Will Le Pen, head of the FN, be forced to echo the rivals she detests to show a united front against terrorism, as she did after the Charlie Hebdo killings in January? Or will she play the race and religion card?
Political observers suggested the answer would come only after the country had grieved for and buried its dead, but added that Friday night’s events were likely to play into the hands of the far right.
“The difference between this and Charlie Hebdo is that then it was journalists and police, symbols and institutions of the republic. These latest attacks were against ordinary people, all and everyone, men, women, children,” said Cheurfa, an analyst with Science Po’s research thinktank Cevipov.
“And they allow the FN and Marine Le Pen to say, ‘I told you so, we’ve been talking about this threat for years but nobody listened, so give us your vote.’”
But then some of the things they’ve been saying have also been true.
There really are some murderous thugs out there who want to kill everyone for religious and or political reasons. Denial of that simple fact isn’t going to get us anywhere. The question is what in buggery do we do about it?
At which point I can only repeat something I said at my UKIP hustings some years ago, something that got a round of applause and a few cheers. I’m far less worried about bearded nutters who try to kill us all than I am about their existence leading to our freedoms and liberties being stripped from us.
And I end up with a rather awful utilitarian calculation, one that’s rather insensitive while bodies are still cooling. But better 125 dead in Paris, or 50 on the Tube, or even 3,000 in two towers, than that 60 million, or 65 million, or 320 million, people have every shred of civil liberty stripped from them. There’s undoubtedly things that the police and or the security services can do to make such attacks less likely, to prevent some to most of them. But a society that gave them the powers to be able to stop every possible one wouldn’t be a society worth having.
Vile as it may be to actually say it out loud, some deaths in terrorist attacks are simply the price that will be paid for remaining a free society in any reasonable sense. I don’t wish it on anyone and I’m not volunteering myself. Not directly that is: although I’m obviously volunteering to accept a slightly greater risk of untimely death in return for the maintenance of those freedoms.
Just can’t see any other route through the logical problem…..
But better 125 dead in Paris, or 50 on the Tube, or even 3,000 in two towers, than that 60 million, or 65 million, or 320 million, people have every shred of civil liberty stripped from them.
I agree. Especially as France shows that constant intrusion into people’s communications and privacy does not actually work. It is not as if the French have any significant limits on what the police and authorities can do if they want.
So it is better still to strip the citizenship from the millions of people it should never have been granted to and deport them all back to whence they came.
A free society is a homogeneous society. Time we were once more. All societies with significant numbers of Muslims torture. And are undemocratic. We chose to have the Muslims. We will loose the civil liberties too unless we choose otherwise.
Sorry. A failed close italics bracket
That should fix it.
The FN were right all along.
You can have France, and their culture and their historic freedoms and liberties – relative to most of the rest of the world – or you can have Islam.
You can’t have both.
If the bearded nutters aren’t expelled, there won’t be any civil liberties worth fretting over. A free society that won’t stop sworn enemies infiltrating it will soon be neither free nor a society.
Our ancestors fought for centuries to get themselves – and their children – out from under the Mohammedan sword.
We aren’t smarter or braver than they were. They wouldn’t have suffered a single child molestor in Rotherham to live.
@Steve
“Our ancestors fought for centuries to get themselves – and their children – out from under the Mohammedan sword.”
What? I’ve heard of the Norman Yoke and even Catholic Oppression, but the Muslim Yoke – never.
‘Will Le Pen, head of the FN, be forced to echo the rivals she detests to show a united front against terrorism, as she did after the Charlie Hebdo killings in January?’
What united front? She was kept out of the demonstration after the C.H. murders.
And if you go expelling interning or flattening every mosque (as was said yesterday) then we have already lost the freedoms of conscience and expression.
And then somebody will look at us – let’s say communist adherents of a Courageous State – and decide that we are “just plain wrong”(as was said in justification yesterday) or say “we can have a fair society or we can have neoliberals; we can’t have both.” And then…
Careful Steve. Ironman will be along in a moment to yell at you from his broken down old high horse that you are a bigot and a racist.
Tim, I think you’re wrong. Not least because you’re simply quibbling about numbers: would 1 million deaths justify some sort of measures? 50 million?
Beyond that there are lots of things which we as a society proscribe and this proscription usually arises from events. Fifteen years ago it wasn’t necessary to have a law which said that if you marched through the streets of an English city holding up placards suggesting that you were enthusiastic for the beheading of those who insult a particular religion then you were knowingly placing yourself beyond the pale. Now it simply seems like common sense. I would be quite happy with a law which said that carrying such placards, or agitating for the murder of British soldiers and policemen, or for the overthrow of the government, or even possibly for the introduction of sharia law, means British citizens go to jail for five years or are offered free transport to whichever Muslim country they want to go to which will accept them, and non-British citizens are immediately deported.
The beauty of these people is that they identify themselves so willingly. Any suicide bomber or AK-47 wielding maniac needs a support network of people to store weapons, provide safe houses, organise planning and logistics et cetera. The people who do that are closely linked to, if not exactly the same people as, those who carry the placards.
We could have closed down the Northern Ireland situation in an afternoon with the right backbone – we knew exactly who the players were. But we did not have leaders with the requisite spine who were prepared to lift 500 people from the streets (and if necessary helicopter the place with money to assuage any local anger for a while) and so we wasted 30 years, 3,500 lives and billions of pounds. And the ordinary people of Northern Ireland were forced to live in fear of a small number of maniacs. All, basically, because of a small number of Guardian columnists, mainland leftists, and bien pensant wankers.
The Islamist situation is potentially far worse – PIRA men were not generally suicidal, for starters – but if we started by rounding up say 5000 marchers, preachers, Internet activists, we could make a serious dent in their future prospects.
Ha! Right on cue. Giddy up neddy!
Ironman – “And if you go expelling interning or flattening every mosque (as was said yesterday) then we have already lost the freedoms of conscience and expression.”
No we have not. We have preserved them. The route we are going down – ever increasing numbers of Muslims and so ever increasing police powers and intrusions to cope with them – means liberty will die a death of a thousand cuts. Until, of course, they are a majority and then it will die very quickly indeed.
The only way to save those freedoms you claim to love is to remove the illiberal part of Western society. Forever. The remaining part can continue to be free and liberal.
“And then somebody will look at us – let’s say communist adherents of a Courageous State – and decide that we are “just plain wrong”(as was said in justification yesterday) or say “we can have a fair society or we can have neoliberals; we can’t have both.” And then…”
As if they have not f*cking done it before, want to do it now and are planning even as we speak. Liberalism did nothing to save a single Kulak from dying in the wilderness of Siberia or prevent a single child being murdered by the Communists.
Why don’t we just ban beards ? That would rid us of all of the nutters including Corbyn.
Doug – Srsly? You must’ve heard of Tours, la Reconquista, the Janissaries, the Crusades, Lepanto, or the Moslem slavers who abducted people from the English coastline right up till the 19th century?
Interested – The Islamist situation is potentially far worse
It already is far worse than the Troubles. The IRA was comparatively tiny and limited in its goals.
I also like the recruiting sergeant argument, which requires the likes of Ironman to believe that there are large numbers of law-abiding muslims who despise those muslims who hate us and our way of life but who would be recruited to the cause of the haters by the arrest of the haters.
I prefer to think law l-abiding muslims would react by thinking ‘Thank fuck that maniac has been lifted, he was giving us a bad name!’
(I know this is what many do think – who is helping MI5 and the CTC arrest people?!)
“The only way to save those freedoms you claim to love is to remove the illiberal part of Western society.”
And the hundreds of thousands who voted for the new Labour leader would regard that description: “illiberal part”, as relating to us.
Good luck us.
Yeah because no-one would have a problem with that and turn into a marcher, preacher or Internet activist.
When you wrote “Our ancestors…” I for one thought you were talking about Britons.
Steve yep – they just haven’t reached a PIRA like capability yet.
The main thing which has saved us to date is the difficulty of sourcing automatic weapons here.
But the Balkans is awash with AKs and hand grenades and Manpads etc; only a matter of time before a shipment gets through.
Thanks to the likes of Ironman agitating for more muslim incomers, by denouncing anyone against as a racist, we certainly have men in the country now who can strip and assemble an AK and know how to use one. As soon as they get the AKs…
In France they can put thousands of armed police on the streets immediately: here we will be relying on bobbies in yellow jackets with tin sticks and 2×2 ARV officers to respond to half a dozen locations. Hold tight, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. 150 dead will look like a picnic.
It’s almost literally insane to allow this poisonous ideology of extreme Islamism to take hold here, and yet we’ve done it.
Ukliberty – Richard the Lionheart was British.
Sort of.
@UKL “Yeah because no-one would have a problem with that and turn into a marcher, preacher or Internet activist.”
Ha ha – see my earlier comment. You believe that law abiding decent muslims would march to protest the arrest of those who openly say they want to behead people? I have more faith in them but if they do we have planes and we can probably reach resettlement agreements with somewhere like Somalia.
I think we’d end up with a few thousand deportations and the rest of the U.K. muslim population would breath a sight of relief.
Fred – Why don’t we just ban beards ? That would rid us of all of the nutters including Corbyn.
And it’d rid us of hipsters.
Guantanamo Bay would become the most ironically retro prison in the world.
Ironman – What would Pope Saint Pius V do?
Interested,
I think lots of people, including but not limited to law abiding decent Muslims, would march to protest the authorities “rounding up say 5000 marchers, preachers, Internet activists”.
If people are committing or preparing to commit crimes they ought to be arrested and reasonable people wouldn’t have a problem with that.
Sure, but – and I know little about the Crusades – didn’t he fight to get Jerusalem out of Saladin’s hands? Saladin wasn’t rampaging around Britain.
Or was there a fear that Saladin (and other such) would eventually make their way to Britain? Genuine question.
Steve
What does the present Pope say? Or the one before him? Or the one before that? Or…
I agree we have to be robust in defending our freedoms:
As Islam is unable to separate state and religion there is a case for removing charitable status from all its institutions, the closing of its schools, the removal of its organisations from campuses and civil society, as this is in direct conflict with the foundational principle of modern democracy.
Those migrants who are unable or unwilling to assimilate to our society by wearing face coverings in public and civil spaces, who fail to learn the language, should no longer receive the support of the country they leech off in either benefits or housing.
Halaal slaughter goes against the humane treatment of animals which is a mark of civilised society and so all such slaughterhouses should be closed, the importation of halaal meat banned and any unofficial slaughtering or smuggling vigorously prosecuted with stiff compulsory penalties.
I think the above measures would separate those migrants who genuinely appreciate the UK from the hostile colonists and ancourage the latter to remove themselves.
ukliberty
Don’t waste our time with actual facts.
The introduction of internment, the way the arrests were carried out, and the abuse of those arrested, led to mass protests and a sharp increase in violence. Amid the violence, about 7,000 people fled or were forced out of their homes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius
@Ironman,
Most of the Muslims in Europe have no freedom of conscience or expression. They are bound to their religion by the fate of, at minimum, shunning by family and community if they leave it.
It would be indeed illiberal to ban people from being Muslim by free choice, but the choice is not in the vast majority of cases, free.
And ironically, the ones that freely choose to join up in the west are grossly overrepresented amongst the bearded nutters.
@UKL “I think lots of people, including but not limited to law abiding decent Muslims, would march to protest the authorities “rounding up say 5000 marchers, preachers, Internet activists””
Ah yeah – like that huge Not In My Name demonstration of 500,000 muslims post 7/11?
ukliberty
So..doing what Interested would like actually as fact cost hundreds of people their lives.
Wow. Thank God we’ve got people like him to think these clear thoughts for us.
I think what the likes of Ironman and UKliberty miss is the “strong horse” reality. In any society based on tribal loyalties, religious affiliation, and – yes – a patriarchal system where in any given family of people one man essentially dictates a significant amount of what happens it is often easier for moderates reluctantly to go along with the extremes.
When you add in that the most fanatical adherents are quite willing to kill and die for their beliefs, and that most of the benefits of the belief system accrue to the strongest (i.e. the men) then it is exponentially harder for liberals in that tradition to be heard and, much more so, to effect change.
This may be – and Ironman does love his facts but doesn’t answer questions – why there are no, not one, majority Islamic countries with anything approaching a liberal attitude to life.
You guys are betting the farm that our ageing, divided, uncertain, distracted, lazy and unbelieving culture can withstand an assault by a young, vigorous, united, fanatical group of believers.
Sorry, I don’t understand. Perhaps you don’t perceive a distinction between “rounding up” and arrests on reasonable suspicion? I don’t know.
I’d rather believe the following:
This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. … Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community. … In my opinion, such a power [indefinite detention without trial] in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.
– Lord Hoffmann
ukliberty – you know the historical background to the Crusades, I presume.
Or was there a fear that Saladin (and other such) would eventually make their way to Britain? Genuine question.
A good question for the historians. More importantly, they’re here now.
Ironman – What does the present Pope say? Or the one before him? Or the one before that? Or…
I haven’t been paying close attention, but I reckon it’s mainly mealy-mouthed koran-kissing bumfelchery.
How’s that working out for Christendom?
Oh yeah…
Allow no more in at all.
Remove the vote from them so no power blocks or support to and from leftists (who are the real cause of this mess).
Make it financially very hard for them to produce more offspring than the native population. Hence no demographic takeover..
Make our non-acceptance of their world-view clear. No more mosques/ no halal etc
Steps against their agents of infiltration–muslim brotherhood a banned organisation, etc,etc.
And general action against the left. En masse sacking of Senior Civil Service, closing down all non-science uni courses –to clear out and squash the next generation of leftists before they can get a start.
There is a huge amount that can be done without the bogus justification of a police state.
@UKL “Sorry, I don’t understand. Perhaps you don’t perceive a distinction between “rounding up” and arrests on reasonable suspicion? I don’t know.”
Ah – argumentation as snark, coupled with nit-picking. That’ll win.
Yes, obviously I mean arrest on reasonable suspicion. They can them go before a jury of their peers and be dealt with if convicted.
@Ironman
“So..doing what Interested would like actually as fact cost hundreds of people their lives.”
And argument as gobbedegook, couple with a large dose of “Uk Liberty is on my side!”
I didn’t know it was about a threat to Britain.
Was WW1 started over a threat to Britain?
Or WW2?
Interested,
It wasn’t snark – sometimes I don’t feel I understand what people mean so I ask them what they mean. In the context, I find it strange if people use “round up” synonomously with “arrest on reasonable suspicion”, because I think “round up” has a connotation that “arrest…” does not.
Hilarious of you to complain about “snark” though, well done!
UKL – I mentioned introducing laws in the same comment, so I have to say that I don’t believe you. There is nothing wrong with snark as long as it is part of a cogent argument – it’s actually quite amusing. But snark *as* argument…
We’re staring down the barrel here. It’s time to put the Leftists and the Muslims on one side of a giant fence and the rest of us in the other. Never the twain shall meet and live happily ever after. The west’s cultural and demographic death spiral is too far gone to be stopped, so we secede, have a war of annihilation against Islam in western Europe, or all become dhimmis. Those are the only options.
Ironman – “And the hundreds of thousands who voted for the new Labour leader would regard that description: “illiberal part”, as relating to us. Good luck us.”
And luckily we won the Cold War so that people like that could do what they wanted to do. Which they wanted to do when we were much more liberal.
You live in this sad little racially-based bubble where only White middle class people have moral agency. Everyone else merely reacts to what White middle class people do. People like Corbyn did not want to kill us during the Cold War because of the Official Secrets Act. They wanted to kill us because they believed in a fundamentally illiberal doctrine. That doctrine remains.
I think a big point of difference between some of us and others of us is that some of us do not believe that introducing a law which said specifically you may not march about the place calling for or even celebrating the deaths of your fellow citizens would ever lead to the arrest of people who argue about economics on a blog. The law on murder leads only to the arrest of people suspected of murder – it is not widened to include people suspected of offences that are not murder.
ukliberty – “I’d rather believe the following:”
Good for you. If you want to believe in fairly unicorn farts that is fine by me.
Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community.
Except it does. It leads to ever greater powers being handed over to people like Lord Hoffman to police and control expression and other freedoms. As we see with things like the Religious Vilification Act. Freedom is slowly dying a death by a thousand cuts with CCTV cameras everywhere, with the loss of civil liberties every other year. A process that these attacks can only speed up.
… In my opinion, such a power [indefinite detention without trial] in any form is not compatible with our constitution.
Indeed. But we will get it anyway. Because no Muslim country, no country with a sizeable Muslim minority is or can be free. They need these sorts of laws. So will we.
– Lord Hoffmann
Ironic you quote a Jewish South African who was a supporter of the political process that made South Africa so unlivable that he had to flee to the UK. If he believed that what he wanted worked, he would have stayed to enjoy the new Rainbow Nation. But then he did have two daughters.
Interested
‘In France they can put thousands of armed police on the streets immediately: here we will be relying on bobbies in yellow jackets with tin sticks and 2×2 ARV officers to respond to half a dozen locations. Hold tight, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. 150 dead will look like a picnic. ‘
The same thought occurred to me, It’s a worry.
ukliberty – “Yeah because no-one would have a problem with that and turn into a marcher, preacher or Internet activist.”
Indeed. Which is why we have to deport all of them.
ukliberty – “When you wrote “Our ancestors…” I for one thought you were talking about Britons.”
He was talking about our Common European Home. Don’t you usually claim the nation state is an artificial modern construction? Jerusalem is the centre of the Christian world. The five ancient seats of the Patriarchs are Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria. All but one of them remain in Muslim hands. Those places belong more to Europe than to the Muslim world.
I don’t recall claiming that once, let alone usually.
Because people become afeard and support politicians who cause that to happen. Not because terrorist violence has the capability to make that happen itself.
Which is Hoffmann’s point…
Do you actually know any history, UK Lib? Before the Islamic conquest, the shores of the Mediterranean had very much a common culture. The inheritance of the Roman Empire. The Holy Land marked one axis of its advance. Another was halted in southern France. The Reconquista in Iberia & the Crusades in the east were to recover those lands. Iberia it was eventually successful (Granada 1492). In the east, it was briefly checked & eventually halted & reversed at Vienna in 1683.
It’s a war of conquest went on for a thousand years. Some would say it’s continuing now. Taking a snapshot of positions in the C12th, calling that the status quo & making moral judgements on it isn’t history. It’s ridiculous.
Your title search for religious villification act in legislation has returned no results.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/all?title=religious%20villification%20act
bloke in spain,
ukliberty – “Because people become afeard and support politicians who cause that to happen. Not because terrorist violence has the capability to make that happen itself.
Which is Hoffmann’s point…”
Yeah, no sh!t. Except terrorist violence has exactly that capacity to make that happen. That is the point of the violence. It aims for a backlash and a backlash it gets. Always. Inevitably. Hoffman is not so stupid he does not know this.
But then that is the problem with letting foreigners make British laws.
ukliberty – “Your title search for religious villification act in legislation has returned no results.”
Thanks to the Hereditaries in the House of Lords. Not to the likes of Lord Hoffman.
Not on its own. It can’t change laws and policies on its own. Such change requires human political agency. Geddit?
So why write as if it exists?
Was there even a draft Bill of that name?
Clue: no.
“I’m far less worried about bearded nutters who try to kill us all than I am about their existence leading to our freedoms and liberties being stripped from us.”
Always something the ‘far right’ are said to want to do.
Yet it’s not ‘the far right’ demanding speech codes and the mass arrests of ‘racists’ who dare speak out about the dangers of indiscriminate immigration, is it?
@ UKLib
I just find it surprising one can manage to be ignorant of what’s basically the grounding to European history. The commonality of Christian lands up until the Reformation, at least. That, by threatening France or Italy or even Byzantium, Islam was a threat to Britain. Because Britain, France & Italy etc were linked by the common Christian center of Rome (or Avingon. Or both 🙂 Yeah, well). Kings held right to their thrones by being “Christian Princes”, in the original sense of the word.
What does the present Pope say?
Franny the weird seems to think that we’re already in WWIII and that we should be using force to stop militant Islamic terrorists from murdering Christians in the middle east and elsewhere.
Of course these views do not get as much airtime as his views on climate change, but there you go.
Well said, Tim Worstall. We must not let governments use the threat of terrorism to take our liberty.
Their treachery is evident. The U.S. allows millions of invaders to cross our southern border, then spies on our electronic communication in the name of guarding against terror. It is the governments’ job to prevent terror, yet they use their failure to do so as justification for taking our liberty. Pretty good deal – for them!
“I’m far less worried about bearded nutters who try to kill us all than I am about their existence leading to our freedoms and liberties being stripped from us.
And I end up with a rather awful utilitarian calculation, one that’s rather insensitive while bodies are still cooling. But better 125 dead in Paris, or 50 on the Tube, or even 3,000 in two towers, than that 60 million, or 65 million, or 320 million, people have every shred of civil liberty stripped from them.
Just can’t see any other route through the logical problem”
Our civil liberties are not damaged if we deport Muslims and stop more Muslims coming here because Muslims are not “us”.
A similar line of thinking to the one now being laid out was what lead to the end of nice functioning countries like Rhodesia, and created vile shitholes like Zimbabwe in their place.
It isn’t possible to extend the freedoms of civilised people to barbarians. They just use such freedoms to destroy the civilisation they find themselves within (but of course apart from).
The only option here is to treat Islam like the directly opposed political ideology it is. Deport Muslims. Prevent more Muslims coming to Europe. And then start taking back the lands that Islam conquered from our civilisation all those years ago. Force the tide of people in the other direction by mercilessly attacking Islam wherever it exists. Destroy Mecca. Destroy ISIL. Destory the Taliban. Destroy Iran, Syria, Turkey, the Gulf States, and the rest. They are enemies of civilisation and should be hunted until they do not pose a threat to our civilisation any more.
“At which point I can only repeat something I said at my UKIP hustings some years ago, something that got a round of applause and a few cheers. I’m far less worried about bearded nutters who try to kill us all than I am about their existence leading to our freedoms and liberties being stripped from us.
…
Vile as it may be to actually say it out loud, some deaths in terrorist attacks are simply the price that will be paid for remaining a free society in any reasonable sense.”
Is this a free society in any reasonable sense? :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2614834/Arrested-quoting-Winston-Churchill-European-election-candidate-accused-religious-racial-harassment-repeats-wartime-prime-ministers-words-Islam-campaign-speech.html
I highlight that case in order to point out that, unlike, say, the terrorism of the IRA or the Red Army Faction, Islamic terrorism is part of a wider culture war. Not a single mainstream media outlet dares publish the Danish Mo cartoons, and the leader of the so-called free world states (in front of the world) that the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. If someone was videoed on a train saying things that have been written in your comments threads, they’d be hunted down, arrested, probably convicted and suffer loss of employment. Those aren’t signs of freedom – they are acts of submission.
It’s Islam vs that free society you like to pretend you still have. And when it’s suicide bombers vs suicide libertarians, we already know which side has won.
.
Thank you, Julia M.
It irritates me to no end that the meta-context we have in the west is that, when somebody like Anders Breivik commits a mass murder, it’s OK and expected that we tar all of the populist anti-immigrant parties out there, and that it would be beyond the pale to consider any root causes (like suppressing anti-immigration speech from political discourse) that might have led a Breivik to do what he did.
But when we get Muslims claiming responsibility for a mass murder, we have our political classes saying how dare we tie it to Islam itself as well as hearing from all sorts of “reasonable” academics/quangocrats/opinion journalists about anything other than Islam that might have led these people to commit mass murder.
It’s time to face the severe bigotry we have in our societies — and that bigotry comes from the clerisy in academia, media like the BBC (or its equivalents in other countries), the Brussels class, and the like.
“But better 125 dead in Paris, or 50 on the Tube, or even 3,000 in two towers, than that 60 million, or 65 million, or 320 million, people have every shred of civil liberty stripped from them.”
Is it that binary a choice, though? I agree to an extent (“what’s the point in defeating ISIL if we end up worse off as individuals as a result?”), but isn’t the truth that we can minimise the numbers likely to harm us, minimise the loss of liberties and end up in a safer, much unchanged country?
The view that it’s got to be one extreme or the other is as fundamentalist as the medievalism in ISIL’s worldview, it seems.
I still don’t see why making fundamentalist thinking legally, morally and socially unacceptable (perhaps by not being so worried about offending folks), plus some focussed policing, plus a smarter approach to immigration wouldn’t fix it.
It’s not like all the suicide bombers and mad preachers look like Aled Jones, is it? Nout wrong with profiling if it’s working, as unpleasant as it may be to say it out loud.
@Steve
Doug – Srsly? You must’ve heard of Tours, la Reconquista, the Janissaries, the Crusades, Lepanto, or the Moslem slavers who abducted people from the English coastline right up till the 19th century?
Sure – and I also know that Tours was a raiding expedition not an invasion, The Reconquista a farrago of shifting alliances that was only turned into a grand Christian scheme after the fact, the Jannissaries though nasty were not aimed at conquering Europe, The Crusades can hardly be classed as liberating our ancestors (and shifting alliances again)…
Fuck it. I no longer care.
We flattened Dresden because we intrinsically knew what National Socialism would lead to unchecked. Unsurprisingly, it turned out we were right.
Yes, on paper, it is hard to defend killing thousands of ‘innocent people’ (who ‘innocently’ supported the regime) in firestorms, especially if you are having a group wank over a copy of the road to Serfdom, while having the luxury of not being placed into a concentration camp.
There is no God. Some people like to pretend that there is, and live their lives accordingly. Good for them, I hope that helps.
If you lead your life by a set of rules that preach forcing other people to do what you believe is correct, then I call fascist. I care not if you include some kind of imaginary sky fairy in your arguments, Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. I also care not if you actually act out these rules, or just rant on about them in some silly shaped building ‘peacefully’ building succor for those who do. You are still a fascist and I care little for your ‘human rights’.
Have a nice day.
If I may expand my comments:
I think that in much of the “western” world, by which I mean the advanced industrial democracies with a western tradition, so Europe/North America/Australia and New Zealand, more or less, that establishment class that I mentioned in my previous comment has been propagandizing endlessly about he unallayed virtues of multiculturalism and diversity. There are a lot of regular people who look at what’s going on around them in everyday life, and they get the impression that what they see is nothing like the message that the folks who beat the constant multicultural drum in the media. And so, rightly or wrongly (some of both), they express their disapproval.
But the establishment classes have decided that any disapproval is automatically racist, and something that must be suppressed. (We see a lot of the same thing in Europe with the attempts to create the EU superstate, and in America on the topic of climate change.) This leads to more radical forms of expressing that disapproval, as well as to the rise of those populist parties. Suppressing it even further is what leads to the Anders Breiviks of the world thinking the only way they can get their disapproval heard is to engage in a spectacular act of mass murder.
Oh FFS Doug. I live in the Carthegenian city of Malaka. Same place as the coast of Morocco, opposite. if it wasn’t for raghead religion. There’s bricks in the building I live in are Roman. We’ve history goes back 2000 years before Arabian pederasts appeared out of the ass end of nowhere on camels.
@UKlib
Christendom, as it used to be known. The way that SJW (and more sensible lefty) types swallowed the head-hackers’ crusader rhetoric whole is astonishing – and depressing.
It’s interesting how far some people will go to avoid recognizing obvious patterns.
Disaffected Muslim minority with a violent fringe in France. Disaffected Muslim minority in with a violent fringe in Belgium. Disaffected Muslim minority with a violent fringe in Russia. Disaffected Muslim minority with a violent fringe in India. Disaffected Muslim minority with a violent fringe in Thailand. Disaffected Muslim minority with a violent fringe in the Phillipines.
Muslim minorities are inherently disaffected because Islam is a religion of dominance and subjugation. And some proportion of Muslims in minority situations turn their disaffectedness into violent action. Not a large proportion, but it doesn’t take a large number of ultra-committed, violent assholes to cause a lot of problems.
Thefefore, the larger you let your Muslim minority become, the more of these types of attacks you’re going to have. What was the first rule of being in a hole, again? Stop digging. That’d be a good start.
The head-hackers’ crusader rhetoric that the UK engaged in total war with an entity capable of utterly destroying us, like in the First and Second World Wars?
“Except it does. It leads to ever greater powers being handed over to people like Lord Hoffman to police and control expression and other freedoms. As we see with things like the Religious Vilification Act”
Completely misunderstanding every word that left Lord Hoffman’s mouth and quoting from the, “Religious Vilification Act”. Can’t beat that!
Oh yes, and ‘Round ’em up’ now apparently denotes targeted and calm investigation. Really can’t beat that.
I am thankful for small mercies.
This week I saw a woman in a black niqab on the street outside my office in central Edinburgh, which is about a once in a year event for me.
If I lived in Bradford or Luton, probably the odds are that there would be several of them living the same street as me
‘We flattened Dresden because we intrinsically knew what National Socialism would lead to unchecked. Unsurprisingly, it turned out we were right.’
We flattened Dresden because it was (and still is) a transportation center. German transportation had become a prime bombing target months before the attack on Dresden.
“The head-hackers’ crusader rhetoric that the UK engaged in total war with an entity capable of utterly destroying us, like in the First and Second World Wars?”
Islam can destroy the West much more thoroughly than Germany ever could. Importing Islam will result in demographic replacement of European peoples by Islamic peoples, and replacement of Western culture by Islam. Especially when we insist on importing more and more, favouring them as a persecuted minority, and paying the Jizya (welfare) that enables them to expand numbers at our expense.What Islam proposes for us amounts to complete annihilation. We are acting like a defeated people for some reason.
The best Ironman has is lies and smears and shouts of ‘racist’. He’s backed himself into a corner and his colossal ego won’t allow him to accept he’s wrong and disastrously so. Doesn’t matter. Life has a way of moving on and leaving fantasists behind. I expect in the coming years to hear less and less from people like him on this subject: every mass killing drives the nail home, even into the skulls of imbeciles, abd when they bomb the cretin’s beloved Anfield… Or slaughter the worshippers in his church…
@Gamecock “Well said, Tim Worstall. We must not let governments use the threat of terrorism to take our liberty.”
I rarely disagree with you GC but here I must. Liberty is worth nothing if you’re dead. Ok, so you accept 150 dead in Paris. What about 150 dead in your town? Or 1000 dead at the university your children attend? What if your entire family bar you are among that 1000? If it’s just a numbers game you have no principles; if you don’t draw a line (a million? five million?) you have lost your mind.
And what liberty might you lose? The liberty to (in the UK) march around shouting about how great it is that a British soldier had his head cut off in broad daylight? Sorry, but I don’t want the liberty to do that, and I don’t want anyone else to have it. Make it that specific if you like. If it were put to a vote I’d say ninety percent of Britons would want those people removed from society one way or another. And it will happen, so why wait?
Most of us on here are broadly libertarian, but the right to complete freedom (insofar as we’ve ever had it) is fine in a monocultural society where we all broadly agree about stuff. We now have in this country many tens of thousands of borderline savages who hate us, hate our country, our traditions, our history. We need to stop theorising and playing and posing and posturing and put away childish things and let the men loose. Because the other side are sending men, that’s for sure.
I’m interested to know what the leftists here really think Western society will be like in 30 years time when the Muslim population has greatly expanded. Do you really think it’s going to be like some trendy inner-city London suburb, and everyone’s cool, bi, arty and doing an Arts degree, only there will be more brown skins? Because that’s not how I see things panning out. That’s not how things are going in the Western cities that Muslims are already colonizing.
It looks an awful lot to me like a slow-motion invasion has been taking place. And the leftists have long been well-aware of that (while pretending otherwise), and have been deliberately abetting the takeover, for their own deluded reasons.
“And it will happen, so why wait?”
This is the one thing that the people who believe as I believe get wrong. It will not happen, we are too tame, too civilised. The government needs to make it happen. There is support but it will not happen on its own. This makes us perfect victims if our rulers do not do what we wish.
“We now have in this country many tens of thousands of borderline savages who hate us, hate our country, our traditions, our history. We need to stop theorising and playing and posing and posturing and put away childish things and let the men loose. Because the other side are sending men, that’s for sure.”
Correct. Barbarians.
“t looks an awful lot to me like a slow-motion invasion has been taking place. And the leftists have long been well-aware of that (while pretending otherwise), and have been deliberately abetting the takeover, for their own deluded reasons.”
In the end they will just convert. What’s not to like about Islam for the inadequate, people hating, sociopaths that most leftists are? They will have important positions. They will have three wives and multiple mistresses. They will be considered men of power and prestige.
A free society does not offer them this.
I don’t want to lose our freedoms. The problem is that we are letting in hundreds of thousands of people who want to destroy those freedoms, and we are giving them the vote. And they are gaining in influence in myriad other ways, not just through violence. Dramatically reducing Muslim immigration seems the obvious and easy way to stop this, if only it were politically possible (which may be before too long)..
We will have to keep dealing with those that are already here. I don’t think “rounding up and deporting” British citizens is really going to work, especially for the native-born second generation, and who wants to have a government with that sort of power? But letting hundfreds of thousands, or millions, more Muslims into the country just seems obviously suicidal now.
@uklib “The head-hackers’ crusader rhetoric that the UK engaged in total war with an entity capable of utterly destroying us, like in the First and Second World Wars?”
No idea what point you’re trying to make here.
The crusader rhetoric in question is the idea that Muslims were (as always) the “victims,” that the Holy Land was/is immutably Islamic (despite conversion by force not so very long before), that Saladin was a perfect gent, and – most glaringly – that centuries of Muslim aggression in Asia Minor, Iberia, France, Italy and Sicily, Austria and the Balkans are all to be entirely ignored.
Not childish at all.
And in answer to your question about Saladin threatening our island directly, had Charles Martel been defeated at Tours we might well now be looking at the problem of Islam from the other side; and the mediaevals were aware of this.
In many ways mediaeval society was refreshingly un-convoluted in its thinking. Shit though it was, at least the rulers defended what was theirs against what was other.
“I don’t think “rounding up and deporting” British citizens is really going to work, especially for the native-born second generation, and who wants to have a government with that sort of power?”
If we have governments then defending the indigenous people of their geographical area is their number 1 purpose. Rounding up and deporting is a pretty obvious thing to do if your geographical area is invaded by aliens.
Any libertarianism or so-called liberalism involving all people including free riders and barbarians will fall to bits under the pressure of invasion from outside, because most people do not subscribe to these ideas even slightly.
In order to preserve it there needs to be a line between civilisation and barbarism, and barbarians need to be treated differently.
This does not destroy freedom; it preserves it for those who happen to be civilised.
Islam is barbarism and should be treated as such.
@tomsmith by it will happen I meant precisely that it will be made to happen one way or the other.
Re this supposed “Religious Vilification Act”- I think people are thinking of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/1/contents
ukliberty – “Not on its own. It can’t change laws and policies on its own. Such change requires human political agency. Geddit?”
And I am sure you and Lord Hoffman both get some sort of satisfaction about thinking about White people being blown up …. and preventing them from doing anything about it. What it is I don’t know. But in the real world, terrorist attacks cause terrorist responses. I agree with him that those responses are not good for us or our society. But they will come anyway. Because most people do not enjoy the idea of White women and children being blown up. They will demand action.
“So why write as if it exists?”
I didn’t.
“Was there even a draft Bill of that name?”
You think that playing cute and dumb works for you?
Doug – “and I also know that Tours was a raiding expedition not an invasion”
No you do not. You think you know. But you don’t. After the fact it may have been called a raid. But all the Arab conquests started out as raids. When there was no real resistance, they came back again. And again. And again. Eventually leading to conquest. Had they won at Tours, France would have been Muslim.
“The Reconquista a farrago of shifting alliances that was only turned into a grand Christian scheme after the fact”
What do you think that even means? If you mean that the Reconquista, like every other historical event, is only seen as a historical event after the event, well, yes, obviously. No one goes off at the start of a war cheering that they are off to fight in the 100 Years War. On the other hand if you mean the Muslims and Christians on either side did not see it as a battle between Islam and Christianity, you are wrong.
“the Jannissaries though nasty were not aimed at conquering Europe”
Given this was their express purpose and they came to the Gates of Vienna more than once it is odd you claim this. Is there some Big Colouring Books of Politically Correct History that tells you this sort of thing?
“The Crusades can hardly be classed as liberating our ancestors (and shifting alliances again)…”
Why not? We allied with Russia to fight Germany. That is shameful but hard times call for tough choices.
I’m glad the UK police farce has got over the resourcing issue caused by the terrible Toree Cutz at last…
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/woman-43-arrested-after-beauty-salon-posts-no-muslims-comment-on-facebook-following-paris-attacks-a3114861.html
This all sounds a lot like the old “better red than dead” line the fellow travellers used to spout in the ’70’s. The only problem was, under that calculation, you didn’t get to choose which one you ended up as.
The EU suicide note has been delivered.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/15/eu-commission-president-borders-will-remain-open/
Ironman and UKL perfectly described by this woman:
http://youtu.be/yWNv97yq4Fc
“The EU suicide note has been delivered.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/15/eu-commission-president-borders-will-remain-open/”
WTF is wrong with these people? Are they trying to provoke a reaction?
Interested, your faith in your government is dangerous. They will – and are – using “terrorism” to go after citizens, not the invaders. They take your rights while doing nothing about the invaders.
Your government doesn’t love you.
SMFS:
“And luckily we won the Cold War so that people like that could do what they wanted to do”
Should we not wait until the end of the Cold War before we declare the winner?
ukliberty, time to crawl back under your rock
Now is not the time.
There are desperate people still searching for loved ones.
There are people critically ill in hospital.
There are unburied dead who have not yet been fully mourned.
And we are nowhere near understanding what really happened this weekend, and where the perpetrators came from and how this came to pass.
So no matter what your politics, now is not the time. It is not the time to say I told you so. It is not the time for easy answers to hard questions. It is not the time to be blaming any group, other than the perpetrators themselves. It most certainly is not the time for kneejerk solutions.
Let’s unite the families. Let’s mourn the dead. Let’s allow the wounded to recover. Let’s find out what really happened. And then, can we please just for once, have a mature debate about how we fix this without labelling and denigrating those whom we disagree with about methods.
But for now, for these few days, it is not the time.
Medieval nations had monarchs who wanted to pass those nations on to their kids. Therefore, they had a strong incentive to consider the long-term consequences of any action.
Few modern politicians care about anything beyond the next election, and those who do tend to lose them.
I’ll keep faith with Newton’s 3rd law of motion, thanks.
^^^^ for InfoholicUK btw. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3319696/French-fighter-jets-carry-massive-airstrike-operation-ISIS-stronghold-city-Raqqa-Syria.html
The time for mature debate was thirty or forty years ago, but the left shouted RACIST! RACIST! HATE SPEECH! at anyone who tried to have one. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
So now we’ll end up having a war, because there’s no other option. When that happens, just try to remember who’s really responsible, and stop blaming the victims.
I was thinking that perhaps the much maligned financial services industry might have a few pointers here. Don’t laugh, the regulation of the last few years has imposed a heavy collective responsibility on the whole sector. One of your traders goes off the rails, you are all responsible. End of. If we tell the Muslim ‘Community leaders’, the Imams, the parents and the friends that if young Mo goes off and does something stupid then they will personally be held responsible, then maybe we might get some better intel and better behavior. In the meantime, I would suggest that now would be an ideal time to make it clear to those living in the UK, that not only will there never be Sharia law in this country, but there is to be absolutely no tolerance for disobeying British laws on the basis of Sharia culture. Stop these ‘community leaders’ from exploiting our ‘white guilt’ and the useful idiots of the chattering classes. It is not discrimination to apply our laws equally.
“make it clear to those living in the UK, that not only will there never be Sharia law in this country, but there is to be absolutely no tolerance for disobeying British laws on the basis of Sharia culture”
There will be Sharia law when there is a majority of people who want Sharia law. i.e. in the near future
@Gamecock
‘Interested, your faith in your government is dangerous. They will – and are – using “terrorism” to go after citizens, not the invaders. They take your rights while doing nothing about the invaders.
Your government doesn’t love you.’
I don’t have much faith in govt – hence, I’m here – but it’s a counsel of despair to say that nothing can be done, or should be.
At this point libertrian worries about encroachments on freedom are secondary to the demographic reality of what is happening. Once it happens, we are finished.
Of course the government uses events in order to strengthen itself. But the main issue with government responses to date is the complete lack of immigration control and the refusal even to think of Islam and Islamic people as a general problem to be tackled..This is what they need to do now. Not bomb Syria. Not increase surveillance. Not make excuses for the Muslims that haven’t beheaded anyone yet.
‘it’s a counsel of despair to say that nothing can be done, or should be.’
What should be done has nothing to do with spying on citizens. There is no place in the West for people who are taught that lying and killing are acceptable. Hoping to over hear one saying he is going to kill somebody is not a rational defense.
“We could have closed down the Northern Ireland situation in an afternoon with the right backbone – we knew exactly who the players were. But we did not have leaders with the requisite spine who were prepared to lift 500 people from the streets (and if necessary helicopter the place with money to assuage any local anger for a while) and so we wasted 30 years, 3,500 lives and billions of pounds. And the ordinary people of Northern Ireland were forced to live in fear of a small number of maniacs. All, basically, because of a small number of Guardian columnists, mainland leftists, and bien pensant wankers.”
I’ve only just read this, so forgive the belated reply, but is that an attempt at irony or what?
Because we spent four years, starting in 1971, carrying out just that policy. In all about 2000 people were interned, the vast majority of them alleged to be on the Republican side. And it didn’t work.
“What should be done has nothing to do with spying on citizens. There is no place in the West for people who are taught that lying and killing are acceptable. Hoping to over hear one saying he is going to kill somebody is not a rational defense.”
Precisely. Which is why my strategy is better. Which to abolish all the spying on people bollocks, whether white brown or yellow skinned, and instead control what the people who are causing the trouble in the UK (ie Muslims) are doing instead, up front and openly. All current mosques to be closed, new ones prohibited apart from State sanctioned ones, with State sanctioned imams. Islam has proven it can’t police itself, so we will have to do it for them instead. Then no Muslim can hold an elected office, so as to break up the Muslim block vote situation, and prevent Tower Hamlets/Birmingham schools situations arising again. Basically until Muslims can be trusted not to just put their co-religionists ahead of everyone else in society when they gain power of State bodies, they will be prevented from taking any State power. Halal slaughter to be outlawed (unfortunately Jewish slaughter will be collateral damage here, but needs must when the devil drives). Finally pass a law that makes it fundamentally clear that religions are fair game for free speech, and anyone who threatens or attacks anyone for using their right to free speech about religion will lose their citizenship and be thrown out of the country.
Thats my manifesto. Make it abundantly clear that the West is a Judeo-Christian/Secular cultural space, Islam is not part of that culture. If Muslims wish to live here they may do so freely, may practise their religion freely in private or in the sanctioned mosques, but no concessions will be made for their religious sensibilities. Be totally up front and open about all the restrictions, rather than spy on people in secret. Then let people get on with their lives. Prosecute those who break the law, no more.
IMO a small restriction on the rights of a few now will save a lot of bloodshed in the future.
Jim
“unfortunately Jewish slaughter will be collateral damage here”
Actually, that bit isn’t necessary……