Off the keyboard of John Ward

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Publishes on The Slog on November 21, 2015

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ANALYSIS: Terror – who brought it upon us, and who is disseminating it today?

The Slog outlines an authentic step by step guide to how and why insane Jihadism has become widespread terror

Brussels has been on ‘maxumum alert’ to my certain knowledge for three days….all shops are closed and every sporting event cancelled. An attack, we’re told, is ‘imminent’. Imminent is becoming one of those internet words like ‘free’: it’s a tricky one to interpret, given the reality.

Meanwhile, of the ten people besieged in the St Denis raid, er, seven have been released without charge. Spookily, the only persons killed were this week’s Mastermind winner, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and his girlfriend or perhaps cousin but whom we now ‘know’ haha wasn’t a woman at all. As their coming back to life, regardless of sexual orientation, is not imminent, another trail of information and evidence has been lost: another Osama Bin Laden has been buried at sea.

We know Abaaoud was a mastermind, by the way, because he masterminded the Stade de France attack – you know, the one where they made themselves conspicuous by entering the ground half an hour late, were immediately spotted by security cops, and then blew themselves up…scoring a casualty total of precisely three. Yup, it takes a master of the Universe mind to devise that one.

We’re beginning to see emerging elements in the National State of Emergency declared by Hollande last week. The French National Assembly has awarded the Executive sweeping powers: the bill includes the right to tell ISPs to block websites – without any judicial review or court order. Police will no longer need a warrant to seize electronic devices without a warrant. So gung-ho is the Assembly, several even more draconian moves have been suggested – for example, criminalising the Act of even attempting to load one of the summarily banned websites.

French MPs have already voted in favour of an amendment allowing the Minister of the Interior to block any website “promoting terrorism or inciting terrorist acts” (no legal process for adjudication of promoting or inciting) and confine to house arrest individuals that present “serious reasons to think that their behaviour represents a threat for security and public order”….such to also be decided by security forces, not the Courts. So if I blog “what a pity the Schäuble assassin missed” I could be banged up before you could say lettres de cachet. If Nigel Farage stands up in the Brussels Parliament and suggests “one day that crook Verhofstadt is going to wind up hanging from a lamppost” we might even wind up sharing the house. This could be even worse than I thought.

Across the Channel in Target Britannia,  Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond is saying that yes, Britain really is a target and yes, we’re alert. David Cameron his chosen this moment in particular to tell us that seven “major planned Jihadist atrocities” have been foiled in the UK this year, a statement as unqualified as it is unsubstantiated: will CallMeDave now be arrested by Theresa May as a suspected NVE? We don’t know, but we do know that without drawing breath, the Prime Minister confirmed that his government’s new Strategic Defence and Security Review will involve ‘thousands of armed troops flooding the streets if terrorists launch a Paris-style attack on Britain,  and a huge increase in the number of combat troops placed on high alert for a rapid response to a terrorist attack’.

But I’m afraid this leaves me asking one simple question: who exactly are the ones creating terror here? I mean, that is what terrorists do, right? They create a widespread sense of terror.

Before anyone leaps to a convenient misunderstanding of my motives, I should reiterate my very clear view that has not wavered in nearly fifteen years: pc in Britain, the US and Europe has from Day One turned a blind eye to the fundamentally intolerant, misogynist and aggressive nature of Islam. But if they hadn’t done this, we wouldn’t be in the self-perpetuating state of terror that besets us today….with an immigration policy that allowed in hundreds of extremist preachers and an estimated 15,000 Jihadist activists.

Unbelievably, we’re still at it: a pre-Christmas commercial planned for showing in  UK cinemas has been banned by the chains because it features the Lord’s Prayer. Apparently, ‘the cinemas rejected the commercial, saying that it could offend people of differing or no faith’. Hands up all those readers who think the Jews might have objected.

There is then, of course, the vexed (but entirely glossed over) question of where some of this ISIL worldwide well-drilled and ten-million strong at least headcases bought their weapons in the first place. Just over a month ago, it was revealed that the British government has identified Saudi Arabia as a “priority market” and is encouraging UK businesses to bid for contracts in, among others, security and defence. The Saudis have roughly the same in common with our values as ISIL: they are also known suppliers of weapons to the Jihadists.

ISIL’s other major supplier is Erodgan’s Turkey, whose leader Cameron licked all over in his ill-judged Ankara speech of 2010. Turkey is a member of NATO – a military organisation dedicated to the annihilation of Jihadist terrorism.

And of course, we mustn’t leave out France. Je suis Paris, when all’s said and done. Unfortunately, Syrian Jihadists frequently use the FAMAS assault rifle….supplied to them by France.

As the Independent pointed out two years ago, ‘France was instrumental, alongside the UK, in lifting the European Union arms embargo on Syria which would allow supplies to be sent to the rebels’. This was way back when the ‘bastards’ of ISIL were brave freedom-fighters against Bashar Assad.

Earlier this year, in fact, France24 gushed that ‘France’s booming arms trade has proved one of the few bright spots for the country’s struggling economy’;  Hollande conveniently ignored the advice of experts that ‘the influx of arms to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries is worsening tensions in a region already ravaged by conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen’.

And just to round off the survey, the US remains the biggest arms exporter to the Middle East, with €7.5 billion worth of weapon sales in 2014, while the UK and Germany are also major players.

This is how it works. Our governments follow amoral foreign and export policies, we the People pay. Western governments remain in awe of an energy form we should have moved past decades ago, we the People pay. Politically correct idiots ignore the dark sides of immigration, we the People pay. Establishments become completely beholden to the greed of bankers, we the People pay. Those of neoliberal dogma hire the government pipers to play their ideological hymn, we the People pay. Media moguls smear every real opposition to their cosy privilege, we the People pay. Childish fundamentalists with small dicks get cheap arms and gain ground among the disgruntled, we the People pay.

The path along which we are allowing ourselves to be herded is so well trodden – and so easily recognised by even the most inattentive student of history – it is beyond parody. I feel like a man face up under the guillotine, waiting for it to hurtle down.