One event changes attitude in UK-----how strange

<altogether now....McG's paragraph needs a bit of background singing>...."Oh say can you seeeee...by the dawns early liiiiight."

Do you know how you are coming across?

Every civilised Country in the world has its dissidents who have paramilitary persuasions, and crackheads in alleys and, dare I say it, people who actually disagree with the politics of their present Government.
Enough already, it's one of the joys of being a Western democracy.

Or were you thinking of transporting them to some camp in the middle of nowhere, because they dont "fit in" with the ideals of the present administration, or are repugnant to them. Just google "Stalin" or "Hitler" if you want some ideas on how to deal with them.

....and by the way, I said "The MAJORITY" (of fellow Brits). I did NOT say ALL.


Note to Panzade...... I shall now have my Martini, as the sun is over the yardarm here. Wanna join me? Bring some ice, my freezers buggered.

Okay.

In return, when I say center-rightish, you certainly will from now on accept this as term for the Democrats.

And ... well, extreme(r) right, when I think of Republicans.

I don't suscribe to the notion that the British were mere 'observers' in all this before the London attacks. Britain has been a good friend and ally of this country for a long time and has been at the forefront of the struggle against both al Qaeda and Saddam's regime from the start.

Both of us face some common problems in dealing with the Islamist challenge, ranging from internal political opposition, the potential criminal & treasonious activities of some Moslem immigrants and the real & feigned indignation of other immigrants who demand that we pretend there is no conflict, to the external opposition of other nations and the complex web of interests that governs all this. I don't see much point in quibbling about who does this or that aspect of the required struggle better that the other. We both act according to our own abilities and limits.

The population of the U.S. is more like 4.5 times that of the UK: not nine times. Perhaps we just leave that impression.

The 'Blitz" on London was terrible indeed, but it demonstrated the toughness and will of the British people. Perhaps a bit more attention could be given to the malicious folly of Lloyd George that created the context for the next struggle and the continued folly of Chamberlain and others who hoped - against all the evidence to the contrary - that the emerging problem would just go away. There may well be a lesson here for all of us in the present situation.

No point in arguing now about the unhappy history of Britain in Ireland. The fact is it left lingering strong feelings on the part of the Irish population most oppressed, and which provided most of the immigrants. These attitudes in turn shaped those of their children in this and other countries. The various Penal laws applied to Irish "Papists" and expanded from the late 16th century until the early 19th Century, stripping them of political power, property, and basic rights, left a long-lasting effect on the cultural memory of the people. No surprise at all that some time might be required for it to pass away - particularly among those who leave to find a better life elsewhere. Ulstermen of both stripes rightly regard themselves as Irish. That, however, doesn't erase the former wrongs of the Stormont government and the Ian Paisley types who once controlled it. Happily all that is now past - along with most (but sadly, not all) of the IRA diehards.

the vast majority here think Bush is a very dangerous lunatic with a very low IQ I'm afraid - he's a laughing stock here - one very funny skit showed him with his Chief of Staff explaining policy to him with the aid of a sock puppet. The behaviour of the American troops filled us with horror - what wonderful ammunition they gave the terrorists.

Please don't quote his supposed IQ at me - I don't find it believable based on his utterances and actions!

Lord Ellpus put the facts very well but if you don't want to face facts you ignore them - as those making sweepingly inaccurate statements, about a country they don't know are doing.

America funds many terrorist organisations including the IRA - what to do about that? We had many years of IRA bombing as a direct result of American finance

Really? Where in the budget does the IRA get its funding from? What other terrorist organizations are we funding?

A cursory search of last years budget showed no entries for the IRA.

Irish American citizens with romantic ideas of the Emerald Isle

as regards other organisations - I don't think the budget for secret service activity is itemised

weren't the prisoners in Abu Ghraib supposed to be being well treated? the facts proved to be a little different and disastrous for world peace

Then, you meant to say AmericaNs, not America "funds many terrorist organisations including the IRA - what to do about that? We had many years of IRA bombing as a direct result of American finance"

Is that correct?

There is a considerable difference you know.

Don't despair McG. All Brits aren't bonkers. Here's one who doesn't have any solutions, but he is sure asking all the right questions:

How are we going to fight this war?
By Matthew d'Ancona
(Filed: 14/07/2005)

This week, our politicians have reminded me of the castaway boys in the last scene of Lord of the Flies, suddenly tearful and ashamed of their terrible mischief as they are finally confronted by their grown-up rescuers.

Yes, there was a mood of solidarity and mature consensus at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday and during Monday's Commons debate on the bombings. But there was also the whiff of shame in the air: shame at the political decadence that had so demeaned the debate on the war on terror before 8:50am last Thursday.

The low point was the moment in March when the Tory whips, having forced the Government to insert an automatic expiry date into its Prevention of Terrorism Bill - the "sunset clause" - brayed that they were off to uncork the champagne. To celebrate what, I wondered at the time. Who was their real enemy? Bin Laden - or Blair?

This week, there were no champagne toasts in the Commons, no games or cheap shots or debating flourishes; only a collective flinch at reality's harshest smack. As the death toll clambered over 50, and the perpetrators were revealed to be British-born suicide bombers, the decadence drained from the system. The political consensus will not last, of course.

But the arguments that follow will be conducted in a new and awful context: namely, the absolute, incontrovertible knowledge, spelt out in the blood of Londoners, that this war is now being waged in our very midst. "It is a war," one Cabinet minister said to me. "People didn't believe that till last Thursday. But they do now."

I hope he is right. This war, of course, is like nothing that has preceded it, which is why it is so tempting to call it something else: a criminal conspiracy, or a series of isolated atrocities carried out by psychopathic mavericks. And yet the analysis that the President and Prime Minister offered after 9/11 now seems more pertinent than ever.

We face three, inextricably linked threats: from Islamist fanatics, from the rogue states that harbour them, and from the deadly weapons which they seek to acquire. Only three months ago, Kamel Bourgass was jailed for 17 years for plotting to unleash ricin on London's streets. Bourgass failed. On July 7, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer, Mohammed Sadique Khan and another man succeeded with conventional explosive. What if it had been the other way round?

Alas, these grim realities have been obscured for almost three years by the tangled arguments over the liberation of Iraq. At precisely the moment that it should have been looking outward with ever greater vigilance, the British polity turned in on itself. "Iraq" became political shorthand - like "spin" or "sleaze" - a metaphor for all that was objectionable about Mr Blair and his Government. The horizons of British politics narrowed dangerously.

Ironically, it has taken a local event to remind us of the global nature of this conflict, its pervasiveness, and our consequent inability to escape its consequences simply by blaming this or that head of government. Does anyone seriously believe that 52 more Londoners would be alive today if Gordon Brown were Prime Minister, and John Kerry were President? The question is so absurd that it scarcely merits a response.

Yet this was precisely the logic applied in the aftermath of the Iraq war. Get rid of Bush and Blair, and the bloodshed will stop. The Spanish tested that logic to destruction after the Madrid bombing and discovered, to their horror, that the jihadis carried on plotting their atrocities.

The Iraq war was grotesquely caricatured in this country as a symptom of the Prime Minister's political infatuation with George W Bush, even as a demented outburst of Christian adventurism.

It came to be viewed almost as an abstraction, a symbol of Mr Blair's mad itch to intervene, a quarrel in a far away country of which we know nothing. But everyone knows the London Underground map, and everyone can point now to the stations that bear fresh blood stains. The war on terror has come home.

In truth, it was always here.

In this conflict, everything is, and will be, connected. There is still much glee at the failure of the Iraq Survey Group to unearth Saddam's weapons. I would have thought a more pertinent question - and a terrifying one - is where, exactly, all those weapons are?

That is, the 3.9 tons of VX gas, 8,500 litres of anthrax, 550 artillery shells containing mustard gas and other nasties that the Iraqi dictator himself admitted to producing in the 1990s, but are still officially "unaccounted for".

I am not saying that these unspeakable weapons have found their way into the hands of the disaffected young jihadis of West Yorkshire. But it requires only a small leap of imagination to conclude that there must be many other young men like them, in cities and mountain hideouts around the world, working desperately hard to lay their hands on these and similar tools of destruction.

Although the New Labour knee has not yet jerked, the contours of future action are already clear. The Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary have all been in Brussels this week seeking European co-operation on counter-terrorism.

Ministers mutter about the need to transform judicial culture tout court, and the heavy burden upon Lord Phillips of Matravers, who becomes Lord Chief Justice in September, to ensure that the courts deport those who should be deported.

Be in no doubt: the Government is braced for the worse. "If this is a one-off, we'll be all right," one of the Prime Minister's closest allies told me. "But if there are other incidents we have a very big problem."

On Monday, Mr Blair pointedly left the door open to further legislative measures. "Just using the normal processes of law will not be enough," he warned.

Therein lay the seed of a huge and necessary debate on the proper balance between security and liberty in this country. But that debate will now be carried out in the proper context. This is not about party politics, Mr Blair's future, or the Iraq war.

It is about what a civilised society does to confront those who will do anything to themselves, and to others, in the name of a murderous mission that knows no limit.

Matthew d'Ancona is deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph
LINK

This is a sad spectacle.

"My country responded better to terrorism than your country...."
<sigh>

Before the smoke had cleared here, there were lines around city blocks full of people waiting to donate blood. Plenty of people sat with their Muslims neighbors to buffer any hot-headed attackers. The heroism of average people, the small kindnesses, the resolve to remain who we are...sorry if you missed it--or you want to pretend it didn't happen.

I don't know anyone here who has insulted Britain in this time. It is low indeed to insult another who suffered the same affront.

These times bring out the best in some--and the worst in others. Give more thought about how you want to portray yourselves, those of you who use this opportunity to insult another country about their response to an unwarranted, unprovoked attack.

We should understand one another more--not join in on an attack.

Great Britain has given the world several examples of real lunatic leaders - far worse than Vivien's characature of our President. One even sped our revolution along.

I assume the "America funds many terrorist organizations" bit is code for the support Jewish Americans provide for Israel. Perhaps Vivien should read a bit more about the role of The British Empire in the creation of the "Zionist Entity", and the original betrayal of the Palestinians.

While some American money may have funded some IRA activities, the organization itself sprang from centuries of British oppression in Ireland. The IRA bombings were the legacy of centuries of British misrule. Don't try to blame that on America. The attitudes of the Irish Americans who once provided support to the IRA were formed by those of their parents and grandparents who knew the situation very well indeed.

I think too much of the British people to suppose that Vivien truly speaks for them as she claims.

Fox--

My post crossed yours.

Thanks for bringing that great article.

Aside--- Britain should free the Irish.

McGentrix wrote:


....and for this we can be truly thankful!

To Lord Elpus

Do the following words sound familiar?.........They are not my words but those of one of your countrymen.....at least he writes for the Daily Telegraph.

"

This is a piece from an Ellpus post a few pages back. Somehow I missed it, however, it is too good to pass up.

Well we did experience a good bit of retaliation from the Sioux, though none of it in Georgetown. I agree that the situations are analogous both in the events which provoked it and in the response to them. Our bloody response has been well-documented. It is justified only by the finality of the result achieved, certainly not the methods used, which were often very cruel. In the aftermath Americans have come to better understand the point of view of the Indians in that cultural, political, and military encounter or clash between civilizations. However we are no more able (or even willing) to undo the past than are you.

And therefore they bombed in Germany (car bomb in Duisburg 1987, mortar bombs and granades in Münster, Osnabrück, Dortmund ... the following years)?

(I must admit, I have quite ambivalent feelings: on the one site, I feeled quite secure, because I had a 24/24 survey of my house by British and German police [I lived closed to some commanding officrs for more than a year here in the 80's], but it really was a bit ... peculiar funny to show my ID card at least every second day when I entered the street leading to my flat.)

Daniel Pipes: How Britain harbours terror

July 14, 2005

THANKS to the war in Iraq, much of the world sees the British Government as resolute and tough, the French one as appeasing and weak. But in another war, the one against terrorism and radical Islam, the reverse is true: France is the most stalwart nation in the West, even more so than the US, while Great Britain is the very most hapless. Consider:

Counterterrorism. UK-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain, and the US. Many governments - Jordanian, Egyptian, Moroccan, Spanish, French and American - have protested London's refusal to shut down its Islamist terrorist infrastructure or extradite wanted operatives. In frustration, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak publicly denounced Britain for "protecting killers". One American security group has called for Britain to be listed as a terrorism-sponsoring state.

Counterterrorism specialists disdain the British. Roger Cressey calls London "easily the most important jihadist hub in Western Europe". Steven Simon dismisses the British capital as "the Star Wars bar scene" of Islamic radicals. More brutally, an intelligence official said of last week's attacks: "The terrorists have come home. It is payback time for ... an irresponsible policy."

While London hosts terrorists, Paris hosts a top-secret counterterrorism centre, code-named Alliance Base, whose existence was just revealed by The Washington Post. At the centre, six major Western governments since 2002 share intelligence and run counterterrorism operations (the latter makes it unique).

More broadly, President Jacques Chirac instructed French intelligence agencies just days after 9/11 to share terrorism data with their US counterparts "as if they were your own service". This co-operation is working: former acting CIA director John McLaughlin calls this bilateral intelligence tie "one of the best in the world". The British may have a special relationship with Washington in Iraq, but the French have one in the war on terror.






France accords terrorist suspects fewer rights than any other Western state, permitting interrogation without a lawyer, lengthy pre-trial incarcerations, and evidence acquired under dubious circumstances. Were he a terrorism suspect, says Evan Kohlmann, author of Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe, he "would least like to be held under" the French system.

Radical Islam. The myriad French-British differences in this arena can be summarised by the example of what Muslim girls may wear to state-funded schools.

Denbigh High School in Luton, 48km northwest of London, has a student population about 80 per cent Muslim. It years ago accommodated the sartorial needs of their faith and heritage, including a female student uniform made up of the Pakistani shalwar kameez trousers, a jerkin top, and hijab head covering. But when Shabina Begum, a teenager of Bangladeshi origins, insisted in 2004 on wearing a jilbab, which covers the entire body except for the face and hands, Denbigh administrators said no.

Their dispute ended up in litigation and the Court of Appeal ultimately decided in Begum's favour. As a result, by law UK schools must now accept the jilbab. Not only that, but Cherie Booth, wife of British prime minister Tony Blair, was Begum's lawyer at the appellate level. Booth called the court's judgment "a victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values despite prejudice and bigotry".

In contrast, also in 2004, the French government outlawed the hijab, the Muslim headscarf, from public educational institutions, disregarding ferocious opposition both within France and among Islamists worldwide. In Tehran, protesters shouted "Death to France!" and "Death to Chirac the Zionist!" The Palestinian Authority mufti, Ikrima Said Sabri, declared that "French laws banning the hijab constitute a war against Islam as a religion". The Saudi grand mufti, Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, called them a human rights infringement. When the "Islamic Army in Iraq" kidnapped two French journalists, it threatened their execution unless the hijab

ban was revoked. Nonetheless, Paris stood firm.

What lies behind these contrary responses? The British have seemingly lost interest in their heritage while the French hold on to theirs; even as the British ban fox hunting, the French ban hijabs.

The former embraced multiculturalism, the latter retain a pride in their historic culture. This contrast in matters of identity makes Great Britain the Western country most vulnerable to the ravages of radical Islam, whereas France, for all its political failings, has retained a sense of self that may yet see it through.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia and author of several books on Islam and the Middle East.

This surprises me -- IRA bombings in Germany? Why and for what purpose?

The serious political objectives of the IRA were essentially achieved in 1921 after the partition settlement with Britain. There was a period of bitter civil discord that followed among Irish nationalists, motivated it appears as much by principled desire for a united country versus a pragmatic acceptance of what was at least possible, colored on both sides by conflicting personal ambition among the leaders. The facts were clear that a united Ireland could only be achieved through a lengthy period of reconciliation and political accommodation on both sides.

Parts of the Unionist movement in Northern Ireland were as radical and violent as the worst of the IRA. By the 1980s both sides of this violent struggle were as addicted to their criminal and murderous methods, and the peculiar status it gave them as to any remnant of political purpose. Only the continued foolish actions of the Stormont government gave the continued struggle any meaning. I believe the British made the best of a very bad situation after that, and that, by now there is no reason whatever for continued action. However after more than a century of organized struggle these things die hard.

Again, I have no quarrel with terrorism as such. It is merely one of several means of warfare, and I doubt seriously that mankind has seen the last of war. The principal objects of strategy should be to avoid unnecessary fights or those that will distract attention from more serious matters, but, at the same time, take on serious threats before they mature, at a time and place favorable to the outcome desired. Unfortunately it is difficult sometimes to tell one from the other. Moreover these considerations are in turn interlaced with other economic and political factors in a highly non-linear tangle.

I think the targets were British military establishments and/or places that British servicepeople frequented.

Correct. Some dozen (badly) hurt persons, two persons killed, about seven (if I remember correctly) bomb attacks.

As said, some (suburbian) areas were closed completely to the public (besides for those German civilians and their visitors etc living there).