Threat Amplifiers

Seven Algerians have been arrested detained by police today. The government has judged them to be a threat to the national security of the United Kingdom.

In entirely unrelated news, the safety elephant has announced his new tough plans to tackle terrorism.

I was going to leave it at that but sometimes they just go to far.

Do they seriously think we're all brain dead idiots? It just so happens that today these seven men have become such a threat to our national security that they must be arrested detained immediately? By a total coincidence this happens on the same day that Charlie boy is trying to sell his latest proposed assaults on our society? Good grief! Can anyone seriously argue that these arrests detentions haven't been arranged for entirely political purposes? It's the fact that it's so blatant which really hacks me off. They just assume that the entire population is composed of idiotic lemmings who'll believe whatever they're told. Spit.

And the government is likely to deport these detainees to Algeria. A memorandum of understanding ensures that the UK government has a get out clause when the torture starts. At what point do we acknowledge that the extremists are achieving their goal of changing our values?

The government thinks it can get away with this because everyone's scared of the evil terrorists. Hey Mr Hamster, people will say, these guys are terrorist scum and if they happen to get deported and tortured so much the better. They were involved in the Al-Qaida ricin ring, a plot of unspeakable evil.

Except that the Al-Qaida ricin ring was bullshit in any number of ways. It seems that the government would prefer it if this was not widely known. The article reproduced in that link was withdrawn from the Guardian website for "legal reasons". (What better reason could there be to read it?) It's a good illustration of why the government doesn't like the courts to become too involved in these things. The courts tend to rely on actual facts and this can interfere with the government's narrative.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying there are no terrorists out there. There are. But this government cannot resist exaggerating the threat at every opportunity in an attempt to convince us that their draconian measures are necessary.

Well it's not on. In the word of the great philosophers Chuck D and Flava Flav, "don't, don't, don't, don't believe the hype".