Last time I wrote about this, it was the day before the London bombings but London Mayor Ken Livingston’s comments again remind me of that question of how will we know if this slow war against shadows is over or even changed?
The terror threat faced by London is “fairly disorganised” and involves small groups of disaffected people, according to the capital’s mayor. Ken Livingstone told the BBC London was not the focus of a “great organised international conspiracy with orders flowing down the chain”. But he said there had been 10 attempted attacks since 11 September 2001, two of which had come since the 7 July bombs.
What is the background level for disorganized dissaffected people that you may never remove from society? Is there a difference between, on the one hand, events of terror by international criminal gangs or whatever Al Quada is now and, on the other, events of horror caused by the disorganized and dissaffected? Is that difference such that the state’s right or obligation to monitor mail and email, listen in or worse stop or will that just continue – less noticed or accepted – as well? Or is the plan to drop the hammer once every five or eleven years without real purpose or practical plan for restoration of anything, like dreamy sophomoric murderers in the unfocused post-colonial open season for disorganized dissaffection.