Fly London

The search has been on, ever since the London bombings a year ago, for an elusive individual the police and intelligence agencies describe as “the fifth bomber”. He is the mastermind behind 7/7, who presumably slipped out of the country just before the bombers struck. The search is now over. I have found him, still living in London, at 10 Downing Street - and his name is Blair.

As he is such an honourable man, it is only fitting that the Police Commissioner himself, namesake and equally-beleaguered Ian Blair, should make the arrest and bring him in for questioning. I am serious; I am not trying to be satirical or funny here. The London bombings last year - and the attempted follow-up a fortnight later - are directly linked to Blair’s decision to commit British troops to Bush’s mass-murderous imperial expedition to Iraq.

Pussyfooting by the media

All this week I have observed with some amusement, disbelief and despair at the mainstream media’s pussyfooting over the issue of where the blame for 7/7 should lie. Instead of stating the obvious, that the most powerful man in the land was its architect, they have decided to go about things in a roundabout, plainly dishonest fashion - by calling once again for a public inquiry.

Everyone - apart from Blair and his toadies - is agreed that there should have been a public inquiry in the immediate aftermath of the London atrocities. But the naked mini-emperor at No 10 has steadfastly refused to institute one. Therefore, calls by the mass media for one on the anniversary of 7/7 are legitimate. However, it is a dereliction of journalistic responsibility for media organisations to fail - no, deliberately refuse - to honestly lay the blame where it should rightly be.

What they are actually doing is using the calls for a public inquiry as cover behind which to aim half-hearted pot-shots at Blair. They interview survivors and members of the public calling for an inquiry. They commission survivors and security “experts” to write articles calling for inquiries. If dogs could speak, you can bet your bottom dollar that you would see them on the BBC calling for an inquiry! They even use the recently-released video by al-Qaeda of one of the London bombers, in which he says that Blair’s foreign policy, in particular Iraq and Palestine, led him to become a jihadst.

I know this is a legitimate journalistic device used in reporting, to get others to mouth words which you cannot say yourself, in order to maintain your objectivity. However, when this device becomes the philosophical grounding of your 7/7 coverage, it becomes suspect. Why have op-ed pages and independent commentators? And newspapers have been known to kick “objectivity” into touch when the issues in question, such as paedophilia, rape and election coverage, are ones that people feel very strongly about.

Blair to blame

We don’t need an inquiry to tell us that Blair, as much as Osama, has been instrumental in radicalising the people who bombed London - and their comrades who are planning even more atrocities as we speak. That is a given, it is incontrovertible fact. Wake up and smell the coffee!