Propaganda of the Name: The Meaning of 'Islamic State'.

'we believe the media, civic society and governments should refuse to legitimise these ludicrous caliphate fantasies by accepting or propagating this name. We propose that 'UnIslamic State' (UIS) could be an accurate and fair alternative name'-'Islamic State' is a slur on our faith, say leading Muslims. Observer, Saturday 13 September 2014

The complaint by British Muslim organisations and imams that the Prime Minister should stop using the words 'Islamic state' to describe the self-proclaimed Islamic State takes the absurd to new levels. For a start, Obama and Cameron have been at pains not to call it IS or ISIS or regard it as truly Islamic.

In countering the threat which is a threat to the US and Britain but not yet, it seems the threat does not even have the name is has as 'Islamic State' because President Obama, and so David Cameron, call it 'ISIL'. Cameron referred to a 'so-called Caliphate' and 'nihilists'.

It is understandable why British Muslims would not want to be associated with what they call the 'Unislamic State'. But by denying the neo-caliphate could be 'islamic' and demanding it is called the opposite of what it calls itself they run the risk of being ridiculed and giving more publicity to the idea of its being Islamic or not.

More than that, by acting childishly and petulantly by demanding the media calls Islamic State the 'Unislamic State', the Muslim organisations invite the sort of response which would delight in countering, with malicious glee, that Islamic State really is the 'real face' of Islam going back to its authentic and true 'medieval' origins.

The grotesque irony of all this is that IS would get exactly what they want in the aftermath of the first online public beheading of of a British hostage, captured aid worker David Haines, by reinforcing the attitudes of those who see that act at the hands of a British jihadist either as 'real' Islam' or as 'nothing to do with it'.

There are those who see the beheading as a warning that this is the sort of act that 'you have coming' from a British jihadist 'near you'. Then there are those denying that such an action could ever be committed by anyone professing to be Islamic, to which the answer is going to be like the panto refrain 'oh, yes it is !'.

IS knows that the beheadings are so gory and vile that the western media would whip up outrage of the sort media obsessed politicians such as Cameron thrive on when bigging up the terror threat, the better to increase their self important need to 'do' something as well as playing for votes and 'looking tough on terror'.

By talking up the 'global terror threat', IS gets precisely the necessary response. They are intelligent enough to know how useful their threat is in forcing politicians in media dominated democracies to make out the threat to be a unified one so as to better justify any military interventions they would need to take.

The reasons for that are that IS realises the western nations in Britain are bound to need to intervene militarily to protect oil and gas supplies from control or else sabotage by jihadists across the regions which is claimed as part of a new revived caliphate stretching from sub-Saharan Africa through to the Greater Middle East.

By portraying disparate jihadi-Islamist threats across these different nations as one seamless 'global threat', and using that to intervene militarily, with drones, air strikes or 'boots on the ground' IS would be able to spread its franchise operation out of its core base in Syria and into Iraq into Egypt, Libya, Yemen or Nigeria.

The ultimate ambition, of course, is to be the threat that Cameron is portraying IS as being, that is, one that reaches its sinister tentacles into the heartlands of Britain, something already played on by celebrity jihadists Anjem Choudary who are as media savvy as establishment politicians playing on fear. 

Though appearing a buffoon, Choudury is already knows how to play up to his useful media role in linking the outrage over the execution of hostages to the fact there is less outrage over the way western foreign policy means "hundreds of thousands of people have been beheaded by drones and daisy cutters".

IS online beheadings are meant to stir things up in Britain by opening up a discussion on British foreign policy why Britain is uncritically following the US as 'lapdog' and why it is condemning the execution of one British hostage claimed by ISIS to have been in the British army rather than the foreign policy for 'causing' it.

This gloating and gory propaganda of the deed which is intended by IS to be what Cameron calls 'pure evil' compared to the 'greater evil' against which ISIS is ranged: the Hypocrite Sunni Muslim regimes that made their state possible by bankrolling jihadi efforts against Assad's regime and their Infidel allies.

Islamic State is, in reality, the Islamist State of Syria and Iraq. This would be a far better designation which distinguishes between Islam and the ideologisation of Islam into a set of political tactics and doctrines adapted to the modern world which owes much in its ideas to thinkers such as Maududi and Nabhani.

Maududi used the word 'Islamic State' to mean one in which all aspects of public and private life in a perfect society would be determined by a select Godly elite who would slowly infiltrate their way into institutions and take them over from within and purge kuffars from positions of power.

Maududi put forward a non-violent path to create an utopia. Other thinkers such as Qutb, an influence on Al Qaida, stressed modernistic ideas such as a vanguard elite bent on destroying a decadent world and creating a new world through acts of apocalyptic violence and terrorism.

None of those ideas exist in the Qu'ran. Islamist ideas such as Al Qaida's at one extreme. Those groups such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir which have an ambiguous attitude towards violence demand a Caliphate as an Islamified version of the sort of utopia longed for by, for example, the Bolsheviks in Tsarist Russia.

Islamic State is no more necessarily Islamic than the the Soviet Union was a true union of republics based on the control of worker's councils or even truly socialist. However, few socialists in the west, even those who rejected the Soviet Union would have called it the 'fake union of unsocialist unfree pseudo-republics'.

Malise Ruthven puts it well when he refers to Islamism as,

'the ideologization of Islam at the political level, the construction of a political ideology using some symbols culled from the historical reperiore of Islam, to the exclusion of others. This ideology, sometimes refered to as 'Islamic fundamentalism', is better described as Islamism: the Latin suffix attached to the Arabic original more accurately expresses the relationship between the pre-existing reality ( in this case a religion ) and its translation into a political ideology, just as communism ideologizes the reality of the commune, socialism the social, and fascism the ancient symbol of Roman consular authority'.

The difference is that socialism or communism were not words with a necessary cultural resonance for those identifying with a religion and civilisation such as Islam does imply. This is why not colluding in the portrayal of Islamic State at face value is vital and why 'Islamist State' would be the right name.

One advantage, is that those following or tempted to identify with Islamist groups in Britain would see that the necessary outcome of trying to create a caliphate based on an enforced and extreme version of sharia law ends up creating a hell on earth for other Muslims first and foremost in the lands under its control.

On message politicians in Britain, however, insist on 'ISIL' for reasons of 'public diplomacy'. One reason is 'ISIL' sounds more pointedly sharp and sinister, far more deadly and dangerous than ISIS which is also the name of an Egyptian Goddess. It sounds more evil and vile like SPECTRE in James Bond.

Another handy use of ISIL, is it avoids serving to remind those who opposed air strikes against Syria in 2013 that the last 'S' in ISIS means 'Syria' which could be entered targets there bombed. ISIL sounds more like a bacteria or lethal virus, a truly 'poisonous ideology' that can seep unguarded into any 'community'.

ISIL could be borne back to 'the homeland'. Having said that, some criticised the use of ISIL because the 'L' means Levant, that is the power claim made over Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq , Southern Turkey, or even Israel. Yet that would serve to create a greater sense threat in the region too as well as the US.

The calculation could be that nobody actually knows that 'L' means Levant or what Levant means apart from sounding a bit fragrant. Of course, ISIL and ISIS are both better than IS which means 'Islamic State' and it could not be admitted that Islamic State is either a real state or that its really Islamic which is what IS wants.

Islamic State: Britain and the Call of the New Modern Caliphate

The savagery of Islamic State is plain for all to see when broadcast across the globe via Youtube, social media sites and reportage such as that on Vice News. The gory spectacle of online decapitations, mass executions and enemy corpses strewn on pavements of Raqqa have lead the Caliphate to be called 'medieval'.

The idea IS is a medieval throwback is convenient in trying to compare it with the values of the civilised world and to portray it as irreparably 'other'. IS, from such a perspective, consists of pyschopaths looking for an excuse for gloating cruelty or else it is the real face of purest Islam just as it was back in the seventh century.

Politicians in the West such as Britain's Prime Minister Cameron, concerned at the prospect of battle hardened jihadists returning from Syria to plot terror attacks, have tended to downplay the nature of the 'so-called Caliphate'. They refuse to call is 'Islamic State' ( IS ) and President Obama refers to it merely as  'ISIL'.

By speaking of the need to 'degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL' on the 13th anniversary of Al Qaida's 9/11 attacks on New York, Obama has made it clear he refused to recognise it as an Islamic State. ISIL sounds rather more like an acronym for a deadly virus as opposed to ISIS which sounds rather less menacing.

Referring to Islamic State as ISIL makes it appear a lethal threat to the security of the region without being a legitimate Islamic State and thereby colluding with the view of itself as the direct successor to Muhammad's seventh century Arabian state; this is precisely what the self-styled Caliph al-Baghdadi would want.

However, when Britain's Nick Clegg refers to Islamic State “this medieval and vile movement” he was indicating such atrocities belong firmly in the Dark Ages. In fact, Islamic State both in ideology, tactics and propaganda belongs firmly in the modern world for a number of reasons politicians would prefer not to admit.

One reason is Islamic State is a consequence of the support and backing given to radicalised jihadists by Britain and America's Gulf allies in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Qatar, in particular, supported the al-Nusra brigades which, among many other jihadist groups, had members splinter off and joing ISIS throughout 2013-2014

Islamic State is a classic example of 'blowback'. It was only in April 2014 when ISIS became a threat to those who had backed Sunni jihadists in a proxy war against Assad's Alawite dominated regime, Hizbollah and its Iranian backers that Turkey, Qatar's main regional ally and NATO member, put al Nusra on the terrorist list.

Two years before Islamic State became Cameron called a 'deeper and graver threat than we have ever known', British jihadists were known to be flying into Turkey to cross the border to fight against Assad. Nothing was done as it is in September 2014 to fortify the borders because jihadi travellers were fighting the right enemy.

There is a history of MI6 andi the CIA having allowed jihadists from Britiain to go to Afghanistan and to fight in Bosnia and Kosovo so that they could be monitored and later 'turned' and deployed as intelligence assets that could provide information and act as informers on domestic Islamist groups operating within Britain.

A dark and shadowy power game has gone on with British jihadi-Islamists, one exploited by groups such as CagePrisoners, a front for Islamist agitation and anti-Western propaganda which has been able to exploit the very real fact of the CIA having imprisoned thousands of western Islamists and sympathisers without charge

A jihadi-Islamist sympathiser, Moazzam Begg, founded Cageprisoners after having been incarcerated in Bagram in Afganistan following his arrest in Islamabad in 2002 . He was subequently held in Guantanamo Bay until 2005 when he was 'rendered ' as part of America and Britain's so-called 'global war on terror'.

After having played on his role as a victim of Britain's foreign policy and been courted as a cause celebre on his return by the Respect Party and the Stop the War Coalition, Begg was re-arrested in March 2014 and charged with terrorism offences in July connected to his alleged role in training at a Syrian terrorist camp.

The flavour of Cageprisoner's propaganda could be seen in one advertised event scheduled for the 20th September 2014 entitled 'Is it a Crime to Care ? Syria-Gaza, Criminalisation of Islam'. The agenda is one of building up the image of a global Muslim community persecuted the better to propagate the ideology.

By blending a defence of jihadi-Islamist ideology with humanitarian missions to the Greater Middle East, a dark mirror is held up to British foreign policy and the contradictions between its stated policy of humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan to Iraq when compared to Britain's 'support' for Israel over Gaza.

Through projecting visceral aggression on to the enemy, which is the British state and society, the propaganda narrative is one that suggests that Islamist resistance in the Middle East and in Israel is apiece with the need to resist a British state which is pursuing a global war on the Muslim umma. Hence,

'..the attacks on Islamic concepts of war, political governance and the unity of Muslim lands are nothing new, they have now increased on an unprecedented scale in the wake of the rise of ISIS and its declaration of a Caliphate. The matter is not about supporting or opposing the version of a Caliphate as demonstrated by ISIS but rather the criminalisation of Islamic political thought and ideology.

The concepts of jihad, shariah and khilafah are not the exclusive possession of ISIS but core Islamic doctrines subscribed to by almost one third of the world's population. It is telling that the government's treatment of ISIS is similar to its treatment of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb-ut Tahrir, and the Taliban, despite the enormous differences of belief and methodology between the groups.'

Islamism is not Islam and there are, of course, various trends within Islamism : ISIS is at the violent and bloody end of this political spectrum. But British Islamists, such as Jamal Harwood, head of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Anas Altikriti of the MAB, hold to the idea that revolutionary Islamism is the one true political Islam.



The grim irony is that many British Islamist movements, front organisations and propaganda outfits such as the British Muslim Initiative are backed and bankrolled by Britain's foremost Middle Eastern ally in the Syrian conflict and commercial trading partner in the form of its Gulf partner Qatar.

The MAB is essentially an British version of the Muslim Brotherhood which Qatar and NATO member Turkey backed against Iran and Hizbollah with the full support of Britain, the US and France through such groups as the Friends of Syria created in 2012 by Nicolas Sarkozy, the then French President.

Qatar was prepared to back the most ruthless Sunni militants and jihadists in Syria and the most stalwart defender of Qatar has been the the British government. In April 2014, Philip Hammond was in Doha when he announced locating a British military base in the gas rich emirate and arms deals worth QR230.

The Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is a relatively 'moderate' Sunni militant group backed by Qatar in Egypt and in Syria. This is one reason Britain and the US was prepared to work with it and  identify with Qatar's regional strategy to back it until the Egyptian coup in 2013 and the emergence of Islamic State in Syria.

It is within this context that David Cameron in March 2014 ordered an enquiry into whether the Muslim Brotherhood should be branded a terrorist organisation. The reason, given that the group had been effectively given cautious backing in 2012, was the fear of Britain being caught up in any blowback from Egypt.

Despite the idea that the 9/11 Al Qaida attacks on New York 'changed everything', Britain continued being a haven for Islamist malcontents or 'Londonistan' and no terrorist charges were ever brought against those who had been advocating it such as Abu Hamza, who was extradited to the US, Omar Bakri and Abu Qatada.

London remains in 2014 a place where Islamist exiles from the Muslim Brotherhood are allowed to settle and act as influential lobbyists with a media apparatus supported by Qatar because of the scale of billions of pounds worth of gas wealth being invested in the Stock Market, prime real estate and buying influence.

Any decision to put the Muslim Brotherhood on the terrorist list would be a purely political decision based on realpolitik considerations and the need to please Britain's other regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and , of course, Israel which has its own influential lobby groups and detests Qatar for backing Hamas in Gaza.

It is in response to that threat that Anas Altikriti is ramping up the messianic propaganda offensive against the British State for being complicit in the oppression of Muslims both within Syria and Gaza and being "Islamophobic" in its attempt to criminalise legitimate Muslim aspirations for a Islamist political order.

In such circumstances, there is a danger of ever greater "radicalisation" within Britain as the Islamist emphasis upon the Caliphate, jihad and the imposition of sharia law, portrayed by Cageprisoners as "not the exclusive property of ISIS", could catch on as potent symbols of Muslim unity against 'western imperialism'.

After all, a prime component of IS propaganda is to provoke the west and grab media attention. Beheading journalists is a tactic to draw attention so that fellow jihadi travellers in the Middle East and the Britain can exploit the outrage to suggest these killings are only in revenge for the 'greater slaughter' of Western policies.

Such propaganda has been the consistent line from those ranged against the British government and prepared to rationalise terrorism to a point just short of justifying it ever since 9/11 when the 'war on terror' was first launched and groups such as the grotesquely named Stop the War Coalition were set up.

Though the StWC was created by disgruntled far leftist agitators indulging in toy town revolutionary politics as well as political has-beens from the 1980s dismayed by the collapse of British Communism and the Soviet Union in 1991, it rapidly became dominated by Islamist fronts such as the MAB.

What united the British hard left and Islamists was common opposition to the British state, the perceived global dominance of American Imperialism and the ideology which presented it and Israel as the two main determining reasons why the Greater Middle East was embroiled in conflict and wars.

As a consequence to this supposed 'anti-war' activism in Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair and hack propagandists such as Denis MacShane started to step up the the rhetoric about Britain and 'the west' being menaced by an alignment of dictators such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Islamist terrorists.

Blair's manner of 'framing his response' to events in the Greater Middle East in the run up to the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 ended up giving credence to the idea popular among opponents of the war that the US and Britain were engaged in a long 'civilisational war' with Islamism at home and abroad.

Of course, Saddam Hussein was a secular dictator whose overthrow led to chaos. The installing of a democracy by 2005 only widened and deepened Iraq's pre-existing sectarian tensions and led to an open warfare that had not abated by 2014 when ISIS stormed in from Syria and led a Sunni Arab insurgency.

What Blair's government did was to confirm the propaganda narrative of jihadi-Islamists that Britain's foreign policy was about destabilising and dividing and ruling oil rich lands for the exclusive benefit of its corporations and decadent western consumers whose repellent materialistic lifestyles were part of the problem.

The ideology of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and other Islamists identifying with a transnational Islamic State was that the false decadent existence of the westerner was inauthentic. The hypocrite Blair embodied this state and society which exploited Muslim disunity just in order to grab what was really Muslim people's oil.

Propaganda such as this had long found a receptive audience in the Middle East. That it found support in Britain was not surprising as it was the case bit forward by radical leftists who saw the Iraq War as an invasion to seize control of Iraq's oil and, in truth, that was an important reason behind it.

Radical Islamist and their leftist allies in the Stop the War Coalition were able to frame the 'war on terror' narrative in Britain as a 'war of terror' in which the victims were Muslims irrespective of Blair's proclaimed belief that the invasion of Iraq was a war of liberation from a dictator who murdered Muslims.

The irony is that both radical Islamists and pro-liberation radicals in Britain agreed that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator: they were only at odds because Islamists regarded the western imperialists as the 'root cause' in creating the dictatorship and backing it in the first place whereas Blair saw it as an outgrowth of pure evil.

Blair saw Baathist dictatorships and Islamism as a consequence of a evil totalitarian ideology while Islamists saw Saddam Hussein wholly as a CIA backed stooge who had done the West's bidding in containing Iran and was kept in power after the First Gulf War of 1991 to protect other tyrannies such as Saudi Arabia.

The stated purpose of Blair's 'ethical foreign policy' in using British forces to protect civilians from brutal regimes by assisting in removing them. It was to make a break with previous Cold war realpolitik and the policies that had led to the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s by paramilitary Serb militias.

Contrary to improving Britain's standing in the so-called 'Muslim World', Blair's decision to join in with the US in Iraq was portrayed in 'anti-war' propaganda as a war on Muslims for oil just as nothing had been done to save Bosnian Muslims because there was no oil in the former Yugoslavia at stake.

The War in Afghanistan in 2001, which was less than two years old when Iraq was invaded, was more difficult to portray as a cynical war for resources using a humanitarian pretext, though the interest the US government and UNOCAL had in building a gas pipeline was often mentioned as the 'real reason'.

It was the Iraq War that overshadowed the way Britain and its relationship with Muslims and political Islam was portrayed. Blair was adamant that Islamism was a the global threat after the fall of the Soviet Union just as global communism had been after 1945 when Britain and the US had defeated fascism in Europe.

The irony, once more, is that this messianic depiction of Islamism, called after the London Bombings of 2005 by the neoconservative politician, Michael Gove as 'seamless totalitarian movement ( Celsius 7/7 page 12 ), was one groups such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the MAB agreed with, except for Islamism meant 'liberation'.

Though Islamism was not one monolithic ideology uniting fanatics in power or else sleepercells waiting to be activated across the west, what happened in the decade after the Iraq invasion raised the stakes in that either the Arab nations would move towards democracy or stay under dictators said to be imposed by the west.

The daughter of the Tunisian Muslim Brotherhood movement Soumaya Ghannoushi, one of the many offspring of political exiles from Arab nationalist dictators who had been allowed to seek refuge in Britain, was a founder of the British Muslim Initiative designed to mobilise British Muslims as a political force.

Ghannoushi made it plain that is Britain and other Western nations did not stop their support for Arab dictators and Israel, then the threat of terrorism coming back to visit the West was going to be a regrettable consequence that they would have coming to them in the form of blowback.

Ghannoushi was considerably more sophisticated is presenting British leaders such as Tony Blair with a choice: either continuing to back corrupt secular dictators and rentier elites in the Maghreb and Near East and face an aggressive fanatical response or else back democratic Islamist reformers.

Ghannoushi, who benefitted from a wealthy background and private education, was a regular orator at anti-war movements in London in the first decade of the new century who had a fondness for incendiary rhetoric and yoking together the predicament of all Arab Muslims in different lands into one suffering umma.

 'In our globalised world, crises can no longer be kept far away, left to rage in distant lands and devour obscure nations. The troubles of Kabul, Jenin and Falluja now spill over on to our shores, towns and cities, lay bare our fundamental vulnerability, and put an end to our sense of immunity....London and Washington must decide which Islam they want: a peaceful, democratic Islam, crucial to any pursuit of global stability, or the anarchical and destructive Islam of al-Qaida and its ilk'.

Ghannoushi's stance was clear: the most ferocious and violent jihadist movements were wholly a reaction to colonialism and western imperialism, a form of resistance that was the outgrowth not of any real or imagined shorcomings within Islam as a 'religion of peace' but a pathological response to oppression.

What Ghannoushi was revealing was a veiled threat on behalf of the British umma whereby if Britain sided or was seen to be siding with regimes that oppressed the democratic aspiration of Arabs, through aligning with Islamist movements that were not aligned with Al Qaida, then they would become terrorist targets.

Ghannoushi's was power claim, a judgement of what 'ought' to happen concealed within a discourse that masqueraded as a mere statement of the facts. Clearly it had little time for minorities that were non-Islamic in the Middle East by conflating Arabs with Muslims and the quest for an Islamic dominated state.

Democratic Islamists such as Ghannoushi rejected Al Qaida and Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Yet they retained the idea that Islam's lack of any clear distinction between the realm of the political and of the religious contained the true liberatory potential that those with the correct view of Islam would apply if free from western meddling

One problem with the vision of Islamism as the source of true freedom and diversity-within-unity is that in practice is would always cause chaos and have a ready excuse in the context of Arabic politics that the failure to realise democracy was less to do with the flaws in the doctrines but western policy.

By 2011 with the revolt against Ben Ali in Tunisia was replicated in Egypt. Arab uprisings across the region had created new hopes of a democratic order but within two years by 2013 the result had been chaos and either the restoration of authoritarian regimes or the collase into conflict, violence and terrorism.

The only exception to this bleak scenario was Tunisia where the Rachid Ghannoushi's Ennada Party won an election in October 2011, a result that was accepted and created a regional partner the western states were prepared to work with. Needless to say, firebrand daughter Soumaya Ghannouchi has been quiet ever since.

Elsewhere in the Maghreb and Near East the prophecy of an end to secular nationalist dictatorships and its replacement either by reformist Islamised democracies or else Sunni militancy, jihadi insurrections and blowback has actually happened as a consequence of events in Libya, Egypt, Syria and Iraq.

The collapse of the old order of nationalist dictatorships after 2011 came without western interference, laying bare the futility of the decision to invade Iraq a decade before. It came too late as the effects of years of corruption, mismanagement and struggles over resources as oil and water caused intractable conflicts.

Blair continued to stand by his idea that Middle Eastern dictators and Islamist terrorism were both part and parcel of the same disorder, except where those dictators were amenable to western interests. That proved evident when as a UN special "peace" envoy he praised Sisi's crushing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Though Blair seemed alone in being the most vociferous western public figure lauding the use of military force to overthrow an elected but shaky government in Cairo, machine gun demonstrators, ban opposition parties, and pass the death sentence of its leaders, Britain ended up giving de facto recognition to Sisi's regime.

With the disintegration of the borders drawn up between Syria and Iraq by Britain and France in 1916, the Sykes-Picot 'line in the sand', the collapse and disintegration of Libya following the western backed overthrow of Gaddafi and the rise of jihadi-Islamists there, the stage was clearly set for the new Caliphate.

In northern Syria, the failure of all political systems since the Turkish government abolished the Caliphate in 1924 after three years of war against Assad had failed to remove him and the brutality of war has laid waste to vast parts of the country, made the new Caliphate the only political 'solution'

In Iraq, the Sunni Arabs had been marginalised and pushed out of Iraqi national life by the dominance of Iranian backed Shi'ites in Baghdad and the growing autonomy of the Kurdish region: both regions where Sunni Arabs were not diminant had the vast majority of Iraq's oil wealth.

Within Britain, the call of the IS Caliphate has been confined to a few who went to fight against Assad but numbers also of jihadi-travellers who sympathise with it even if they have not wanted to join in as combatants They serve in other capacities as making good jihadi wives or executioners of journalists such as James Foley.

The response to these atrocities and British born jihadists by Cameron repeated similar mistakes of the sort made by Tony Blair. Having done nothing to stop the jihadists going to Syria when they were fighting on the 'right side' against Assad, Islamists are pointing now towards their criminalisation as a double standard.

Cameron started to use similar language as Blair about a 'generational struggle' with ISIS when Britain and the US had supported Saudi and Qatari policy throughout 2012 and 2013 and did little or nothing to put pressure on Riyadh or Doha to stop the flow of funding jihadists in Syria.

The phrase 'generational struggle' was in any case deployed by Cameron during the Algerian hostage crisis of January 2013 as a means by which disparate threats against western resource interests such as Algeria's oil and gas could be welded together as a united threat to Britain's way of life and security.

The reason for these rhetoric sleights of hand and precision tooled media soundbites is to provide the impression that there is a one global movement of jihadists that stretch from otherwise exotic far off Muslim lands directly right into the heart of Britain with the same intention of causing terror and mayhem.

This rhetoric is useful as 'public diplomacy' because it softens up the public mood for military intervention when it is needed. It also serves to conceal the facts that those violent jihadi-Islamist threats have emerged and surged out of the blowback created by the support given to such jihadist forces by Britain's allies.

Terrorism expert Michael Clarke claimed, 'The danger of the prime minister's rhetoric.. is that it can serve to unite forces that might otherwise be fractious and ineffective. The most obvious strategic mistake would be to unite forces which will otherwise become more disparate in the natural course of events."

However, the dangers in that were factored in to the 'business as usual' approach that Britain has taken towards jihadi-terrorists as useful as assets when fighting against forces such as Assad's which stand in the way of its geopolitical ambitions and its oil and gas interests in the Middle East.

Jihadi-Islamists in Syria and Iraq no less than powers such as the US and Britain are playing the long game in vying for control over resources. In calling itself 'Islamic State', the new caliphate has attempted a propaganda coup which aims to unite jihadists across Africa and the Middle East against 'western imperialism'.

The rationale is to trap Western politicians within their own rhetoric about a 'unified threat' and drawing them into war with any one jihadi-Islamist group where oil and gas or strategic interests are at stake: from Boko Haram in Nigeria, al Shabaab in Somalia, AQAP in Yemen and jihadi-Islamists in Libya and Sinai in Egypt.

So would appear that IS could spread as a 'franchise' operation and global brand throughout these lands.With East Ukraine in conflict and the Libyan capital haven fallen to jihadi-Islamists, the EU powers are far more than the US, with its shale oil and gas, increasingly concerned for energy security at all costs.

In Britain's case, it is Qatar that is courted as the long term supplier need to step in and up the export level of liquified natural gas to Britain as North Sea gas depletes It is also Qatar which is responsible for backing not only Muslim Brotherhood forces in the Middle East but also militias in Libya and also the Taliban.

While Qatar did not directly fund or back Islamic State it is a direct consequence of its rivalry with Saudi Arabia in trying to back the jihadists most effective in advancing their interests and to install its government in Damascus. Saudi Arabia backed factions opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood which it now calls 'terrorists'.

The danger is that such regional rivalries among those Gulf state powers which are allied with Britain could be fought as proxy wars just as they are at present in Libya between Qatar which backs militant Islamists and the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia that are all backing forces previously loyal to Colonel Gaddafi.

Across many of the lands to which a stake has been claimed by the new Caliphate of Raqqa, whole parts of states have collapsed in part or completely where a combination of climate change, drought and overpopulation has put pressure upon society and  thrown up jihadist movements against corrupt regimes.

Within Britain, the British Muslim Initiative and the Cordoba Foundation are promoting a vision of the Muslim World that Britain ought to be bound to uphold, that of the Muslim Brotherhood, unless it would want to be condemned to being an oppressor of the Muslim umma as seen in the recent Gaza-Israel War.

The danger is where the British State is portrayed as not having upheld the interests of Muslims, it is held to be hostile and putting itself in the camp of the enemies of the Muslim Brotherhood abroad and so of the freedom of Muslims everywhere including within Britain.

So when Cameron made a speech playing up the 'ISIL' as 'a greater and deeper threat to our security than we have known before' he reacted in precisely the way IS would have wanted by conflating Islamic States threat in the Middle East with as yet unrealised and abstract threat within Britain.

The publicly made avowal of 'depriving people of their citizenship' and prosecuting people for terrorist activity abroad taps in to the idea promoted by groups like Hizb-ut Tahrir and Cageprisoners that British Muslims everywhere are second class citizens and so the 'extremism' the government condemns feeds on.

By converting the entire regions where British jihadists could head into one seamless global battleground, the British government is acting in a manner more likely to make that become a reality by doing little to have put pressure on Saudi Arabia or Qatar to stop backing 'extremists' only to change when blowback beckons.

Those British jihadists who went abroad were not stopped by the British security services in 2011. Nor were plans made then to work with Turkish security because it was policy back then to funnel jihadists towards fighting Assad. Jihadi sympathisers are aware of those double standards and ready for revenge attacks.

The irony of jihadi-Islamists invoking Western foreign policy as a justification for terror attacks is as absurd as the botched and shoddy realpolitik strategy of that foreign policy in having facilitated the very rise of the Islamic State to which they would owe allegiance over that of a Britain to which they feel no primary loyalty.

That there are those who feel the call of loyalty to a caliphate in Britain has long been apparent, even if not quite the one being created by al-Baghdadi in Syria and Iraq. But that the British government would effectively play a part in creating one through the consequences its own policy strategies is a black farce.

Do you Support Military Action against ISIS ?

The Guardian has held an online opinion poll on the prospect for military intervention in Iraq and Syria against IS. 42% of those stated they supported military action against the Caliphate, 31% said only if it was 'legal and invited' and only 22 % were against it. 46 % said they supported the use of ground troops.

My own response is largely sceptical about military intervention as a substitute for politics and a regional diplomatic effort to contain the Islamic State. The British government is already using public diplomacy to prepare the people for a long and many sided struggle against this new enemy.

The reason for this and, indeed, the refusal by PM David Cameron even to use the words 'Islamic State' instead of ISIL, the name of an insurgent group rather than a self-proclaimed Caliphate State, is that Western leaders, politicians, dilomats and generals are themselves divided on how to deal with the problem.

Do you support military action against Isis? Not sure.

Military intervention would need to be the last resort if the state of Iraq where threatened with total collapse. Arms, intelligence and equipment to bolster the Kurdish peshmerga could stave off IS as well as help from special forces. Yet it is useless without a new regional political and diplomatic initiative.

That means involving Iran and changing the absurd policy of continuing to back Sunni militants as both an alternative to Assad in Damascus and IS. The reality is that is only an abstract choice based on wish thinking that is in continuity with the failed policy of backing 'moderate' Sunni rebels.

There was no indication from Obama or Cameron that cooperation and engagement with Iran or Assad. Without that, military intervention could only bolster Sunni militancy because the conflict in Syria is a proxy war between Qatar and Saudi Arabia against each other and against Iran.

Would you support the use of ground troops? No.

Apart from having special forces on the ground to assist the Kurds, putting troops into Iraq would not acheive anything apart from granting IS a propaganda victory and the chance to whip up jihad against the Infidel. It would mean loss of British lives for geopolitical goals not related to the defence of Britain.

True, the fall of Kurdish regions and Baghdad or attacks on oil producing zones would create an oil price shock and severely affect developed global economies such as Britain. But Iraqi troops could be trained and supplies by all global players interested in energy security, then there is no need for ground troops.

Have you changed your view to in favour of military action following the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff ? No.

The purpose of the executions to instill terror and the idea that there is a pyschopathological threat that stretches from Syria to Britain in continuity with the murder of the soldier Lee Rigby in Greenwich; these attacks are, then, a mere reflex consequence of Western foreign policy.

Despite the fact propaganda this agenda is amplified and echoed by Stop the War ideologues such as Lindsey German, reacting to these atrocities by blundering back into Iraq or using messianic rhetoric like PM Cameron's about a 'generational struggle' only makes for a conflict mentality to take root.

It's the idea of 'generational struggle' and a 'global war on terror' that IS would have wanted as a response to their beheadings as they too want to implant the same idea of a struggle between the 'Muslim World' and both the Hypocrites ( other states in the region ) and Infidels, i.e. the West, also by nature hypocritical .

The beheadings are propaganda of the deed. If the West attacks the Caliphate ( the purest and most unhypocritical of Muslim states in that it has only a single standard-join the jihad, be converted or be killed ) then clearly it would kill Muslims as Christians and other non-Muslims are of no consequence.

The pyschopathology behind it is one identified with many in the West who are semi-educated : the beheadings are nothing compared to the 'real' terror which is Western foreign policy, a propaganda trope pounded out uncritically by radical leftists, no less than Islamists, who contrast 'state terror' with 'individual terror'.

How successful do you think military intervention will be in combatting Isis? Somewhat.

Military intervention by the 'International community' i.e. the West could be futile because the foreign policy basis has been so disastrously based on shoddy realpolitik dressed up as humanitarian concern in Syria. Only a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria is possible, if at all.

The security of Britain could have been improved had the government not been prepared to back Sunni militants in Syria to get onside with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in their regional proxy struggle with Iran over energy pipeline routes and as means to divert internal discontent outwards.

Only towards the end of 2013 and into 2014 did the US and Britain start to put pressure on the Gulf states to clamp down on private donors when it was clear the support for Sunni jihadists was leading many to abandon the Free Syria Army to join ISIS instead: as with Afghanistan in the 1990s it is blowback.

Over the longer term, Britain needs to avert being dragged further into conflict in the Middle East by finding alternatives to importing LNG from Qatar to make up for the decline of North Sea gas reserves. That means greater energy conservation and investing in renewables energy, such as tidal power, and also in nuclear power.

Other global powers would also be needed to preserve the security of energy supplies such as China and the East Asian economies by footing the bill instead of the West. Borders such as that with Turkey need to be fortified and strengthened and risky geopolitical power games in Syria dropped.

The Islamic State: Climate Change, Terror and the Making of a Caliphate.

The Caliphate ( Islamic State ), established and centred on Raqqa in Syria, does clearly have its origins on uneducated mosque imams contantly extolling the Caliphate as a symbol of a lost spritual and political realm towards which Sunni Muslims should aspire and realise through jihad.

Syrian writer Hassan Hassan cites the Syrian cleric Mohammed Habash claiming "Isis did not arrive from Mars; it is a natural product of our retrograde discourse." and while that is true, the sad reality is that it has caught on because of a civilisational crisis in this part of the Middle East that has induced it.

One thing that comes across from Vice News's report 'Spread of the Caliphate' is that the foot soldiers of IS are both brutal and banal, largely semi-educated men all the more dangerous for the indoctrinated certitude with which they assert their credo that they are on a roll and shall follow God until victory is assured.

The ISIS jihadists are in for the long game, indoctrinating and grooming the children to become future warriors as the only way for the Caliphate to survive and strive forth towards its destiny of creating some sort of pure community that is uncontaminated by enemy influences from without and within.

If they were not so deadly, their corny attempts at piety would be entirely laughable as opposed to merely contemptible. Hence the point of their headless corpses strewn across pavements and sticking heads on spikes is meant to give the impression that they are, in fact, very serious.

The aim is to spread the Caliphate out, kill or convert the Infidel ( or with Christians make them pay a tax ) and to be part of God's project as it unfolds and is realised. Women are to be nowhere seen on the streets of Raqqa. Jihadists previously living in Europe claimed they left the girls behind for the cause.

Women need to be properly concealed in order to thereby maintain the fundamental purity of the Caliphate from within, the better to make it more ferocious and formidable without against Indidels and Hypocrites ( secular Arabs). It says so, they claim, in the Qu'ran.

This myth of the return of the Caliphate is one held on to by the simple minded but it could only spread in the conditions of lawless chaos of the sort that existed in Afghanistan in the 1990s. ISIS is similar to both the Taliban and Al Qaida but this time rolled into one-and with control over lots of oil resources.

IS is selling crude oil on the international black market, something even reported to be reducing oil prices. It is making $1 million a day from the sale and the rush of adrenalin from that and the prospect of using revenues to expand their Caliphate is causing millennial style fervour.

The support among Sunni Arabs for this is based on a revolt of those living in lands where crop failure, desertification, drought and having been pushed out of ant prospect of adequate poliitical representation in either Syria or Iraq has led to the Caliphate as a "solution" to all earthly evils.

The Sunni Arab zone in northern Syria and Iraq is trapped between other regions with far more resources both as regards the vast majority of the oil wealth ( which lie in the Kurdish regions to the east ) and those absolutely vital to life such as water. Iraq is a resource war over oil and water.

The River Euphrates drying up as a consequence of climate change, decreasing precipitation and increasingly hot summers. Turkey was alleged to have reduced supplies along the Euphrates upstream. That makes the necessity to spread the war as far as possible even more 'vital'.

So many Sunni Arabs in Iraq have come to believe nothing to lose by aligning with a pyschopathological group that asserts their interests as against the Kurds, Turks, and Shi'ites. IS attempted to take the Mosul dam so as to have control over electricity and water: this is a resource war.

The cause of jihad is precisely what they have to sustain them both materially and in hope of regaining the dominance Sunni Muslims once had in the region more generally and in Iraq, in particular, under Saddam Hussein who used to use control over the water supply as a tool of control over the Shi'ite south.

Evidently, IS pursues policies that are evil and mad but there is, beyond evident sadistic cruelty and pleasure in murdering Infidels and Hypocrites, a method and motive to the madness and mayhem and the clear intention to instil terror and utter fear. They need to be taken seriously.

If Iraq and Syria were to break up, it is difficult to see how there could be a secure and viable state for Sunni Arabs as that would depend on the wars in both states having any prospect of ending. And so IS is taking the destiny of Sunni Muslims into its own hands, destroying the Sykes-Picot borders of 1916.

ISIS is an outgrowth of failed attempts to back Sunni forces by the Saudis as a check on Iranian influence in Syria, the idea of Sunni persecution and yet historical superiority, myths of the Caliphate and the collapse of Syrian and Iraqi Sunni regions especially through climate change and war.

British Jihadi Islamists and the Syrian Conflict.

'Counter-terrorism officers, fearful that some of those fighting in Syria will return to Britain radicalised with the ability to carry out violent acts on British soil, hope that female family members will curb the numbers of people intent on taking up arms against the Assad regime'.( Syria crisis: stop your sons joining war, urges Met police, Guardian 24 April 2014 )

Much about the Syria-related terror threat does not add up. The Metropolitan Police may have though 'counter terrorism' depends on educational campaigns and social work 'in the community' to prevent Muslims going to Syria. Yet this depends on the bizarre notion they have not been radicalised already.

By definition, British Muslims who went to fight in Syria or are intending to join the struggle, are radicalised. In the Age of the Internet, British Muslims have access to information and have been able to cross the border from neighbouring Turkey with ease.

The Metropolitan Police are wasting their time. If British Muslims have decided to go and fight along with jihadists, then it is supposed to be the task of MI5 and MI6 to monitor those involved in terror plots before they go, meaning they could be stopped on the border, or to keep tabs on them if they return.

Should British citizens get killed in Syria fighting against Assad, it is the responsibility of those who decided to go. If they join Al Nusra or other groups of fanatics, the chances are they will get killed (in which case they pose no danger to Britain ) or they can be monitored on their return.

The probability is that the British secret services are playing the usual power game in using British born jihadists as 'assets' in order to gain more intelligence or, in fact, to use them as proxies in the struggle to remove Assad. This has been the pattern since the Bosnian War in the 1990s.

This extremely dangerous game, where known Al Qaida affiliated operatives have been allowed to pass across the borders and not arrested, was once part of the Covenant of Security, the policy of permitting exiles and jihadists to settle in Britain so they would not attack it but could be used by MI6.

Since the 'war on terror' got going after 2001, that policy was formally dropped. Even so, the shadowy power game has continued. The security services most likely want British born jihadists in Syria so they can gain intelligence and have agents within groups espousing violent Islamist ideology.

Some radical groups patronised by the British establishment as part of a 'counter-extremist' strategy have, according to historian Mark Almond, have acted as a conduit for Islamists to go and fight in Syria and that the strategy of collusion could lead to blowback.

Since the threat of Al Nusra has grown disproportionately, the British government by late 2013 seemed to have grasped the fact that their strategy for Syria was counter productive and could risk bringing terrorism back directly into the cities and towns of Britain and other backers of the Syrian insurgents.

The threat of terror is, however, always of utility to British governments that have wanted to harness jihadists to destroy states controlled by those hostile to Britain's geopolitical interests and over pipeline routes ( e.g Syria ) and regions with copious oil and gas.

British citizens are going to have to get used to the fact that Britain's high octane consumer society depends on these hazardous strategies for control over pipeline routes from Eurasia and the violent consequences of being locked into a struggle for mastery over diminishing natural resources across the globe.

Blair's Speech and the New Great Game.

Tony Blair's speech, as with everything this man utters, is a carefully calibrated public diplomacy missive better called a propaganda offensive. The timing is instructive; Blair is upgrading his profile in the Middle East because the crisis in Ukraine is set to lead to EU states searching for alternative energy sources.

It was interesting that Blair claimed the Ukraine Crisis would distract attention away from the Middle East. And why his fellow strategist and sinister operative John McTernan is 'on message' to explain just what Blair meant to those who could regard him as an important critic of Western foreign policy.

As is standard with propaganda, words and meaning must be prized apart from their conventional uses

'Libya and Syria are at the heart of Blair's argument: action started by this government but left incomplete. The passage on Syria is a direct attack on Cameron and Nick Clegg, and their inaction'.

Firstly, the Coalition government were not 'inactive' over Syria. They continually called for Assad 'to go'. Sarkozy set up the Friends of Syria group in Istanbul in 2012 to create a unified opposition with the intention of ousting Assad and installing a client state.

Secondly, Britain and France in particular were highly active in agitating for a missile strike on Syria, far more so even than a more energy independent 'post shale revolution 'USA. Their main client in the Middle East is Qatar which is in rivalry to build a pipeline from the South Pars gasfield which it shares with Iran.

Britain and France have increasingly sought to diversify the gas supply away from dependence upon Russia. One reason why Qatar's copious production of liquefied natural gas is a lucrative opportunity whereby its petrodollars from selling it get invested in the London and Paris property market and arms.

'Not a defence of liberal intervention, but a scrupulous account of the costs of doing nothing – particularly where the coalition has called for regime change. And, typically, looking at the bigger picture. The Middle East matters.. It matters because of oil and gas and our economic dependence on them'.

That statement matters. Essentially, with Russia and the US in a dangerous stand off over Ukraine, like Syria another pipeline transit route between east and west, Blair is trying to revive the idea that democratising the Middle East could provide EU states with better energy security.

Yet 'liberal intervention' was what was on offer when NATO facilitated the victory over the Gaddafi regime in Libya and what was on offer with the West's humanitarian concern over the East Ghouta gas attack in Syria. The reason no action was taken in Syria was increased concern over Al Qaida's presence.

The Libyan intervention made a bad situation worse. It enabled Gadaffi to be removed only for immediate ( and highly predictable ) squabbles over Libya's oil production capacity to divide the rebels ensuring another failed attempt at regime change backfired.

Now jihadists from Libya are known to have gone to Syria. The danger is, should Egypt fall into increased chaos, that the entire Maghreb could become a zone of carnage and bloodshed. Al Qaida affiliates are already operating in the Sinai Peninsula and fighting the Egyptian military.

As in Syria, the reality in Egypt was that the US and US tacitly accepted a military coup, even if the Muslim Brotherhood's bungling policies and attempts at institutional takeover has divided Egypt and led it even further towards economic and political collapse.

The Western Powers need to stop pretending that they can control events in the Middle East. Energy security has to be attained by decisive policies to move away from the great car economy and to find alternatives to oil and gas as well as dealing cautiously with Russia over Ukraine.

Blair's understanding on the Middle East is both simplistic and deranged. But his siren calls for radical and decisive action and drawing up of cosmic battle lines between Good and Evil remain potentially lethal if politicians and the media hail it as delivering a solution to an a looming energy security crisis.

Blair: Energy Geopolitics and the Global Struggle with 'Islamist Extremism'.

Blair's speech on the need to combat 'Islamist extremism' on a global scale is both deluded and dangerous. For a start, Islamism is a broad political trend. By adding the flexible word 'extremism' as a means to differentiate which Islamists are acceptible ( or not extreme ) is a formula for open ended conflict.

Far from Blair being an irrelevance in this sense, the former Prime Minister is advocating a foreign policy that many are in fact pursuing at present but with a more robust attitude. As with anything Blair proclaims, the aim is to safeguard his legacy and to make out that he was right all along about the need for a 'Global War on Terror'.

In order to do that Blair empahasises the need for correct propaganda and framing of the global conflict, one quite obviously about western access to resources such as oil and gas from the Middle East and Africa. Thereby, opinion can be mobilised on the basis of a moral cause and purpose instead of being seen as ruthless realpolitik.

"The important point for western opinion is that this is a struggle with two sides. So when we look at the Middle East and beyond it to Pakistan or Iran and elsewhere, it isn't just a vast unfathomable mess with no end in sight and no one worthy of our support. It is in fact a struggle in which our own strategic interests are intimately involved; where there are indeed people we should support and who, ironically, are probably in the majority if only that majority were mobilised, organised and helped.

Amidst the evident absurdity ( a struggle by definition involves two sides and not one, though it may involve more than two ), Blair is agitating for western intervention ( i.e meddling ) in the affairs of all states where Islamism is a force to try and impose the right ( that is to say pro-western ) government in power.

There is an Orwellian doublethink inherent in a strategy which means supporting Qatari and Saudi Arabian use of Islamist jihadists in Syria to fight Assad but backing the Egyptian military against the Muslim Brotherhood, even when it carries out a coup and guns down protesters in the streets of Cairo.

The reason why that freedom to define Islamists as 'extremists' or not is important for Blair is clear; those Islamist militants who threaten western oil and gas interests across the globe ( Algeria, Somalia, Yemen, Egypt ) are 'extremists' who pose a danger to energy security.

However, those Islamists in lands such as Syria who are used as proxies to remove leaders such as Assad who leans towards Russia and Iran are not 'extremists'. No, the jihadists in Syria are part of a battle for freedom. Not least, the pipeline interests Qatar and Turkey have for a Syria without Assad.

This is what is meant when Blair opines,

'what is absolutely necessary is that we first liberate ourselves from our own attitude. We have to take sides. We have to stop treating each country on the basis of whatever seems to make for the easiest life for us at any one time. We have to have an approach to the region that is coherent and sees it as a whole. And above all, we have to commit. We have to engage".

Whether British people like it or not, Blair still represents the way global politics is heading ( at least as far as British politicians are concerned ). Spouting 'warmonger' or 'Bliar' is both boring and doltish. The need is to understand what Blair means and what interests are truly at stake.

For the fact is that Blair joined the 2003 invasion of Iraq as part of a geopolitical move to control it's large oil reserves in the period before shale oil and gas had become big business in the US and energy independence a goal. Put bluntly, unless alternatives to oil and gas are found, western intervention in the Middle East is set to go on.

Blair, after all, makes energy security the first and foremost of his reason to 'engage' with the Middle East, as,

'it is still where a large part of the world’s energy supplies are generated, and whatever the long term implications of the USA energy revolution, the world’s dependence on the Middle East is not going to disappear any time soon. In any event, it has a determining effect on the price of oil; and thus on the stability and working of the global economy.'

While Blair can be criticised for Iraq, it's no use turning him into a hate figure as though British people could pretend their high octane consumer lifestyles where somehow disconnected with the need for stable and falling oil prices. That's a lesson Blair learned after the road haulier's strike of 2000 over petrol prices threatened his government

Cameron, Faith and Missionary Atheists.

It's Good Friday.

In the last few days PM Cameron has started to make utterances on Britain as a Christian Nation, most likely because he wants to 'moralise' his economic policies at a time when the Church of England is criticising him over growing levels of poverty and the dependence on Food Banks more and more British citizens are having

On this Polly Toynbee, one of the most stupid and boringly partisan columnists in the British media,  prattles forth in The Guardian,

'It's mostly toe-curling stuff. Alastair Campbell never gave better advice than in warning politicians off doing God: it's horrible to behold. Sincere or not, they become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, as did Cameron talking of "our saviour"'

True, but the politician he gave that advice to most was Tony Blair whose entire time in office was marked by an evangelical zeal and kitschy uplift. By comparison Cameron seems to be quite moderate in 'doing God', though he has decided to start bringing God in order to bolster his moral credentials.

Toynbee warbles on,

'At a time of anti-Muslim attacks, when Islamist extremism is feared for its terrorist potential, Cameron's "Christian country" is soaked in white nationalist significance'.

No it isn't. The most fervent Christians are often from Afro-Carribean and African British citizens who keep alive inner city churches and chapels.Moreover, at the present time, 2014, 'Islamist extremism' is not feared as much as it was under Blair in the early part of the last decade. This is guilt fuelled politics enlivened by a weird racial obsession.

'He has great verbal agility in sounding eminently moderate and reasonable while planting darker ideas. Behind a harmless love for country churches is a whiff of Lynton Crosby's culture war politics'.

That's one reason why it is better to keep an established C of E. It tends to warn governments about the unethical effect of their policies. The alternative is to allow more 'privatised' faith groups and US style hucters to start to dominate the tone and direction of politics.

Asked in the 2011 census "What is your religion?", 59% said Christian – surprisingly few as most people saw it as a question of culture rather than belief.

There is no reason why is should not be a question of culture, unless Toynbee thinks that secular humanists and atheists should be on some universal mission of conversion to persuade people to proclaim they are atheists on the census. It's curious Toynbee is so obsessed with beliefs.

'Take schools, where a third are under religious control. They take many fewer free-school-meals pupils and pews near good C of E schools swell unnaturally with new parents. Selection makes them popular, yet even so a majority want them abolished'.

England has a free society. The case would have to be for removing funding from faith schools and not for a majoritarian form of coercion in which schools that are disliked are abolished. A majority could well want a mosque demolished or closed down in their town.

Toynbee clearly has an authoritarian outlook. The reason C of E schools thrive is because they are better at teaching subjects that comprehensives. The best thing to do is to try and raise standards in these failing schools instead of trying to level down in the name of abstract ideals of equality.

'Like all humanity, the religious are both good and bad. The C of E is good on food banks, bad on sex and death. Faith makes people no more virtuous, but nor do rationalists claim any moral superiority. Pogroms, inquisitions, jihadist terror and religious massacres can be matched death for death with the secular horrors of Pol Pot, Hitler or Stalin'.

That is not borne out by Toynbee's belief in the majoritarian popular will in opposing or for abolishing faith schools. This bland generalisation ignores the fact that communism was often both both rationalistic and pseudo-religious. Nazism was a pseudo-religion and its ideologues despised Judeo-Christian ethics.

'The danger is where absolute belief in universal truths, religious or secular, permits no doubt. Politicians do well to stay clear of the realm of revealed truth. Cameron will win back few voters by evangelising for Britain as a "Christian country"'

Cameron is not claiming he has any absolute belief in universal truths. He has explictly rejected doctrinal correctness. It was Blair with his missionary zeal to use military force to liberate the globe from tyranny ( one supported by a good number of militant atheists and liberal leftists in Britain ) who held to that creed.

Woolwich Attack: Rationalising Terror and Propagating Ideology.

There is a difference between journalists attempting to explain why terrorists or assassins believe they are justified in carrying out attacks and using those justifications as a means to rationalise them as a mere reflex action to foreign policies that are said to be bound to cause a response.

Senior Guardian journalist Seumas Milne is an example of the latter as clear from the headline accompanying his reactionto the verdict in sentencing soldier Lee Rigby's killer Michael Adebolajo-Woolwich attack: If the whole world's a battlefield, that holds in Woolwich as well as Waziristan.

Essentially, Milne's attitude towards to Adebolajo's assassination is to use it to hammer home hard propaganda points by quoting the words of terrorists and assassins as if their justifications were self evident and not to be 'condoned' because 'counter-productive'.

This Leninist approach to terrorism regards such violence as Adebolajo's as bad because bad for 'the cause', an 'infantile disorder' to use Lenin's words when criticising 'pointless' anarchist violence in Russia before the Revolution of 1917 that fails to yield results.

Milne opines,

'Quite apart from morality, the impact was violently counter-productive for the Muslims that Rigby's killers claimed to be defending, as Islamophobic attacks spiked across Britain.'

That is why Milne loftily writes off morality as something 'quite apart' from the 'counter-productive' nature of the attack. That, in any case, matters less because a soldier who had served in Afghanistan was hacked to death in the streets of London but because it led to a backlash against 'our side'.

The use of language to hint and insinuate that message is clear to anybody who knows anything about how propaganda works. Milne is claiming that what assassins such as Adebolajo must be taken at face value and not to even bother looking in detail at what he actually said.

"We swear by the Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. The only reason we have killed this man this is because Muslims are dying daily. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth ... We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth...I apologise that women had to see this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your governments. They don't care about you. Do you think David Cameron is gonna get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? Do you think the politicians are gonna die? No, it's gonna be the average guy – like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so you can all live in peace. Leave our lands and you will live in peace. That’s all I have to say. Allah’s peace and blessings be upon you. Salaam alaikum".

Milne completely discounts the nature of the threat was aimed at the British public, that if 'You people' failed to stop the war then 'You' would become next. The fact it was a soldier who was targeted was intended to give Adebolajo a sort of equivalent status as a foot soldier in a war.

'Rigby was a British soldier who had taken part in multiple combat operations in Afghanistan. So the attack wasn't terrorism in the normal sense of an indiscriminate attack on civilians'.

It was a discriminate attack on a soldier that was meant to get the public to think that they would be next because they have not prevented a war in Afghanistan being fought. Adebolajo was not even a born Muslim nor from Muslim lands ;attacked' but someone who converted in order to have a creed to fight for.

In that sense, Adebolajo's actions are quite in line with a tradition of political terrorism and assassination that has a pedigree going back to the Russian tradition that culminated in Lenin's bloodthirsty use of mass terror during the construction of the Soviet Union.

The idea that there are no innocent people in this world once the scale of the oppression is so clear means that either people are either for the right cause or against it. By failing to 'do' anything to change governments that carry out oppression in their name they are objectively supporting it and targets.

To mechanically write off all consideration of the psychopathology behind acts of terror and assassinations and killings for political and religions reasons is the gambit of those who have no problem with the idea of murdering their opponents so long as it gets the result they want.

If that means using outrages and atrocities for bolstering one's own propaganda, while affecting a distaste for that killing as 'counter productive', then that's simply the way it has to be in order to wake people up to the killing done in 'our name'. Sp Milne, as a prominent figure in the Stop the War Coalition claims,

'Only the wilfully blind or ignorant can be shocked when there is blowback from that onslaught at home. The surprise should be that there haven't been more such atrocities.'

'You People' had it coming in other words. The position is Stop the War or else expect more bloodshed. This is far from being a pacifist position. But then again, one problem with the 'anti-war' groups in Britain is that they are not led by well meaning people but, alas, cold blooded totalitarian ideologues.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: Down But Not Out.

'Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates dipped into their oil revenues this week to stump up a cool $12bn (£8bn) to bail out cash-strapped Egypt – a swift reward for the army's removal of President Mohamed Morsi and the stunning blow to his Muslim Brotherhood.'

( Ian Black, Egypt's overthrow of Morsi creates uncertainty for Islamists everywhere, The Guardian 12 July 2013

 "I am convinced that we are seeing the twilight of the Islamic revival not only in Egypt but across the Arab world..For a while it was the only alternative to secular dictatorship. That was the conventional wisdom for 30 years. It no longer is." - Hani Shukrullah.

The demise of Islamism as a force in Egyptian politics is greatly exaggerated. The two questions are really these; whether the new government can reverse the economic chaos and, ominously, the prospects of worsening food shortages and whether it can do so rapidly enough to placate those on the streets.

The bleak reality is that if the new government cannot ensure food security then it faces increased anger in the cities will be exploited by the Muslim Brotherhood. Hunger will drive the poorer elements of Egyptian society to support the removal of the government and fights against rival protesters.

On Negotiations with the New Government .

The Guardian states,

'Brotherhood officials had denied they were negotiating with a military regime that has arrested several key members since Morsi's fall, and issued warrants for hundreds more.'

The whole point of the Muslim Brotherhood's strategy of calling on its supporters to 'rise up' is to get them into the streets and keep up the pressure on the new transitional government to regard it as a force in Egyptian politics. there is nothing much the MB can do as it cannot challenge the army.

As the new de facto government lacks legitimacy among the MB's supporters, who belong mostly to the poorer classes, struggling small tradesmen and university graduates shut out of Egypt's political and economic life, the tactic will be to position itself for any failure by the government to alleviate poverty.

If the technocratic government of Hazem Beblawy fails to deliver some improvement in the economic situation and stave off a potentialy disastrous food shortage, the Muslim Brotherhood can move centre stage again. Hence the move already to get pro-Morsi supporters protesting in Tahrir Square.

The Muslim Brotherhood is not going to collapse as a political force. It has managed to survive repression under Mubarak for years because it acted as political organisation and charity organisation providing welfare to the burgeoning population of rural migrants in the cities who failed to benefit from IMF approved policies.

The most ominous part of the Egyptian crisis is that if the economic policies of the technocratic government fail then the political turmoil will be protracted and the economy will shrink even further. With investors and tourists staying away the inflow of hard currency is dwindling and wheat imports cannot be afforded.

The Muslim Brotherhood are aware that the new government will inherit a crisis. A former Musri government minister Bassem Ouda has claimed the state had just 500,000 tonnes of imported wheat left whereas the country normally imports around 10 million tonnes a year.

The new technocratic government faces an appalling task of feeding a population that is already exceeding the carrying capacity of the environment in Egypt and creating a large pool of unemployed young men without opportunities who could well turn to jihadism. Egypt is already vastly overpopulated.

Syria: Proxy War and Battleground in a Global Jihad

On whether the US, UK and France will directly arm the Free Syria Army, not only is the more 'extreme' wing fragmenting and going over to militant jihadist splinter groups but the foreign fighters, seeing Syria as a national battleground in a global jihad, are in fierce combat with the FSA.

'Months of uneasy calm between jihadists and the mainstream Syrian opposition spilled into fierce fighting in Aleppo on Saturday, days after a senior Free Syria army commander was assassinated by a jihadi group...The fighting was in Bustan al-Qasr in the south-east of the divided city.

The battle underscored the fast-splintering nature of the Syrian opposition, which made sweeping military gains across much of northern Syria last year, but has been unable to advance from its key strongholds in Aleppo and elsewhere since January.'

The danger is that the US, UK and France will try to use any advance in Al Qaida inspired jihadists as even more of a pretext to arm the 'right' rebels in order to prevent 'another Afghanistan' on the borders of Turkey. Arming the insurgents would, however, be more likely to create just that.

The plan to arm Sunni Islamists, whether 'moderate or 'extreme', is worse than useless and the only way forward is to bring Iran into diplomatic negotiations instead of asserting as a precondition the demand that Assad must step down.It simply is not realistic and can only only prolong the bloodshed.

The West needs to drop the neo-Cold War style poses against Iran merely to please Saudi Arabia and Israel. The chaos in Syria could spread into Lebanon and Iraq and ultimately even blowback into Jordan and Saudi Arabia itself. Then the strategic interests it wants to uphold at any cost will be destroyed anyway.

It is also ominous that Al Qaida in Syria is acting as a recruiting base for UK born jihadists.

'Al-Qaida elements fighting with rebels in Syria constitute the most serious terrorist threat to Britain, and if they were to get their hands on Syria's chemical weapons the consequences could be catastrophic, according to British spymasters.'

The latest annual report of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) claims that "Al Qaida linked elements" are trying to gain chemical weapons. If so, that would surely mean that the safest course of action is not to arm the Sunni insurgents but to engage in diplomacy with assad.

"There is a risk of extremist elements in Syria taking advantage of the permissive environment to develop external attack plans, including against western targets. Large numbers of radicalised individuals have been attracted to the country, including significant numbers from the UK and Europe."

The question is why the government has seemingly allowed that to happen and is not using their surveillance apparatus to arrest these people. If it does not know who these jihadists are and cannot arrest them then the British government needs to drop its insane plans to arm Sunni insurgents.

The risk of blowback will affect all those in the region from Turkey and Saudi Arabia who backed Sunni fundamentalists in accordance with shoddy realpolitik calculations and fear of Iran. That includes he US and UK and it now must promote peace negotiations that include Iran and do not insist 'Assad must go'.

This is yet another example of how Britain's strategic 'lethal embrace' of Saudi Arabia and overdependence upon oil is mortally endangering the securiry of Britain and its population. Greater terrorism is the price to be paid for a high octane lifestyle and we need to grasp that fact urgently..

Will Egypt Descend into Civil War ?

The potential for civil war in Egypt depends on whether radical Islamists could possibly put up an armed revolt and what access to weapons they have. There are no signs that any junior officers in the army are prepared to defect to the rival Islamist 'revolution' against which the military takeover was directed.

The BBC reports ( Is Egypt heading for holy war? June 9 2013 )

'Security in Egypt has deteriorated dramatically since the overthrow of the dictatorial President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, but compared with Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen there are still relatively few firearms in private hands'.

On the streets of Cairo supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood staging rallies are only armed with bamboo sticks. But the cult of martyrdom is being stoked up with the Muslim Brotherhood calling for "an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks".

The overthrow of Morsi has also stunned Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip which had reason to believe that border restrictions in Sinai would be relaxed. According the one retired general, the military takeover was a reaction to the deteriorating security situation there.

Weapons are smuggled in and out of the Gaza Strip into Sinai through networks of underground tunnels. If the security situation deteriorates in Egypt, with a still chaotic Libya awash with weapons on its border after Gaddafi's fall, Hamas could feel even more panicky and hemmed in after being expelled from Syria.

How Hamas would react is difficut to see but it has been severely set back by not only by the military takeover in Egypt. Earlier in 2013 Hamas severed its alliance with Hizbollah for siding with its Shia ally Assad it its battle against Sunni insurgents. Tehran has stopped its $20 million subsidy to Gaza and supply of rockets.

It is interesting to consider what effect Hamas would have on a future Egyptian government as regards Iranian backing because with the Syrian Civil War raging on it is difficult to see how Washington and London would react to any new diplomatic relations between Egypt and Iran.

After all, the US and UK have already stated they are prepared to arm Syrian insurgents against Assad as part of of a strategy to roll back Iranian influence, a major concern of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait which are willing to invest billions of dollars in the new technocratic government that has replaced Morsi.

On the Crisis in Egypt 2013

The problem Egypt faces after the army's removal of Morsi and arrest of leading Muslim Brotherhood figures is that Adly Mansour, the interim president, lacks a widely accepted legitimacy. It was only in the 1990s that the Muslim Brotherhood committed itself to working through the ballot box rather than armed insurrection.

The army's decapitation of the Muslim Brotherhood, after it won an election in 2012 that gave it 51% of the vote, is potentially a very dangerous intervention. It will convince the more radical Islamists that Morsi's fate is a sign that no matter what they do the Godly will always be oppressed by an illegitimate usurper state.

Given that the Muslim Brotherhood has thrived on a sense of martyrdom after years of struggle underground, the fact that Morsi has been removed following only a year in office is only going to stoke up the outrage as it will be claimed by his supporters he was never given enough time to put things right in Egypt.

Set against the background of rising food and fuel prices, along with protracted economic volatility, the army's action comes at a time when no matter who gains power during or after the interim period of rule there will be anger on the streets and a problem of ensuring support and legitimacy for any new government.

 Levels of food insecurity in Egypt have risen significantly over the past three years, according to a report by the World Food Programme (WFP) and Egypt's official statistical agency, Capmas. In 2011, about 13.7 million Egyptians – 17% of the population – experienced food insecurity, compared with 14% in 2009.

 In political terms, the crisis in Egypt reflects a growing longer term polarisation of Egyptian society that has gathered momentum since the 1973 after defeat in the Fourth Arab-Israeli War. This confirmed the failure of Colonel Nasser's more secular pan-Arabic nationalist vision and led to a reapprochement with the USA.

The policy pursued under Sadat from 1974-the infitah or open door policy-involved the acceptance of Egyptian economic weakness that had led to successive military failures. The policy was to rebuild the nation through receiving large amounts of financial and military aid from the US in return for maintaining peace with Israel.

Many Muslim Brotherhood supporters have persistently resented the combination of dependence upon the US, the important role of the army in Egyptian economic life ( to the point where it controls 40% of the economy ) and the fact that the infitah has not benefited a whole stata of the poorer members of Egyptian society.

With large population growth in Egypt, the burgeoning size of Cairo as a super city of 20 million inhabitants has led to a 'ruralisation' of whole parts of the city where migrants from the villages have tended to look towards the Muslim Brotherhood for common purpose, strength and direction in a society from which they are shut out.

In Egypt, wealth and power is held by those with connections to the bureaucracy and government. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood was unable to effect any change in that, and instead spent more time on trying to push sharia law, has only annoyed those who value economic stability over Islamist identity politics.

Evidently, as the Muslim Brotherhood were not given long enough to disappoint their mass support base by preaching Islamist ideas of social justice, the rule of the Godly elect and then failing to deliver anything beneficial for most Egyptians, many who elected Morsi could get even angrier if economic stagnation continues.

Syria could be the Tipping Point for All Out Regional War in the Middle East

Syria really could be the tipping point where the civil war develops into a regionwide conflict intensified by sectarian enmities. So it adds to the instability caused by the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as well as surpassing the catastrophic bloodshed and carnage that happened as the power of the state disintegrated there and left a power vacuum

Yet the civil war in Syria could be more potentially lethal than Iraq as all the regional powers have turned the conflict into a proxy war. This will inevitably affect Britain because of its overdependence upon Saudi Arabia for oil supplies and to prop up the 'balance of power' in the Middle East against the main threat to Western interests in the shape of Iran.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague's preparedness to back Syrian insurgents is interconnected with these strategic interests. Turkey, which is backing Muslim Brotherhood militias from the north  is a NATO power that, along with Saudi Arabia, is concerned with the growing influence of Iran in Syria where it has acted to shore up Assad's Alawite shia regime.

The absurdity is that in Iraq the US and UK tacitly allowed shia militias to defeat the sunni ones that were fighting them for control over Iraq in the sectarian war that arose after Saddam's state was removed by force ('regime change'). Ethnic cleansing was involved in that and the US and UK looked the other way as the price of defeating them.

As a result of that the Shia Iraqis are now dominant, in partnership with the Kurds, and under Maliki have moved closer towards Tehran. Many willing shia jihadists are arriving in Syria from Baghdad. This a clear long term outcome of Tony Blair's disastrous foreign policy and one that is set to get worse as the Syrian conflict looks likely to spill over into Iraq and Lebanon.

In this sense, there is a definite continuity between Blair and Hague that is routinely ignored by political pundits desperately trying to pretend there is some fundamental difference between the New Conseratives and New Labour. There is none because when Cameron speaks of an 'existential threat' from jihadists he really also means one to our oil supply.

There is a difference in tactics involved in backing Syrian insurgents as opposed to military intervention and not in the intent. The ultimate 'game plan' is to destroy Iran because it is the only regional power that can challenge the US's militaristic endgame of removing it as an independent state capable of resisting designs to control the oil and gas of both the Middle East and Central Asia.

Three months before Hagues's decision to show his preparedness to arm the 'rebels', i.e sunni fundamentalists, by getting the EU embargo removed, Baghdad approved of plans for a Iran-Iraq-Syria Pipeline from the South Pars Gas Field which Iran shares with Qatar. These realpolitik considerations are foremost in the foreign policy towards Syria.

Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia started to arm the Sunni fundamentalists from the outset of the Syrian civil war to forestall the rise of Iranian influence so that the UK now has to stand by this corrupt despotic rentier regime to uphold its oil interests in the Middle East, as well as lucrative arms deals amounting to millions of dollars and pounds.
 
Therefore, the UK and France, and possibly the US in future, want to redress the balance of power by arming sunni insurgents as a counter to the rise of shia predominance they promoted in Iraq ! The same tired pretexts are already being wheeled out as 'Public Diplomacy'-'chemical weapons', 'humanitarian intervention' 'fighting extremism', 'terror threats' etc.

The fact is that  in backing unreservedly Saudi Arabia, the US and Britain is supporting a country that actually funds terrorists elsewhere, including Al Qaida, as well the Taliban in Afghanistan against whom British soldiers have been fighting and dying for twelve years now. The war in Afghanistan is crucially about securing the TAPI pipeline as an alternative to Iran's pipeline to Pakistan.

It is truly Orwellian as regards the ideological schizophrenia, doublethink, and changes of the official line. It's clear shoddy realpolitik has always underlain the purported humanitarian rhetoric about both Iraq and Syria. British people must wake up and think about the problem of oil consumption and dependence unless we want to lose the democracy we have taken for granted for so long.

For the foreign policy will only lead to greater volatility, increasing terror attacks and the increase in state power in Britain over people's lives; the price for thinking that 'business as usual' in such dangerous lands that spawn terrorists and fanatics is something that cannot be questioned or that some terror threat is somehow not connected to it.