After two embarrassing security breaches, an uncomfortable revelation. From The Guardian, with thanks to Jeff Lastname:
The Commons leader, Peter Hain, today admitted for the first time that al-Qaida had been "focusing" on parliament and reiterated his call for an urgent security review after two embarrassing security breaches in 24 hours.Today's Sun revealed how one of the paper's reporters, working as a waiter at Westminster, smuggled in a fake bomb just 24 hours after the storming of the chamber by five hunting campaigners.
Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Mr Hain reiterated his call for an overarching security director to protect MPs and peers, and revealed details of briefings he had received from MI5 about "extremely disturbing" intelligence. He accused parliamentary authorities of failing to improve security despite this intelligence.
Mr Hain said: "The security service briefed me some time ago about some intelligence that they had about al-Qaida operatives in Britain focusing on parliament." He would not go into the detail of the briefing but said the security services had told him they had been trying "for some months" to persuade the authorities to be much more vigilant.
He added: "When I was briefed and I probed and I spoke to the director general about that intelligence I was very determined to act upon it. I was horrified about the potential threat" The incident underlined the need for better security, Mr Hain said.
Mr Hain added that the latest breach of security by the Sun reporter had "done us a favour" by exposing serious lapses. The reporter used bogus references to get a job as a waiter, then - filmed by the paper for its exclusive today - smuggled fake bomb-making equipment into the building.
A turf war over parliamentary security appears to be developing between the government - led by Mr Hain and the home secretary, David Blunkett - and the Commons, led by Speaker Michael Martin, who controls the current security set up led by the Serjeant at Arms.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Mr Blunkett said: "I'm in charge of security for the nation as a whole and what's happened here undermines confidence in the security service and counter-terrorism branch who, like me, have absolutely no control over the decisions of the House of Commons and the House of Lords."
He endorsed Mr Hain's call for a security director, saying Britain needed "not medievalism but modernity"
The office of Serjeant at Arms - currently held by Sir Michael Cummins - has responsibility for security in the Commons. The Serjeant and his staff of ushers and doorkeepers - known as the "men in tights" because of their traditional dress - are responsible for maintaining order in the Commons chamber, galleries, committee rooms and precincts, and the control of access to them. They have been criticised as farcically inadequate in the era of suicide bombers.
Indeed.
In December 2001, jihadis struck India's parliament building. Apparently they'd faked IDs and car-stickers to to smuggle automatics and grenades rioght into the high-security zone. The aim was to hold parliamentarians hostage ( a la Beslan?) and demand Kashmir's separation from India. The plan was foiled by fortutious circumstances and the jihadis were all shot down in a hours-long gunfight.
And now we hear about Britain. Imagine jihadi madmen holding MPs hostage inside the house?!
Also, I wonder what it is about syambolistic democratic monuments in general and parliament buildings in partuicular that so irks the jiihadis? A parallel centre of power, governance and expression odf people's will that could've legitimately only sprung from Allah and the Caliph?
Find it difficult to believe Al Quaeda is targeting British Parliament! With shocking lack of security everywhere in London and unpreparedness of all authorities, if Bin & Boys wanted could have destroyed much of central London
before this... Have advised friend living in London to move though: is checking out Wales at the moment. Am suspicious it is part of Blair's Spin Policy. Omar Bakri of Al Mahajiroun has claimed they have an agreement with British Government : Al Margarinies & others can incite
their followers to Jihad in other countries NOT BRITAIN!! Not sure what TRUTH is. Certainly London itself is awash with Terrorist Bastards...
slightly OT: Toward the close of the Second World War, he was making a tour of Roehampton Hospital and met a veteran who was having an artificial leg fitted.
"With your special limb you will be able to walk without extra support," Churchill commented.
The soldier said, "I think so, sir, but I have a favor to ask, I'd like that old stick of yours."
Churchill hesitated a moment, then replied, "Here are my heart, my hand, & my stick. Now you must take good care of this bit of wood -- its been all over the world with me." from Winston Churchill, the Biography of a Great Man by Robert Lewis Taylor
As bloody as the consequences might be, I suspect that the effect of such a circumstance - a hostage situation in parliament, particularly Commons - might have a very salutary effect on the British voters.
Indeed, it would almost certainly put an end to the flood of Islamic "refugees" most of whom end up as a charge on the rate payer, and might even result in the expulsion of those Muslims in Britain illegally.
One can only hope….
Beyond the Palace of Westminster, across the Atlantic, in that decaying edifice in NYC, a piece of monumental insanity, as crazy as the Indian Lokh Saba's repeal of its Anti-Terror laws this morning!
On Wednesday, the compromised UN Secretary-General’s called the American-led intervention in Iraq “illegal” - indubitably, instantly causing the “Resistance to Foreign Occupation” there to be GREATLY emboldened, in their bloody exertions to reverse the Coalition’s Geo-strategy (one of striving to REDUCE the grave menaces to peace and progress, which, nowadays, emanate principally from the Arab countries, who’re either contributing to them or aren’t working in earnest to stop them).
Has he, at length, fully sold out to the pernicious, maniacal forces inside the UN (and elsewhere), the supporters of cruel, Islamo-fascist/Jihadi aggression, who burn in their obsession to subject the Arab and Moslem sphere - and next every corner of the planet - to their sadistic, predatory, nihilist, theocratic barbarism? Did he accept their welcome, effusive promises to get him clean off the hook in the UN’s grotesque, Criminal “Iraqi-Oil-for-Fraud” Scandal, to give him cover and let him walk over this horrific GENOCIDE/JIHAD in Darfur, fulsomely guaranteeing him his easy, prosperous, “dignified” retirement, back home in Sweden?
Three weeks before Australia’s Federal Elections, the upswing in Terrorism in Iraq, Russia, Indonesia, et al, has let the ALP Opposition - keenly pursuing refreshed, closer alignment with the UN - dance the nation into a STERILE debate over whether our engagement in Iraq’s “made Australia safer or not”. (- Labor’s withdrawing from Iraq by Xmas, notwithstanding, if it wins.)
Instead, voters should be examining a far more APT, URGENT AND DIFFICULT problem: How best to properly and effectively address the dire threat from the megacidal, global, arch-totalitarian, ideologically-interlinked, imperialist, trans-nationally-, regionally- and locally-organized, atavistic cult of regressive Islamo-fascism/Jihadism?
Optimally, this Confrontation needs to be consciously shaped in such a way - while the West retains the ability and intiative to do so (since TIME’s of the essence here) - as to decisively DEFEAT the Islamo-fascists/Jihadis. To prevail in this Existential struggle compells a tight Alliance of sound, multilateral Western and associated Partners - across the full array of the different dimensions required - to gain the INDISPENSABLE Victory, as soon as possible.
Accordingly, beyond Australia’s (individually satisfactory-to-solid) existing defence- & security-treaties and arrangements (with the USA, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, Sth Korea, NZ, inter alia), Canberra’s diplomats ought to be quietly speaking with two further, MAJOR and potentially invaluable players in the contemporary “War on Terror” (WWIV!): Russia and India. Correspondence apropos to Moscow should go out first; India won’t be quite ready for a bit….
In the wake of its recent, large-margin triumph at the polls, in its giddiness, gullability and its feeling of political and moral “vindication”, the Idealist élite of the new Congress-Communist Government in New Delhi is centrally, sorely misguided, self-afflicted with grand delusions and a dangerous denial of objectivity. It’s airily, EMPTILY convinced itself that it’s created a viable, durable nuclear-détente with - ultimately, supremely unstable - Pakistan, and on top it’s blithely accrediting itself for a palpable drop in violence in Kashmir (thanks mainly to much-improved operations by the Army kicking in, not to its own minor, bureaucratic measures, as it claims).
In international forums, primarily, the ruling echelon seeks to re-establish India as the shining-bright Paragon of the (neo-) Non Aligned Movement in the UN (the status it once enjoyed from the 1950s into the ‘70s), counting on this elevation-to-eminence to assist most handsomely in its bid for a Permanent Seat on the UN Security Council (when - and if - that Body’s made bigger, as mooted about at the moment, among a variegated raft of “democratizing reform-proposals”).
This new Indian Government looks distinctly impressed by the appeasement-happy, European approach to things, specially to the “War on Terror” (WWIV!), and wishes to take that myopic tack as well, proudly installing Pacifism high on its slate of political principles, together with Socialism - but rather omitting its pronounced anti-American sentiments from the list.
Sooner or later, though, the lofty illusions of the green, pathetically, purblindly utopian, leftist Administration in India will INEVITABLY be dashed (probably TRAGICALLY), when they inexorably collide with the oncoming exigencies of the innate volatility of Pakistan, plus the rabid intransigence of the sinister, expansionist, Jihadi dogmas - nefariously implanted and cultivated by Pakistan and insidiously paid for by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for decades - within Kashmir (and reportedly growing of late in Bangladesh, on India’s eastern flank).
Whether the Indian Government wants to acknowledge it - at this juncture - or not, today at least the Russians already, accurately see that each of them are contemporarily steeped in SERIOUS (possibly terminal), bitter conflicts, with the identical, fanatical, wild, totalitarian Enemy that Oz, Britain, America, Israel, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Singapore and the rest face, around the world.
The greatest of Good Sense would be a COHERENTLY COMBINED EFFORT - in the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century - to rid the Earth of this monstrous peril, forever. For the fatally-corrupted, iniquitous UN, the question becomes not what role (IF ANY) should it take in this process, but - when the malign influence of its Islamo-fascist/Jihadi Masters has finally been ended - where will there be left for it to hide its gross, mass-lethal Hypocrisies then?
We all know the more radical islamist groups groups are calling for the overthrow of the british parliament. Like in Hilters Mein Kampf it would be wise to take the British islamists future ambitions seriously too. Ofcourse blowing up Parliament house wouldn't result in democracys overthrow today. Ironicly I think that if parliment was blown-up it could play into the hands of the more radical non-islmaist parties...IF that is the major mainstream parties don't take more drastic measures to reduce terrorism.
Blowing up parliamnet would be far more psychologically and functionally disastrous than would be the blowing up of the US house of reps. Most of us would know that the British parliament has the executive and reps all in the one place. Boomm....the executive and all the reps of Britain are gone. No executive, no senators (ofcourse), no reps....all gone. It would be profound choas...the Queen and (probably) the military would have to run a provisional governemnt...until new elections.
The question is after such a profoundly shocking and functionally damaging expereince (ie. for government)who would the people vote in...would the people demand someone who would act much more radically to curb islamism. Would people view islamism then as the germans did the munich communist uprsisings in the 20's. That is as a imminant totalitarian threat...would they THEN view islam in general as something they could no longer AFFORD to live with despite the existance of the non-radical muslims. RemeMber only a handfull of jews and thousands of non-jews were involved in the munich uprisings...yet Hitler blamed the jews and used it as a pretext (among other things) for taking total power. P.s. remember the burning of the reichstag...Hitler used that as a pretext for his obtaining emergency dictatorial powers too.
It is becuase of all the above that the fact a reporter so easily got into parliamnet with a fake bomb is so utterly appalling.
HGII:
As an avid India watcher, am impressed with your analysis of the political letahrgy in Delhi. Simply brilliant.
Hardly surprising the commons has been breached so often. The problem lies with angst from liberal democrat no-benchers, letting in terrorists (joke).
What will it take for the Labour party, or any other british party for that matter, to realise that the problem (the security breach of the entire nation, not just the commons) lies within the untouchable muslim population.
Screw the "moderates", take the rough with the smooth, get rid of them all, no-one wants them here.