French logistics: paying ransoms and funding bombings, assuming the money isn't spent on Iraq's wide range of consumer goods and leisure activites. Maybe the BBC could remember that the next time they trumpet the 'worst atrocity yet'. Time to address the root causes.

Suggestion(s)

Might it not be true that there might be different types of racist/religiously motivated murder in the UK? I only ask because there seems to be a complacent media blanket extended over the issue such that unless race is mentioned in the attack, we can't describe it as racist (the same doesn't apply to religion, since peeing against the Mosque wall would probably be sufficient- or even near an air vent, I suppose, if you are in the pee C US military). Apropos this matter, I have a suggestion. Could it not be true that murders committed by racial minorities rarely use racial language because they are killing a member of group not well defined by saying 'whitey' just before the blow is struck?

Besides, if your crime is motivated by hatred of the host society, which is white in nature, is that not as racially motivated as an attack on a minority which is linked to the habitual actions or character of that minority?

It seems to me that admitting the use of the 'N' word or the 'P' word or equivalent as a necessary and sufficient condition for the full media treatment will rather fall short in the real world. As linkalicious Laban points out- it does

I believe I'm looking for a more nuanced approach.

DumbJon thinks we shouldn't prioritise racially motivated murders. I think that would be a better approach, but it won't wash really, as the journos have a point that a story which links to a wider phenomenon is more newsworthy than a random event- and one point is about all they can handle. Of course, though, random events aren't really random- even a nutter killing indiscriminately says a lot about the society which has let him reach such a nadir. If the BBC want to talk about moral laxness every time there's a senseless murder involving a sexual dimension; or the folly of drugs relaxation every time there's murder that involves cannabis, then fine- but I think they should report the news without relying on the subtexts which happen to match the colour of their own poster collection of social issues. So I'm agreeing with DJ the idealist here.

And I'm agreeing with this. When you hear that ''Muslim association calls Gerald Howarth's remarks 'naïve' and 'arrogant'' you know instinctively they must be good. And they are. He's the shadow Defence Secretary in the UK by the way. It must be said that people who sympathise with our enemies should be encouraged to leave, and people who threaten action against us should be made to leave. Don't know where that leaves Galloway, though he and al Qaeda agree on much, but I'd personally ensure that his passport details were somehow lost from the system, making his re-entry difficult. Maybe the Islamic world could babysit for a while?

A nose for casualties. A BBC journalist has been counting:

'the latest Haditha attack ranks among the biggest US losses.
Last December, 14 US troops and four civilian contractors died in a suicide bombing targeting a military base in Mosul.
Only air crashes, with or without hostile fire, have resulted in higher US death tolls, including 16 in the November 2003 loss of a Chinook helicopter near Falluja and 31 in a helicopter crash in January 2005 near the Jordanian border'

One Way Traffic

When looking at this article from the point of view of bias analysis I don't know where to start- but that's because there's a de facto conspiracy involved in it.

For a start the Police's frontman for the story is the deliciously token 'Met Police Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur', who obligingly offered the kind of personal comment we very rarely get from our technocrat constabulary these days, that 'he had never seen so much anger among young Muslims. '

So, it's the police as community race relations officers again.

But taking a step back, the very term 'religious hate crimes' is an immensely and distastefully Orwellian one, which the BBC choose to lede with. It's just one of those pieces of routinely intimidatory language that now shapes public discourse.

They then claim authoritatively that 'There were 269 religious hate crimes in the three weeks after 7 July, compared with 40 in the same period of 2004.'

Why is this wrong? Because, as they then admit, most were 'verbal abuse and minor assaults'.
It's barely possible to register such 'crimes', let alone verify them. I remember minding my own business one day some years ago, drinking a can of coke. A stranger on a bike cycled slowly past, and very casually, spat directly at me and at my can, scoring what to me was a humiliating bullseye by hitting squarely the opening from two or three feet away. Needless to say I did not report this incident- but was it a hate crime? Heaven knows, to be honest. Or, if the above case seems freakish, I know many elderly people who have been verbally abused and had property damaged just for being old and ageing- these have included my own Grandmother.

But what no one seems to question in this reporting is whether there has actually been the dramatic rise in so-called ' religious hatred crimes' or whether the sensitivity of muslims is somehow so heightened in the wake of the bombings that every possible thing, which previously often went unremarked, is now being reported.

Needless to say the policeman plays ball (and why wouldn't he, being from an ethnic minority and a muslim himself):

'Communities were particularly frustrated by the increased use of stop-and-search and the new "shoot-to-kill to protect" policy of dealing with suicide bombers, he said.'

Cue then the BBC to start editorialising: 'The alarming figures emerged as Home Office minister Hazel Blears held the first in a series of meetings on Tuesday with Muslim community groups across the country. '

Naturally, no-one, especially the BBC, is asking a further, even more sensitive question: whether there is any concerted effort among muslims to push their grievances to the fore as a way of putting politicians in this country on the defensive, as clearly Hazel Blears is seen to be in this article. Undoubtedly there are enough radicals out there, and their sympathisers, to keep many a police complaints officer busy with false testimonies. As the muslims always tell us that there is more than one way to fight jihad I can't help wondering, myself.

RottyPup has more.

I fail to see what's good about David Davis's latest spiel about multiculturalism not working- apart from the sentiment itself.

After all, Mr Davis says 'Let us be clear. Non-Muslims have obligations to their Muslim fellow citizens - to strive for equal opportunities for all, to accept the mainstream version of Islam as a part of society'

But what's clear about this? Why do I have to accept mainstream Islam as part of society? None of Christianity's recommendations or prohibitions are accepted today in society, so why should Islam's have a special place? And does he mean that the police in Bedfordshire have the right idea and this is moderate Islam? (via DumbJon)

And if so, he's not going to change anything whatsoever if, in some freak non-representative accident such as Islamists blowing up the Labour Party whilst in conference, he gets the opportunity.

Behold the sickening Galloway: going further (if you'll pardon the pun in the light of the quotes) than I've ever heard him go before. He's a traitor- but of course we knew that. It's just as bad as watching comical Ali aired for tens of minutes on the BBC. Not for the faint hearted. (from Harry's Place).

In case you have problems with the video, let me give some quotes:

'The idea that Muslims have some kind of sickness in their bodies' (of Tony Blair's view of Muslims).

'Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners- Baghdad and Jerusalem'

'The foreigners are doing to your daughters what they will'

Laban Tall has a great post about the Anthony Walker murder. He compares the coverage of the Walker murder to that of several white boys murdered out of racial animosity. He also gives the stats for interracial murders, which are interesting.

Laban's tacked-on conclusion may be my only quibble with his post. He says ' I'd just like to say that I've no objection to the amount of air that the Anthony Walker case is getting. I'd just like to see all all murders getting that kind of coverage'

I hope that he meant 'all such racially motivated murders'. I'd be all in favour of that. After all, the argument for media prioritising of such murders as Walker's is that racial murders are part of a larger story, not isolated spasms of emotional conflagration as many murders are. However, what's needed is an even-handed presentation of this apparently awful racial tension in the UK (actually it isn't, but the repercussions in politically correct lifestyle restriction are pretty awful, as are the consequences for such integral roles of the state as controlling immigration).

That would mean people getting sick of hearing about white people killed by ethnic minorities in Britain, even more than vice versa- and the most sick of all at hearing it would be the ethnic minorities themselves. Many decent people would be sick of having to analyse their role in all of this, just as we lily livered whites are when berated by BBC-led guilt-edged coverage.

The stumbling block to all of this is the possibility of quite widespread revenge attacks (which doesn't seem so much of a problem when those radicalised are the minority- though I guess radicalisation is hardly the flavour of the month). These might come because the Law is rarely seen to be effective- there is no catharsis in seeing the guilty punished, so the liberal elite are somewhat justified in damping the stories of white trauma down on the narrow pragmatic ground that there would indeed be a backlash. There would because their Royal Liberalnesses are so ineffective and the law has no teeth.

Pub Philosopher agrees about the ultimate sanction of the state.

But rather than give the law teeth we have to join the multi-culti merry-go-round of white guilt. It won't do.

nb. see my earlier post if you have doubts about my feeling about Anthony Walker's death.

OTOH- this is just a BBC Islamist inspired fantasy, as DumbJon points out, and using phrases like '"People are going to fight back."' reminds me of nothing more than the much descried BNP rhetoric which some would like to be actionable- and some do find actionable. 'Phone the police- help the Jihad' might be a nice slogan; or anyway phone your local special pleading centre.

Meanwhile, I couldn't believe how ridiculous the human rights angle from this article was. 'Ethnic' men, apparently, are to be searched more often by police than those who don't seem 'ethnic'. That makes absolute sense, but I just can barely believe how stupid the racial crusader brigade, in criticising this, think we are. Their rationale is that '"If you search people of a particular race or description while letting others through, it doesn't take long for a terrorist group to learn ways of placing their lethal cargo with those who don't meet the profile."'

Yes, but, it's surely a lot riskier for them to approach people not of their 'tribe' with a view to making them human incendiarists. There are many gullible white people who are susceptible to the old Islamofascist-anti-colonial-Islam-means-peace canard- but how can you be sure the worm won't turn? Or, if you mean to plant the bombs on some carrier- how risky is that for the bomber makers point of view? Very.

This stupendous lack of imagination from the so-called human rights lobby is not accidental- they have so much contempt for the ordinary ethnic majority in this country they feel they have to keep it simple and emotionally appealing.

Answering Terrorism.

There are two sides to every coin. I think that while desiring a crackdown on Islamists, on all who support them, and for pressure to be put on the communities who harbour them- we have to admit that there are people who, like the terrorists against democracy in Iraq, don't want our society to work. There are vicious and destructive people who build their own rationale to the point where they express it violently- if 'express' weren't a horrible euphemism for acts like that against Anthony Walker in Liverpool-, of British origin.

Maybe it's sentimental, but everything I hear about him suggests that the apparent racists who targeted him chose an admirable example of where integration actually works, in order to make their point the more brutal and hard nosed.

Just over ten years ago I was part of a debate where I argued for the reintroduction of the death penalty (I lost the original vote, won the ultimate one). One of the things I argued was that for society to have the respect of all its extremely varied and vigorous members, it had to have an effective ultimate sanction. I still hold that view, and I'd apply it to the likes of Anthony's murderers. Our sclerotic justice system won't wake up until it realises the power it has whether it likes it or not. The fact is that power suppressed is merely manifested in the increasingly ego-centric behaviour of the extremer fringes of society. If somebody out there thinks that Anthony's death was just politics by other means- because they calculated it to be that way- then politics has to be able to give an answer by other means than the purely political ones it currently has.