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Today's thought
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Thank our lucky stars
We should count ourselves very, very lucky.
The arrests in the south of England this week and the discovery of more than half a ton of bomb-making fertiliser has apparently thwarted an atrocity in the advanced stages of planning.
In the chilling language of the security experts a huge lorry bomb was destined for a ‘soft target’ - in other words amongst a crowded shopping street or outside a school, a church, a synagogue or perhaps at a big football match or beside a pub or a night club.
In such a multicultural city as London it would, of course, have slaughtered innocent Muslims alongside Christians, Jews and Hindus.
The carnage would have been unimaginable - probably at the very least on the scale of the Bali bombing.
The police and the security services deserve our thanks for their swift response and the meticulous intelligence that made such decisive action possible.
Remember this event the next time you hear some well-heeled human rights lawyer bleating about the civil liberties of terrorists.
But as the IRA used to boast, democracies have to be lucky every time - terrorists only have to be lucky once.
Who is to know how many other such attacks are, as you read this, being planned across the land?
Because by far the most worrying aspect of the present wave of Islamofascist fanaticism infecting the UK is the fact that much of it is home grown.
Young, impressionable British-born Muslims are increasingly influenced by extremist, foreign clerics such as Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri, who our government seems utterly powerless to eject.
Every week they preach that Jews are the sons of pigs and that civilians in Britain are legitimate targets for terrorist attacks. Their hatred of the West and all our freedoms knows no bounds. But still the authorities refuse to act against them.
The decision by the Muslim Council of Britain to issue a warning against such extremism is welcome - but it is only a start.
For too long the Muslim community has turned a deaf ear to those promoting violence and racism in their midst or turned a blind eye when their radicalised sons went off on ‘backpacking holidays’ to the Tora Bora mountains.
Isn’t it time true believers rose up to reclaim their religion from the hands of these extremists?
To fail to do so will put at risk our famed tolerance and also the political, religious and economic freedoms that attracted millions of Muslims to this country in the first place.
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2.4.04 19:39
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Still think appeasement works?
Supporters of appeasement argued that all the Spanish had to do was to promise to withdraw from Iraq and the terrorists would leave them alone.
It's not working out quite like that is it?
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4.4.04 13:55
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Don't posh schools teach any history any more?
I’m used to ignorance and stupidity on a positively heroic scale from the superannuated South Kensington Trots who habitually write for the Guardian.
But this from Emma Brockes this morning has to take the chocolate-covered hobnob.
Money quote - “The image of Britons as protectors of liberty, meanwhile, comes down to an element of what philosophers call "moral luck". That is, virtuous behaviour that comes about not as a result of moral inquiry, but as a by-product of circumstance. The circumstance in this case is geography: the Channel, by saving Britain from invasion, has allowed for its liberty-loving image never really to have been tested.”
Never been tested!?!?!?
Er, 1940 to 1942 anyone?
Don’t middle class schools teach any history any more?
Thank God I attended a Bog Standard Comprehensive.
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5.4.04 23:19
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A curious case of ritual genuflection
British journalists have adopted a curious little ritual genuflection when reporting the activities of Islamic extremists in the UK.
It was most notable last week when supporters of the Islamofascist Al-Muhajiroun group burned the Union flag outside the Regent’s Park mosque in London and gloated that there will soon be an al Qaida bombing attack against civilians in Britain.
After every single report of this disgusting event the reporter felt it necessary to add something along the lines of: “Of course, this tiny minority of extremists in no way represents the views of the vast majority of law abiding Muslims.”
I’m sure all decent people sincerely hope that this is the case, but in truth this statement is little more than wishful thinking.
It is a classic case of what the Americans call ‘editorialising’ - that is the reporter injecting his or her own political views into what should be an objective report, with no evidence to back up the assertion whatsoever.
In fact the only hard evidence available to us paints an entirely different picture.
A Guardian/ICM poll published last month showed that an astonishing 13 per cent of British Muslims support continuing terrorist attacks by al Qaida and other similar groups against targets in the West.
If replicated amongst the UK’s two million Muslims this would mean that more than a quarter of a million Muslims in this country actively support terrorist atrocities against UK civilians.
Hardly a ‘tiny minority’.
The conventional orthodoxy when faced with such uncomfortable statistics is to argue that these are people so worn down and by racism and discrimination that they are driven to desperate measures.
Although this theory conveniently lets the Muslim leadership in the UK off the hook, it is holed below the waterline by the available evidence.
For example, of the two British homicide bombers who killed themselves in Israel last year, one was a former student at Cranfield College and the other an ex-pupil at Repton public school (fees £19,000 a year).
The arrests in connection with the fertiliser bomb plot last week didn’t take place in the deprived slums of Burnley or Oldham, but in the leafy and expensive suburbs of Sussex and Surrey.
Desperate? Impoverished? Disadvantaged?
I don’t think so.
In truth these are immensely privileged young men who have grabbed with both hands every benefit our society has to offer, but who are now determined to destroy our hard-earned freedoms.
It is up to us - and the majority of Muslims - whether we are prepared to allow them to get away with it.
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8.4.04 11:58
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Protecting the protesters
The chemical bomb attack planned for a crowded public space in London was apparently foiled as the result of intelligence gathered from intercepted mobile phone and e-mail conversations - quite possibly thanks to work carried out by listening stations such as Menwith Hill and Fylingdales in Yorkshire.
Remember this the next time you see a group of sanctimonious, smug, ‘peace campaigners’ blocking the gates.
They are entitled to their protest, of course. But let us not forget they can only indulge in their priggish moralising because other, less high-minded, individuals are prepared to lay their lives on the line to protect their liberty.
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10.4.04 19:00
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What would have happened if the war in Iraq hadn’t happened?
How would those who opposed the liberation have dealt with Saddam, his threat to the wider world and his torture of murder of his own people?
Well now we know thanks to this piece in the Guardian.
Among the more hilarious suggestions is the idea from actor Mark Rylance that the Iraqi regime could have been tamed by use of electronic tagging and surveillance cameras.
That’ll teach them!
Perhaps, if we threaten to withhold Osama Bin Laden’s pocket money he’ll stop bombing Western civilians?
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12.4.04 16:17
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Proof that appeasement doesn't work
Supporters of appeasement argued that all the Spanish had to do was to promise to withdraw their troops from Iraq and the terrorists would leave them alone.
It hasn’t worked out quite like that has it?
When the ring leaders of the March 11 Madrid bombings blew themselves up after being cornered by police, investigators found 22 pounds of dynamite and 200 detonators in the wreckage of their apartment.
"They were going to keep on attacking because some of the explosives were prepared, packed and connected to detonators," Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.
Now the terrorists have demanded the Spanish withdraw from Afghanistan as well as iraq.
Perhaps if the Spanish comply, the terrorists will stop their attacks?
I don’t think so. In fact each and every capitulation is immediately followed by yet more outrageous demands.
What next? That Spanish women should stop wearing mini skirts and instead don the burqa? That men should grow beards? That homosexuals should be executed? That adulterers be stoned to death? That churches should be demolished and mosques built in their stead? That female children should be subjected to genital mutilation?
The road of appeasement is never ending - and you have to crawl every inch of the way on your knees.
One day you just have to stand up on your feet and decide to fight back - and the sooner the better.
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13.4.04 21:25
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