News from around the globe that the newspapers seldom print

Disclaimer and fair comment

While I agree with most of the material passed on I may not be in agreement with all. However there is much we can learn from some that we disagree with. Remember it was once thought that the earth was flat.

It is left to your judgment to determine what you agree with and what to act upon.

Appeasement all over again - remember Chamberlain and "peace in our time?" a few weeks later Hitler went on the rampage.

Now there is the appeasement of terrorists, will they never learn.

With idiots like this in charge what hope have we got?

Ho Hum!

Trust politicians to do nothing useful
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 09/08/2005)

Responding to Islamist terrorism in Britain and elsewhere, Germany is considering introducing a Muslim public holiday. As Mathias Dopfner, chief executive of Axel Springer, put it: "A substantial fraction of Germany's government - and, if polls are to be believed, the German people - believe that creating an official state Muslim holiday will somehow spare us from the wrath of fanatical Islamists."

Great. At least the 1930s' appeasers did it on their own time. But, in recasting appeasement as yet another paid day off, the new proposal cunningly manages to combine the worst instincts of the old Europe and the new.

On September 11, the passengers on Flight 93 acted against the terrorists more swiftly and efficiently than all the fancypants federal acronyms - CIA, FBI, FAA et al. On July 7, London commuters figured out for themselves that the third rail was no longer live and they could escape down the tunnel. When the plane crashes, when the bomb goes off, when the guy in the next seat seems to be trying to light his shoe with a match, ad hoc formations of ordinary citizens are able to act decisively and effectively - be they French, British, American, Canadian.

It's getting them to that point that's difficult - as the German Islamist Appeasement Bank Holiday Weekend suggests. Until the bomb goes off, citizens of advanced democracies are generally content to leave it to the professional ruling class - i.e., politicians, academics, lobby groups - whose sloth, incompetence, self-delusion and worse they have a remarkably high tolerance for.

A British MP can go on Syrian television and cry in a crowded theatre of the easily inflamed - "Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters", etc - but it seems unlikely that his constituents will hold it against him come election day.

If, following the London bombings, the Home Office is determined enough to foist ID cards on the general populace, the stoic British will most probably grin and bear the introduction of yet another sclerotic bureaucracy that even the dumbest Islamist can run rings around.

The BBC shamelessly stacked the studio audience for its discussion on terrorism with a disproportionate number of aggrieved Muslims, but most viewers will still go on stumping up the licence fee, willingly feeding the hand that bites them. 

To the BBC's way of looking at things, those "most affected" are apparently not the targets of the bombings - the British people - but only selected sub-sections thereof. Alas, as a non-approved identity group, the British people have no Sir Iqbal Sacranie to intervene on their behalf with the corporation.

A conscientious objector might reasonably withhold from his taxes the money required to fund terrorists on the dole, MPs who urge on Britain's enemies and a national broadcaster that undermines national identity. But I doubt many will. I've been asked a lot in the past few weeks whether "we'll win this thing" - and the answer, of course, depends on whom you mean by "we".

Not all the member states of what we loosely call "the West" will survive this existential struggle: on the Continent, the combination of terrorism, demographics, immigration and welfare would require a genius to steer through it, and there aren't many in sight, and little sign that the natives would be receptive to them. They will prefer the combination of appeasement of enemies and ongoing welfare for themselves so nicely summed up in that "Muslim Bank Holiday" concept.

As we've seen these past few weeks, every issue - immigration, welfare - is now a national security issue. The question is whether the politicians really have the will to do anything about it and, if they don't, how long the people will put up with them.