Glad Roger pointed this out. The government continues to use and abuse the media (who, in some cases, are all to willing to help) to keep the ambient fear level in society high. Why, you may ask, would a government want to do that? Well, the more afraid of whoever the current boogeyman is (it's Muslims^[1] at the moment, twenty years ago it was the Irish^[2]) the population are, the more willing they are to accept the increasing erosion of their civil liberties. Detention orders, identity cards, biometric passports, increased surveillance, the list goes on and they're just issues that occur to me off the top of my head.

This is what lies behind the many operations against alleged terrorist suspects. This is why Jean Charles de Menezes was shot, why the house in Forest Gate was stormed, why the tanks rolled into Heathrow and why there are still restrictions on hand-luggage on transatlantic flights. The thought process they want to instill in you is "okay, so de Menezes was innocent but he could have been a terrorist, the people arrested at Forest Gate were normal, law-abiding citizens but they could have been terrorists".

The government is very happy, even eager, to make sure we all know how many people have been arrested under anti-terrorism legislation because they know that, if that is all they say to us, the assumption will be that they must be the real thing, right? Well, wrong. Of the 1000+ Muslims arrested as alleged terror suspects only just over 2% have ultimately been convicted and most of them not of terrorism charges but other, minor, offences discovered in the process^[3].

What Abu Izzadeen said (well, shouted) to Dr Reid was absolutely right. He, and the government he represents are enemies of Islam, however much they protest to the contrary. Unfortunately, it will also send exactly the message Reid wanted to the country.

Update: Forgot to mention, it seems that 'torture may be worse now in Iraq than under Saddam Hussein'. More for us to be proud of.

^[1]I do believe that the US and UK governments want to paint a picture of all Muslims being involved in terrorism
^[2]In the same way as they did with the Irish
^[3]Note, this is not due process, but why let a small thing like the law get in the way of a conviction?

Apologies to Fred and Narayan for the delay in switching to their new blog locations on Planet SUSE, it's now done.

Anyone got a spare 5,000 Euro?