Don’t look over here! Look over there!
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith made today the most cynical – and least convincing – move yet to exploit “terror” politically in the UK. On the day that New Labour hit a twenty year low in the opinion polls and Harriet Harman blamed Gordon Brown’s office for her dodgy donations, we now have the first headline on the television news as a government announcement of the threat of a “Dirty Bomb” over Christmas.
I cannot say this loudly enough. I have checked with my own contacts and there is NO specific or new intelligence indicating a threat of a terrorist dirty bomb – or any other terrorist threat – this Christmas. Doubtless that will not stop Frank “Goebbels” Gardner appearing any minute now nobly to warn us of the grave danger we face.
Interestingly, even my friends in the Security Services – who normally are pretty happy to see the threat exaggerated, thus adding to their ever increasing budgets and career prospects – this time are sickened by the cynicism of the timing of this “Christmas Warning”.
Incidentally, there is no track record of an attack on “Christmas” and no actual reason to believe that a terrorist attack is more likely to occur at Christmas than any other time of year. The notion is based on a rather simplistic notion of the “Clash of civilisations”.
I have a lingering personal faith which won’t quite die, irrespective of the continuing evidence on the Dawkins side of the equation that the religious, given any power, are evil and dangerous. George Bush did no harm when he was just a parasitic alcoholic, then he discovered Christ and look what happened. Which just goes to show that alcohol is a much more benificent social force than religion.
Blair has revealed he didn’t tell us about his religious faith while in office in case people thought he was a “nutter”. If he thinks we didn’t notice he was a nutter, he is more deluded than I thought – plainly religion hasn’t helped his thought processes. Finally we have the vile authorities of the Sudan. I am of course outraged by their action against a British teacher, but compared to the appalling actions of that bunch of theocratic arseholes against their own people, it is minor indeed.
I had occasion to read General Gordon’s original diaries in the course of researching my master’s thesis. I found it an extraordinary thrill to hold in my hand the paper he had held and decipher his increasingly shaky handwriting. Gordon was a religous fanatic in the Blair mode; portraits show a remarkable similarity of “look” to Blair in the fixated gaze of the eyes. Gordon had a similar approach to Blair, from the same motivations, to bringing the benefits of civilisation to what he viewed as benighted peoples. But unlike Blair, Gordon was a man of incredible personal courage who paid the price for his beliefs. Blair just condemned countless (literally) thousands of other people to death, while shamelessly devoting his own life to raking in the cash.
I have been warning about Frank "Goebbels" Gardner propaganda for a couple of years now. I was a nutter – of course. Now that others are starting to say it, the 'nut' label may lessen somewhat. If the MSM ever said it, then and only then will I be right, for what the MSM writes, is!
And Craig, I'll even be willing to believe in Al-Qaeda should proof ever come my way.
Yours in fruitcake land…
TA.
P.S. Please stand for Parliament again. PLEASE! We desparately need people like you. I'm on my hands and knees here as are hundreds if notthousands of people in orange jumpsuits, on sharp rocks with ear-muffs, gas masks, handcuffs, leg-irons and blindfolds.
Do a Galloway and be selevtive about your seat.
Left off this:
The Christmas element is of course plucked because it is associated with family (as well as Christianity) so by attacking us more now you see, it shows and gives ample opportunities to HM's servants in the commons to say so, that they hate our way of life.
I feel there awaits a big Xmas bonus this year filling the stocking of those who are employed by the ministry of fear.
But, as I believe there is an excellent case to suggest elements of the UK's establishment, our establishment, were at work that tragic day on 7/7, I wouldn't be surprised if these this warning delivered!
Needless to say, I look forward to being wrong.
Meanwhile in Sudan, some Islamic authorities are, once more, Islam's own worst enemies.
It took me sometime to phrase this sentence to avoid the usual inaccurate generalizations like "Islam", "Muslims" and "Muslim countries".
What I find amusing, in vomit-provoking way, about Blair is his extraordinary capacity for self-delusion, even to the point of idiocy!
It almost seems like he's hooked on "controversy", that somehow he feels a need to place himself centre stage and get people to look at him and see how wonderful he is. It's almost Freudian the way he brings the word "nutter" into the frame. Is some part of him flaunting the fact that he really is a "nutter" and hey, look at me, I got away with it, ha, ha!
One also marvels at his blatant, crowing, hypocracy. Christianity, his beliefs, mean so much to him. They are at the very core of his being. Yet, he's quite prepared to push them aside because they might get in the was of his desire for the top job. His beliefs come a poor second to his ambition! I think he's got an odd concept of Christianity. On the other hand, what kind of God is he really praying to? Is it gentle Jesus, the prophet of brotherhood and love, or is Tony's God the slightly sinister, desert, War-God, Jehovah?
"Jon Mendelsohn and the Secret Tape"
"Unfortunately, for Jon Mendelsohn and his partners, the "businessman" was, in fact, an undercover reporter for The Observer of London"
http://tinyurl.com/2ykpzj
I have read John Buchan's 'Gordon of Khartoum', and his shrewd character assessment and interpretation is entirely in keeping with your own. Gladstone, who knew a nutter when he saw one, did not bestir himself to rescue Gordon, and rather allowed Gordon to stew in his own juice. No, Blair will not don a white uniform and advance to the head of the staircase, sword in hand, to meet a brave man's fate. Where are the fuzzy-wuzzies, when we need them?
Jacqui Smith is of course a new labour apparatchik, plucked temporarily from an obscurity to which she will no doubt soon return. One always wonders if these 'dirty bomb' scares will not embolden the spooks in the basement of MI5 Palace to start mixing their chemicals. She who pays the piper, etc.
The Liverpool teacher: what exactly is a middle-aged female teacher from Liverpool doing in the Sudan in the first place? Are there no schools, in Liverpool? Are there no declining standards of literacy, in Liverpool? Are there no semi-barbarous, semi-illiterates, in Liverpool? I know, it's the altruism, and the sunshine.
Craig Murray on how the British government is playing up fears of a Christmas terror attack:
http://kashmiri-nomad.blogspot.com/2007/12/islam-…
I would like someone to explain to me this.
Prior to the war in Iraq, Ken Clarke warned in his speach opposing the war that it would incite terrorism against the British state.
I assumed the anti-war movement agreed with this assessment, as I certainly did. Opinion polls today of UK muslims show a large minority of support for Al-Qaeda, particularly amongst the young.
Now I think I agree that out of the existing terror groups, there is no particular reason to think that they would target Christmas. The terror attacks against the west up until now appear in general to be on random dates.
However it seems odd that given the terrible cock up in invading Iraq, it is the New Labour government that argues that terror attacks are now more likely, despite the invasion of Iraq which was intended to make it less likely, whilst from the anti war movement the argument is the other way round.
Now I support the anti-war movement. I believe the war in Iraq has increased the risk of terrorism against the UK, and we should be very vigilent accordingly, whatever time of the year.
Now does anyone think I am wrong? If so, why?
LeftLib,
No you're right. Hence 7/7. etc. But it still isn't that big a threat – Islamic terrorism has killed a lot less people in the UK, and a lot less people on average per year in the UK since it became a threat, than the IRA. But it is still of course a threat, and should be rationally guarded against. You don't do that by hypeing it beyond reality.
Like the author, I too have a personal (not so) lingering faith. However this doesn't stop me from concurring with Dawkins et al that religions have almost always been a force for evil. I refused to be confirmed into the Church of England along with my peers in my mid teens because it was already clear to me not that there was no God but that the articles of the Church of England were at best bland and at worst simply a recipe for enforced conformity.
I am now almost fifty and at at a time in my life when I feel increasingly the need for solace. I can understand why the likes of Waugh and Greene became Roman Catholics as, with age, they became perhaps more and more anxious. Nonetheless the older I become, the more convinced I am that joining up to a religion, any religion, is the coward's way out. One's relationship with God ought to be an entirely personal affair. There is no need for religion unless one lacks the fortitude to seek out God on one's own.
Like the author, I too have a personal (not so) lingering faith. However this doesn't stop me from concurring with Dawkins et al that religions have almost always been a force for evil. I refused to be confirmed into the Church of England along with my peers in my mid teens because it was already clear to me not that there was no God but that the articles of the Church of England were at best bland and at worst simply a recipe for enforced conformity.
I am now almost fifty and at a time in my life when I feel increasingly the need for solace. I can understand why the likes of Waugh and Greene became Roman Catholics as, with age, they became perhaps more and more anxious. Nonetheless the older I become, the more convinced I am that joining up to a religion, any religion, is the coward's way out. One's relationship with God ought to be an entirely personal affair. There is no need for religion unless one lacks the fortitude to seek out God on one's own.