On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp from the Nazis, perhaps it will be helpful to reflect on the experiences of an ethnic-religious minority in Europe over a period of a decade until 1945… “It was a difficult time for Jewish families, as suddenly the law no longer protected us …
I’m afraid to say we reap what we sow. When you brutalise people, they become brutal. Someone needs to break the cycle.
So I see dissent is now extremism. To speak of a decade of crimes is to inhabit the world of apologists, falsely claiming victimhood. To speak of grievances is to tell a lie: Ali Ismail Abbas was not half incinerated by the reign of terror of Shock and Awe; there was no invasion of Iraq, …
I think we can be fairly certain that the target was chosen carefully — not as an attack on Freedom of Expression – but as a means to divide communities. And it has worked. Just as many commentators have presented the false dichotomy that to be against the atrocities is to unwaveringly support the right …
The BBC has proved without a shadow of doubt this week that European lives are worth more than others’. But then the thousands of refugees left to drown off the coast of Europe over the past five years already knew that. If the BBC afforded as much coverage as we witnessed on tonight’s evening News to …
Dear amateur forensic criminologists, If reality falls short of expectations, perhaps you should conclude that Hollywood’s special effects have been exaggerated all these years, rather than claim that what you saw on the news was a fictitious dramatization. Yours sincerely.
Reminder to self: stop returning to the news, where you will only drown in the hatred of the angered masses. Think instead of the composed plea of the murdered policeman’s brother, who restored the humanity of the victims, stripping back the layers of politicised agitation.
The big lesson to me this week has been to resist paying too much attention to the News – to avoid PM on Radio 4, to switch off Channel 4 News, to put the newspapers to one side. Had I done so, the non-stop commentary would never have sent me into a spin and a …
Both the act of terrorism and the reporting of terrorism are political. Tuesday’s suicide bombing in Istanbul was featured in Breaking News and took second position on the BBC News website that evening, but was a mere footnote on the world news page by Wednesday morning (hours before the atrocity in Paris took place). By …
Events like this are meant to silence us in multiple ways. To silence our response to extremism, because it must be on mainstream terms. To silence our opinions, because they supposedly legitimize the actions of extremists. To silence our voices in our own communities, because the world is framed as a polarized us and them. …
You may be right that now is not the time for Muslims to object to being bashed over the head for their alleged hatred of freedom in response to the actions of two or three criminals… Conversely, you might argue that now is not the time for journalists, columnists and politicians to debate the fate …
I’m sorry, but the reporting and commentary on the BBC news this evening was shocking. Knowing nothing about the identity of the attackers, we learn that France must ask itself whether it has got its approach to immigration right. Now rolling commentary on communal tensions. But who’s to say the perpetrators aren’t natives, self radicalised …
I was wondering why yesterday’s suicide bombing in Istanbul disappeared from the front pages of our newspapers. Then I realised: it was apparently carried out by Marxists. So that’s all right then. The redefinition of terrorism goes on.
Too many people have made too many excuses for too many crimes.
