I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

Brendan Cox, Survivors Against Terror and the Manchester Bombing

The 22nd May was a year to the day since the Manchester Arena bombing in which 22, mostly young people and children, were killed.

To coincide with events held in Manchester, the Survivors Against Terror group (SAT) issued an open letter in the Observer of 20th May (scroll down here), calling for five distinct positions to be adopted against terrorism. This received considerable media coverage, see for example that from the BBC. The main figure in SAT is Brendan Cox. Whilst he resigned from positions in two charities linked to continuing his wife’s work in February, his work on countering terrorism was not mentioned at the time. Even when he has been publicly labelled a sex pest, it is perhaps rather difficult to condemn him when he is standing with fellow victims of terrorism. That of course is precisely the type of thing he will have calculated into his thinking, as he seeks to return to public life.

The SAT intervention has a five point programme it seeks support for:

• Please keep your focus on honouring the memory of those who have been killed. Terrorists often attack partly to gain notoriety. We should deny them it; their names don't deserve to be remembered.

• Give to appeals to help the victims of attacks and demand government provide the high quality services that survivors need.

• Ask media and social media organisations to do far more to take on and shut down those driving hate.

• Support our emergency and security services to do their job. If you know something or suspect something, tell them.

• Take on hatred wherever you find it. Very few of us will ever meet a terrorist, but lots of us will experience those driving hatred. Hatred is the sea that terrorists need to swim in, if we take on that hatred, we dry up that sea.

It would be interesting to know who wrote this, or developed the draft. Points 1, 2 and 4 are so anodyne as to be agreeable by virtually anyone, not least those who have suffered bereavement in terrorist incidents. Points 3 and 5 are more contentious, and open up a potential agenda – restricting social media, and acting against ‘hate’ that is more debateable, and entirely in keeping with political agendas from global elites and their little helpers.

Social Media and Terrorism?

Terrorism long predates social media – the IRA campaign, or that of the various loyalist groups from 1969-98, hardly needed it, even if the technology had existed. Historically, explanations for terrorism have considered concepts such as injustice, poverty, bad foreign policy, or the nature of, and trends within, ideologies and belief systems, serving to radicalise individuals and groups. Social networks are also important – you are more likely to join a terrorist group, if friends are doing so. That is why some towns, like Portsmouth, appear to have had Islamic versions of First World War ‘Pals Regiments’ going off to Syria. Cox and co ignore all of this. Instead the problem is the media and social media, and the wide, perhaps all too wide concept of ‘hate’.

There is little evidence social media played any role in the Manchester bombing.

The bomber, Salman Abedi, was a supporter of Islamic State, and a Mancunian of Libyan heritage. His father, Ramadan Abedi, was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an organisation the British government helped to overthrow Gadaffi. Salman Abedi had long moved in Islamist circles in Greater Manchester, and fought in Libya in 2011 in its Civil War. His brother Ismail Abedi is currently in custody in Libya, fighting extradition to the UK.

But - there is nothing here from SAT or Brendan Cox on foreign policy, immigration or religion. Is it a good idea to be allowing members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group to settle in Manchester? Why did the British government seemingly support the overthrow of Colonel Gadaffi, then work with him against the Islamists, then change course again, to support regime change? What does Theresa May, either the Home Secretary or Prime Minister in much of this period, have to say? There is nothing from SAT on breaking up friendship groups of extremists - in the months before the attack, Abedi twice visited a convicted terrorist in prison. Should we be allowing young men convicted of supporting terrorism to hang out in jail with impressionable young men from the streets?

Taking on 'hatred', requires a definition of hatred that is agreed upon by a majority of the populace. How likely is that? Whilst elite level groups and government departments can readily agree (debating terminology is one of the things they do) such a consensus is unlikely to emerge from where it is needed - the bottom up. And where does any definition of ‘hate’ sit with the concept of free speech?

What Next?

The deployment of victims of terrorism to promote the idea that social media is in some way a ‘cause’ of terrorism is now underway. At the same time, there seems to have been a low level purge on Twitter of ‘extremist’ voices, most prominently of Tommy Robinson. In due course, that is likely to be extended to You Tube, and Nigel Farage has made the accusation that algorithms are being used to censor conservative comment on Facebook.
That, combined with loose accusations of ‘extremism’ or ‘hate’ is likely to be at the centre of the work of groups like Hope not Hate, and it seems, Survivors Against Terrorism, going forward. It avoids asking hard questions about foreign policy, immigration policy and (almost certainly) it avoids asking hard questions about trends within contemporary Sunni Islam. Consider all those politicians and news readers talking about ‘Daesh’ or ‘so-called Islamic State’ to see how readily euphemism can predominate. It risks conflating those involved with violence, with those who are not. And it will almost certainly serve as one of the fronts in the conflicts over politics we will see over the next 18 months.

Do you trust Brendan Cox to define what constitutes ‘hate’?

Northamptonshire Is Out.....

From todays Sunday Times 'Best Places to Live, 2018'

"There is no room for Northamptonshire on the list. It has attractive countryside, handsome houses and a plausible commute to the capital - but please tell us where we should make ourselves at home."

The Perils of Media Fact Checking

One journalistic tool that is now used frequently is to 'fact-check' particular claims or statements by politicians and campaign groups. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Well, quite a bit actually. This is Mollie Ziegler's take:

"The 'fact-checking trend' meant that journalists would gain more power. They wouldn't just get to determine which stories saw the light of day and which were killed or downplayed; they would pick the angle and framing for the stories and determine who was quoted and how. And through fact-checking, they would tell people what to think about claims made in these stories."

Mollie Ziegler, "Trump vs the Media" (Encounter Broadside No:51, Encounter Books: New York) p. 40 - 41.

Fear For Our Democracy In 2018? It Has Never Looked Healthier

On the Left Foot Forward website, the Green MEP Molly Scott Cato, has written an article saying that, after, the events of recent years, she fears for our democracy. It seems a few people shooting boo at High Court judges or Tory Remainers represents an existential crisis.

Below is my reply. I have no idea if Left Foot Forward welcomes, or censures, critical comment, so I have posted it here just in case.

It seems strange to be lectured on democracy, by an MEP who cannot accept the largest mass vote in our people's history. Every vote counts for Molly, except when those votes reject membership of the European Union.

Brexit was a revolt of the little man against the European project. It was also a firm rejection of the EU's pseudo-democratic model - consider technocrats had already taken charge in Italy and Greece when those countries dared to step outside the rules of the troika.

Brexit knocked David Cameron and George Osborne off their perch, and may yet lead to the abolition of the House of Lords if Lord Adonis and his chums use their ermine to thwart the will of the people.

Leaving the European Union offers us the chance to revitalise our democracy from the local level upwards, moving away from the top down process beloved in Brussels. It ends at a stroke the excuses of our own politicians, who can no longer blame their own failings to deliver x or y, on the EU.

How the Green Party, who once believed in localism, came to be the most rabidly pro-Brussels of our political parties, desperate to stay in the single market, is perhaps an issue for those writing histories of political 'capture'.

But let 2019 be the year we remind ourselves that democracy, if it means anything, means delivering for the people. And that means a full, clean Brexit where the soverignty of the British people is restored.

Brexit Resisted? The Remain Activists Trying to Link Brexit to Neo-Nazis

On 9th November, ITV showed a documentary, Undercover: Inside Britain's New Far-Right. It no longer seems to be on ITV's website, but is available at various points online, for example here.

Documentaries of this type were the staple of an earlier era - remember World In Action in the 1990s? The attempts to convince a sceptical public that a far-right terrorist machine was being established in Britain, via the group Combat 18? The security services, under pressure from cuts in an era that was post Soviet but pre 9/11, were needed to save us from this terrible menace. Similar programmes appeared on animal rights activists, and even the far-left. They did not age well.

Politically, this documentary was much more ambitious. It was about resisting Brexit and seeking to garner support for further controls on social media. My colleague Larry O'Hara explains this fully in his article here (17,000 words long so not suitable for people who can only deal with Tweets/sound-bites/You-tube videos)

Larry summarises his case thus:

The coverage of groups like Britain First, the National Front and Generation Identity (GI) was hardly convincing. For example, there was a lot of focus on GI “military style camps” which are a joke. What wasn’t mentioned were actual military-style camps that have taken place in the UK recently: the Siggurd camps (later rebranded as Legion camps).

1) the rather sad and isolated figure of failed UKIP leadership contender Anne Marie Waters is shown as having poor political judgement by consorting with fascists and, er, saying in private about Islam what she says in public

2) long term Searchlight/Hope Not Hate infiltrator Peter Rushton (whose card I marked back in 1994) is shown twice saying Brexit was about ‘Rights for Whites’. Not only do I disagree, I take strong exception to viewers being manipulated by a prepared script in this way. So strong was my exception I have taken the unprecedented step of quoting from one of many intelligence reports in our possession concerning various assets: in this instance one written about Rushton by his handlers in 2002 when he was under fire for being an infiltrator, though supported by the rather naive John Tyndall.

3) I reveal for the first time the amounts paid to Hope Not Hate personnel by pro-EU group Better for Britain, especially interesting given HNHs charitable status and feigned neutrality during the EU referendum and since. HNH are far from neutral commentators on Brexit - they are players central to preventing its implementation.

The second strand of the show was about whipping up hysteria concerning social media. Which explains why an irrelevant group like Britain First had their strength and support exaggerated, and a group like Generation Identity, who barely exist in the UK, were given such prominence. What a coincidence (Not) that since the article was written it has transpired that both Britain First and Generation Identity have had their Twitter accounts suspended.

All this overlaps with the pro-Remainer conspiracy theories peddled by especially Carole Cadwalladr of the Guardian/Observer regarding Russian influence on the EU Referendum. I merely dip my toes into the seething whirlpool that is this debate, which I will return to elsewhere.

In any event, I trust the above has whetted the appetite of those of you interested in referenced argument on the important matters to alluded to above. I did raise many of these issues with the documentary-makers prior to publication, in emails to David Henshaw of Hardcash Productions, but they declined to reply.

They can dish it out, but can’t take it.

Some Recent Talks, An Article and Video Clips

Last month I spent some time in Geneva, speaking at a side-event to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Organised by the think tank European Foundation for South Asian Studies, 'Terrorism in South Asia' brought together four scholars and a healthy audience to discuss events, primarily in Pakistan and Kashmir, and their impact closer to home.

You can hear a recording of my talk here, via Soundcloud. A copy of my paper "Terrorism in Pakistan and the role of Pakistani diaspora in the UK: Challenges?" is on the Academia.edu site, but I think you will need to be a member of the site to download it (it is free).

Whilst in Geneva I did some work with the Indian media. It is fair to see the antipathy between India and Pakistan somewhat colours their approach, but hopefully the gist of my general points emerges here, and here. Some of the EFSAS recordings of the event are also appearing online now, for example here.

Finally I also did a guest lecture in Septemberto a Leicester University summer school for distance learning Criminology students. You can hear an audio recording of my talk on British Jihadism here.

Journalistic Solidarity From Shepherd's Bush to Qatar

Yesterday's Evening Standard saw the BBC's World Affairs Editor, John Simpson, complaining about the pressure Qatar is under to close down Al-Jazeera. He wants to see the West supporting the station.

One of Simpson's lines particularly caught my attention:

"It may have been accused of being slanted in favour of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt and elsewhere but it employs talented ex-colleagues of mine from the BBC, and I've always felt its heart is in the right place".

It is a sign of just how lightweight Simpson is, that whilst showing solidarity to his old BBC muckers, he does not actually get the main problem with Al-Jazeera. That is its ability to take in western liberals by saying one thing in its English language programming, and something entirely different in its Arabic material. Consider these findings from one US think tank:

"Aljazeera Arabic, in contrast, has much less freedom to report on regional developments -- including in Qatar -- than the English site. Very little criticism of Doha can be found in Arabic"

or the wave of resignations among its staff because of this subservience to the Qatari royals. More recently Al-Jazeera's racism re-surfaced, for once in English, when it blamed climate change on the Jews.

Either Simpson does not know these things, in which case he is a fool. Or he does know it, and decided it did not matter.

Chewing the Fat About Julian Assange, Wikileaks and Today's Politics

I spent some time today interviewing Dr Larry O'Hara, editor of the parapolitical magazine Notes from the Borderland.

You can hear the interview on my Soundcloud page here.

Issues covered take in Julian Assange and Wikileaks, Brexit and the EU referendum, the state of the Green party, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party, technology, fake news, Hacked Off! and phone hacking, Donald Trump and The Prisoner.

Russell Square: The Problem of Public Cynicism

Last night a 60 year old woman was stabbed to death at Russell Square in London, and five others injured. A 19 year old man was arrested at the scene.

Early reports are focusing on the attacker's mental health issues, with terrorism not being ruled out.

Here we meet the authorities greatest PR challenge, and a potential boon for Islamic State whereby they achieve some of their aims, whilst doing little or nothing. The authorities, political elites and religious organisations have spent so long enforcing the view terrorism is nothing to do with Islam, large swathes of the general public no longer believe anything they say after major incidents such as this.

Consider the BBC. It cannot bring itself to refer to Islamic State as, Islamic State. It is the so-called Islamic State. In nearly thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland, and despite contestation in the Republic movement over the name, they never once referred to the 'so-called IRA'. Ulster loyalists who felt the Ulster Defence Association did not speak for them, were expected to suffer the indignity of the name's daily usage by the press, whether they liked it or not.

The murder of Father Jaques Hamel could hardly be more religious. A French priest has his throat cut at the alter during communion by two Islamic State supporters crying 'Allah Akhbar'. Yet the immediate response of some of our elites is to say the exact opposite in explanation.

In pubs, cafes and clubs across the country, the masses are now laughing at this. Many people now assume that when they are told an attack is not terror related, it is. They are beginning to see terms such as 'attacker with mental health problems' as a euphemism. That cynicism is unhealthy. It aids some of Islamic State's aims of causing dissension and division. It discredits the other work of the police, security services, media and politicians.

It is ultimately far worse for community relations, and the future of the country, than the truth. Whatever Russell Square is, it should serve as a reminder that this politically correct nonsense has to stop.

Acceptable and Unacceptable Glories

This morning BBC Radio 4's Start the Week was a discussion centering on the Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany, and his new work.

What I found remarkable about this was less Al Aswany, or even the panel discussion, but the issues redolent in Tom Sutcliffe's introduction. Sutcliffe stated:

"The greatness of Islamic societies in the past has led Muslims of all kinds to dream about and plan for equally glorious Islamic societies in the future. How can they get past the disappointing compromised and sometimes violent present though? Must an Islamic state necessarily be at odds with modern secular democracy? And can an open pluralistic society come to a working accommodation with a monotheistic faith?"

There is plenty of food for thought here. For Islamists, the gap between theory and reality in Muslim majority societies, and especially in countries which declare themselves Islamic, poses an almost insurmountable challenge. Thus far, the easiest response has been to call for ever more of whatever interpretation of Islam is to hand - hence in part the Islamification of Pakistan under Zia, and later the development of both Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. To my mind it also helps explain the prevalence of conspiracy theories in both Muslim communities here and in Muslim majority nations - if life is not ideal, it cannot be due to the beliefs on which life is predicated, but the wiles of those opposed to the faith. Equally, the extent to which a pluralistic society can accommodate Islam is one of the issues of our age - certainly since the Rushdie affair.

But as so often with the BBC, Sutcliffe accidentally tells us as much about his world, as he does anything else. Just read that first line again:

"The greatness of Islamic societies in the past has led Muslims of all kinds to dream about and plan for equally glorious Islamic societies in the future".

I am not sure many Radio 4 listeners felt uncomfortable hearing those words. Substitute the word British, for Islamic and Muslims, and then see how it reads. You could equally do that with the words German, American or French, to similar effect.

"The greatness of British societies in the past has led Britons of all kinds to dream about and plan for equally glorious British societies in the future".

But Sutcliffe, and I suspect many Radio 4 listeners, would feel distinctly uncomfortable if a politician were talking of the glories of Britain's past forming the basis to establish a glorious future. The liberal aversion to Donald Trump talking about the United States in such terms, is marked.

Why then is liberal opinion tolerant of such a vision for Islamic societies?

Significantly, references to glorious Islamic societies of the future tend not to predominate in the discourse of contemporary British Muslim representative organisations. You can certainly find it though in recent decades - old Islamic Foundation pamphlets are a good source for it - and it is certainly present in the current rhetoric of the Islamic State. For now though, we tend to hear much more from the Muslim Council of Britain about pluralism, democracy and accommodation.

Am I the only person who considers that deep down in Tom Sutcliffe's words is a recognition, by his focus on 'glorious Islamic societies in the future' that we don't really buy all this talk of accommodation and pluralism, but, as with many others, he is much too polite to say so?

Our New Weapon Against Islamic State? Marketing Gobbledygook

This evening's Evening Standard has a bizarre one page feature on Sven Hughes, a former military psy-ops expert, who now runs a marketing and PR firm called Verbalisation.

Verbilisation has had some degree of profile due to its work with the anti-extremism think tank Quilliam. Here we hit the first problem. Given the degree of paranoia about and hatred for Qulliam from many Muslim representative groups, any PR company worth its salt would tell Quilliam to steer clear of Verbalisation, a company which Chris Blackwell's Standard piece claims is 'staffed largely by 'ex-military personnel'.

The second problem with Verbalisation is that someone seems to have decided the best weapon against IS is management gobbledygook. Check this out from Sven Hughes:

"the marketing industry has become quite lazy. Verbalisation is a step towards solving that. We have very rigorous methodology for decoding called RAID or Rapid Audience Insight Diagnostic. It's a 24-parameter, psychological profiling technique which enables us to not only understand what our audience is saying but what they're actually thinking, believing and what will effect their behaviour change."

I am not an automatic basher of Quilliam (unlike some academics) but I do hope they are not paying too much for this bizarre management and PR speak. And if this is the type of thought that is driving 'counter-radicalisation' policies in this country, it does not bode well.

Edward Snowden Joins Twitter

For those who use social media sites, the former NSA contractor turned whistle blower Edward Snowden appears to have opened a twitter account.

Within four hours of his first tweet earlier today, he had 488,000 followers, but was following just one account himself - the US National Security Agency. When I did a twitter search under the single word 'Snowden' the first account which came up, was not that of Edward Snowden, but the account of the NSA. Big brother works in mysterious ways.....

Gang War Author Peter Walsh, Plus More on Paul Massey

Following the murder of Paul Massey, Russia Today had an interesting interview earlier this month with journalist Peter Walsh, author of the book 'Gang War: The Inside Story of the Manchester Gangs".

 

Walsh comes across as quite balanced, if cautious. He is certainly correct to point to the loyalty Massey inspired in others, but he does not dwell on the reality that the Massey family had enemies in the city. For example his cousin, Constance Howarth was convicted of being the lookout in the failed attempt to murder Salford's David Totton in 2006. The man convicted for being at the centre of that plot, Bobby Spiers, was a director of Paul Massey's security company, PMS.

On Paul Massey's politics, the final post on his twitter feed indicates he was planning to stand again for Mayor of Salford, where (as Walsh contends) he received a decent vote last time. This could have been as an Independent or perhaps with Bez's Reality Party - if Bez got round to registering it with the Electoral Commission. I don't think Massey would have won, but a vote of 10%+ was certainly possible.

Interestingly Paul Massey's twitter feed suggests that he took a different approach to national elections - a 7 May tweet called for a UKIP vote in the imminent general election.

Who should I vote for in the General Election 2015? These 12 questions will help you decide http://t.co/WYF6izLY7b vote ukip pm Salford

— Paul Massey (@paulmassey19601) May 7, 2015

Perhaps a policy of Reality for Salford, UKIP for the country?

Failing to attach Paul Massey to UKIP must be the first time Hope Not Hate have missed an opportunity to attack the party!

Manipulating the News: A Follow Up

I received a lot of positive feedback and support on social media for yesterdays post, on the manipulation of the news in the case of the stabbing of school teacher Vincent Uzomah. 

A few brief updates. Firstly the Guardian's Helen Pidd confirmed that the judge in the case did NOT order any withholding of the ethnicity of the attacker. This confirms that those news outlets who did not report he is a British teenager of Pakistani heritage, opted to do so of their own volition. 

 

@MrPaulStott @chrishanretty the judge specifically allowed reporting of the ethnicity of the offender

— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) August 11, 2015

Secondly neither Show Racism the Red Card nor the Today Programme replied to me on social media, where I levied the question as to whether their interventions in this story properly reflected events. Laura Pidcock of Show Racism the Red Card also failed to comment, despite being sent a link to these criticisms.

An unexpected development during the course of yesterday was Matthew Weaver of the Guardian, somewhat bizarrely, picking up on Show Racism the Red Card's intervention on Radio 4, and deciding that in and of itself it was worthy of being a news story. Indeed at one point yesterday it was the ninth most read article on the Guardian site. This illustrates the nature of modern media websites - the need to produce endless layers of content that fit readers preconceived ideas means a highly partial and indeed disingenuous discussion on a radio show can, two hours later, become a news item.

And that serves as a further example of how liberal elites manipulate the news.