So, the International Monitoring Commission (IMC) is nothing more than a collection of "spooks, spies, civil servants and failed politicians". People who are vindictively looking to "penalise the very people who have done so much to bring peace to Northern Ireland". Well, that explains it then, writes David Adams.
The IMC report must be part of another anti-peace-process, black-propaganda campaign by Northern Ireland Office (NIO) securocrats and their stooges. Thank God someone caught them on; you just couldn't be up to those NIO people and their dirty tricks.
Though it still leaves the rest of us with a few crucial, if somewhat awkward, questions.
If the paramilitaries aren't to blame - or at least any of those that politicians are eager to claim credit for leading in from the wilderness and providing with political direction, or to having an insight into the thinking of - then who is behind the murder, intimidation, extortion, punishment beating, drug-dealing and racketeering plaguing our society?
And more critically (with apologies, of course, for running the risk of upsetting the peace process or the sensitivities of those working so hard on our behalf) can anything be done about it and, if so, by whom? Or must we simply accept that fascistic gangsterism is to become as prominent and permanent a feature of Northern Ireland as the Giant's Causeway?
Politicians claim that, beyond an occasional statement of condemnation (or exploitation), they are as helpless as everyone else.
The PSNI can't stamp it out without help from the communities, and that won't be forthcoming so long as they continue to be portrayed as part and parcel of this grand securocratic conspiracy to destroy the peace process. And, following from that, there is the not insignificant problem of people potentially gambling with their lives if even suspected of having helped the police.
Which eventually brings us back to where we started. Politics and society left to the tender mercies, and still at the beck and call, of the paramilitaries. So goes the current, circular and never-ending illogicality of the peace process.
Add to this two governments still extremely reluctant to rock any paramilitary boat too much in case it capsizes and funding bodies tripping over themselves to pour millions of pounds of peace money into paramilitary coffers, and you begin to realise the extent of the problems we face.
The godfathers, some regularly consulted by government ministers and senior civil servants no less, have never had it so good. They have money, power, political clout and a degree of faux respectability and are immune from anything even approaching accountability for their actions or the directions they give others.
Some have even managed to achieve a perverse form of celebrity status.
Is it any wonder, 10 years after they declared ceasefires, that impressionable young men are still lining up to join their ranks? Where else would so many no-hopers get the chance to exercise such enormous, untrammelled power over neighbours? And where else could they hope to find such totally defenceless targets?
For it is almost exclusively within host communities that paramilitaries now seek out their enemies. Long gone are the days when they attacked one another.
The man, woman or, increasingly, child who voices an opinion other than that acceptable to their local "protectors" will in the first instance be "spoken to". If that doesn't do the trick, then they run the risk of a severe beating or worse.
And God help the poor sod who is courageous (or foolish) enough to openly complain about what is going on.
Neither is all of this any longer confined to a few easily identifiable, working-class areas. Like an unchecked computer virus, paramilitary oppression has spread to such an extent that it has become well nigh impossible to identify any part of Northern Ireland completely free of it.
It's little more than a week since the IMC report was published, and already six punishment beatings and a shooting have taken place. And that's only the ones the PSNI and media are aware of. Goodness knows how many other threats and assaults didn't quite make it on to the radar screen. An indication, as if we needed one, of how invincible these people now feel themselves to be.
Call it what you will: fascism, Stalinism, totalitarianism, gangsterism, it is the fact of it that matters, not the title. It's amazing how people suddenly become quite colour-blind when a boot is firmly pressed on their neck. It's of little consequence whether it's an orange or a green boot. It's a boot and it's on their neck is all that matters.
Neither is it of much import who shows an interest in their predicament, as long as someone does, even "spooks, spies, civil servants and failed politicians".
Nor do they care that highlighting their problem might upset the sensitivities of the architects of the peace process or even risk damaging the process itself. After all, it's an expensive peace that has to be bought at the price of virtually every freedom except thought.