How to end terrorism. A reminder.

With the recent London bombings, the attempted bombings and the astonishingly cynical response to both from the government and most of the media, it is all too easy to overlook the significance of today's statement from the IRA.

The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign. All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms.

All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.

The IRA leadership has also authorised our representative to engage with the IICD [Independent International Commission on Decommissioning] to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use in a way which will further enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as possible.

What we are not hearing is this. The IRA was not defeated and the civil war in Northern Ireland was not ended by the British army beating down catholic front doors, nor by the internment of 'suspects' or by MI6 infiltrating terrorist groups, or by assassinating any group's leadership, active members or random members of the public. Not at all. The bombings and terrorist atrocities were ended when our government sat down with the leadership of the IRA and began negotiations. We didn't surrender to the IRA, we didn't give in to their demands, we didn't betray anyone, we simply talked to them, discovered areas of common ground, they gave way a little, we gave way a little and now we have a peace in Northern Ireland. Terrorism, bought about by the British occupation of another country, ended by talking. Imagine.

Sadly, some leaders of the Unionist community have attitudes which remain stuck firmly in the 70s. Ian Paisley has said that the IRA have "reverted to type" although just for a change, he doesn't make it very clear what he means. Surely if the IRA had reverted to type they would have set a bomb in a Belfast hotel and killed a couple of dozen innocents? Reverting to type is not something Mr Paisley will ever be accused of. He used to be an ignorant, opinionated bigot and he remains an ignorant, opinionated bigot. Let us hope most Unionists will ignore him.

Some interesting stories on London and terrorism via Crimes and Corruptions of the New World Order.

William Bowles writes in 'Ramping up the fear quotient' how the government and police are dripping out disinformation in order to keep terrorism on the front pages and thereby divert attention away from their own murderous activities. It contains a very concise analysis of recent propaganda put out as fact and the media's complicity in spreading it;

The media for its part, seems quite content to act as an unquestioning conduit for whatever rubbish the state puts out, not even bothering to correct the record (such as it is) when yet another scurrilous piece of disinformation bites the dust. In fact the media's role in this entire affair has been, to put it mildly, shameful.

To illustrate this, can I point out that the Met Police have been forced to admit that Mr de Menezes, whom they executed recently did NOT leap over the ticket barrier as first claimed, he used his travel card and he was NOT wearing a heavy jacket, but a normal denim jacket which could not possibly have concealed a bomb. These facts destroy the police's story as to why they had to kill him. Has this been widely reported? No it has not.

The BBC are this evening giving a great deal of coverage to the fact that Mr de Menezes' visa to be in the UK expired in 2003, as if that justifies seven bullets to the brain. Reporting of this nature leads to headlines like this; Bombers are all spongeing (sic) asylum seekers which appeared on the front page of the Daily Express on Tuesday (via The Daily Mail Watch). I am ashamed to be British.

Andrew Murray in The Guardian again challenges Blair to come clean over the link between the new wave of terrorism and Iraq, a link backed up by no less than three new studies, each finding that the war in Iraq has incited more, not less, terrorism. Quite how long Mr Bliar can continue to behave like King Canute faced against the tidal wave of factual information showing him to be wrong remains unclear.