"A Greater and Deeper Threat to our Security than we have Known Before".

"It was clear evidence, not that any more was needed, that this is not some foreign conflict thousands of miles from home that we can hope to ignore. The ambition to create an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and Syria is a threat to our own security here in the UK.

In Afghanistan the Taliban were prepared to play host to al Qaida, the terrorist organisation. With IS we are facing a terrorist organisation not being hosted in a country but seeking to establish and then violently expand its own terrorist state.

"With designs on expanding to Jordan, Lebanon, right up to the Turkish border, we could be facing a terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a Nato member.

The ambition to create an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and Syria is a threat to our own security here in the UK.

The terrorist threat was not created by the Iraq war 10 years ago. it existed even before the horrific attacks on 9/11, themselves some time before the war.

This threat cannot be solved simply by dealing with perceived grievances over Western foreign policy. Nor can it be dealt with by addressing poverty, dictatorship or instability in the region - as important as these things are.

The root cause of this threat to our security is quite clear. It is a poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism that is condemned by all faiths and faith leaders."-Prime Minister David Cameron.

The threat that Islamic State poses would most likely not have existed had it not been for Western foreign policy as it could not have exploited the chaos in northern Syria to gain power and declare the coming of the Caliphate both there and in Sunni parts of Iraq, a land destabilised by the 2003 US-UK invasion.

The tissue of untruths spun by Prime Minister Cameron, in reaction to the barbaric beheading of US journalist James Foley, shows how leading politicians are prepared to use the power of media images to put the case for unending and permanent intervention, even of a military kind, in the Middle East.

MI6 is there to advance geostrategies and manage the attendent risks. As Patrick Cockurn made plain, MI6 was involved, alongside the CIA, in channelling weapons to Sunni jihadists such as Jabhat al-Nusra from Libya and setting up a 'supply chain' of weapons provision across the Turkish borders into Syria.

Britain should never have backed the strategic policy of Qatar and Turkey in backing Sunni militants against Assad through groups such as 'Friends of Syria'. The reason why Britain's security has been comprimised is because this policy of backing regional powers in the Middle East who were prepared to back jihadists.

Britain should have been putting far more pressure on Turkey to tighten up the borders to prevent Western jihadists entering. Certainly, Turkey would need have to prevent IS militants crossing back into its territory so if it could acheive that, as Turkey is an IS target too, they could be detained there.

Ramping up the terror threat level to "highly likely", of course, is a way of preparing Britain for an attack if it happened. It also serves to deflect attention away from the fact that Britain's foreign policy helped empower IS by supposing that 'moderate' Sunni forces could be backed to oust Assad.

It was clear that both Qatar and Saudi Arabia were locked into a competition throughout 2012-2013 to back the most effective ( i.e ruthless ) jihadi groups so that they would be able to determine a post-Assad Syria. That and the chaos of the war created space for IS to gain ground and flourish.

In 2013 ISIS was fighting with the Free Syria Army against the Kurds which are now being supported by the US and Britain. Until late 2013 and 2014 little was done by London or Washington to put greater pressure on Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to stop the transfer of funds from private donors to Sunni militants.

All these prevention of terrorism policies are reflexes to to the consequence of a failed foreign policy strategy that was even more fundamentally foolish that the one in which the US and Britain backed the mujahadeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, splinter factions of which went on to become Al Qaida.

Syria has become a failed state in the north as a consequence of the policy that 'Assad must go', a demand pushed for by Qatar and Turkey to check Iran and to expedite the possible construction of a gas pipeline from the South Pars gas field to Turkey and an energy hungry EU.

At the core of the West's problems and the terror threat is its energy dependency upon gas from unstable lands which makes it bound to look for energy diversification no matter what the consequences and risks could be. Qatar is a major supplier of LNG to Britain and France.

The foreign policy agenda was clearly set out by Philip Hammond in April 2014, when mulling the possibility of a British base being constructed in Qatar

“The West is crucially dependent on a stable energy market above all else, Our economic recovery is fragile. Anything that calls for a spike in the oil price would derail it. The mostly likely scenario to cause that up spike is a surge in tension in this region, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz. It is very much in our interest to have a stable situation in the Gulf. That is why Western countries are prepared to invest so much in this region and supporting the Gulf states to maintain that stability.”

With Russia and Ukraine almost in a state of war and Libya haven fallen to Islamist jihadists, Britain and Europe's energy security looks more fragile than ever before and this has been factored in to the need to take risky foreign policy decisions such as continuing to back Sunni militants in Syria.

Until Britain, and other European powers, find energy alternatives to oil and gas, the dependency dillemma is always going to drag Western powers into meddling in the Middle East and causing the sort of potentially very dangerous problem of terrorist 'blowback' on a permanent basis.

Postscript: A Note on Britain's Gas Imports.

It uses an increasing amount of LNG from Qatar which prevents it making up for declining North Sea gas reserves by having to purchase more gas directly from Russia, as was confirmed in a Reuters report in March 2014,  in accordance with an agreement dating back to 2012.

'Britain will begin this year to import gas from Russia under a formal contract for the first time, just as European calls to loosen Moscow's grip on energy supply mount because of the crisis over Ukraine.
The country's biggest utility Centrica signed a deal in 2012 with Russian state-controlled Gazprom to import 2.4 billion cubic metres of gas over a period of three years, and the supplies will begin flowing in October.

The next fact is that Britain and the EU's energy network is interconnected and, of course, a surge in oil or gas prices would affect the British economy if it were to have an impact upon the economies of its European partners. A report from the New Scientist made the energy dilemma clear,

The situation in the UK is less clear. Gas imports account for around 70 per cent of supply, but because of the complex European network of pipelines and interconnectors that we rely on, it's difficult to say exactly how much of that imported gas is Russian. Some reports claim that Russia supplies around 15 per cent of that total and others put this figure much lower. Russian energy giant Gazprom estimates that it sends 11 to 12 billion cubic metres to the UK each year, out of an overall UK consumption of around 84 billion cubic metres.

Whatever the figure, if Russia cuts gas supply to Europe, the knock-on effect would be felt as keenly in the UK as in many other parts of Europe. The crisis may also affect a deal made between Centrica (which owns British Gas) and Gazprom to begin importing 2.4 bn cubic metres of Russian gas via a pipeline from Holland in a couple of months' time.

Energy security is national security for high octane consumer societies which need dependable supplies of oil and gas to uphold the energy intensive lifestyles the great majority of citizens in Western nations have come to take for granted. The search for alternatives ought to be a matter of urgency.

The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Reflections on Just War and Just Terror

Propaganda about the Israel-Palestine conflict often falls into two versions. One is that Israel only uses such means as is strictly necessary to defend itself against Hamas, a dastardly group of terrorist fanatics that wants to wipe Israel off the map as stated in their charter.

The second is that, on the contrary, Hamas are a dedicated resistance force representing the true will of the Gazan people against an agressive colonialist terror state and that Israel is an alien entity in the Middle East founded on a form of 'state terrorism' far worse than anything offered by the PLO or Hamas.

Neither of these two propaganda tropes lead to an understanding that there is, in fact, a dark and pyschopathological link between Israel's politicians and the Hamas rocketeers who both need the aggression and terror of the other in order to advance their respective power claims.

Terror cuts both ways. Israel is a state in which its government is ready to deploy terror tactics to advance their strategy for dealing with Hamas. Likewise, Hamas is an organisation dedicated to an armed insurgency against Israel using rocket attacks and that is also a tactic of terror.

The brutal reality is in previous confrontations in 2012, 2008-9 and, further back to the period that followed on from the war which created the Gaza Strip and Israel back in 1948, terror has been used by fanatics both sides just as it was from the outset.

The Likud government pursuing the war in Gaza at present, though termed a 'ground incursion', is directly connected to the Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary group in many ways similar in its tactics to the PLO and even Hamas. That Israel is a succesful democracy tends to obscure this.

The irony, however, as historian Mark Almond pointed out during the 2008 Israeli-Gaza conflict is that it is precisely democracy that has ratcheted up the tensions and led to a belief on both sides that the terrorism of the other justifies being tough and intransigent so as to shore up domestic support.

As Almond puts it ' both Israel and Gaza are among the few democratic parts of the Middle East. But democracy makes peace more difficult to come by. few Israeli would-be prime ministers want to appear ‘soft’ on terrorism. And Hamas won the election in Gaza by voicing its bitter resentment of Israel'.

The Israel Palestine conflict of 2014 is, as with others before it, in reality a regional conflict. Yet it tends to get portrayed as the theatre of some cosmic global struggle between good and evil. As with other conflicts it is about ethnicity and religion but also about control over resources such as water and offshore gas.

Though Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel condemns the rocket attacks as terrorism ( which they are ) the fact is that they are designed as provocations to get Israel to retaliate in precisely the way it is doing and for Hamas to portray Israel as a terrorist power ( and it is carrying out war crimes ).

The difference, of course, is that the balance of terror in 2014 more than in any previous conflict is stacked in Israel's favour due to the development of the Iron Dome defence system in 2011-2012. And this has been decisive in Israel going for outright victory and to military means to force Hamas into submission.

The usual criteria of 'intentionality' and 'proportionality' when considering whether a hostile action is just war or terror has become blurred entirely. On both sides the emphasis has been on just terror, even if the the decisive advantage lies with Israel which wants to now finish off Hamas permanently.

Syria: The Potential for Terrorist Blowback"

Historian Mark Almond on how and why European Muslims are going to Syria to become battle hardened jihadists and on how certain groups funded by European governments have themselves forwarded Islamists 'along a pipeline' to Syria to fight against Assad. 

There is an element of collusion between the government in Britain and jihadists dating back to the 1980s in Afghanistan designed to further geopolitical and oil and gas interests, one that has and can and will lead to violent 'blowback' in the form of domestic terror attacks.

Syria : The Danger of Energy Geopolitics.

Back in September military action by the US and France over the alleged chemical weapons attack by Assad's forces on a suburb of Damascus seemed inevitable. Dossiers were being produced and ministers were waxing indignant about the need to 'punish' Assad.

The rapid climbdown by the US was forced upon it by  Russia's brilliantly timed diplomatic intervention when they struck a deal in which Assad would allow both  Russia and the US to oversee the destruction of the chemical weapons arsenal. The US was thereby allowed  to save face and claim its coercive diplomacy had worked.

War was averted. Yet the issue, of course, was never completely about chemical weapons, though the hardline on 'weapons of mass destruction' was also designed to send out a message to Iran that their alleged programme to build a nuclear bomb was of a piece with the dangerous rogue state of Syria which is its stalwart ally.

The reason why the US and France were drawn to the brink of intervening with missile strikes and aircraft carriers had been sent to the Eastern Mediterranean was the dangerous New Great Game over gas resources and pipeline routes, one that explains Western double standards over Syria and Egypt.

After the Egyptian army had mown down protesters and their barricades with bullets and bulldozers  in the streets of Cairo who were against the military coup, Western diplomats made weasel comments about the need for dialogue. When Assad was alleged to have used poison gas in Syria, the call was to remove him.

From the US perspective, there was far less to gain in intervening to try and put pressure on Assad than certain EU powers such as Britain and France. The US felt it needed to act because it was tied to the rhetoric about Assad's use of chemical weapons being a 'red line' that once, when crossed, necessitated action.

True, the US still has energy interests in the Middle East better served by shoring up the regional powers that are backing the Sunni insurgents seeking to overthrow Assad's Shia regime, most obviously Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But the shale gas 'revolution' in the US reduced dependence upon the other enemy of Assad-Qatar.

All three external powers backing and funding the insurgents against Assad decided to do so in order to get a new regime that would not oppose their energy interests, in particular the plan to build more gas pipelines to EU states, to export Qatari liquefied natural gas ( LNG ) and reduce dependence on Iran and Russia.

Energy geopolitics is a prime determiner of  the relations between states in the early twenty first century as the race is on to control supplies that are not keeping pace with the burgeoning demand. States haunted by the prospect of their decline such as Britain and France have been the most aggressive in struggling to retain influence.

Part of this is post-imperial hubris but that ties together with both these states role as large arms providers to Middle Eastern states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The BG group has major interests in exploiting Egyptian gas reserves ( hence the mealy mouthed denunciations of SCAF for their bloody coup d' etat ).

The problem with Syria, from France and Britain's perspective, is that he occupies a piece of strategic land through which Iran wants to extend its energy interests no less than Russia which has leased a naval port in Tarsous through which it can protect its energy interests in the Levant with new discoveries of undersea gas.

But Russia also seeks to guarantee the potential "Islamic pipeline' that would, in any post-civil war Syria, be built from the South Pars gas field that Iran shares with Qatar through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean. That would cut the power of Qatar and Turkey as energy providers to the EU.

Despite the immediate crisis having diminished since September 2013, the longer term potential for intractable conflict remains. More than that, there is evidence that radicalised Muslims are going to and fro from Western nations to Syria to become hardened jihadists and who might carry out attacks there.

There is evidence that the secret services have been prepared to use these jihadists as 'assets' in the past from Afghanistan, to Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Kosovo in order to further energy interests. The prospect of 'blowback' being visited upon Britain and France is a lethal consequence of this New Great Game.

The Egyptian Coup : Causes and Consequences

The Egyptian military coup of July 3 was a turning point in the history of the Arab revolts. However, the 'Arab Spring' of 2011 was, to use AJP Taylor's phrase' on Germany in 1848, more generally the point where Arab history 'reached its turning point and failed to turn'.

The Egyptian 'deep state' that developed under post colonial dictatorships and the dominance of the army was not really affected by the Egyptian uprising. It was a 'people power' demonstration; there was never a revolution against the deep state and so no actual revolution as in Iran in 1979.

Essentially, what has happened is that the old elites allowed Mubarak to fall in order to appease popular opinion and to try to introduce a measure of controlled democratic representation. That was in continuity with rather more limited experiments in that direction in the 1990s and 2000s.

Set against the background of the disintegrating economy and food crisis, one brought about by a lethal combination of longer term climate changes and demographic pressures, the Egyptian army was able to protect the deep state by allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to take responsibility for the worsening chaos.

A trap was set for the Muslim Brotherhood in having the Supreme Court declare electoral regularities in their seats as a pretext to dissolve the Egyptian Parliament in June 2012.  That was two weeks before an election between a Mubarak era PM and Morsi to vote president who would be the only democratic representative.

That benefited the deep state as it meant that either an old regime appointee would be elected or else a leader without experience who would prove too weak to challenge vested interests. Morsi approved IMF austerity measures and the torture and beatings in Egyptian prisons were not stopped. Nothing changed.

Army grandees such as General Sisi have taken a gamble on a coup because there was mass popular support to be rid of Morsi from those who believed his presidency was leading towards Egypt becoming ungovernable and descending into further economic chaos.

In addition, Salafi jihadists were causing havoc in North Sinai along with Bedouins. The Muslim Brotherhood were portrayed as a danger to Egypt's 'stability' by beings allegedly indulgent towards Islamist terrorists. That has seemed to threaten the basis of the settlement agreed in 1979 between Egypt and Israel.

General Sisi also knew he could execute a coup because the US would be hardly likely to withdraw the $1.3bn it provides to the Egyptian army to provide 'stability' and protect its geostrategic interests. These include preserving peace on the Israeli borders, oil and gas pipelines against attack and the Suez Canal.

The obvious flaw in this plan is that the coup is likely to ensure that Islamist radicals are more likely to resort to terrorism because they can be sure that more alienated and unemployed young men will see the crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood as a sign that only armed resistance can remove the corrupt elites.

If Egypt descended into chaos, it is likely that global jihadists could find a foothold just as they have in Syria. Arms are awash in neighbouring Libya and many jihadists went from Libya to fight in Syria and could also enter the fray in Egypt. This would pose severe threats to world peace.

Egypt is the largest and most influential Arab nation and its collapse would trigger off collapse elsewhere. Yet the move towards a democratic transition in Egypt is bound to be stalled by the coup because it is impossible to see when elections could be held in conditions of anarchy and violence on the streets. 

Events in Egypt may well now spill beyond a turning point at which the course of history did not turn. It , and the entire Middle East, could be heading beyond the point of no return towards violence and civil war which will shake the foundations of the entire global order.

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..

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.

'You People". Thoughts on the Woolwich Murder and a Perverted Theology of Violence.

"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".

Michael Adebolajo's brutal hacking to death of an off duty soldier was done in clear day on 22nd May 2013 in a street of south London. While reports claim the murder was a frenzied attack, Adebolajo seemed quite calm and composed when he delivered there his deadly message to the British public via camera footage.

Much immediate media coverage was irresponsible. When ITN claimed Adebolajo had brought 'Baghdad violence to the streets of London' it could only have been exactly what he had wanted as a response. Such a lurid comment was typically one that had no relation to Adebolajo's statement when he blamed Afghanistan.

In reality, of course, a perverted theology was at work in Adebolajo's mind that many have not yet taken seriously on its own grounds. They tend to think Adebolajo was 'radicalised' or that his statement must be taken as the true, if regrettable, statement by a violent jihadi Islamist objecting to foreign policy.

The obvious fact is that it cannot be known to date whether there were greater forces behind Adebolajo or whether he acted from his own initiative or as 'part of a team' or both. Yet the words, despite the clinically spiteful banality of their message revealed a certain mindset that it is interesting to explore.

Few have actually really looked at what the killer said in relation to why he did it with any coherence because they are afraid these may well be his words and that he meant it. So he can be written off as 'brainwashed', 'indoctrinated' or just 'pure evil' or the supposed true face of radical Islam' or 'fanatical religion'.

Adebolajo's act was pure form of propaganda of the deed amplified by the immediate recording of his acts and words via instant media and the Internet. By all accounts, Adebolajo made no attempt to escape and according to one eye witness seemed to be want to be caught.

The purpose of this act is to make a statement and to terrify people by the idea he means everything he says and to insinuate there will be more in store from those who may or may not be supporting him. As investigations are continuing, it is too early to have a clear perspective on that.

Even so, part of the pose he presented is meant to get people to assume he was otherwise decent but 'driven' to these 'acts of desperation' by British foreign policy. Adebolajo states he believed so. It's no comment on the foreign policy at all since he seeks to punish less the government but "You People".

By that he means the people who don't do enough to stop their government and so it is his job to ratchet up the death tally on 'your side'. The pathetic and maudlin hypocrite's tear is there: if only you would have done something, "You People" would not have received this being visited upon "You".

Adebolajo, in that absurd light, is thus merely an extreme protester, the man just forced to kill by the spectacle of fellow Muslims in a land being killed that he's never travelled to or connected to by his parents country of origin-Nigeria. This is' transferable greivance' (*)  mongering on a cosmic level.

For Adebolajo comes from a strong moralistic Nigerian Christian background. He was converted to Islam only later after having fallen into bad ways with the 'wrong sort' in Romford. This confirms the fact that the terror threat can come from a sort of hatred at the emptiness of Britain's consumer society and anomie.

There is not much to "integrate" into in London. Large areas consist of no binding social fabric much beyond shopping and consuming, a freedom that is considered to blind "You People" to the fact this lifestyle diverts 'them' from looking at what happens abroad in their name.

To bring this point 'home', the terror that Muslims feel in Afghanistan then must be brought home too. You must learn to feel their pain. The failure to act, the failure to stop whatever you are doing right now and think of Him means the Godless shall and must be punished.

The very fact "You People" haven't actually done anything wrong is precisely why you must be punished and why he believes he is an Agent of Allah bringing down His Wrath upon those who turn away from the True Path and merely exist like a mere collection of docile domesticated farm animals.

Hence "You People" are fit only for slaughter until you change both the error of 'Your Ways' and 'Stop the War'. To pretend there is not some perverted form of an Islamic idea of God the Avenger, just as he is in the Old Testament, is to pretend to ignore that this form of outrage is caused by he who is bereft of real faith.

Adebolajo believes he can only force people to ask 'Why? ' through bringing death down on people from out of nowhere as judgement upon them. The twisted logic is that You must be terrified into acting because nothing else will force you to feel the suffering of Muslims in other lands.

This is the sort of sentiment rationalised by hard left apologists for violence in the Leninist tradition. It is a form of nihilism. Only when faced with terror, death and nothingness can unbelievers be forced to face the abyss he alone has faced and to either back his cause, or do what he demands you do-or to die.

Unfortunately, Adebolajo's actions and words were quickly swallowed by hard left apologists for murder and violence at face value. The reason is that because Adebolajo effectively claims he disliked British foreign policy and was prepared to kill and 'suffer' for his crimes, it can be harnessed to other's propaganda.

A crude example of that is Lindsey German of the farcically named Stop the War Coalition that includes support from many on the ex-communist left in Britain who have morphed into apparent pacifists while still using atrocities to ramp up crude hatred and propaganda as opposed to reflection.

After the Woolwich attack, German stated "Unlike with most terrorist attacks or indeed other crimes, we have been able to see film footage of the perpetrators, hear testimony from the witnesses who saw or talked to them. So we know what these men say motivated them".
.

German  accepts what he says because it benefits her point. And her status  just parrots the line ( effectively ) 'war is wrong so this what you must expect ' while this terrorist fed her that line ( effectively ) word for word. Though not able to justify murder those like German use it to hammer home the points they want.

The ideology in action here comes from some cosmic calculus of death in which innocent people are never innocent and the universe is dominated only by killing or being killed. The "real killers" and those killed who must be avenged.
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If that ratchets up the arithmetic of death , agony and pain, then, in the higher scheme of things, this is a matter of indifference. The cause is all and those who are to die 'in the name of Allah' have been predetermined to do so once the Evil was started-always, of course, by 'the West'.

NB *The phrase 'transferable greivance'  comes from the philosopher Roger Scruton in The West and The Rest: Globalisation and the Terrorist Threat.

Diary.

Pondering on terrorism this morning on Facebook.

The original just has to be read to understand why Henning Mankell represents those who rationalise terror attacks in order to overcome their terror of them as opposed to understanding that some people are, in fact, evil and crazy. The "western world" had not humiliated Muslim countries. How did Sweden do that ?

Perhaps that's not so generous. As a crime writer he is obliged to plunge into the darker recesses of the human psyche. But he did not distinguish between the idea that these are the thoughts that can be thought and "this is what I think".

With these sorts of issues it's necessary to be careful in the language you use. Yoking together Afghanistan with the reason why this "lone wolf" terrorist tried to blow himself up is unnecessary.

I don't like the Afghanistan War either but it's bad form to try and use the potential threat of terrorism to register opposition to the war, as if Swedish presence was the clear motivating factor, or a crucial one. In which case there would have to be an explanation as to why no Serb has tried to kill people after the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999.

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The fact is that it should be possible to criticise the war in Afghanistan without being seen to be siding "objectively" with fanatics. A position made difficult by neoconservative rhetoric-"you're either for us or against us" .But that hardly applies to Sweden which is in Afghanistan to help with the humanitarian operations. In reality, the war is about a pipeline, regional reconstruction and geopolitical control in Eurasia.

It might be that 'some' Muslims perceive Afghanistan as a war against fellow Muslims in intention. If so then this shows an ideology and form of identity politics at work and a refusal to look at facts. But its one reason why "humanitarian wars" are pointless and in Afghanistan's case it was never going to be won quickly, in fact never.

The problem with this new form of terror might be that it is just the reflection of a society in the higher realms of boredom.

For those confronted with a society based on total consumerism, the loss of identity, felt hard by those from religious backgrounds and where there is still an affinity for the lost "Muslim World", then out and out violence is one way of punishing docile consumers and society that reduces people to mere 'economic animals'. Not least if that consumerism is based on the car economy that derives from oil, most of which comes from lands living under dictatorships or repressive regimes that are dysfunctional e.g Saudi Arabia. A way of making consumers pay a blood price in this deranged scheme of things?

The mistake being made is that Al Qaida style violence is not organised by some hierarchy or chain of command. It is carried out by those who willingly buy into the psychopathology or accept the one I've outlined here. There are too many rationalisations of this violence by those trying to make partisan political points about aspects of "the system" they dislike. Mankell is somewhat like Sartre in this sense who used the terrorist protests of the Baader Meinhof to make points about the alienation under capitalism. Because he did not like capitalism and the USA's global power.

As for Mankell, his ability to "understand" the motives of the suicide bomber was not made clear because he linked it to Afghanistan. As a crime writer he was trying to probe the psychopathology of those who commit such acts.

The danger comes with rationalising terror in order to express one's own political viewpoints. Understanding criminal minds is one thing, using that to express a dislike of foreign policy ignores the fact that a new hyper identity has been created throughout Europe is about a power game. "We" are here and "we" will make you change this foreign policy.

Only the problem is that the foreign policy is based on easy supplies of cheap oil which are procured only through collusion with repressive regimes. With Western nations seen as complicit in that, only bringing terror into the belly of the beast is seen to provide the will force some change.