Terrorism (state and retail)

Three days before the British election, The Independent’s headline title read: “Majority of British voters agree with Corbyn’s claim UK foreign policy increases the risk of terrorism”

It was late at night but the new Terminal 3 at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport outside Jakarta was still bustling with families and friends waiting for their loved ones returning from abroad.
My friend Noor Huda Ismail was just arriving from Singapore, and I decided to pick him up and discuss ‘certain issues’ with him in the car, on the way to the capital. Lately he and I were busy, awfully busy, and a one-hour journey seemed to be the most appropriate setting for the exchange of at least some essential ideas and information.

USS Liberty Before Israeli Attack

So in the Libyan fable, it is told,
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
“With our own feathers, not by others’ hands,
Are we now smitten.”1

The hallmark of any administration worth its corruptly curing salt is making hay while the sun shines its searing rays.  Not long after the slashing and running down was taking place in London, moving from London Bridge to Borough Market, the tweets of blame and fire were already coming through.

This article is about events so counter-intuitive that Hollywood would reject the plot as being too unbelievable. Fifty years ago on June 8th, another nation intentionally attacked a U.S. Navy ship in international waters, and the U.S. didn’t respond.
The attack

Nothing justifies killing of innocent people.
— Tony Blair, CNN, 15th January 2015

One has to ask why terrorists like those who struck last night in London, and earlier in Manchester, launched their attacks now. It is difficult not to infer that their violence was timed to influence the UK election on Thursday. Those behind the attack – whether those carrying it out or those dispatching the terrorists – want to have an effect. Terrorism is the use of indiscriminate violence for political ends. It has a logic, even if it is one we mostly do not care to understand.
So what do these terrorists hope to achieve?

The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Rwanda’s tragedy has been exploited for many purposes. Add slandering a pro-Palestinian activist to the list.
Since I wrote this article about the Jewish Defense League last month, Toronto’s Alex Hundert has repeatedly labeled me anti-Semitic. The self-declared “anti-fascist” tweeted at Pacific Free Press, Rabble, the NDP and others to “cut ties” with me.