Last week six cleaners in Westminster were arrested in dawn raids,
detained and smeared as would-be assassins of the Pope with the willing
connivance of the fourth estate.
Twenty-four hours later all six were - in now time-honoured fashion -
quietly released without charge, the Met having found no evidence of a
plot, weapons, explosives, fundamentalist materials or anything
incriminating whatsoever in fact.
It was like arresting someone for a murder that hadn't happened and
where the "victim" kept appearing on prime-time TV every day for a week
giving live addresses.
These six men, all of north African origin conveniently enough, who I
repeat have been charged with no crime and against whom there is
apparently not a shred of evidence have had their rights massively
infringed by the state.
They have been labelled terrorists and extremists involved in a plot to
assassinate the leader of one of the world's largest religious
institutions. It has been reported that a shared joke in a staff canteen
may have led to this scandalous situation, something the Met
strenuously deny.
Well they would wouldn't they?
The other claim was that they were arrested because they were in "a position to do something" due to their jobs.
OK, well, so were Kay Burley and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Why not
bang them up too?
The Archbishop probably has more of a motive than most
given the centuries-old enmity between the two faiths.
Cameron definitely looked a bit shifty on the platform. Where was the armed response unit when we needed one?
And where is the public outcry over these pre-emptive arrests? Nowhere, that's where.
Have we become so cowed, so duped, so inured to having our rights
trampled on that we just docilely swallow the anti-terror propaganda as
gospel and assume that the authorities must be working in our best
interests?
The state has always fitted people up when it needs a quick result, The
Birmingham Six, the Tottenham Three, Sus - in fact if it wasn't for
fit-ups and the seemingly endless self-destructive tendencies of George
Michael there'd be hardly anyone in jail.
They don't even bother denying it now, they just pretend it never
happened. Just as when MI5 and MI6 were busy passing messages under the
torture chamber door or holding the jump leads for the CIA
interrogators.
And speaking of revisionists David Miliband was forced this week to face
yet more allegations that he was complicit in the torture of British
citizens while foreign secretary.
You would think after mountains of evidence to show British complicity
in torture, Miliband would at least acknowledge wrongdoing had been
committed. A lot of the cases didn't even happen on his watch - although
quite a few did.
But no, time and time again he has shown himself to be craven to the
core. He claimed the US would sulk if he handed over information
relating to the torture of Binyam Mohamed, even though it had already
been published - by the US.
Time and again he has tried to prevent the
truth from coming out - to the point where he had to be slapped down by
senior judges.
You would think that might be enough to prevent party members voting for
him in the current leadership elections but at time of writing he
remains the odds-on favourite.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to elect one power-hungry hypocrite as leader
could be seen as unfortunate - to do it twice is just plain careless.
SIC: MS/UK