Operation Temperer

As I'm already getting bored of saying on Monday (22/5/17) the UK city of Manchester came under terrorist attack. With 22 people killed and 59 wounded this was the second worst terror attack ever to hit the British mainland.

In response the British government have raised the terror threat level to critical. This is the most severe terror threat level and normally means that an attack is either imminent of underway. By changing the threat level the British has also been able to activate something called; "Operation Temperer." Although the British public already seem to have started referring to this as; "Operation Tempura."

Operation Temperer allows the British military to deployed in support of the British police. This is not as dramatic as it first sounds.

Britain obviously has a military to defend it in a time of war. However in a time of peace it falls to the police to defend the military when they're stationed in the UK. The Ministry of Defence actually has its own police force - the Ministry of Defence Police - specifically for this purpose.

Monday's (22/5/17) bomb attack occurred at the security perimeter of the Manchester Evening News Arena (MENA) on the outside of the perimeter. This makes it extremely hard to defend against. If you increase security checks such as bag searches at the perimeter it creates a bottleneck causing a large crowd to form outside of the perimeter. That actually increases the risk from this type of attack.

Following the November 13th 2015 (13/11/15) attack on the Stade de France stadium we faced a similar problem with the COP21 Summit that was also held in Paris, France later that month. Then there was talk of introducing a soft outer perimeter and a harder inner perimeter. People would smoothly pass through the outer perimeter after it only being established they had tickets to reach the inner perimeter.

However the MENA bombing occurred at the end of a concert as people were leaving. The only real solution I can think of to that problem is to do what they do at high-risk football matches. Remove people from the ground in sections and throw a mobile police cordon - "Kettle" - around the small groups as they're escorted to their trains/buses home.

Football hooligans clearly enjoy that. However if we have to go to those lengths for an Ariana Grande concert I kind of think it means the terrorists have won.

Therefore the only real way to secure a location like the MENA is to have armed police patrolling on the outside of the security perimeter. Unpleasant as it is if the need arises they will then shoot and kill any attacker before they have time to detonate their bomb.

The problem is that the British police are not routinely armed. The select few who are get assigned to protecting things like military bases and government and diplomatic buildings. Operation Temperer simply allows the military to protect their own bases - something they're more than capable of - meaning the armed police can then be redeployed to protect civilians.

One area where Operation Temperer will centre around is the Horse Guards Parade area of central London. This has the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street on one side and Buckingham Palace on the other. In the middle you have the parade ground of the Cavalry Guard. These days they use light tanks rather than horses.

In this area of London the military already work extremely closely with the military of security. However rather than being intimidating this actually one of London's main tourist attractions.

The people you see standing outside Buckingham Palace in silly red jackets and even sillier hats are actually some of the most elite soldiers in the British Army. They carry real assault rifles loaded with real bullets and real bayonets.

Yesterday (23/5/16) there were raids carried out in the Fallowfield area of Manchester by very heavily armed masked people wearing grey uniforms. It has been incorrectly claimed that these were members of the British Special Operations Forces (SOF) the Special Air Service (SAS). They not. They're members of London's Metropolitan Police's newly formed Counter-Terrorism Specialist Firearms Officers (CTSFO) unit.

However the SAS were deployed in London to end the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege. They've had a rapid response unit stationed in London ever since. They actually carried out the raid on the London apartment of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after he'd attempted to carry out the 2009 bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Detroit, US.

I know this because I was driving through London's Blackwall tunnel when the SAS came tearing past. Let's just say that Abdulmutallab wasn't the only one who needed new underwear.

As to why the terrorist threat has been raised there are a number of good reasons.

Although I hate to say it one of these is that the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins of May 28th (28/5/17). Rather like the Christian holy month of Lent Ramadan is all about sacrifice, atoning for sins and getting yourself right with God. However for groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) this means blowing people up.

So although it's got nothing to do with what most Muslims would recognise as Ramadan the terrorist threat is higher during Ramadan.

Secondly the UK holds its General Election on June 8th (8/6/17). Yesterday I said that in carrying out the bombing ISIL were trying to force themselves onto the election agenda because they felt left out. However now I've had time for consideration I think they may have been attempting something more sophisticated then that.

As I will do in this post it is extremely easy to blame the Manchester bombing on the governing Conservative Party and in particular former Prime Minister David Cameron and his scumbag Chancellor (Finance Minister) George Osborne.

In the wake of the attack much of the British public have responded by praising the emergency services including Britain's cherish National Health Service (NHS) for their response. Yesterday I wrote about the need for close coordination between the health services, police services and schools to limit the psychological impact of the attack.

The Conservative government are not only starving those services of funding they are actively trying to destroy those vital links between them. For example they're pushing the idea of what are called; "Free Schools" specifically because they fall outside local authority control.

As such it is extremely difficult to discuss the Manchester bombing without it reading like an attack on the Conservative party.

Manchester and near-by Liverpool are traditional Labour Party strongholds. They certainly won't make any effort to avoid attacking the Conservative Party.

Therefore ISIL seem to be trying to swing the election in favour of the Labour Party.

That's because Labour have long had an unpleasantly close relationship with Muslim extremists. The Bradford West seat is particularly shameful to the party. As you may have heard the Labour MP there Naz Shah actively campaigns on a platform of anti-semitism, homophobia and misogyny.

The most high profile example is the resolution of Labour MP Jo Cox on June 16th 2016 (16/6/16). This should have triggered a counter-terrorism investigation over her material support for ISIL and other groups.

However the Labour Party stepped in and used political pressure to block the investigation. That is far from the first counter-terror investigation Labour have blocked and the party have still not disowned Jo Cox.

At the election the Labour Party themselves are defining success as equaling their worst election result which came in the 1930's. So even with ISIL's help I think it is highly unlikely that we will see a Labour government on June 9th (9/6/17).

Monday's (22/5/17) suicide bomber has since been identified as Salman Abedi - the 22 year old child of Libyan refugee parents. This makes the bombing very much an example Karma biting Britain on the arse.

Britain had a long running feud with former Libyan leader Muammer Qaddafi. I often talk about this Cold War of Resistance involving groups like the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Irish Republic groups such as the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). Qaddafi played a huge role in arming these groups and basically anyone who wanted arms. So the 1996 Manchester bombing was probably carried out using Libyan Semtex.

In the wake of the 2011 revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt Britain spied an opportunity to take revenge on Qaddafi. They dispatched covert terror cells to conduct attacks on the Libyan security services. When the Libyans acted against the British terror cells Britain used it as an excuse to launch a conventional military campaign which eventually killed Qaddafi.

This is the same tactic Hitler used in Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Bill Clinton used in Serbia in 1999.

These terror cells were largely raised from the large Libyan ex-patriot community living in and around Manchester. The joke at the time was you had more chance of hearing a Manchester accent in Misrata, Libya then in the home end at Manchester Utd match.

As such Manchester City football club have actually come to represent Islamist terrorists in England's rough around the edges football code. This sees West Ham represent gay men, Arsenal represent lesbians, Tottenham represent Jews etc.

Obviously Qaddafi did not fall as quickly as Britain would like. So Britain set up training camps to turn these terror cells into terror armies. When Qaddafi did fall those terror armies were scooped up by Turkey and poured into Syria via the Garvaghy Road where they became ISIL.

When it comes to Syria and Iraq Britain has a pretty good intelligence picture. They've got regular forces on the ground in Iraq acting as trainers and SOF's on the ground in Syria. There is also the vast air operation which guided by a huge intelligence gathering operation.

In contrast Libya is currently a madhouse. There are currently I think four governments and a huge range of militias. Amid the constantly shifting allegiances half the time I don't think these militias know who they're fighting, who they're allied with and where they are located.

So in contrast to Syria and Iraq Libya represents something of a huge intelligence black hole for Britain. Amid a range of competing regional actors it is also an extremely politically sensitive one.

Britain's security services seem to be basing their response to Monday's (22/5/17) Manchester bombing on the July 7th 2005 (7/7/05) Al Qaeda bombings.

Here Al Qaeda dispatched a bomb maker to arm several terror cells. It was sort of the A team that carried out the 7/7/05 bombings with the B team trying and failing to carry out a similar attack a week or so later. I think there may even have been C and D teams who were stopped before mounting their attacks.

Even at their most powerful Al Qaeda were always a small group that operated in the shadows. By contrast ISIL have been able to operate openly allowing them to train large numbers of fighters. As such they're likely to have many bomb makers making each one less valuable to the group.

So the reason that Britain haven't yet tracked down the bomb maker and the other terror cells may well be that they simply don't exist. Having being trained in Syria or Libya Abedi may well have been his own bomb maker.

However I have to say that I'm not so confident in that theory that I'm going to order everyone to stand down.

I do though think the raising of the terror threat is a precaution due to a lack of information rather than a reason to start panicking.

16:40 on 24/5/17 (UK date).