that we will not allow, something about the creation of WMD (this time we are threatening a country when we know they haven’t even made any WMD’s!), yet we don’t really have any evidence of a nuclear missile program. I guess we have to just trust in the governments of the US and UK to provide us with valid, reliable intelligence, surely they wouldn’t lie to us… again… would they?

Well we are about to find out, ‘IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for electricity only, had told his agency it wants to restart centrifuges at Natanz to enrich uranium on a “small scale.”‘ and of course the Western world is up in arms, I mean its not as if we have a nuclear weapons program, or vast stockpiles of them, or that the US is intending to use them (again…) this time in Iran… oh.

The stench of extreme hypocrisy is hard to stomach whenever you read soundbites from the neo-conservative scum that fester in the Whitehouse, and of course this issue is no different:

“They shouldn’t do it because it would really be a sign that they are not prepared to actually make diplomacy work,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week.

“By cutting the seals, the Iranian leadership shows its disdain for international concern and its rejection of international diplomacy,” Schulte [the US ambassador to the IAEA] said.

Perhaps similiar to the disdain for international concern and diplomacy when you invaded Iraq? Or like the disdain for international concern and diplomacy when you go ahead and nuke Iranian nuclear sites.

Diplomacy. It’s just the stuff that happens whilst you plan the next war.

The Sunday Times run this story, and to be honest I don’t think anyone expected them to face charges. However, there must be some people wondering just how accountable the officers involved actually are, and whether if the defence is poor intelligence anyone higher up the food chain will face action. What seems to me to suggest that the officers acted incorrectly is the false statements issued by the Metropolitan police to justify the attack.

The statements - suggesting that ‘his [de Menezes] clothing and his behaviour at the station added to [the officers’] suspicions’ - seemed to acknowledge that even with intelligence fed through to the officers by radio, before lethal force was used the officers’ had to have some further justification. However, the statements were false, and the scene now revolves around a exceedingly normal person sitting on a train being jumped on, forced to the ground and repeatedly shot. The officers have no personal justification in shooting de Menezes, instead they have to admit that although they had been given ‘intelligence’ during the pursuit, they still had to make a judgement call based on their own professional experience, and that they got it badly wrong. A man has died and someone must take responsibility for this, if the officers involved are not charged, then someone else must face charges for false intelligence, or perhaps a failed order handed down without enough evidence that lethal force was neccesary. Conversely, if no-one senior to the officers is charged in this way, and that any orders or intelligence handed down to the officers was given based on interpretation by the officers when confronted by de Menezes, then the officers’ must face charges.

The justification of ‘just following orders’ was not good enough for Nurembourg, and it shouldn’t be good enough here either.

Tony Blair, complete and utter nonsensical twat (abbreviated to CUNT), continues to push the boundaries of unbelievable hypocrisy, and continues to smugly grin in ignorance. The subject is becoming a favourite for the international messiah: Iran. Blair’s comments basically assert that Iran is responsible for preventing progress in the Middle East because:

the regime is doing things that are completely unacceptable in the international community — like supporting terrorism, like meddling in Iraq, like trying to have a nuclear weapons program…

Sorry? ‘meddling in Iraq’, ’supporting terrorism’, having a ‘nuclear weapons program’? Is it me or is this exactly the same thing that America and Britain are guilty of? What is the difference Tony? Is it that Iran are trying to get nuclear weapons, whilst we are simply in the progress of upgrading them, is it that Iran may be sending small arms into Iraq, whilst we send in the heavy bombers, is it that they support the wrong kind of terrorism?

Surely there must be some kind of distinction between Iran and the UK for you to make that statement. But there is not, you made the statement because you are a joke, you live in a fantasy world, a world that simply does not exist.

That in this world you somehow run a country is an even bigger joke.

Not content with creating thousands of years of religious fueds, he has now inflicted on us a new Jesus: George Bush. Jesus was a son of a carpenter, George is a son of a bitch, but lets hope that the new Jesus meets a similiar fate, and is nailed to a cross within a week. But is it God that is to blame, or are the voices in his head thoseof the devil?

Either way, it is those that applauded Bush’s ridiculous speech are the real evil, may they all burn in hell.

From theIndependent Online:

In a flat West Yorkshire accent, Mohammed Sidique Khan declared: “Our words have no impact upon you, therefore I’m going to talk to you in a language that you understand. Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood.”

In the video, which was broadcast by the Arabic television station al-Jazeera, Khan said: “Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters.”

Khan, who worked as a learning mentor to children at a primary school in Beeston, Leeds, said: “Until we feel security, you will be our target. Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight.”

Now, the response as usual is that:

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, condemned the video. He said: “People across Britain will be sickened by this video. Nothing can justify the murder of innocent people”.

David, shut the fuck-up you ignorant fuck, we justified the deaths of the innocent people killed in Iraq without any problems. Look back at British foreign policy over the last 50 years, count the millions of innocent people dead as a result, now we have justified and even glorified this.

So don’t you dare say that terrorism cannot be justified, when Britain as a nation justifies it every single day. It cannot be one rule for ‘them’ and one rule for us, even-up, or shut-up.

Jacques Chirac has called for the:

strengthening of global governance by reforming the UN and providing more support to the developing world. He said his government would introduce an international tax on airline tickets next year to provide permanent funding for the fight against Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. France would hold a ministerial meeting next February to discuss ways of implementing this idea, which has already been backed by Germany, Spain, Brazil, Chile and Algeria.

As usual the idea to help Africa relies on putting the cost of the project at the feet of the taxpayer, a solution that requires no real thought or realistic assessment of how the problems are caused in the first place. For France to be proposing an international tax on airline fees as a workable solution to create more aid for ‘developing’ countries is laughable. Why doesn’t Chirac dip into his own pockets to help increase aid? Or better still, rather than spending billions of Euros a year subsidising French farmers (far more than is spent by France on aid) - effectively killing any chance of developing countries having far trade in relation to foodstuffs - why doesn’t he use this money to develop fair trade?

Because of course, Chirac, and fellow European statesman, are far more interested in pointless grand gestures than actually addressing the real issues and causes of poverty. No doubt the project will eventually be shelved in favour of a series of free concerts, where obscenely rich artists can pretend they give a fuck for an hour - whilst plugging a new album for free - and politicians can pretend that they are in touch with the ‘people’.

Iran seem to be raising the stakes in the war of words regarding their pursuit of nuclear power:

“The Americans are trying to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran and transform its identity by using political and cultural instruments and their puppets, but they will suffer their biggest defeat from the voluntary Basij youth,’’ Khamenei said without elaborating. He did not elaborate in his address made during a visit to a Tehran base of the Basij, a corps of civilian vigilantes who enforce the Iranian regime’s Islamic strictures.

Bush issued his veiled threat after Iran resumed uranium conversion at its nuclear facility in Isfahan, a move that also prompted a warning from the UN nuclear watchdog agency. Bush has called for continued diplomacy to halt Iran’s nuclear programme, with resort to UN Security Council sanctions only if diplomatic efforts fail.

This response serves to add to the already tense situation, with diplomats uncertain as how to proceed following the revelations that traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Iran has stated that they still wish to continue negotiations with the European three, but the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still maintains that:

“Our policy is transparent and clear: we are after the nation’s lawful rights within the framework of international law and we will defend these rights seriously”

After Europe initially called off talks after Iran began enrichment activities, but now French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy has stated:

“We are suspending the negotiations,” he told France Inter radio. “But at the same time, we think it is still possible to talk to them … There is no reason to close the door on Iran.”

So hope remains that talked can be reopened, but it still seems unlikely that Europe would accept the legal right of Iran to pursue the nuclear activity that they wish, whilst America remain isolated from discussions, but clear that they would be prepared to assess all options available if the talks do break down. With Iran holding firm, and Europe and America equally unbending in their opposition to the Iranian stance, even if talks are reopened their failure seems simply a matter of time.

So the home office have today published a list of ‘unacceptable behaviours’ relating to terrorism. The non-exhaustive list so far:

Terrorist violence

Cannot foment, justify, glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs

Terrorist acts

Cannot seek to provoke others to terrorist acts

Criminal acts

Cannot foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts

Inter-community violence

Cannot foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.

Method

Individuals who do the above by any means or medium are caught by the legislation, including:

- writing, producing, publishing or distributing material;

- public speaking including preaching

- running a website

- using a position of responsibility such as teacher, community or youth leader

So writing material and running a website I wonder if many blog sites will be looked into, as the government - in particular Herr Blair- seem to think that attempting to understand terrorism is akin to justifying it, and logic dictates then that you must be a supporter of terrorism. The subjects of the United Kingdom have never had true free speech - legally - which makes it easier for the New Labour media machine to enforce repression of what is in many cases dissent, labelled as terrorism.

Is it an offence to write that I understand why 4 men decided to detonate themselves in London, taking the lives of innocent people? They wanted to express their anger and disgust at a world that condones the state terror perpertrated by many ‘civilised’ nations, a world in which a few powerful nuclear states can terrorise nations at will, and any peaceful protest will never make any difference to this state of affairs. This is not condoning the act of killing innocent people in London, this is simply saying that violence breeds violence, they wanted to do to London what we did to Baghdad.

However, this is the real crux of the matter, Tony Blair and George Bush cannot understand that the acts of the London bombers are no different to the act of illegally invading Iraq. Both acts were carried out by a small group of people pursuing an agenda through violence, Blair and Bush mobilised a massive military force, whilst the suicide bombers turned themselves into human bombs.

Both acts resulted in the deaths of innocent people, except Blair and Bush managed a far higher body count (although of course America ‘Don’t do body counts’), however, whilst the London bombers have been rightly condemned worldwide, the invasion of Iraq has not been(and when Blair repeats his claims that terrorism can ‘never be justified’, he seems to forget how frequently he justifies this terrorism).

I was sickened by the London bombings, and cannot have any idea what it is like to lose a loved-one to a random act of terror, but likewise, I am equally sickened by the actions of Tony Blair and George Bush, for although they may not have strapped the explosives to themselves, they are no less guilty. Nor can I hope to understand what it must be like to be an Iraqi who has lost a loved one due to the terrorism of the UK and US.

It is about time we started condemning all terror, and the next time Tony Blair makes a speech defending the war in Iraq, and America’s role in the world, perhaps he will be arrested for breaching these new rules - because he has done more to further the cause of terrorism than any other person in the UK.

Somehow I missed this:

Students of the Basrah and Shatt Al-Arab universities in Basrah city have been on strike for the last three days as a reaction to the attack last week by Sadrists and Mahdi Army militiamen on tens of students organising a field trip or a picnic at Al-Andalus park, downtown Basrah.

Hooded men assaulted the students with rubber cables and truncheons which resulted in the death of a Christian girl, Zahra Ashour, and another student who came to her rescue after militiamen had tore off her clothes and were beating her to death. He was shot in the head.

Students say that their belongings, such as mobile phones, cameras, stereo players and loudspeakers, were stolen or smashed to pieces by the militiamen. Girl students not wearing headscarves, most of them Christian, were severely beaten and at least 20 students were kidnapped and taken to Sadr’s office in Al-Tuwaisa for ‘interrogation’ and were only released late at night.

Students also say the police and British soldiers were nearby but did not intervene.

A Sheikh As’ad Al-Basri, one of Sadr’s aides in Basrah, stated that the ‘believers’ of the Mahdi Army did what they did in an act of ‘divine intervention’ in order to punish the students for their ‘immoral and outrageous behaviour’ during the ‘holy month of Muharram, while the blood of Imam Hussein is yet to dry.’ He added that he had sent the ‘group of believers’ to observe and photograph the students, and on witnessing them playing loud music, ‘the kind they play in bars and discos’, and openly talking to female students, the ‘believers had to straighten things out’.

Read the whole post here, with good updates from the author.

The talks that were planned for the 31st of August have been cancelled after Iran made the decision to resume nuclear fuel activities - which could eventually lead (in theory) to the production of nuclear weapons.

“We can’t continue with formal negotiations as if nothing happened,” said Jean-Baptiste Mattei, chief spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry. “The suspension of their fuel activities was the basis for our negotiations. By resuming some of those activities the Iranians have effectively suspended the agreement these talks were based on.”

Now that talks have finally broken down, something that was inevitable given that Europe was essentially trying to deny Iran basic rights over nuclear development, calls have once again been made to report Iran to the UN security council. However, the UN have again supported Iranian claims that Uranium was brought to, not made in Iraq, and that the report due to be issued soon by the IAEA would also support Iranian claims that a weapons program simply does not exist, as they have yet to find any evidence of it.

Now that that talking has ceased, is the next step action? Will Bush use the breakdown in talks to fuel his pre-emptive strikes? We’ll have to wait for word from the White House.

Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.

“The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions,” said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.

Scientists from the United States, France, Japan, Britain and Russia met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to U.S. and foreign officials. Recently, the group, whose existence had not been previously reported, definitively matched samples of the highly enriched uranium — a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon — with centrifuge equipment turned over by the government of Pakistan.

Iran has long contended that the uranium traces were the result of contaminated equipment bought years ago from Pakistan. But the Bush administration had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients.

So, some of the mud slung at Iran has proved to be bullshit, but will this report get as much press as the original allegations? It would be interesting to see if Bush will in time comment on the report once it becomes official, I suspect he will disregard it, perhaps with something along the lines of: ‘Well, the report is irrelevant really, it does not deter us from completing our mission “Operation Iranian Freedom”‘.

The negotiations between the European three (UK, Germany, France) and Iran seem to be at a critical point, and Iran should view this vindication as another reason why they should be allowed to pursue nuclear power, as is there legal right. This is further backed-up by the IAEA board, which in its third year of an investigation in Iran, has still not found any proof of a weapons program. Let us not forget that:

The IAEA had put together the group of experts in an effort to foster cooperation but also to eliminate the possibility that its findings would be challenged by the White House, officials said. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the White House rejected IAEA findings that cast doubt on U.S. assertions about then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s arsenal. The IAEA findings turned out to be correct, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

Read the full article from the Washington Post here…

As Shi’ite party militias roam the ruins of Iraq’s cities killing and beating political dissidents, and whipping women who fail to wear the requisite head-to-toe chador, our “democracy”-crazed neocons cite the country as a “model” – and look forward to the “liberation” of the rest of the Middle East along similar lines. The world seen through the prism of neoconservatism is truly a Bizarro World, where everything is stood on its head, not just physical laws but also traditional moral precepts as well as the rules of logic.

Americans are naturally repulsed by the sight of what the Busheviks have wrought in Iraq, but the alternative is not to turn around and make war on the Shi’ite-Kurdish tyranny we made possible in the first place. A war along those lines would be an act of such incredible hubris that it would make our prior mistakes – beginning with the invasion of Iraq – seem almost benign.

It’s time to face up to the horrific reality: there are places on this earth that in no way resemble the cultural and political landscape of the U.S., and nothing we do will turn Iraq into a suburb of the American metropolis. Short of wiping out a good portion of the population and imprisoning most of the rest in “reeducation” camps where they’ll be forced to memorize Robert’s Rules of Order and the aphorisms of Emily Post, it simply cannot be done.

Read the full article here, and reclaim the reality of what has happened, and is happening in Iraq.

It was shortly before the London bombings that I scribbled a few lines on the lowering of security levels in the UK, so I’ll scribble a few lines now. The last time I focused on the falsity of the terror-levels, post-9/11, when the UK was not high on the terrorist agenda. And how lowering them after the UK had invaded Iraq, and was now involved in an illegal and bloody occupation, proved how little sense is behind the terror-levels, as the UK was surely in far more danger now.

Now of course, the inevitable attack has sadly happened, and is of course now just another part of history, and the terror-levels are back to the fore.

Now, it strikes me that the terror-level indicators are a bit silly, and don’t really mean a thing. For example, the terror-levels have now been reduced from ‘”critical” or Level 1 — its highest state — to “severe general” or Level 2G’ because ‘intelligence sources do not have any specific information relating to imminent attacks.’ Well, at no stage since 9/11 has there been any evidence that the government has gained any reliable intelligence on the likelyhood of a terrorist attack - as was demonstrated by lowering the security level prior to the London bombings. So why have security levels based on intelligence, as the government is extremely unlikely to gain any real intelligence on bomb attacks?

Now the actual terror-level seems to be a pointless indicator that the government uses to maintain the illusion that we are under attack, that a threat is always very close to being imminent; whereas in reality real threat is determined by ‘”alert” level, which runs in parallel and is also decided by JTAC, remains at its highest rating.’ It is the alert level that determines police resourcing and public security, so why have the terror-level indicator, if not to stir-up fear in the general public?

The terror-level is nothing but a New labour media device, designed to convince the doubting public that we are under attack; you can almost picture Blair dealing with people who do not believe the constant threat of terror: ‘Look, of course we are in danger, the terror-alert says “severe-general” for god’s sake’.