Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

In 1976, a British journalist wrote an admiring piece on Saddam Hussain:

An Arab country with the second largest proven oil reserves, a fierce revolutionary ideology, a large and recently-blooded army, and a leadership composed almost entirely of men in their thirties is obviously a force to be reckoned with. Iraq, which has this dynamic combination and much else besides, has not until recently been very much regarded as a power. But with the new discussions in Opec, the ending of the Kurdistan war and the new round of fighting in Lebanon, its political voice is being heard more and more. The Baghdad regime is the first oil-producing government to opt for 100-per-cent nationalisation, a process completed with the acquisition of foreign assets in Basrah last December. It was the first to call for the use of oil as a political weapon against Israel and her backers. It gives strong economic and political support to the ‘Rejection Front’ Palestinians who oppose Arafat’s conciliation and are currently trying to outface the Syrians in Beirut. And it has a leader — Saddam Hussain — who has sprung from being an underground revolutionary gunman to perhaps the first visionary Arab statesman since Nasser.

Who was it? Answer over the fold.

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Although “think different” was Apple’s advertising slogan for many years, it seems some Apple Stores have their own ideas about what should constitute the limits of acceptable thought. British blogger Yusuf Smith describes what happened to him after checking his blog comments at a local Apple Store:

Kingston has an Apple Store, which like other such shops, has a room full of Macs which offer free internet access. When I’m near an Apple Store, I always go in to check my email and my blog, so as to approve any legitimate comments and delete any spam. Others go in for similar email-related purposes and to engage in long chats over various chat systems in various languages. The staff must know me: I go in there often, visit the same websites, stay about 15 minutes (less than I do in Regent Street, because Kingston is near my home and I’ve no need to stay an hour) and go.

Today, as I was closing up (and leaving my blog open, to drum up a bit of publicity), two policemen came up to me and asked me if I’d come out for a chat. They told me that someone had raised concerns about me, that they were there for anti-terrorism purposes, that there was concern about people accessing extremist websites which they were sure I could understand in the current climate. They asked for ID, which I duly provided, and asked me if they knew me, to which I replied that they might, as a few years ago I had complained (to the local MP, who I believe also raised it with the local Safer Neighbourhood scheme) about idiots on mopeds using a nearby subway as a cut-through and about youths loitering in there which does not really give much of a sense of assurance. We had a bit of a talk about what I do on my website, what a blog is (he had never heard of them) and the fact that I used their machines to approve legitimate comments, so as not to hold up discussion, and get rid of spam. The other cop talked to his colleagues over his radio and gathered that I was not under any suspicion, and eventually I was let go.

Abu Eesa has another outstanding post that should be required reading for anyone wishing to understand the situation in the UK as well as the intellectual pedigree of some of these ‘repentant’ Islamists who are appearing in the media. I am tempted to quote slabs of it here but I think it’s more important that people read it from beginning to end.

One of the more disturbing but perhaps understandable aspects of the investigation into links between an Australian doctor and the terrorists in the United Kingdom, is the case of Dr Ali.

The Indian doctor — who had been in Australia for just six months — was taken in for questioning by Australian authorities because he had looked after some things for another doctor — Dr Haneef — who is currently being questioned by police (but has not been charged) in relation to his alleged links to the attempted terrorist attacks in the UK. Although one might not have got that impression from some of the media coverage, Dr Ali has committed no crime and was simply a man who had, according to police sources quoted in The Age, made an “unfortunate acquaintance”. The Age reports:

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IT News is running a story about cyber terrorism and electronic jihad (entitled, “Electronic Jihad’ app offers cyberterrorism for the masses”). They report that Al-Jinan.org, an “electronic jihad” group, has launched a “Web-based application [which] offers Islamic jihadis a way for even the relatively nontechnical to target and attack Web sites perceived to be anti-Islamic.”

They then proceed to quote a couple of “experts” on “electronic jihad” and monger some fear about Islamic terrorism on the Internets.

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Here’s the natural consequence of this “research“: if you can develop a predictive model capable of identifying members of a “sleeper cell”, why wouldn’t you just lock them up?

A Queensland Senate candidate and former Nationals staffer has called for radical Muslims to be incarcerated in the case of a terrorist attack in Australia.

Independent candidate James Baker, a former army major who also worked as an adviser to former Queensland Nationals leader Mike Horan, says he wants people deemed as “radical” Muslims to be interned following a terrorist attack in the interest of national security.

Of course, the problem is that, as the recent experience in the United Kingdom demonstrates, you can’t easily identify who is a “radical” Muslim because people who are determined to carry out a terrorists attack will go to great lengths to conceal their intent. Therefore, in the face of a real terrorist campaign against this country, the Baker Plan is unlikely to do much good: whilst the police are loading the Muslims into the trains and trucks to be sent off the camps, the guy with the non-Muslim name, non-Muslim appearance, and non-Muslim identity will be setting off the bombs.

Those hapless al-Qaeda boys were to find out that Glasgow has no respect for international terrorism. Nobody gets between 10,000 Weegies and a £99 week in Ibiza booked on Thursday night through Barrhead Travel.

So says the John Smeaton tribute site, set up to honour the Scottish baggage handler who helped police subdue the terrorist who attacked Glasgow airport on the weekend.

It’s a sentiment shared by fellow Scot Osama Saeed who writes:

John Smeaton has rightly become national hero with his tale of how he punched the man on fire. How I envy him. I would have loved to be delivering some good punches, kicks and more. If there are more of his ilk want to set themselves on fire, then let them come to my place and we’ll have a bonfire.

Smeaton’s various televised accounts of his confrontation with the terrorists are entertaining and have, quite rightly, made him an internet celebrity as well as a national hero.

“You’re nae hitting the Polis mate, there’s nae chance,” Scotland’s answer to Chuck Norris thought when saw a terrorist attacking a policeman. “So I ran straight towards the guy, we’re all trying to get a kick-in at him, take a boot to subdue the guy.” “Glasgow doesn’t accept this. That’s just Glasgow; we’ll set about ye,” he told ITV News.

Poor Angry Anderson. As trusty Daily Telegraph reporter Luke McIlveen reports, not only does Anderson have a cold, but he’s also been staying up until the wee hours of the morning with Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose while they tour Australia together (no doubt bringing thousands together with their messages of peace and love).

Anyway, according to McIlveen’s reportage, “[Anderson’s] talking about Rose Tattoo’s new album Blood Brothers and the perils of hydroponic marijuana for Australian youth. But mostly he’s talking about the danger fundamentalist Islam presents to our way of life.”

For me, all of the above three are inextricably linked. But I should break it to you now that unfortunately McIlveen fails to continue the music-drug-fundamentalism axis. I’d expected that either he or Anderson might have, for example, blamed Islam for Rose Tattoo’s new album and/or the perils of hydroponic marijuana for Aussie youth.

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Ibrahim El-Nour, the founder of the so-called Save the Shisha campaign has an, err, interesting approach to lobbying government. Firstly, he has likened the British government’s recent ban on smoking in enclosed public places to the Iraqi invasion.

Ibrahim El-Nour, a campaigner who called for shisha to be exempt from new anti-smoking laws, goes as far as to say the renewed sense of tension “will have the same impact as the Iraq war.”

He told Al Jazeera: “Arabs see it as an intrusion in their culture, the dismantling of their community venues.”

El-Nour’s Save the Shisha campaign hoped to convince the government that shisha, or hubble-bubble – a water-pipe used to smoke flavoured tobacco – was a cultural alternative to pubs for Muslims who do not drink.

Then, he says that stopping people from smoking shisha in shops would do nothing less than, “destroy a whole community.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, in a letter to a British MP, he also warned that the closure of shisha places would result in Arab children turning to alcohol and drugs.  “Their children will be introduced to places where alcohol is consumed as well as drugs,” he wrote.

And then, upping the ante slightly he warns in this video, that shop owners may end up killing themselves as a result of the ban.

The Australian reports today on the latest piece of fully sick research to come out from the habib braintrust of south west Sydney:

Howard government-funded research has also found there are more young Muslims per capita who are vulnerable to the influence of radical Islam in Australia than in any other western country.

In order for this statement to be true, the researcher would have needed to:

1. Develop a predictive model (based ideally on some sort of empirical research) of externally observable behaviours and/or social features that could be used, with some accuracy, to predict future radicalisation;
2. Apply that model to a significant and randomly selected sample of Muslims in Sydney (controlling for possible biases) in order to quantify the number of Muslims who are likely to become radicalised later in life;
3. Then — and this is where it becomes really impressive — apply that same model to every country in the Western world in order to then reach the conclusion that there are more potentially radical Muslims in Australia per capita than anywhere else. Alternatively, if similar studies (using the exact same criteria) were carried out independently in every other country in the Western world, then they could also refer to that research too.

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