The shocking death of Lee Rigby quite naturally appals us all. The intention of the crazed little group who conceived this killing was to make it as horrible as possible in order to scare people.
Horrible, sociopathic violence happens to people from time to time. They have done since Cain killed Abel, metaphorically or literally as you choose. Here is another headline today, just as horrific:
A British soldier has been jailed for stabbing a 10-year-old boy after getting drunk on vodka while serving in Afghanistan.
Both that obscene attack and Michael Adebolajo’s appalling actions are borne out of the same conflict. But it is reasonable to suppose that both these incidents involved people with, for whatever reason, a pre-disposition to murderous violence.
Such people have always been with us and will always be with us, but fortunately they are very, very few. In a nation of 60 million, involvement in violent crime is very low. If you are the victim of criminal violence, the odds over the last decade are about one in twenty thousand that the violence inflicted on you will have any linkage to political or terrorist causation. And the odds that you will suffer any kind of violent attack are thankfully pretty remote.
We should not panic from theatrical violence, just deplore and take sober stock. Sadly if a lunatic on the bus decides to strangle you tomorrow, there are no pre-emptive laws that can stop that. We should stop pretending that the state can always prevent.
Sorry it’s a Sun link.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4940206/lee-rigby-feared-for-soldier-girlfriend-in-afghanistan-but-terrorists-hack-him-to-death-on-london-street.html
Guano,
I was interested to read this sort of thing from you – again:
“as beginners we do not have anywhere else to turn but to them. These leaders think that they can intimidate us by spying on our private lives and win our hearts by false praise, wives, and chicken. They then sell us to the security services who hate us for embracing Islam. It is just the constant lying that grinds you down …
“… When one of us gets lured into committing a crime, they say we weren’t even Muslim. Look he was dealing drugs or looking at porn. Yes, they were dealing with drugs and looking at porn because these leaders made sure that nobody in the Muslim community found them a little job or one of their daughters. If they did give them a job or a wife, they did their utmost to make sure that things went wrong for them.”
——-
I know nothing about your personal life, Guano, other than what you have written here. But I suspect you have a rather large chip on your shoulder. You have written about problems with your ex-wife, issues with porn, problems with being “spied upon” – and I got the impression you thought you were even being spied upon here. (Although how anyone would know you were posting here, unless you told them, I don’t know. The spooks could, but otherwise …)
But I’m sorry to say that I think a chip on your shoulder makes you biased, and therefore I no longer take what you say as being representative of British Muslims. I think [JMO] that your view is tainted by whatever negative experiences you’ve had in your private life.
That’s something that probably applies to all of us, regarding one subject or another. And I don’t exclude myself from that. Not at all.
In the old days it used to be so much more simpler to teach people . As an astute commenter put it: Your parents’ version of Homeland Security warnings.
The notion that a bunch of self righteous tossers (salafists)running around; playing cowboys and Indians for real in those far flung lands (Libya, Yemen, Syria) influencing the Muslims in UK is a bit of an overreach. However fact that the said Muslims lives have become a misery in the Western countries in the hands of the institutional racists as well as the racist in the wider society is another story.
This is ye olde “Barbarians are at the gate” theme, so successfully narrated from the Romans onwards. It used to be the “communists” currently it is the “Islamists”, so long as there an “ist” is found there can always be an enemy found, however stupid or ridiculous this enemy may turn out to be.
Rather oddly the Sun and Daily Mail have both pointed to the estranged wife Rebecca Rigby (albeit in passing) fact. However without wishing to offend anyone and with unreserved apologies to the grieving family. The handlers appointed to help them cope with their grieving, perhaps could be milking the situation for its worth, for the benefit of their masters .
“This 35-year reactionary victory is an immense tragedy, and it is a tragedy mainly for Muslim people. For progressive people in Pakistan, for example, this is the major struggle at the moment. And in Europe, people like Tariq Ramadan and Qaradawi, for example, are NOT progressive but they seem to be viewed as such ”
Thirty-five seems about right, Suhayl. For decades, at least, there has been a tidal slip to the right, making centrists seem progressive, or liberal. As for genuine liberals, well, they are verklempt. I don’t know why people respond better to the crazees on the right moreso than extreme Left. Maybe the pitch of the dog whistle the left uses needs an adjust, but I think it’s because people are scared. When they get scared they hunker down, or roll up like an armadillo; armor out. Someone, somewhere seems to like that kind of human response.
I think someone mentioned this…http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22664468
“MI5 asked Woolwich murder suspect Michael Adebolajo if he wanted to work for them about six months before the killing, a childhood friend has said.
Abu Nusaybah told BBC Newsnight his friend – one of two men arrested after Drummer Lee Rigby’s murder in south-east London on Wednesday – had rejected the approach from the security service.
The BBC could not obtain any confirmation from Whitehall sources.
Abu Nusaybah was arrested at the BBC after giving the interview.”
I mentioned yesterday I saw the movie ‘Snitch’ which was not a great movie, but it is based on a true story; “Become a confidential Informant, or else!”
Boston dove-tails with that.
http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/05/23/officer-collier-shooting-rosebud-moment-of-the-boston-bombing/
Can anyone tell me if Lincolnshire is poor, or affluent?
Suhayl, maybe the silver lining is that things get so bad that actually peaceful Muslims reject their religion altogether. (As in the organisation of the religion, the ‘book(s)’, praying 5 times a day, etc.) Yet retain their colourful human cultural aspects.
Hasn’t that sort of thing already happened to a great extent within Christianity in the Western world? Now Buddhism is becoming fashionable and I say to those considering this: be careful, don’t jump from one prison to another.
Man is on a very slow boat to Enlightenment at this time. Organised religions are not just not working out to bring Peace to the planet, they are actually an impediment. Abandon this ship and the human race has a better chance to avoid destroying each other and create real security. Communism has, for example, for the most part also been abandoned.
The alternatives, mutually exclusive, to our obtaining Enlightenment are some kind of a holocaust, man-made like a Nuclear War, or natural like a major asteroid hitting the planet, that causes such critical damage that it triggers a complete re-think, an Awakening. Or, we may have a visit from a far more advanced species from another Galaxy that shows us how to get our pathetic act together.
—-
FedUp, can’t we get beyond every ‘ism?
April Showers
25 May, 2013 – 7:39 am
“The arrests of the two men arrested on the Pakistani Airways plane were not terrrrrist related we are told this morning. So why the Typhoons?”
April, what I find odd is that the plane could have landed within 30 minutes at its destination – Manchester but was diverted to Stanstead via a long circuitous route around the east coast
Scroll down to:
Pakistan International Airlines flight PK709: Diverted route
At:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22664834
“The alternatives, mutually exclusive, to our obtaining Enlightenment are some kind of a holocaust, man-made like a Nuclear War, or natural like a major asteroid hitting the planet, that causes such critical damage that it triggers a complete re-think, an Awakening.”
Maybe we need another one of these…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Invasion
Fedup 3.35pm A crafty peek at the Mail Online reveals that it’s not Muslims taking the banner headline today, it’s the Germans.
‘German fans brawl and throw missiles on the streets of London as thousands arrive for Champions League final at Wembley tonight’
~~
Someone there must look at the Medialens website. This was linked on Medialens a few days ago.
No wonder they think they are born to lead the country: Eton schoolboys told to imagine themselves as future prime minister
Boy’s sitting King’s Scholarship exam in 2011 asked to write a PM’s speech
David Cameron is the 19th old Etonian to be prime minister
Many former pupils of Berkshire school in prime political positions
[..]
‘The year is 2040. There have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. Students are asked to imagine that protesters have attacked public buildings, and that policemen have been killed. Consequently, the Government has deployed the Army to curb the protests… 25 protesters have been killed by the Army,’ it goes on.’
‘You are the Prime Minister,’ the paper says, before instructing the young Etonians to draft the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation explaining why deploying the Army was ‘both necessary and moral’.
[..]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330801/No-wonder-think-born-lead-country-Eton-schoolboys-told-imagine-future-prime-minister.html
Almost topical.
“Another said it was a “fuss about nothing”, adding that the pilot had “over exaggerated”.
It’s why I don’t fly anymore. “Excuse me, but my son has asked you for water three times”
“Sir, I need you to take your seat and STFU !”
“Re the Habbu-Clown, not only are almost all of his posts adding nothing to the topics, not only are almost all his posts deliberately designed to derail, not only are almost all of his posts offensive attacks on other Posters, not only are almost all of his posts shameless bullying of another Poster, but now, despite his trademark Clownishess, he is getting very, very boring; in ancient Athens, to safeguard anybody potentially corrupting their democracy, they developed the system of Ostracization, and I think to safeguard against the continous swamping of this Blog with his tedious nonsense, perhaps a similar system should be used here;
I (Macky) nominated the Poster “Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)” for expulsion from this Blog.”
I Sofia Zablotna-Habbercake second that. As an added bonus I promise to expell myself.
The Sky hasn’t fallen over our Ship of Fools
“The human race was dying out
No one left to scream and shout
People walking on the moon
Smog will get you pretty soon
Everyone was hanging out
Hanging up and hanging down
Hanging in and holding fast
Hope our little world will last
Along came Mr. Goodtrips
Looking for a new ship
Come on people better climb on board
Come on babe we’re not going home
Ship of fools
Ship of fools
Read more: THE DOORS – SHIP OF FOOLS LYRICS”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzk–IsbbOs
Strange days — i’ve quoted two musicians today both Jim(i) and both died at age 27. Both had ‘got it’ — mission complete. Did someone say the good die young? RIP Drummer Rigby.
” what I find odd is that the plane could have landed within 30 minutes at its destination – Manchester but was diverted to Stanstead via a long circuitous route around the east coast ”
Stansted is the preferred landing site for any aircraft in British airspace that has been or might possibly be hijacked. There are areas where the aircraft can be isolated and ground staff are best trained and equipped to deal with such events.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/633654.stm
Nobody could be 100% sure it wasn’t a terror related incident when the Typhoons were scrambled. Always best to plan for the worst in these situations.
What is the secret to assimilation?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/05/25/sweden-riots-violence/2360211/
“The violence that erupted May 19 followed a police shooting of a 69-year-old man who, police say, was waving a machete as officers attempted to search his home in the largely immigrant enclave of Husby, a Stockholm suburb. The torching of cars and buildings, and attacks on police in multiple districts in the capital have shocked Swedes unused to such mass violence.
“This has shaken Sweden,” said Peter Kadhammar, who covers immigration and integration issues for Swedish daily Aftonbladet. “Of course, everyone has been aware of the massive failures in the immigrant policies, but this has shaken Sweden because the violence was so widespread.”
Swedish newspapers report more than 100 cars have been set on fire since the riots began and dozens of buildings — including schools, stores and a police station — have also been torched.”
The long route could be speculated was to ascertain the nature of the emergency and if necessary to down the passenger liner over the North Sea. That is the sad fact about the current air transport use. If the hijackers don’t kill the passengers for sure the fighter jets sent to blow them out of skies will.
You cannot make this shit up, in the twenty first century all air passengers are humiliated, inspected, searched, groped, X-rayed, and rechecked, only for the fighters to target them and blow these out of the skies.
The comical part of it all is; The paranoia has extended to include those who actually control and fly the aircraft. The air crew are searched and groped too. Why would a pilot need a bomb, gun, and shit? He has all the aircraft to himself; has never crossed the minds of the dipshits choreographing the show.
Craig, is this the sort of thing you had in mind, when you said “But it is reasonable to suppose that both these incidents involved people with, for whatever reason, a pre-disposition to murderous violence.”?
“On Loving Your Enemies
From a letter to Michele Besso, Jan. 6, 1948. Albert Einstein—Michele Besso, Correspondance 1903-1955 (Hermann, Paris, 1972) , p. 392. Einstein Archive, reel 7-382, quoted in Jammer, p.87. Jammer gives the quotation in its original German along with an English translation. I have taken the liberty of cleaning up the English, mainly by replacing “cogitative” with “cognitive” as the translation of “gedanklich.”
Upon a friend commending the Christian maxim “Love they enemy” Einstein replied:
I agree with your remark about loving your enemy as far as actions are concerned. But for me the cognitive basis is the trust in an unrestricted causality. ‘I cannot hate him, because he must do what he does.’ That means for me more Spinoza than the prophets.”
http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza2.html#god
Wow! Macky was in fine flow at 11h14 this morning.
I shan’t of course deal with the ‘substance’ of his post because there was none.
But it would be most remiss of me not to pay tribute to his fine rhetorical skills – three “not only are almost all of his posts”s in a row are, after all, not given to everyone and had me at the edge of my seat with the excitement of anticipating what was to come: would I be accused of murder, arson, rape….other nameless horrors? But no, the climax, the peroration was that “I was very, very boring”. I was so disappointed!
But no matter. Trying to recall a worthy equal to Macky in the rhetorical stakes I first thought of the great Sir Winston Churchill but then Macky’s learned reference to ancient Athens gave me inspiration. Therefore:
I nominate Macky as….the Demostenes of this blog!
And, in admiration, I promise to tremble before his future blasts.
“Outside the new library, which opened last month, another white, ethnically Swedish handyman is busy painting. “This place behind me, they’ve just spent 40m kronor [£4m] on it,” he grumbles. “They don’t talk about that when they talk to the TV, do they? They talk about the problems, they don’t talk about everything people are doing for them.
“These people, they should integrate in this society and just try a little bit more to be like Swedish citizens.”
Scratch beneath the surface and this is a sentiment shared by many in a country that arguably has the world’s most generous asylum policies. Sweden has taken in more than 11,000 refugees from Syria since 2012, more per head than any other European country, and it has absorbed more than 100,000 Iraqis and 40,000 Somalis over the past two decades. About 1.8 million of its 9.5 million people are first- or second-generation immigrants.
“This is one of the countries that treats immigrants the best,” says Mohammed Hassan, a Bangladeshi studying in Husby’s new library, who previously lived in Brick Lane in east London. “It’s much, much better than any other European country in which I’ve travelled.”
So it has come as a shock for many Swedes to discover the scale of resentment. It’s not hard to find it. Aleks, whose parents came from Kosovo, says: “I hate the police. I hate the cops. I think setting fire to cars in the neighbourhood should stop, but I don’t think throwing rocks at the cops should stop.””
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/25/sweden-europe-news
What is the zeitgeist?
What is missing from the needs, or is it the ‘wants’. Is it ” East meets West and never the ‘twain shall meet”?
Villager you’ve quoted two musicians up to their necks in the Laurel Canyon scene, with tight links to the US military industrial complex: Morrison’s father U.S. Navy Admiral George Stephen Morrison being ‘attacked’ in the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Hendrix of course intimately connected with Vietnam serving there in the ‘elite’ 101st Airborne Division and purportedly booted out for him to audition for and join The Monkees.
See http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr93.html
Newsletters 93 through to 112 inclusive.
Suhayl, also consider this thinking, sourced from Einstein
“The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events.
To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.
In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task…’
—-
Ben Franklin, go/dig deeper.
Two things that others may find a good read;
A remarkable review of an important book:
http://soviet.ie/index.php?/topic/3349-fodlas-review-of-slouching-towards-sirte-nato%E2%80%99s-war-on-libya-and-africa/
And a comment left by john andrew on the Medialens Site iro blowback;
“When I saw on TV the terrible event outside an army barracks in Woolwich last Wednesday one of the first thoughts that went through my head was the word “blowback”. I wonder how many of the millions of people who watched the news like I did also thought “blowback”, and I wonder how many really understand the importance of that word in the context of how it’s quite often used these days, as a sort of euphemism for the word “revenge”.
When I was little kid growing up in colonial Rhodesia, the English child of English parents, I sometimes experienced a distinct coldness, hostility even, from some of the people I met. These people were not black-skinned people but white-skinned, like me. Mostly they were quite old people, and always South Africans. As I grew a little older my parents would just shrug and dismiss it by explaining that it was because of the Boer War. They would tell me stories of how, in the 1940s and before I was born, when they lived and worked in South Africa, many of the people they came across just refused to speak to them. My mother was offended by it, and responded by treating South Africans with some contempt. This frequent hostility was one of the reasons why my folks left South Africa in the early 1950s and moved north to Rhodesia, which was still an English colony, and where a far larger proportion of white-skinned people were English. All this because of the Boer War? Something that had happened more than fifty years earlier?
As I grew older and learnt a bit about the Boer War in school I still didn’t properly understand what all the fuss was about. O.K. it was another boring war, just like all the others you had to endure in history lessons. In the Boer War the British won, the South Africans lost. By the time I left school I had come to expect sneering contempt or open hostility from older South Africans as normal, an attitude which had already been passed on to many younger South Africans of my age… talk about holding a grudge. Why couldn’t they just get over it?
Being a colonial country the history lessons I learnt in my school were history lessons taught from an English perspective. The exams we did at school were for an English examination board. So we learnt some of the truth; we learnt the relevant dates, the names of the main generals, the details of the more significant battles… and so on. I thought I was something of an expert on the subject of the Boer War, and the mark I eventually got in my history exams was pretty good. The South Africans were just sore losers. That’s all there was to it.
It was only years after I left school, and left Rhodesia, that I learnt about Roberts’ scorched-earth policies and his concentration camps. Somehow that stuff had been overlooked in my school history lessons. Suddenly I began to understand.
Today British armed forces are actively engaged, every single day, in acts which, if they were being perpetrated by other armies on British streets, would be called acts of terrorism. The British armed forces, all of whom the British people are brainwashed into seeing as “heroes” are behaving as terrorists and could, if there was any real justice in the world, be charged with war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. The fact that they cannot be so charged because there is no effective global system of justice does not extinguish the reality of what they are doing.
The terrible events of last Wednesday are only part of the phenomenon of blowback. Though undoubtedly shocking the scale of such acts is brief and tightly localised; the other side to blowback is much less horrific, but far more widespread and long-lasting. The other far bigger problem is that the terrorism being perpetrated today by British forces will not be forgotten, or forgiven, for at least half a century by hundreds of millions of people – exactly as the acts of terror perpetrated by their predecessors were not forgotten, or forgiven, in South Africa. Even if every British soldier was to return home tomorrow, and stay there, their actions will not be forgotten, or forgiven, for so far into the future that even in two generations time an unknowing British tourist venturing into the Middle East might be puzzled by the hostility of locals; and any British child who happens to be growing up in some Muslim country anywhere in the world can still expect to meet with open hostility and resentment, and wonder why.”
Finally a spur of the moment quote: The most hapless sort of Troll, is a boring Troll.
****We (Macky,Sofia Zablotna-Habbercake) nominate the Poster “Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)” for expulsion from this Blog.”****
Cryptonym i think i need more context on what you are conveying. The link has only given me a calendar– so, confused.
Aware of their military connections and believe, they had both broken through to the other side.
“Ben Franklin, go/dig deeper” I need help if you’re referring to the zeitgeist, Villager.
If you are speaking of religion depending upon an active arbiter (God) who fiddles with events in progress, rather than one who merely starts the wheel and leaves the momentum up to human activity, then Spinoza and Einstein have some gravitas. To that end enter Ralph Waldo Emerson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Reliance
You have got to admire the Krauts for getting their priorities right when it comes to fracking….;)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/german-brewers-oppose-fracking-because-of-fear-over-clean-water-a-901474.html
****We (Macky,Sofia Zablotna-Habbercake, nevermind) nominate the Poster “Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)” for expulsion from this Blog.”****
April showers reminded us that the football has taken the heat of MI5’s latest expose. Although I have put a bet on for the underdogs Borussia, I will be going to the local theatre tonight to see Moliere’s ‘The Hypochondriac’, at the same time the game is on grrrrr.
The German police believe that there could be some trouble/terror risks for tonight’s game.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/police-warn-of-possible-terror-in-germany-for-champions-league-final-a-901863.html
****We (Macky,Sofia Zablotna-Habbercake, nevermind) nominate the Poster “Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)” for expulsion from this Blog.”****
“The violence that erupted May 19 followed a police shooting of a 69-year-old man who –
was Portuguese was he not?
Immigrant youths then rioted in sympathy, claiming that they have been subjected to discrimination and police brutality.
“Sweden has been traditionally welcoming of refugees and 15% of residents in the country are foreign-born, one of the highest ratios in Europe. But over the past two decades, Swedes have been increasingly worried about immigrants failing to integrate and the cost to the state in benefits.
“This concern has spurred the success of the anti-immigrant far right party, the Sweden Democrats, which won enough votes to enter parliament for the first time in 2010 and is polling in third place ahead of elections next year.”
And from the same link (Ben’s)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/05/25/sweden-riots-violence/2360211
“Administrations in the past two decades have been slowly dismantling the cradle-to-grave welfare benefit system known as the “Swedish model.” As a result, rising income inequality is hitting young and immigrant populations hard: Unemployment is running at 16% among residents of foreign origin and 7% for the general population.”
Maybe dismantling benefits when unemployment is at 16% is going to affect “assimilation”.
In Paris, immigrants are ghettoised in “Les Banlieues”, grim, grey, endless blocks with high levels of racial tension.
I saw an interview with a young male immigrant from Les Banlieues. He said that applying for jobs was soul-destroying. He said that as soon as employers saw his address, they never proceeded past that. They showed him the door. This is not how you get people to ‘assimilate’ either.
14% of Sweden’s 9.6 million are foreign born.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2013/05/swedens-riots
” There is broad popular support for helping refugees. In 2012, 44 000 asylum were accepted from countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, making Sweden of the world’s most welcoming countries for asylum seekers. Earlier this year there a public outcry erupted when it was revealed that police tried to track illegal immigrants by randomly asking foreign looking people to show their ID-cards.”
Austerity is the surface of this, I think Dreoilin. Cutting back on Welfare has been happening since the 1990’s. Unemployment with immigrant youths is probably the bulk of the 14% unemployment and the resulting boredom and too much free time seems to be the bulk of the unrest.
What was it like in their country of origin? I suspect it was as bad if not worse. The question I’m asking has more to do with the WAY people deal with hardship.