NEWS OF THE WEEK

YOUNG BRITISH ISLAMIC TERRORISTS

Only recently the Metropolitan Police have said they will arrest and question young British Muslim jihadists returning from Syria where they have participated in terrorist training and combat against the Syrian Government. The stated aim of these deeply misguided and potentially dangerous youths, dangerous that is to the general public over here, is to wage war against those who are fighting their Islamic brothers whoever they may be. In Syria itself they’ve joined up with various hard line fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups all of which have been declared violent and illegal by most governments around the world, particularly those in Europe and the United States.

It is not simply a question of who these young British terrorist exports are but more important perhaps their personal backgrounds and how they’ve tied themselves to a cause that really has nothing to do with them as British citizens except in terms of an immature rationalization based on religious zeal that borders on lunacy. These questions apart one must consider those who’ve given them support in this country along with publicity.  

Young British converts to jihad, for which read Islamic terrorism, are more often than not the British born children of African and Asian Muslim immigrants to Britain in the 1980’s and 90’s. They may have attended school or university in Britain but culturally and emotionally they never fully integrated into British society. Most were outsiders seeking something different and ultimately found it in the religion of their parents but one that had been seriously radicalized for their youthful ardor by fundamentalist preachers allowed into this country and permitted if not encouraged to spread their racist and violent teaching among the children of these immigrants. This indoctrination can be traced back to the beginning of Labour Government under Tony Blair from the end of the 1990’s. Within this time of mass Muslim immigration from Asia and the Middle East came dozens of extreme fundamentalists welcomed into Britain by Labour Home Secretaries who knew exactly what they were about from police and intelligence reports and despite which facilitated their sermonizing outside mosques to large crowds of youths by giving them full police protection.

This Labour protection of Islamic fundamentalist preachers was all the more extraordinary given their comprehensively racist sermons which were not only anti-white but grossly anti-Semitic and anti-black African and Caribbean. The term applied by these preachers to all those not Muslim was dhimmi, a grossly insulting term connoting religious and racial inferiority. Protected by the law and the police during the time of a Labour Government these people could say whatever they pleased without sanction and their effect on young Muslims was substantial. Thus were the seeds of extremism sown among the Muslim youth which have today ripened into a thirst for terrorist Jihad. Not only in Syria but anywhere! They are a consequence of New Labour’s comprehensively permissive attitude towards Islamic extremism for an entire decade after they were elected to govern. A time during which, it should be said, British foreign policy under Jack Straw was highly favorable towards the grossly anti-Semitic Islamic Republic of Iran, and Straw himself friendly to a regime that had openly denied the Holocaust!

Just as the scuzzy financial creeps running the City of London today are Thatcher’s children, so are these young British jihadists the sons of New Labour. Both spawned their own creepy-crawlies. One set responsible for mass financial swindling and an economic collapse that has impoverished millions, the other responsible for a home grown Muslim terrorist movement that could easily bring Middle East violence onto the shores of our island. As to why so many of these youths, educated in Britain, have opted to identify with such an fundamentally non-British cultural milieu, perhaps it’s because of the religion and culture of their parents. It’s faith that is primary to their existence not the culture of their new environment. They may be a minority within the Muslim community but they’re fast growing and sad to relate seem to have considerable support not to say sponsorship from various organizations within British society.

Let’s take a look at those who seem to be friendly. To individuals, movements and organizations that may loosely be termed up and coming there’s nothing like a bit of publicity.  The Oxygen of Publicity as the phrase is known… and oxygen to the needy it is! And there is no media organisation that gives as much publicity to British fundamentalist jihadists busy fighting in Syria or anywhere else for that matter than Channel Four Television. Their news service seems to have a regular connection with Islamic terrorists busy firing machine guns and other weapons just about anywhere in the world where there is conflict and the same is the case with British Muslim youths engaged in jihad. Channel Four News is popular with Muslim youths throughout Britain, not simply because it is comprehensively hostile towards the Jewish State of Israel but because it provides jihadists with neutral if not favorable publicity. At times it seems as though the Channel acts as an information center for would be recruits.

Second in any publicity list for jihadists is undoubtedly BBC television and its various news programs. The organisation has always had a very mixed attitude to Israel at best and that’s putting it kindly. Far more honest would be to say that it’s slimily hostile. Like Channel Four it refers to Islamic terrorists as jihadists or fighters for Holy War rather than what they actually are… religious terrorists, a section of British Muslim youth so beloved of Britain’s political and cultural left. But wait a moment, is it not true to say that the Islamic fundamentalism these youths espouse is utterly hostile towards socialism, trades unions, women’s rights, gays of whatever gender and many other democratic values and basic human rights besides? Many of their views wouldn’t come amiss in a fascist state so why, one wonders, are they so beloved of the British left and draw no criticism from BBC television.

Unfortunately, it now seems, the British police who had in the past given Islamic hate preachers so much protection on the streets of Britain under New Labour will be called upon to arrest their young disciples returning from doing what they were inspired to do a decade earlier! Maybe we’ll even have the delicious coincidence of an arresting officer today being a former protecting officer of yesterday.

FLOODING   

Oh dear, Oh dear… Fresh from his involvement in the Great Horsemeat Scandal earlier this year,  Environment Secretary Owen Paterson has been caught with his pants down again in the Great Flood Crisis to hit Britain and then came the news that the head of the Environment Agency, now run by former Labour Ministerial jerk-off, Lord Chris Smith, would be visiting the Somerset Levels! Oh happy day! With its staff cut massively in recent times the Agency had clearly been at sixes and sevens when it came to doing a bit of flood prevention and drainage there in the past. Yes it’s another oh dear for farmers boy Paterson. Though not quite as full of blustering bullshit as Boris Johnson he’s clearly first class in making it up as he goes along! If there was ever a member of a Tory Government in recent times who sounded so much at sea then it’s Mister Horsemeat himself! Talk about monkey on a stick. He seems to pop up everywhere there’s some rural crisis like a jack-in-the-box who’s only got one line of chatter. Namely that he’s ready and able to sort everything out! Yes he’s the Jonny-on-the-Spot for horsemeat and floods, farmers and damage limitation. He’s got it all at his fingertips and knows exactly what’s what… only he doesn’t and what he’s actually full of is rushed up civil service briefings and what he actually knows from first-hand experience is jack! One look at him and you know he’s not exactly a man who inspires confidence, to put it mildly!

No, it’s going to rain for forty days and forty nights and the man to help us out and see us through is Mister Horsemeat himself who to date has been in charge of sorting out a criminal scandal for which no-one as yet has been prosecuted! Now I ask you, is that something that makes you feel inspired, and that now he has overall responsibility for sorting out flooding of large parts of Britain he’ll sort that out too! That when he promises to see what he can do about switching on the sun sometime soon there’ll be no more rain and it will be so hot that all the water in Somerset will simply evaporate just because he’s told everybody he’s looking into it! Why, if you listen carefully you can even hear the sheep laughing!

But that’s nothing compared to the visit of Chris Smith to the Somerset Levels yesterday. He arrived to reassure all the angry farmers and residents of flooded out villages all dolled up in rural clothing and wellies but only after first visiting a nearby bird sanctuary, like that was the day’s priority. His appearance was therefore greeted with anger and contempt and he was strongly advised to resign by some of those present to which he replied that he wouldn’t as there was much important work he had to do! The standard and well known politicians reply for gross managerial failure, particularly in taking any responsibility for the failure of the Agency he supposedly runs. All in all, we have a case here of a plain disjuncture between disaster and crisis on the one hand and those with authority supposedly capable of dealing with it. It’s not so much a physical disjuncture but one that is temporal in character. People who always seem to turn up too late after everything’s happened and haven’t a clue! It’s not so much a matter of being out of touch as being out of time, like getting their feet wet when all the shit’s flowed under the bridge. And suddenly there they are, full of genuine concern and all primed for action. It’s like they expect us to think, oh thank the lord, everything will be alright now that we’re here!

I mean, exactly where do these people think that they’re from? Well, flooded out farmers and horsemeat burger eaters know… They’re from a big glass jar in a Tory cold storage locker who’ve been pulled out and defrosted. Not because they’ve been promoted and put on any fast track to glory but because they’re simply the next on the list.

So pity the poor flooded farmers and all those who bought houses in some seaside town on the front for their retirement that they thought they’d turn into Guest Houses and bring in a few quid. Yes, somewhere nice and quiet down on the coast next to all those other little Guest Houses. Shame they never understood the difference between Geology and Geography when they were at school or ever considered what might happen if there was global warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, in which case most of England would be under water along with all those little seaside hostelries and pubs, and those silly people who chose to farm on the Somerset Levels close to a great estuary with the world’s second largest tidal range sweeping in and out daily. No problem! Land flat as a pancake at sea level with a great Atlantic surge coming in on a regular basis so all it takes is a few weeks of rain and they’re stuffed! Very clever that! Farming so close to serious water without ensuring any serious drainage of rivers. No, we’re farmers and Tory Governments love farmers! Only they don’t and not only that, they don’t give a fuck and won’t spend any real money to help. Just pretend to love you and your Range Rovers and Wellington boots and let you think how important you are and what a fine job you’re doing for Britain when they really don’t give a shit and all they want is your vote! On the Somerset Levels there’s been no serious drainage of the rivers for years and they’re all silted up so farmers you can all go drown if you want. You were stupid to farm there in the first place and we’re only spending loose change because we’ve first got to refinance the banks so we suggest you get real! You’re the last people we need to think about now with all those lovely Romanians coming in!

So with all those Somerset villages cut off from Tesco and your world and your living room knee deep in mud guess what’s happening now? Yes you lucky people, you’ve got Horsemeat Boy Owen Paterson and the Birdman of Flooding Lord Chris Smith on the case so watch out for those promises! They’ll get with it all right away… which means sometime next year when its dry, and as for any compensation, well that kind of thing can take years! If it’s tough down in Somerset you can always go try elsewhere! It’s not the fault of the Environment Agency when your farm gets a bit wet!

No, farmers and politicians don’t mix. That’s because bankers always come first.

MY TAKE SO FAR ON SOCHI

So the Russians spent 30 billion on the Winter Olympics at Sochi. As much as was spent on all the previous Winter Olympic Games put together so it’s as much as a publicity advert for the wealth of the supposedly New Russia under Putin as it is for a great festival of sport. But then having said this, why not? The facilities provided for all the snow and ice jockeys are fabulous indeed and in the face of endless threats of disruption and violence from Islamic terrorists and sheer sour grapes and alarmist warnings from the United States Government, all seems to be going well.

Sadly, the Governments of Britain and America failed to attend the Opening Ceremony at the highest level. Their feeble and pretty wretched excuse being that the Russians have passed what they term anti-gay laws which, when all’s said and done simply make it illegal to teach or publicize gay practices at schools. This has been blown up out of all proportion and manufactured into an accusation by Western politicians that the Russian Government actively promotes homophobia and in this they’ve been busy marshalling the voices of gay rights campaigners to their cause. It has been fascinating to witness this carefully contrived alliance between the sour grapes hostility of Western Governments and the gay rights movement along with busy activity in the media! Anything to damage all the hard work that went into creating this Winter Olympics at Sochi which was also how the International Winter Olympics Committee saw it because they refused to lend their voice to any support for all the rushed up complaint!

So no President Obama, David Cameron, Harry or Wills. The latter was out shooting wild boar on a private hunting estate in Spain, David was swanning around the Somerset Levels making promises and Harry? Well your guess is as good as mine but just about anything’s possible. I mean they might have sent Princess Anne if they’d had horses doing some skiing but alas no such luck. Instead we’ve got the treat of seeing the Iranian leadership freezing their balls off and countries definitely without any ice or snow ever sending teams to participate in the splendid and colourful Opening Ceremony. So where do their athletes train all the year round? Well they don’t! The big teams however have got more than enough, from Norway, Canada and Russia to Austria and Italy, Finland, Korea and China. China? Where’s all the snow in China? They must have it somewhere. Yet places with snow twenty-four seven like Iceland and Greenland do zilch. Clearly, the countries that send large teams of athletes have a lengthy tradition of snow and ice sport. It’s part of their culture as much as noodles, cream cakes, chianti and reindeer steak. And here forgive me but I can’t think of anything to say about Canada! I mean the Chinese, Koreans and Italians have noodles, the Austrians have cheesecake and the Swiss, strudel, but the Canadians? It’s what you might call a Canada question!

What we’ve seen so far to delight the eye are the young British guys doing amazing somersaults on snowboards. Marvellous stuff, but then these kids have been doing it for years. In fact there are schools you can go to in Britain with professional coaches and instructors where you can learn to do it, and there are places that make seriously expensive kit for the sport. Many aspects of snowboarding are a fairly new with a huge variety of skills.

All in all, Winter Olympics sport comes down to enthusiasts, participants and watchers on television, the latter mainly dirty old men who can’t wait to watch those lithe long legged girls on skates taking a tumble. Full marks for the legs and all but the acrobatics and skills are just incidental, so it’s either being out and participating or getting your pleasure in an armchair with your wife in the kitchen. As for the sport itself, its enthusiasts and competitors, well it’s all very serious and so much of it a home for the brave. We should salute them all, express our gratitude and thanks and wish them the best.

As for all the political sour grapes that surrounded the Sochi Winter Olympics, well it only shows its detractors up for what they are. No regard for the sport, no regard for the athletes and no regard for the internationalism of the occasion. Just sour grapes politics to which I say thank you very much BUT NO THANKS! A toast instead to the Russians for putting it on and all the athletes there who amaze us with their dedication and skill.