Andy Rowell, 24 February 2009

Earlier this month, the breaking news in the UK was that a major anti-terrorism operation was underway in the North of the country. Nine men had been arrested as the Police swooped on the vehicles that were on a motorway heading for London.

Although the operation was carried out by British anti-terror police, the men had apparently been under surveillance by the UK’s domestic security services, M15. However, it soon emerged that the vehicles were part of a 100 vehicle humanitarian convoy travelling from the UK to Gaza organised by Viva Palestina.

 The convoy was due to travel 5,000 miles through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt before arriving at Rafah in Gaza early next month. The convoy included 12 ambulances and a fire engine and carried medicines, tools, clothes, blankets and shoe boxes full of children's toys and treats. One of the two vans surrounded by police had signs saying Stop Killing Children, another said Free Palestine. It hardly had the hall-marks of a major terror threat.

Of the nine men arrested, six were released soon after. On the back of the arrests, Police searched properties in the northern town of Burnley. Wajid Khan, a local Labour councillor said Muslims in his area were afraid that the Police operation was actually intended to stop aid getting to Palestine.

“Some people might be thinking, is all this because this aid is going to Gaza or is it police conducting a counter-terrorism operation?” said Khan.  One of the arrested men was a “respected member of the community” who was an active member of Viva Palestina, Khan added.

The initial inference after the arrests was that the humanitarian convoy was in some way a disguise for terrorists and that hidden amongst the toys and clothing would be weapons or explosives making their secretive way to Gaza. But so far there is no evidence that either the convoy or men arrested had anything to do with terrorism. A few days later, the seized vehicles were released by the Police. The vehicles had been “thoroughly checked" and the Police said “continue on to their destination”. Then finally and quietly all three remaining in custody were released too.

By taking such high profile action, what had once been a peaceful legitimate and humanitarian convoy of aid from the people of Britain to the people of Gaza had been tarred as a potential terrorist mission. Once again it seemed that those who had been engaged in perfectly legitimate activity had been demonised as terrorists.  And if the wanted to scupper the convoy by their action, it worked: donations to Gaza fell by 80 per cent after the arrests wer made so publicly known.

The vehicles were released the day before Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of the domestic security service, MI5, accused the British Government of exploiting people’s fear of terrorism to restrict civil rights.

Rimington said: “It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state.”

And Britain is fast becoming a Police state. The British are the most spied upon people in the democratic world. Earlier this month the influential House of Lords Constitution Committee issued a report into “Surveillance: Citizens and the State”. Horrified by the increasing amount of surveillance, the committee concluded that “The rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and private sector risks undermining the fundamental relationship between the state and citizens, which is the cornerstone of democracy and good governance.”

Whilst the Police and security services increase their surveillance of us, they do not like people photographing them. Last week hundreds of photographers staged a protest outside London’s main police station, Scotland Yard, against a proposed new law which they say could stop them taking pictures of the police.

The law supposedly makes it an offence to gather information on security personnel if that data could be used for a purpose linked to terrorism. The leading union working to defend the rights of the press, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), argues the law could be used to harass photographers working legitimately.

The Vice President of the NUJ, Pete Murray argues the law was “absurd”. He said “We as citizens constantly get told that these extra security laws, terrorism laws, all of this surveillance stuff, is not a threat to us if we're not doing anything wrong. So why on earth it becomes a threat to a police officer to have a photographer, a working journalist, a photographer taking a picture of them is quite beyond me."

As the British State targets innocent civilians and journalists, last week the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) published one of the most extensive studies of counter-terrorism and human rights yet undertaken. Undertaken by an independent panel of eminent judges and lawyers, its “alarming findings” found that “many governments, ignoring the lessons of history, have allowed themselves to be rushed into hasty responses to terrorism that have undermined cherished values and violated human rights.”

Leading the charge of undermining international law were the US and the UK. The chairman of the Panel, Arthur Chaskelson, the former president of the South African constitutional court, said:  “We have been shocked by the extent of the damage done over the past seven years by excessive... counter-terrorism measures”.

As our civil liberties are eroded and ordinary citizens become criminals, we let the real criminals of the moment walk free. Earlier this month, Washington's new director of national intelligence, retired Admiral Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security than Al-Qaeda or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The real terrorists are not those who organise humanitarian trips to Gaza, but are the bankers from Wall Street and the city of London whose recklessness has plunged the western world into its greatest depression for a hundred years.

"The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications," Blair told the Senate Committee. He recalled the “dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism." Let us not forget that this political instability brought on World War Two.

Blair was arguing that violent extremism will be home-grown out of fear or desperation once people lost their job, their home and their family had been destroyed by the economic meltdown.  As Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, and author of “Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians” argues “The corporate thieves, those who insisted they be paid tens of millions of dollars because they were the best and the brightest, have been exposed as con artists .. Our business schools and intellectual elite have been exposed as frauds.”

Every day now thousands are losing their jobs. Countless more live in fear of losing their jobs or their homes. Already in the US, some 3.6 million people have lost their jobs. An estimated 2.3 million properties in the United States that received a default notice or were repossessed last year. And this number is set to rise in 2009.

The United Nations' International Labor Organization estimates that some 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide this year. The social impact of this uncertainty is far greater than anything ever inflicted by Al-Qaeda or its allies. 

But when the heads of eight of Wall Street's biggest banks appeared before a Congressional Committee “few of the bankers expressed much contrition for their industry’s conduct”.  The head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, did though accept that that banks did deserve criticism: “Many people believe – and in many cases justifiably so – that Wall Street lost sight of its larger public obligations and allowed certain trends and practices to undermine the financial system's stability,” he said.

When their British counterparts appeared before a Parliamentary Committee in London, they were more contrite. But despite saying sorry the bankers have walked away with millions of pounds in pay and bonuses. For example, the disgraced former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fred Goodwin, received a bonus of £2.8 million in 2007.  Because of mistakes made by Goodwin the bank has subsequently been bailed out by the British government who now own 70 per cent stake in the company.

But it is very unlikely there will be any criminal charges against any top bankers in either the US or the UK. So it seems we operate in a parallel universe. There is one where ordinary citizens are spied on and harassed. It is one were people who are involved in trying to supply humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza are arrested and demonised. And then there is the law for the elite who have broken the back of their countries in pursuit of reckless greed. Their actions have meant misery for tens of millions of people. And yet they are rewarded with millions of pounds of bonuses and allowed to walk free.