Britain shrinks away at a threat of war

When your government caves in like this, you know it no longer serves the interests of the people. It has come to the point where every decent, remotely sane Brit should consider whether or not their system needs to be, as we Americans used to say, "altered or abolished:"

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

A sane government would have immediately rounded up all Saudi foreign nationals, including diplomatic personnel, and deported them from its soil over a threat like this. It would be perfectly reasonable for the government from that point on to consider any act of terrorism committed on its soil by Saudi nationals, or foreigners financed by Saudis, to be acting as proxy fighters operating under the implicit or explicit guidance of the Saudi government. In short, any act of terrorism committed by such people would be quite rightly considered an act of war.

The Blair government was more concerned with creating a neofascist state in Britain than providing for the basic security of the people of the United Kingdom.