
© AFP Photo / HO / West Midlands PolicePavlo Lapshyn
Of all the circumstances surrounding last week's conviction of Britain's Neo-Nazi Ukrainian born terrorist, Pavlo Lapshyn, the London press' failure to join the dots, even to call him a terrorist, is scandal all of its own.
When considering state actors' role in aiding domestic terrorism, the London press has a blind spot. They seem to forget that during the 1970s & 1980s Irish troubles, state complicity and 'collusion' was pouring petrol on the flames. Evidence has been around for years that the British Army's Force Research Unit (FRU), Brigadier Gordon Kerr specifically, was an integral part of the anti-IRA, Loyalist terror program.
State terrorism in Northern IrelandState collusion with British terrorists arguably represents the greatest threat to UK national security, because it has gone almost entirely unrecognized and unpunished. This week Irish writer, Anne Cadwallader, pointed out in her new book about the Irish troubles, '
Lethal Allies', that serving policemen in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) instigated and took part in terrorist murders of Catholics. Along with the unofficial 'shoot to kill' policy, this collusion was a powerful recruiting tool, generating ever more terrorism.
Collusion also turned Northern Ireland into a civil war training ground for the police and army, pitting soldiers against urban guerrillas. Cadwallader says: "There was systematic collusion in the 1970s... there must have been somebody trying to push Northern Ireland over the edge of the abyss. If there had been a virtual civil war, I think it would have suited some people in London."

© AFP Photo / Peter MuhlyMasked youths prepare to throw molotov cocktails as they block the railway line near the house of former Irish Republican Army (IRA) man Colin Duffy in Lurgan, southwest of Belfast and Bellaghy, Northern Ireland
Comment: $13 billion might seem like a lot of money to us little people, but did you notice that at no time was it suggested that anyone go to prison for causing a crisis whose true cost probably hits the $1 quadrillion mark, and which we the people have been forced to pay?