There wasn’t much of a “German far left” line on Baader-Meinhof, as far as I know. The German far left, or at least its intellectual capability, was wiped out by both nazism and Stalinism. Otherwise such a stupid phenonemon could never have existed.

At the same time there was said to be significant – passive – support in certain sections of the West German population for “left wing” terrorism – I suspect to a significantly higher level than was ever the case within the organised, political left.

If the Police wanted to frame me for a bank robbery, for example, I am sure they could do it. Just invent a list of telephone calls and contacts. I would ofcourse respond that I have no links with organised crime (which is true). Have you read Kafka’s ‘The Trial’? How can a person prove their innocence against a corrupt system. They can’t, but that is a far reaching discussion and perhaps a tad philosophical for this moment.

As for your German-ness, I merely wanted to show you that I was aware that different Euroepean nations have different political histories. I’m sorry if you found that offensive.

I don’t knowd about the 9/11 stuff, I’ve always kept well away from it. Same as crop circles and alien abductions in my book. I am not privy to discussions in the CIA or even MOSSAD as to what they knew or did not know.

I repeat, I would just like to see a far-left strategy for fighting terrorism. What line did the German far left take over the Baader-Meinhof. It would be interesting to know.

And you contradict yourself. First you say, no-one can pin anything on you because you haven’t and won’t do anything. They you say the police can frame you now, “for murder, pimping or drug dealing either” anyway. To frame someone, some kind of ‘evidence’ is provided. Don’t you think it’d be easier for severe miscarriages of justice to come about if the ‘evidence’ already all exists and just the selected bits need to be pulled together to fit the crime?

And I repeat: where does this idea of “random terrorism without warnings” come from? The evidence pre-9/11 was all there. The “intelligence services” were too stupid, incompetent, or isolationist (not having enough staff who could understand the languages in which the phone calls, etc., they’d recorded existed, having sacked them all), to understand the warnings.

And I repeat as well (and I know this gets us nowhere, but I can do the same as well): why do you think that a police-observation state is any kind of answer?

If that’s the society we are going to have to live in (and one you want to live in), you accept that the terrorists have won – and have little problem with it.

‘Why should the government treat ‘you, Sue R, as a criminal?’. Because it will stop nasty people blowing me up on my journey into work? They can treat me as a criminal, but I’m not one so they wouldn’t be able to pin anythin on me, not even drugs. I suppose you are thinking of ‘The Lost Honour of Katerina Blum’, where she was identified as a terrorist, when she wasn’t. There’s nothing to stop the police framing me for murder, pimping or drug dealing either.

I don’t know if the CIA knew all about 9/11 but had failed to process the information. Sounds a bit troofer to me. Wouldn’t that be an argument for expansion of intelligence services though if it’s true?

I repeat, how do you (d z bodenberg or anyone else)see the state/government dealing with the longterm threat of random terrorism without warnings? I think the left has to give some attention to this question because at the end of the day it’s workers and their families that are blown up.

Just as easy, and just as valid is my question: why should the entire population be treated as criminals, and how would this do *anything* to counter international terrorism anyway? (The CIA knew all about 9/11 beforehand, but they didn’t know they knew, because they already had too much data they couldn’t deal with or understand. Collecting even more information won’t help them at all, surely?)

Why should the government(s) treat *you*, Sue R, as a criminal?

That data will show exactly *who* you are (and who I am, as well). That is the nature of the internet and modern technology. Nothing is anonymous.

And we know the record of governments (and not just the British one) when it comes to leaving files on the 5.47 to Brighton (or to Mönchengladbach, Paris, Rome, or Bratislava), or leaving them on old laptops which turn up on the world’s favourite place for finding stolen goods, erm, I mean auction house. A future socialist revolution (which will obviously, as history has shown, work out perfectly and for the good of humankind), or a future fascist state is neither here nor there. Chile has (had) the longest record of democracy (based on Britain’s, I believe) in South America. It couldn’t happen there, everyone was convinced. Why shouldn’t it happen here?

In a nutshell: if the state knows all your details someone else will, at some point, too. Data protection is too weak. Files have to be accessed, somehow, and all chains have a weak spot (or many of them), enabling “unauthorised access” – either directly, online; or (I suspect, less probably) via the left on the bus/stolen memory card route. And it could be one of those “nutcases”. It doesn’t have to be google or amazon using them for a profit. Which is almost as bad.

When it comes to draconian countries and drug dealers etc. – perhaps they get around such problems by “nationalising” such industries. North Korea got caught smuggling cocaine (I think) into Australia a while back.