[extropy-chat] [fwd] London bombings and toxic memes

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:

> A British friend writes:
> =======================
> 
> "The British police have just announced within the past hour that
> the four London bombings of last week were indeed suicide attacks.
> Four 'suspects' died at the scenes of the bombs, they say.
> 
> "Moreover, it seems the four men concerned were from Leeds, West
> Yorkshire (where I lived in the 1970s). They've raided a number of
> houses there, including one in the Burley district (where I lived
> for nearly ten years).
> 
> "I think these are the first-ever suicide bombings in Britain, or
> indeed in Western Europe."

Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was certainly intent on suiciding if he
had succeeded, and a compatriot of his who was to do a duplicate
attempt, decided against it and hide his shoe at home until the cops
came for him. Furthermore, most, if not all, of the 9-11 hijackers
either held european passports, had spent many years living in european
nations. Zaccharias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, was a
French citizen who was a disciple (as was Reid and his partner) of that
one-eyed mullah that British authorities have so far refused to arrest
or even investigate.

> 
> Further thoughts...
> 
> I lived in Hessle Terrace, just off Brudenell Road in the Hyde Park
> area of Leeds, in 1972-1975. Then I moved about half a mile away, to
> The Village Street, Burley, where I lived for the next seven years,
> 1975-1982.
> 
> Obviously the area has changed since I left Leeds in 1982, but it
> was already getting pretty multi-ethnic in the 1970s.

Ah, the benefits of diversity, eh Dirk?

> 
> The fact that these London suicide bombers were all young men from
> Leeds, British born and raised, and who no doubt spoke with
> Yorkshire accents, puts a weird slant on the whole event. They were
> also, so I gather from news reports, all of Pakistani ethnicity.
> 
> This means that in all likelihood these first-ever suicide bombers
> in Western Europe were not...
> 
> A) Foreigners
> B) Arabs
> C) Iraqis or Palestinians
> D) People who had suffered injustices in far-off places
> E) Relatives of people who had suffered in far-off places

This is debatable, you don't know the family histories of those four.

> F) Connected in any way, other than in their own minds, with the
> problems of Palestine, Iraq or any other Arab country...
> 
> Nope -- they were young Brits of South Asian ancestry who had grown
> up all their lives in England and spoke with Yorkshire accents. (Or
> so it seems on the evidence so far.)

Not necessarily. It is estimated that approximately 3,000 British
citizens have attended al Qaeda terrorism camps in Afghanistan in the
past. Britain is heavily infiltrated.

> 
> They did what they did out of ideological conviction, not because of
> any personal experience of suffering, not because of any family
> connections with the trouble spots of the Middle East, and not
> because of any real "ethnic" identification they might have claimed
> with the Arab world.

Another debatable statement. That they were all muslim pakistanis, born
of pakistani immigrants, should be a clear enough ethnic
identification. Speaking with a yorkshire accent does not make one
assimilated.


Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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