Correction

Hands up

The Muslim cabbie guide dog abuser story mentioned in the last post was London based and not a rehash of the other Muslim cabbie guide dog abuser story reported in Australia's Herald Sun a few days ago

Factual errors, particularly my own, piss me off. So thanks for putting me straight David.

The Evening Standard's still full of xenophobic shit and 'Muslim cabbie bans guide dog' is still a quality headline though...

Imagine what fun the German equivalent of the Evening Standard, or the Daily Express, or The Sun, would have had with the bio and actions of this guy back in 1938 -

...migrant background ...attended religious schools ...felt alienated ...nursed a sense of grievance against the treatment of 'his' people ...committed terrorist assassination

Actually, as it 's history there's no need to imagine.

-

Just for giggles, it's worth comparing what the police said after the (non Muslim) raid in Lancashire a couple of weeks ago...

"He's not a terrorist and it's not a bomb factory but we are interested in what we have seized from his house. It will take expert advice to establish exactly what he has got.

"He was arrested under the Explosives Act on suspicion of possessing chemical substances that aren't in themselves an offence to possess but if combined may be capable of making an explosion."

which wasn't reported by most (if any) of the national dailies or the BBC

with this Muslim story which was splashed all over the fucking shop yesterday

Dhiren Barot, of north London, planned to use a radioactive "dirty bomb" in one of a series of attacks in the UK

Barot, 34, also allegedly plotted to cause explosions at several US financial buildings "designed to kill as many innocent people as possible".

The plans were for attacks on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank buildings in Washington, the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings in New York and the Prudential buildings in Newark, New Jersey.

... The Crown could not dispute claims from the defence that no funding had been received for the projects, nor any vehicles or bomb-making materials acquired.

The plain and simple fact is that you'll always be able to find fantasist losers, psychos, benefit scroungers, puppy bashers, wife beaters and people who wear silly hats in any community if you look hard enough. The question is who's ends are the newspapers serving by extrapolating the behaviour of the few to make a case against the many?

Not mine, that's for sure

Of course, the key difference between Muslim fantasist losers, psychos and puppy bashers and non Muslim fantasist losers, psychos and puppy bashers is that some of the Muslim ones supposedly blew up London last year.

And as soon as somebody proves that with the aid of some evidence that has been subject to critical, and public, scrutiny maybe we can all collectively sit down and figure out a way forward that doesn't involve winding everyone up in a way that's virtually guaranteed to make things worse.

London and the rest of the UK were targets for IRA bombs for getting on 25 years, yet I can't remember any point over that time when our establishment came anywhere near to encouraging hysteria or vilifying communities in the way it is doing today. Nor do I recall any suggestions of invading Eire, carpet bombing Dublin or the wholesale 're-education' of Irish Catholics living on the mainland.

Of course not, it would have been a fucking stupid way to behave.

It would have made things worse.

That's not to say that no ill-conceived, repressive and divisive measures were taken in Northern Ireland. There were plenty.

And they did make things worse

Maybe it's just me but, as a general rule, I'm not a great fan of making crappy situations worse than they already are.

Cherry-picked, unrepresentative stories about maltreated guide dogs, benefit scrounging, the rent-a-mob antics of the same handful of nutters and shills and all the other shit that pours forth daily serve only to encourage hatred and alienation.

And my fear is that's the idea.