Osama Bin Laden is dead

My first reaction was "Good".  Please note the lack of an exclamation mark.  More accurately we should say Osama Bin Laden was executed - there was no sense in the News I have heard today that any attempt was made to capture him.  British leaders praised the actions of the Americans, perhaps because the destruction of the twin towers was also the worst terrorist atrocity to hit the British people.
After just a little thought I realised there is a serious problem here.  There is no justice. U.S. President Obama is wrong: Justice has not been done.  The intention should have been to capture and put him on trial.  We cannot tell which of these to options, execution or trail, would cause the most suffering in the world.  I suspect we have the worst of the two options. 
Worse that that was the unedifying sight of Americans gathered outside their seat of government chanting "U S A ... U S A".  Why?  You just killed an enemy, you just won a battle, but the war isn't over.  Someone in the baying crowd said to the interviewer "This is an end".  How wrong can you be.  This is neither an end nor a beginning, it may be an escalation.
It may be an escalation because an executed icon is a martyr.  Those left behind will, perhaps rightly, be aggrieved at the actions that have been taken.  They will respond in the only way they know how.  As a result more 'innocents' will die.
Now we are all on high alert looking for reprisals.

When they happen, then what?

We go and execute those who commit further acts of terrorism and each time there are 100 more ready to take their place.  We have understood this effect for centuries as the Hydra myth proves.

There is a better way - arrest and trial and then to attempt to win the peace, not the war.

Politician Bugged

So some politician has allegedly been bugged by the police while in a discussion with one of his friends. They are both Muslims - hence the paranoia. The rest of us have taken having our freedoms removed, and it seems that some of us have even supported it, now that it starts to affect politicians (the ones who have been removing our freedoms), there are calls for the re-instatement of civil liberties and the rights to privacy. Well what a surprise!
Perhaps the only way to remove the ridiculous 28 days incarceration without trial is to ensure that the first person to be the subject of such an action is an MP.

Reality check. MP's are people too. They are as likely to do bad things as anyone else - more likely perhaps, as they have both opportunity and motive. The law (good or bad) should apply to all the people in the same way.

Now we should see the next one who is caught being creative with their recording of funding for some campaign or other, or employing their family at unreasonable rates of pay, being arrested under the prevention of terrorism act.

Armed Police

Nothing in the news. I went for a walk at lunchtime, across the millenium bridge and followed a couple of armed policemen - sub-machine guns, flack jackets - the works. When I got to the station coming home from work there were three there as well.

If this is supposed to make the public feel safe it is having the opposite effect on me. I don't generally worry about the terrorist threat - there's nothing I personally can do, but get on with my life. All these police just keep the concern at the front of your mind. They can be at least as dangerous as the terrorist, if they get carried away.