UK State Terror Resurgent 28

Predictably, the death of Osama Bin Laden has brought the return of “war on terror” impunity to the crazed British security services. An extraordinarily sinister body, the “Civil Nuclear Constabulary”, has arrested five Asians for possibly taking photographs of the Sellafield nuclear power station – of which there are thousands of photographs online and which is visible on Google Earth.

Because of course, if you were a fiendish mastermind wishing to have intelligence on Sellafield, you would covertly and surreptitiously take photos using five young Asian men in a group in Cumbria in broad daylight.

Racist harassment by the state is firmly back on the agenda.

28 thoughts on “UK State Terror Resurgent

  • Tom Welsh

    Talking about crazed security services, I find it odd that nobody in the world’s media has yet questioned how and why the US armed forces entered Pakistan – notionally still a sovereign state – broke into a fortified residence, and killed its owner? Not to mention then removing his body and dumping it at sea – reports I have seen quote US spokespeople as saying the body was gently lowered into the water, but have you any idea how high the flight deck of USS Carl Vinson is above sea level? Think “12-storey building” and you won’t be too far out.

    It really does seem as if there is only one sovereign state left in the world: the United States of America. Any privileges or independence enjoyed by other nations is purely conditional on the USA’s grace and favour. Consider, for example, how easily the bin Laden killing could be replicated in London. Do you think the RAF, or any other British forces, would (or could) prevent an American attack? Any one of us could be next – depending on whether someone in the CIA gets his facts mixed up.

  • Parky

    See the Wiki “Drone attacks in Pakistan” and realise how the Americans act with complete impunity in Pakistan. It was said a drone attack was ruled out because of the risk to surrounding civilians, not that they are usually too bothered about that. In the case of the OBL “assasination” his neighbours were the Pakistan military and they would have been a bit unhappy to be collateral damage for one of uncle Sam’s propaganda exercises, therefore a “special forces” ground attack was executed instead. Normally these are rejected because of the danger to the afore mentioned special forces from local oposition forces but guess what, in this case the Pakistan military were fast asleep and only knew about the attack the next day possibly from CNN.

  • spectral

    Ian Tomlinson ‘unlawfully killed’.
    Not sure I’ve seen this! Must be UK version of State Department’s “unlawful or arbitrary
    deprivation of life”.
    Sheldon Volin, US political scientists call this type of society Inverted Totalitarianism.

  • glenn_uk

    We’ve gone from DWB (Driving While Black) to PWB (taking Photographs While Brown) being an offence. What’s surprising is not so much that some daft coppers decide to harass people like this, but that the police high command are so eager to rush it to the press. Then the BBC solemnly announce this as a disturbing new threat to us, as if it actually mattered even in the slightest way – there being nothing else of importance going on in the world to fill news slots.

  • its1789

    The families killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan, as well as Gadaffi’s three small grandchildren; appriciate the subtle difference between being blown to pieces by a real terrorist bomb, and being killed by bomb dropped by a kindly Danish pilot on a mission to bring freedom and democracy to Libya.

  • Nomadic

    You get arrested if you take photographs inside tube station, or if you take photographs of strategically important buildings including administrative buildings. Ask where? In Uzbekistan! Congratulations to Brits. You have come down to the levels of Uzbeki officials!!!

  • CanSpeccy

    “Racist harassment”?

    Why racist?

    Why harassment?

    “Fears of a revenge attack following Osama Bin Laden’s killing increased last night after five men were arrested under the Terrorism Act close to the Sellafield nuclear site.

    Seems to me you are engaged in incitement to racial antagonism without justification.

    “The suspects, all in their twenties and from London, were detained by armed police hours after Britain was placed on red alert for possible reprisals after the Al Qaeda leader’s death.

    They had driven 300 miles to the site, which has long been regarded as a major target for Islamic terrorists.”

    (Read more:

    Their behavior is surprising. Five people of Pakistani origin or descent drive 300 miles to inspect a prime terrorist target, following a US incursion and assassination on Pakistani soil.

    Seems to me that the logic of the undeclared war on Pakistan justifies the concern that those arrested were potential terrorists.

    If their rights were violated or if they were not treated in accordance with the law, why not say so?

  • Jotman

    The countries where I have been most strongly admonished for taking photos are Egypt, the Republic of Georgia, and the UK.

    But at least in Egypt and Georgia the authorities don’t harass you for taking photos of the train stations. Once I made the mistake of taking a photograph inside Paddington Station. Not a moment later a voice boomed over the public address system: “Photography is strictly prohibited inside Paddington Station.”

  • CanSpeccy

    People who write here as though to be arrested for filming a nuclear fuels processing operation is somehow a breach of their civil rights are simply idiotic.

    The Sellafield plant currently stockpiles one hundred thousand kilograms of plutonium dust which, according to the British Pugwash Group, is being stored in a “ludicrous” way (

    One hundred thousand kilograms is enough to build tens of thousands of nukes. It’s enough, if transported into the atmosphere by combustion or and explosion, to create the greatest man-made catastrophe in the history of the world.

    One can only be thankful that despite the lunacy of having such an operation on British soil, the British authorities at least employ a Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) to maintain some security over a doomsday installation waiting to bring doomsday to most of the UK, and depending on wind direction, Ireland or Europe, or probably both.

    People understand that it is foolish to talk about bombs when boarding an aircraft. Likewise, it is foolish to drive all the way from London just to videotape the Sellafield nuclear fuels processing plant, since such film would be a necessary prerequisite to the planning of a ground-based raid or attack on the plant.

  • The Cartoonist

    This just came through on Twitter, from the London Photographers’ Branch:

    “BREAKING – 5 London men arrested for filming near the Sellafield plant on Monday have been released without charge”

    Reminds me somehow of the Austrian Tourists tourists a few years ago who took some photos of a bus depot in London. Police approached them and forced them to delete all of their pictures. It’s getting more and more ridiculous, they’ve gone completely bonkers here in the UK.

  • The Cartoonist

    @CanSpeccy, don’t be ridiculous – someone who wants to plan a “ground-based raid or attack on the plant” would be better off looking through the Google image search, Google Maps, Google Street View and Google Earth, but surely not by taking a few photos (or a video) from a distance. For crying out loud, people can take photos of whatever they want even in Moscow or Peking!

    There is absolutely no law against taking photos in a public space.

  • CanSpeccy


    First, Google Street View doesn’t take you into Sellafied, only to the perimeter.

    Second, anyone who thinks they can reconstruct a three-dimensional complex from a Google satellite image is nuts.

    Third, you say “There is absolutely no law against taking photos in a public space.” You sure? The people arrested were arrested under anti-terrorism legislation, the provision of which are unknown to me — do you know them?

    In any case, only an idiot would complain of legislation that might lead to the arrest of suspicious behavior in the vicinity of a an installation with one hundred thousand kilograms of plutonium, of which it requires only a couple of kilograms to make a bomb.

    If the arrests were made in violation of the law, then (a) this can be established in court and appropriate compensation made, and (b) the law can be amended to insure that such behavior becomes a legitimate basis for arrest and questioning in the future.

    In any case, if you think that some trivial supposed civil right of individuals acting, at the very least, foolishly — like someone joking about bombs while boarding an aircraft — trump the need for the utmost security for a doomsday establishment, I would say that you are stark raving nuts.

  • The Cartoonist



    I am a 100% sure:

    Any more questions?

    CanSpeccy, I believe you must be utterly raving mad if you think that photography in public places should be verboten. And this has got nothing to do with idiots making jokes about bombs while boarding an aircraft.

  • Bill Brown

    Tom, I think you’re pretty safe from the CIA unless you hire people to fly commercial jets into 100-story office buildings and kill 3,000 people. In that case you’ve got it coming.

  • CanSpeccy

    “I am a 100% sure” and pretty certainly wrong.

    “Five men were arrested near the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, northwestern England under the Terrorism Act, police said today.

    Local police said a stop check on a vehicle by the Civil Nuclear Constabulary at 4:32pm local time Monday led to the arrests of the men, who are in their 20s and all from London. The BBC reported they were of Bangladeshi origin.

    Sky News sources suggested the officers became suspicious after seeing the men filming or photographing around the plant.”

    Read more:

    The news report may be in error, but it would appear that filming or photographing a nuclear fuels processing plant can be a basis for arrest under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

    But interpretation of the Act is not a simple matter, so your 100% certainty seems a bit of a joke.

    In any case, I am glad that there are laws that prevent potential terrorists from filming or otherwise behaving suspiciously in the vicinity of one hundred thousand kilograms of plutonium: enough to make tens of thousands of fission bombs.

  • CanSpeccy


    More accurate, perhaps, to say that the US is the agent of the New World Order, a global government in the making. That is the reason for the genocidal war on the nation state, not only in Europe, but in the ME and Central Asia – a war conducted, for the most part, by the governments of those states. More about this here.

  • CanSpeccy

    The Cartoonist’s insistence, based largely on a link to a piece of upside down writing, that “There is absolutely no law against taking photos in a public space,” has continued to irritate me to the extent that I finally did a Google search, which yielded, in about one tenth of a second, a link to this Wikipedia article, which lists a vast number of legal restrictions on the taking of photos in public and privates spaces in the United Kingdom.

    In particular, the article states: “It is also an offence under section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to take a photograph of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”

    Which allows one to resume consideration of Craig Murray’s bizarre contention that police officers acting in accordance with the Terrorism Act, or other legislation concerning the security of nuclear installations were engaging in “racist harassment” by detaining and questioning five men who, having driven from London, were observed photographing or filming the Sellafield nuclear fuels processing plant where there is enough plutonium to replicate all the fission bombs on Earth several times over.

    Can anyone explain the basis for this charge of racism? Is the charge based on the supposition that the police were white and the arrested men brown?

    And if so, does that mean that in Britain it will be necessary to prohibit white police from policing brown (or yellow or red or blue or green) people?

  • The Cartoonist

    From the Wikipedia article quoted above:
    “In general under the law of the United Kingdom one cannot prevent photography of private property from a public place, and in general the right to take photographs on private land upon which permission has been obtained is similarly unrestricted.”

  • CanSpeccy

    “Cartoonist” you are a clown indeed. Mark Twain said the essence of American humor is a lie badly told. Are you an American as well as a clown?

    The piece from the Wikipedia article to which I provided a link (see above) begins with the words “In general..” clearly implying, as the following sentences confirm, that there are exceptions. And in fact there are many exceptions. I won’t quote them here. folks need only follow the link to see for themselves.

    Now about Craig Murray’s charge of “racist harassment” by the police, can no one explain what was racist in the action of police in detaining individuals, under the provisions of the ant-terrorism legislation?

    My own view is that Craig Murray assumes that the police were white whereas those arrested were brown and that this, in itself, amounts to racism. But in that case, which is best, a little police racism as Murray may bizarrely defines it, or accepting the risk of the greatest man-made catastrophe in the history of the world (remember, there’s one hundred thousand kilograms of plutonium dust stored at Sellafield, enough to make tens of thousands of bombs or poison the entire planet if transported into the atmosphere) for the sake of political correctness and a spot of British race baiting?

  • The Cartoonist

    Of course I’m an American and I’m proud of it! I even admit that sometimes I work for a circus, although not necessarily as a clown.

  • dreoilin

    Took photos of the Trawsfyndd power station back in the 70s and nobody batted an eye. Mind you, the IRA would have been seriously loopy to target that, given our proximity.
    We weren’t there to photograph the power station, but to visit the Hedd Wyn memorial. Nevertheless, we just sat there with our Dublin reg car, snapping away (macabre curiosity I suppose – no nuclear in Ireland) and nobody paid any attention.
    I also drove as far as I could into RAF Valley, out of similar curiosity (and given that I was travelling with an obsessive photographer) but that was pre-William. Nobody challenged us at all. Changed times?

  • CanSpeccy

    I am disappointed that neither Craig Murray nor anyone else has offered an explanation for Craig Murray’s allegation of racism against members of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary who arrested five Bangladeshi men on Monday who they believed to have been filming the Sellafield nuclear fuels processing plant.

    “The men [now released] told police they were travelling along the road just 100m (330ft) from Sellafield because their in-car satellite navigation system had taken them the wrong way …” (Irish Times).

    A false charge of racism is surely as offensive as a racist slur. In fact it may be a racist slur.

  • CanSpeccy

    “Racist harassment by the state is firmly back on the agenda.”

    Is this statement completely unsupportable? If not, why does no one say anything to support it.

    Or is it a statement of Anglophobic racism by a self-hating Englishman.

  • CanSpeccy

    Interesting article here (The Culture of Tyanny) by Joe Sobran about false charges of racism.

    “Thought-crimes differ from ordinary crimes in several respects.

    First, they aren’t defined. Nobody knows exactly what “racism” is; it can mean anything the accuser wants it to mean. And it rarely refers to overt acts; usually it refers to the alleged thoughts or attitudes of the accused.

    Second, nothing has to be proved – and since the word has no clear definition, nothing can be proved. So the accuser bears no burden of proof, as he would in cases of ordinary crimes. The accused is presumed guilty as long as the accusation is sufficiently strident. And, given the vagueness of the charge, he can’t prove he isn’t racist.

    Third, and most important, nobody ever has to pay a price for making a false or reckless accusation. Nobody is ruined or disgraced for making loose charges of “racism.””

    Something for Craig and his groupies to bear in mind. False charges of racism are a prime weapon of arse holes in support of tryanny.

  • CanSpeccy

    Amazing, no one here ready to support Craig Murray’s claim of racist harassment by the Civil Nuclear Constabulary officers who arrested five Bangladeshis who were thought to have been filming the Sellafield nuclear fuels plant which stores one hundred thousand kilograms of plutonium, enough to make thousands of fission bombs: not even Angrysoba who called me, for what reason I am don’t know, a “kike-hater” on this very site.

    Perhaps Angrysoba is a kike himself and thinks I hate him.

    But what is a kike, anyhow? I thought it was a large bird.

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