David Craig, on December 4th, 2019(Wednesday blog)
Kissing the snake?
I’m afraid my website was down for a few hours yesterday. For anyone who wants to know what I mean by “kissing the snake”, please just see yesterday’s blog about The Snake
Mark Steyn’s article
Here’s a large part of an article written by Mark Steyn commenting on the latest London Bridge terror attack:
Usman Khan, a “British man” as the media instruct us to think of him, was a convicted terrorist, tried and jailed for his part in a plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange. In 2013, he was sentenced to sixteen years in prison, and the judge ordered him to serve at least eight.
Which seems fair enough, since it would be prudent for a city as dependent on “financial services” as London to disincentivize the detonation of the Stock Exchange.
Yet here we are, and six years later Usman Khan is out of his cell on something called “license”, which is a type of probation. But don’t worry: he had to wear an electronic ankle tag, just like Adel Kermiche was wearing when he decapitated Père Hamel during Mass at his church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. (I attended the funeral in Rouens Cathedral, a bleak affair.) As Mr Khan was known to be eager to blow up London landmarks, a condition of his “license” was that he was forbidden to visit Britain’s capital.
Then the identities of the dead emerged. Jack Merritt was a 25-year-old Cambridge criminology graduate and an administrator of the “Learning Together” programme. He had written the dissertation for his Doctorate of Philosophy on the “over-representation” in the British prison system of young ethnic-minority males, such as Usman Khan. He had apparently donated to a charity fun run by two Cambridge professors that raised money to buy a laptop for Usman Khan. Usman Khan used that laptop to explore his continuing-education interest in global jihad, and then he asked permission to go to Fishmongers’ Hall in London to attend the “Learning Together” anniversary event. Jack Merritt saw Usman Khan as his friend, proof of the validity of his thesis, a testament to the success of the programme. Usman Khan saw Jack Merritt as the other, the infidel. So he killed him.
There will be empty chairs round the Christmas table in two English households now and forever. And it behooves us to be sympathetic to and indulgent of those whose grief takes incoherent forms. As Laura Rosen Cohen noted, Jack Merrit’s father reacted to his son’s murder by Tweeting that:“my son was a beautiful spirit who took the side of the underdog”.
Dave Merritt was mourning his son, and seeking to give his lost life some kind of meaning. He was then invited to write a column for the Guardian: “Jack would be livid his death has been used to further an agenda of hate.”
Why is it necessary for Merritt Sr to damn those who disagree with him and his late son as “furthering an agenda of hate”? Why couldn’t it just be a public policy dispute – about cautious and responsible approaches to crime, immigration, social tranquillity, multiculturalism?
If anything can be said for certain about Jack Merritt’s short life, it’s that in the end he wasn’t terribly good at recognizing who the real “haters” are. Nor is his father, who seems to think they’re Nigel and Boris, Tories, “Islamophobes”. So who actually is the hater here? If you happen to think that bollards and de-radicalization programmes are insufficient to the situation, Dave Merritt will label your difference of opinion as “an agenda of hate”. Which is one reason why the bollardization of everything is all we get.
The determination to denounce everything other than diversity blather as an “agenda of hate” is a big part of why we’re where we are today. We need a broader conversation than Dave Merritt seems willing to permit, which means there will be more Jack Merritts.
As I wrote two years ago:
There is also a tragic, suicidal and sacrificial quality to our diversity stupidity: “‘We took him in as if he were a son,’ the girl’s father said, according to the Bild tabloid newspaper. He has lost his only daughter. She was stabbed and killed by her former boyfriend, an unaccompanied refugee from Afghanistan.”
And there is also a decadence to our stupidity. When Maria Ladenburger was raped and murdered by another fake “child migrant” from Afghanistan, her father, a senior official at the European Commission, asked for donations to be made in her memory to a “refugee charity”.
I hear echoes of poor Maria Ladenburger’s case in the reactions to other recent killings: we are tiptoeing very close to conscious child sacrifice in the cause of “diversity”.
Against that must be set the bravery of those who fought back. That is a well-told tale, even if it winds up like a jihadist version of the end of The Benny Hill Show: the Allahu-Akbar guy pursued doggedly by men wielding fire extinguishers and narwhal tusks and anything else they can grab. We cherish such stories because, ever since Flight 93 on 9/11, they have been the only good news of the day.
But they are not enough, not in a world where all the people who matter think like The Guardian, Dave Merritt, Cambridge University, or Cressida Dick, the head honcho of Scotland Yard, who denounced the terrorist act as (all together now) “senseless”. Au contraire, if you share the worldview of Usman Khan, as millions do, his actions make perfect sense. What’s truly senseless is our reaction to them.
For example, when the TV conversation veered away from the multicultural twaddle it was only to query whether this showed Isis were still actively in the game, notwithstanding al-Baghdadi sleeping with the virgins. Isis is a symptom, not the disease – merely the most recent flag of convenience for the great enduring jihad. At the dawn of the century, it was al-Qaeda. By 2030, it will be something else. But the idea that what we’re facing depends on some Isis high command trained at Isis staff colleges is as “senseless” as anything else.
In the early hours of December 13th, one of two men will become the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister: on the one hand, Jeremy Corbyn, a man whose sympathies his entire adult life have lain with terrorists, whether Irish Republican or Islamic, and who is all for early release for persons he doesn’t think should be banged up in the first place; and on the other, Boris Johnson, whose party talks tough on crime, immigration, terrorism and everything else, but under whose showboating butchness nothing ever changes.
Usman Khan was an ill-educated fanatic, but, up against all the sophisticated stupidity of the elites, he figured that out at least.
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Good article. These people are like the sheep in animal farm backing the pigs and providing justification for the monsters in charge. Nothing but useful idiots.
We need Mark Steyn for Prime Minister! He unfailingly speaks/writes plain talking good sense. As for the father of the slaughtered young man, his attitude is beyond my comprehension and that of a significant number of parents and grandparents with whom I’ve discussed the recent terrorist attack. Ordinary law-abiding, peace-loving native-born UK citizens are of the opinion that those found guilty of plotting or committing acts of terrorism should be either locked up in solitary for life, and the key thrown away or, if not born here, should be summarily deported to their countries of origin. Persistently to bleat on about “rehabilitation” and “de-radicalisation” in the face of blatant evidence, as demonstrated by recent events, that this has no effect but to sanction further terrorist acts, constitutes a kind of reverse Darwinism, a perverse bent to bring about the destruction of one’s self and one’s tribe. Tragically, these pacific, leftie, do-gooder types, who appear to have lost all instinct for self-preservation, will take the rest of us and our children and grandchildren down with them.
I actually believe that if an English born individual is involved in a terrorist action resulting in the death of innocent individuals the punishment should be death.This is treason of the worst kind against your own countrymen(persons).Foreign nationals commuting such acts I have more respect for but the result should be the same.Why should we fund the incarceration of these people,only for them to be let out by unscrupulous lawyers,wet pseudo psychologists/social scientists ? The gullibility of so called intelligent,educated people is amazing.The problem is they infest all of the decision making institutions and the mainstream media.My generation were brought up by people who had experienced life and death and were sceptical of most things until proven.They had sound Christian values and lived in cohesive,self supporting communities where the family,not diversity was their strength.There is little of that left and it is all down to the Marxist so called liberalism which infests all our institutions.I am greatful to blogs such as this which gives me some hope and at least a knowledge that out there there many of us who think the same way.As an eleven year old I used to read Peter Simple in the Telegraph because he was so humorous.Everything he satirised has come to pass and that tells you how low we,as a nation,has sunk.The only escape I see from this nightmare,is violent insurrection or financial collapse,or both! Not a pleasant outlook but a realistic one I think.
Mark can always be relied on for a good analysis of situations and he does inject some amusement into it especially in his talks. I rather like the idea of calling schools Transformative Learning Centres. They take children who are curious to discover everything about the world and turn them into brainwashed zombies who cannot think for themselves. Then they make them pay for further learning to ensure the message is fully implanted. The best of them become actors, journalists or politicians to ensure the message is continually repeated.
Picking up on the comment about Darwin, I saw a view recently that suggested that the human race was an evolutionary experiment. I suppose all evolution could be viewed that way but our ability to understand the natural world makes us different. It went onto to say that we are almost two species. The rational thinkers and the politically correct social justice warriors. It makes a lot of sense to me because I certainly cannot understand what is going on.
I saw Baroness Scotland blathering on (that is a good word that Mark Steyn uses) about the climate crisis. She told us the crisis is because the oceans are warming and they keep us cool. Just the opposite is true. Water had a thermal capacity that is slightly higher than the land masses and around 3300 times that of the atmosphere. The oceans keep us warm and heat the atmosphere. At school she should have learned that the Gulf Stream brings warm water to the UK making our climate warmer for the latitude. The Telegraph published an article recently saying there was no climate crisis, but all the quoted science was wrong. We live in astonishing times.
One of the better Conservative mp represents my district. He has voted against every call to war starting with the criminal Blair Iraq deal. He answers my letters eg calling out the White Helmets, false OPCW evidence etc always defending the Conservative narrative.However two very mild criticisms of ***** going back a few years were ignored. I therefore conclude that importation of a 14 Century barbaric culture is official policy. It has allowed the passing of the Patriot Act in USA and the quite dreadful Civil Contingencies Act here. We are being prepared like Christmas turkeys.
Apologies, but I had to delete one very long comment made by a reader as PC Plod could have interpreted it as being “Izlumophobic”
Great contribution from all.
There are only a few solutions to save our skins.
British born – death penalty
Foreign born – deport with no chance of readmission.
Specific ban on new ******* entering the country. Hard on some but how can you tell who the bad guys are?
Loppoman makes the factually correct point … how do you tell who the bad ones are? How can you tell what a man is thinking? He may be patiently biding his time whilst preparing for an attack on innocent people. Could be your next door neighbour or the man down the street who has a plan you don’t know about. Do we allow hundreds or thousands of traditional English men and women to be sacrificed on the alter of I**** or do we kick out PC along with all the M****** purely to protect our people? There is not a single church in Saudi Arabia … why should there be? If one were to open there would be a riot and the native people would kill everyone there. Does that show they are a strong people or does it tell us that the Crusades have never ended? How many mosques are there in UK, it is estimated there are 1600. Why is this imbalance tolerated? Simply because there is no option with weak governments. The people there are intolerant but they have oil to sell us and they buy millions of pounds worth of armaments from us, so they must be good chaps surely? Now 8% of the House of Common are foreigners or of foreign heritage and they represent the 3% of people who are of foreign extract. In the House of Lords the figure is 6%. Yet there are no foreigners allowed in the Pakistani administration. So who are the racists? To be elected to the Pakistani administration, firstly you have to be pure Pakistani and a Member of the Muslim league, so I can’t apply which is most disappointing, I hope you’ll agree!