It was in America, of all places, in the bosom of the Great Satan, that I first saw burqa-wearers "in the flesh" so to speak. Standing in a shopping mall in Baltimore six years ago, I noticed these two things - presumably human beings - walking past clad head-to-toe in grim black. As a wee boy from Belfast - where religious attire is a Rangers top and a balaclava - I was taken aback at this exotic sight. In fact I almost physically recoiled at the horror of it, at the sheer life-hating men...
"The Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement." April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate on Trends in Global Terrorism The final damning indictment of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" has come and, in a twist of irony, it arrives in the language of cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Iraq as jihadist cause celebre? Naturellement. For those whose IQ is ...
On BBC 2 last night a Catholic archbishop and a Muslim Council of Britain spokesman slugged it out over Pope Benedict’s speech at Regensburg in Germany on Tuesday which some believe insulted Islam. Seeing the pair offer their competing truths was like watching two five-year-olds argue over who would win in a fight between Batman and Spiderman. For all the articulate discourse, they were essentially debating the validity of two fictional characters. In the Indian city of Allahabad the d...
"I think amongst the leaders in Europe I think it is clear. Amongst the people in Europe and Western opinion there is a big battle to be won. I mean, I'm being just honest about this. And I think there is a desire not to face the fact that we are fighting a global struggle." Tony Blair, Ha'aretz, 10th September 2006 Link So there we have it. As a parting gift to his beloved electorate, the soon to be ex-British prime minister says they are naive, that they don't realise the natur...
"I hope their lights stay off, I hope they sweat buckets without their air-conditioning. Let them live for just 24 hours the way the people of Baghdad live every fucking day." So said a friend of mine back in 2003 when I told him there had been a major power cut in New York. He is no jihadist, certainly not a Muslim, nor a man of any religious belief, but rather a white Englishman with family in the States. But even with the Iraqi debacle in its early stages, my friend expressed his anim...
In the newspaper world we call them nibs, stories which merit no more than a few paragraphs. Thursday’s Independent gave the news that bombs in Baghdad had killed 40 people a 100-word nib on page 26. Had these murderous outrages been perpetrated anywhere else, they would have made the front page. But not in Iraq. Day after day after day, dozens of people are killed and the rest of the world yawns. The situation in Iraq is akin to what the British referred to in Ireland as "an acceptabl...
Well it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. To emphasise the drama of today’s alleged foiled terrorist plot, the BBC news was presented from the side of a runway at Heathrow. And there was poor Huw Edwards trying to do a live link while a plane took off behind him. But still the point was made. The auto-cuties don’t leave the comfort of their studio unless it’s Big News. So the arrest of twenty men suspected of plotting to blow up aircraft this morning must be significant. ...
When I was ten my teacher banned our class from using the word "nice". Never again we were told, were we to reach for an adjective and end up grasping the "n" word. This teacher was idiosyncratic to say the least - she used to interrupt lessons to play us Handel’s Messiah on the old piano in the corner of the room - so I took her "no nice" edict as another sign of her contrariness. But later in life I have come to see that she was right. We were banned from using the word because it force...
Two weeks into the latest conflict in the Middle East, the casualty figures make interesting reading. US-sponsored Israel has sent 422 Lebanese to an early grave while Hezbollah (brought to you by Iran and Syria) has killed 42 people. In other words, the Jewish state, armed and backed by the world’s richest country, has maintained a ten-to-one kill ratio in the first fortnight of fighting. This disparity in human suffering is the single defining characteristic of this war and must be ackn...
Watching the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, I find myself thinking what the reaction would have been if something similar had happened in my own country during the Troubles. Imagine the scenario: It is 1986 and the IRA have kidnapped two British soldiers and smuggled them across the border to the Irish Republic, saying they will only be freed if republican prisoners are released in return. Eschewing negotiation and lacking the intelligence to mount a rescue operation, the ...
A friend of mine describes it as "the unrequited hate affair" - the fact that while many Scots hate the English, the cursed Sassenach tends to reciprocate with something approaching bored indifference. Certainly my erstwhile colleague is right to note the depth of hostility which the Scots harbour towards their southern neighbours. But why should this be so? When challenged on this, Scots often mention a sense of historic grievance at English domination of their country, most famously exhi...
In Irish politics it is known as a stroke - an act of bare-faced hypocrisy which wrong-foots your opponent. As strokes go, the Ulster Unionist Party’s decision to cosy up to the Progressive Unionist Party in order to deny an executive seat to Sinn Fein takes some beating. Adding former Ulster Volunteer Force bomber David Ervine to the UUP’s 24 MLAs elected by Northern Ireland’s "decent people" gives unionists an extra seat in any future executive at the expense of SF, which also has 24 assemb...
My condolences to the family of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) who died peacefully in her sleep this week. I never supported the Coalition myself but neither did I bear it any ill will. A the time of its passing, it seems right to find a few nice words to say about the deceased. To me, the Coalition symbolises a more optimistic time, when lasting peace and local self-rule seemed possible. The NIWC was formed in the run-up to the negotiation elections of 1996 to give voice t...
As the years progress I find myself less able to summon up the fury which once propelled me. I have become afflicted by the disease of on-the-one-handism whereby I feel inclined to see things from other people’s point of view and accept that they may have a point. I am indebted then to the Church of England for causing me to swear at the TV for the first time in many months. Yesterday the 26 bishops and arch-bishops who sit in the House of Lords helped vote down a bill which would have al...
Slowly but surely the war drums beat louder between the US and Iran. Last weekend the celebrated American journalist Seymour Hersh claimed the US had drawn up plans to attack the Islamic Republic's with nuclear bunker-buster weapons. Iran has been refered to the UN Security Council for "defiance" of its international obligations not to develop nuclear weapons. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows no sign of backing down in this stand-off, calling for the destruction of Israel and r...