The pop star Ariana Grande has canceled the remaining dates of her "Dangerous Woman" tour following the murder of 22 fans (at the time of writing) and the injury of dozens more at her concert in Manchester. The Manchester Royal Infirmary reports that half the victims brought to the hospital overnight are children. The killer was a suicide bomber. Theresa May says the police believe they know his identity. The usual, predictable details will follow. [UPDATE: He's Salman Abedi, the Manchester-born son of Libyan refugees and another "known wolf".]
As The Independent's headline has it:
There's only one way Britain should respond to attacks such as Manchester. That is by carrying on exactly as before.
That's not actually the "only" way Britain could respond, but it seems the way to bet, judging from the responses of the political class. "Carry on" is a very British expression. One thinks of the famous scene in one of the most famous of the Carry On comedies, Carry On Up The Khyber, surely the most insightful film ever made about Afghanistan: as you'll recall, the revolting Khasi of Khalabar grows ever more enraged at the British Governor's refusal to let the shelling and destruction of Government House disrupt his dinner party. Even when the Khasi has the main course replaced with the head of a decapitated fakir, Her Majesty's viceroy declines to let his eye be caught by these vulgar attention-seeking jihadists. The film received unenthusiastic reviews from London critics in 1968. One would not have predicted that half-a-century later it would be official British policy on the home front.
Easier said than done, alas. A couple of hours ago, as I write, the Arndale shopping center in Manchester was evacuated, somewhat chaotically, with hundreds of customers stampeding for the exits lest they be the cause of The Independent's next carry-on editorial. The Arndale was the scene of the city's last big terror attack - in 1996, when the IRA totaled it. Two hundred people were injured, but nobody died, and you don't have to be a terror apologist like Jeremy Corbyn to find the bad old days of Irish republicanism almost quaint by comparison. A few weeks ago the BBC reported that "approximately 850 people" from the United Kingdom have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for Isis and the like. That's more volunteers than the IRA were able to recruit in thirty years of the "Troubles", when MI5 estimated that they never had more than a hundred active terrorists out in the field. This time maybe it's the exotic appeal of foreign travel, as opposed to a month holed up in a barn in Newry.
Carrying on in Germany, Angela Merkel pronounced the attack "incomprehensible". But she can't be that uncomprehending, can she? Our declared enemies are perfectly straightforward in their stated goals, and their actions are consistent with their words. They select their targets with some care. For a while, it was Europe's Jews, at a Brussels museum and a Toulouse school and a Copenhagen synagogue and a Paris kosher supermarket. But Continentals are, except for political photo-ops on Holocaust Memorial Day, relatively heartless about dead Jews, and wrote off such incidents as something to do with "Israeli settlements" and "occupation" and of no broader significance.
So they moved on to slaughter 49 gays in a nightclub in Orlando - the biggest mound of gay corpses ever piled up in American history and the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11. But all the usual noisy LGBTQWERTY activists fell suddenly silent, as if they'd all gone back in the closet and curled up in the fetal position. And those Democrats who felt obliged to weigh in thought it was something to do with the need for gun control...
So they targeted provocative expressions of the infidel's abominable false religion, decapitating a French priest at Mass and mowing down pedestrians at a Berlin Christmas market. But post-Christian Europe takes Christianity less seriously than its enemies do, and so that too merited little more than a shrug and a pledge to carry on.
So they selected symbols of nationhood, like France's Bastille Day, Canada's Cenotaph, and the Mother of Parliaments in London. But taking seriously assaults on your own nation's symbols would require you to take your nation seriously, and most western citizens are disinclined to do so. As the great universal talismanic anthem of the age has it, "Imagine there's no countries/It's easy if you try..."
So the new Caliphate's believers figured out that what their enemy really likes is consumerism and pop music. Hence the attacks on the Champs-Élysées and the flagship Åhléns department store in Stockholm, and the bloodbath at the Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris and now at Ariana Grande's "Dangerous Woman" tour.
In the decade since the Canadian Islamic Congress launched their "flagrant Islamophobia' lawsuits over my book, various comrades such as Ezra Levant and Douglas Murray have noted, correctly, that a principled commitment to free speech has always been a minority concern - and an even smaller minority with respect to free speech about Islam. As the most learned imam John Kerry put it with respect to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, there was "a sort of particularised focus and perhaps even a legitimacy – not a legitimacy, but a rationale..." Those cartoonists, they were all wearing short skirts and asking for it.
Conversely, most other western citizens believe that, to invert Trotsky, if you're not interested in Islam, Islam won't be interested in you. Ariana Grande was eight at the time of 9/11, and most of her fans even younger. They have passed their entire sentient lives in the age of Islamic terror, yet somehow assume it's something compartmentalized and sealed off from them. "Dangerous Woman" is meant to be an attitude, nothing more - an edgy pose in a pop culture that lost any edge long ago; a great T-shirt, like the ones last night scavenged from the merchandising stands and used to bandage the wounded. It must come as a shock to realize there are those who take your ersatz provocations as the real thing, and are genuinely provoked by them.
"Carrying on exactly as before", as The Independent advises, will not be possible. A few months ago, I was in Toulouse, where Jewish life has vanished from public visibility and is conducted only behind the prison-like walls of a fortress schoolhouse and a centralized synagogue that requires 24/7 protection by French soldiers; I went to Amsterdam, which is markedly less gay than it used to be; I walked through Molenbeek after dark, where unaccompanied women dare not go. You can carry on, you can stagger on, but life is not exactly as it was before. Inch by inch, it's smaller and more constrained.
And so it will prove for cafe life, and shopping malls, and pop concerts. Maybe Ariana Grande will be back in the UK - or maybe she will decide that discretion is the better part of a Dangerous Woman's valor. But there will be fewer young girls in the audience - because no mum or dad wants to live for the rest of their lives with the great gaping hole in your heart opening up for dozens of English parents this grim morning. And one day the jihad will get lucky and the bomb will take with it one of these filthy infidel "shameless" pop whores cavorting on stage in her underwear. You can carry on exactly as before, but in a decade or two, just as there are fewer gay bars in Amsterdam and no more Jewish shops on the Chaussée de Gand, there will be less music in the air in western cities. Even the buskers, like the one in Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens today serenading a shattered city with "All You Need Is Love", will have moved on, having learned that it's a bit more complicated than that.
I am currently reading Douglas Murray's fine book, The Strange Death of Europe, which lays out, unsparingly, the central illusion of the last half-century - that you could demographically transform the composition of hitherto more or less homogeneous nation states on a scale no stable society has ever attempted, and that there would be no consequences except a more vibrant range of local restaurants. Mrs May declared this morning on the steps of Downing Street that she had held a top-level security meeting, or what they call in Britain a "COBRA", which sounds like something scary enough to do battle with SPECTRE; in that sense, it's a very butch acronym for a bit of bureaucratic furniture labeling (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A). But I'll bet the mood around the table was one of fatalism and resignation, outside a few micro-adjustments to the budget of counter-terrorism agencies and the number of CCTV cameras and the amount of security checks at "sensitive" "high-value" targets like department stores, and theatres, and restaurants and football grounds and pubs and chip shops and...
But the arithmetic is not difficult: Poland and Hungary and Slovakia do not have Islamic terrorism because they have very little Islam. France and Germany and Belgium admit more and more Islam, and thus more and more terrorism. Yet the subject of immigration has been all but entirely absent from the current UK election campaign. Thirty years ago, in the interests of stopping IRA terrorism, the British state was not above preventing the internal movement within its borders of unconvicted, uncharged, unarrested Republican sympathizers seeking to take a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool. Today it declares it can do nothing to prevent the movement of large numbers of the Muslim world from thousands of miles away to the heart of the United Kingdom. It's just a fact of life - like being blown up when you go to a pop concert.
All of us have gotten things wrong since 9/11. But few of us have gotten things as disastrously wrong as May and Merkel and Hollande and an entire generation of European political leaders who insist that remorseless incremental Islamization is both unstoppable and manageable. It is neither - and, for the sake of the dead of last night's carnage and for those of the next one, it is necessary to face that honestly. Theresa May's statement in Downing Street is said by my old friends at The Spectator to be "defiant", but what she is defying is not terrorism but reality. So too for all the exhausted accessories of defiance chic: candles, teddy bears, hashtags, the pitiful passive rote gestures that acknowledge atrocity without addressing it - like the Eloi in H G Wells' Time Machine, too evolved to resist the Morlocks.
As I asked around Europe all last year: What's the happy ending here? In a decade it will be worse, and in two decades worse still, and then in three decades people will barely recall how it used to be, when all that warmth and vibrancy of urban life that Owen Jones hymns in today's Guardian is but a memory, and the music has died away, and Manchester is as dull and listless as today's Alexandria. If Mrs May or Frau Merkel has a happier ending, I'd be interested to hear it. If not, it is necessary not to carry on, but to change, and soon - before it's too late.
~Mark will have more to say about yesterday's events on the radio this afternoon, Tuesday, with Evan Solomon at 580 CFRA Ottawa live at 5.30pm Eastern.
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Mark,
What kind of idiotic parent lets a child attend a concert by someone calling herself "Dangerous Woman"?? And it appears these children for the most part were girls unaccompanied by an adult, not that "adult" means maturity anymore.
It is clear that Europe, led by England, France and Germany, is committing suicide.
I joined your Mark Steyn Club for constant exposure to your brilliance and engaging communication style. You provide critical information with sharp tongue and quick wit - true gifts.
Mark, I believe someone of stature must publicly declare that Islam is NOT a religion - it is a political movement based on hate, violence and death. The Muslim Brotherhood has admitted its goal is eliminating the US constitution and imposing Sharia law on America. It is on their detailed website couched in the usual Muslim soft-talk. It is a stealth movement powered by immigration, large scale baby-production and friendly but stupid public officials. This is treason; that dangerous gang and all its tentacles should be shut down and deported to the extent possible.
Our leaders are afraid of the MB . Are they hostage to potential violence against their families a la the Clinton death squad? We must pray President Trump can remain strong, but his retaining many Obama administration officials such as Gen. McMaster give little hope. McMaster's undercutting Trump's remarks in Saudi Arabia should be grounds for dismissal based on insubordination.
Oh mercy what a mess.
Thank you Mark, I enjoyed your article, and like you and others I have bought Douglas Murray's book, which is lucid and uncompromising, as one expects from that author. The MSM coverage in the UK is too depressing to watch, however some of the tone this time feels a little different. Readers might wish to check out Allison Pearson's comment article on the front page of today's Telegraph, which takes particular exception to the 'self-soothing mantras' of the great and good.
Thanks for referring to Wells' 'Time Machine', indeed a book to think about frequently these days. Perhaps the next one to read out?
It is always the "compassionate conservatives" who get us killed. The nicey nicies who prevent us from thinking what needs to be thought, saying what needs to be said, and doing what needs to be done even if we vote for it. Increasingly, it depends on whether you want to live or not.
I enjoyed, as ever, your piece.
But I was bored. We've been here so often. You describe the problem so well but the solution is what?
Less Islam, I presume. But how do you want that delivered whilst retaining the baby, not the bath water?
Another insightful analysis about another despicable massacre in Europe.
FNC's Tucker Carlson asked his guest tonight, "Are there warnings that we missed for what's happening in Europe right now?" Mark Steyn's name immediately came to mind as he often does during barbarous attacks like this but not because I fear him.
Mark wrote in this article--"All of us have gotten things wrong since 9/11," but someone that has written America Alone, After America; several other books on the subject; frequently appeared in the media with warnings about a certain demographic change; endured 3 HRC tribunals because of his warnings and cogently argued in the Munk Debates about this topic was certainly not as wrong as the overwhelming majority of Westerners.
Another great article Mark and thanks for the mention of Douglas Murray's book, I too am now reading it and I can't help but feel wistful for the days of my youth when I lived in Europe. That Europe is now gone and there seems to be no going back. Your writing is prescient and future generations may perhaps study your works and regard you as the Edward Gibbon of The History of the Decline and Fall of Western Europe.
So who is held responsible for this mass murder in UK? Will we still blame Isis or the UK government who knew this known wolf was a threat but decided to just continue surveillance rather than act on the known threat. We have the same problem here, we knew of the threats here and these known wolfs were unmasked after a tragedy, when will we prevent these from happening? Comey's claim to fame, before he found himself mildly nauseous, found a threat in Martha Stewart, while she was preparing pirogi's in her kitchen, found her committing insider trading offenses so she wound up in jail, but the other threats we will continue surveillance activities until we find someone willing to take action. Mark mentions Poland in his once again concise post above stating that Poland has very little Islam and for good reason, public discourse or disobedience is not tolerated at all. Getting off the subject, public shaming by colleagues keeps their populace civil. Especially in smaller towns and villages, most youth are not considered professional unless they have some form of higher education even if its from a local trade school. Furthermore, if you are not employed it means you are not self reliant, that s another problem that you would have. That means you can't support a family. So if you are a foreigner, you can't disguise it by not knowing the local culture and if you don't adapt to the local culture no one will get to know you, if no one gets to know you you don't stay around very long. If you plan to terrorize anyone look out for the older ladies wearing babushkas (their effective version of UK's CCTV) because they will not tolerate any civil disobedience plus everyone knows each other so its hard to get away with much. Poland has its own issues but for the time being, an invasion of foreigners isn't one of them especially if you are not wealthy or do not have a special marketable skill. Maybe its because the Poles love their culture and their country and their history (maybe the good parts of their history), trying to preserve their borders, language and culture unlike most of Europe.
Apparently even Morrissey gets it. Some good points made here. "Also, 'will not break us' means that the tragedy will not break her, or her policies on immigration. The young people of Manchester are already broken - thanks all the same, Theresa." Ouch.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/23/morrissey-attacks-politicians-and-the-queen-over-manchester-terrorism-response
Thanks for the link, Matt.
With any good fortune this tragic event will usher in a day that people aren't walking on eggshells paranoid that they will trigger a micro-aggression of some rampaging snowflake or a bottled up jihadist. I mean really, what else do these people do all day but find ways to be offended?
As Morrissey once crooned 'The Devil will find work for idle hands to do'...
The Eloi reference is spot on and the column brilliant. The future, not so much.
From reading "The Time Machine" and seeing the Rod Taylor movie, I had gotten the impression that the Eloi were deliberately evolved [though some unexplained mechanism by the Morlocks, perhaps having too easy a life] into sheeple, with little regard for each other's lives. Witness the scene where Rod Taylor rescues the would be drowning victim amid the collective indifference of the rest.
Mark replies:
Indeed. There's a whole section on the 21st century Eloi and watching women drown in my book After America.
I'm constantly surprised at how few folks know that prophetic and central theme of the story, or recognize it as it happens.
Hopefully this means The Time Machine will at some stage become a Tales for Our Time - that would an excellent choice, I reckon. I yesterday read an Anthony Daniels essay on the story and was struck again by its uncanny insights.
Brilliant as usual, Mark. The first world leader to deny reality post 9/11 was Bush when he insisted we're not in a religious war. Islam and the world's leftists have the same goal: the end of Western Civilization. At this point, it's hard to tell which is making the biggest strides and who is doing whose dirty work.
Who is doing whose dirty work---
As thousands of Americans daily file through the turnstiles at airports, shedding their shoes, their belts, carrying tiny shampoos in plastic baggies, pausing while they are scanned, and for a few extra special passengers, finger swabs and hand groping and wands. We do it to each other. Neighbor to neighbor. How many millions of dollars, hours of wasted time, and stress. It is normal. We accept it like the sheep that we are. Land of the free, home of the brave...
They have won by getting us to censor and distrust ourselves.
Yes. Westerners expect to be able to remain perfectly safe while experiencing the edgy frisson that comes from attending a Dangerous Woman concert; it reminds me of the recurring protests by campus SJWs who think they are actually doing something of significance and being brave. In contrast, violent Islam actually means it; it moves relentlessly towards its goal with real danger and lethal consequences.
Meanwhile, "carry on exactly as before" amounts to this: ever-increasing tiptoeing around Muslim sensibilities, continued shrivelling of public discourse, and the complete avoidance of any discussion of whether Islamic immigration is good or bad for the West.
Dangerous Woman, get away from me.
Amen
The west is faced with an implacable foe, always seeking to outdo itself in terms of evil and depravity. Hugh Muir of the Guardian believes he has the answer. He's calling for the most robust possible attack law enforcement can muster......against free speech.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/23/manchester-rule-of-law-apply-everyone-hate-peddlers-katie-hopkins.
Keep sounding the alarm. Hopefully our society will awake before it's too late.
It must be really hard for Mark to write effectively the same column after each such atrocity.
But this column is genuinely excellent. I have forwarded it to several friends, one who had not heard the John Kerry quote before. *That* is why writing these columns is worth doing: one by one we get people to see each tragedy as part of a trend and those people also get to see what our political masters are (or are not) doing about it.
This is a great column, and I thank Mark for taking the time to write it. Keep up the good work!
Spot on, Phil, about how tedious it must be for Mark to write this column over and over. Nevertheless, he does so brilliantly -- and with **such energy**, to have a tour de force like this available so quickly!
However, I demur with your use of the word "tragedy." As with 9/11 and so many of such outrages that have followed, the events themselves are monstrous crimes. (I think the word "tragedy" is suitable, though, for the experiences of the random victims caught up in the events.)
The best term I've heard for 9/11 itself was Mona Charen's "the savage enormity."
That's a fair point -- I had used atrocity in the first para and perhaps I should have stuck with that even at the cost of repetition.
You're right that our choice of words is important. And too many make the wrong choices and hamper the defence of our way of life, a la Kerry's "not legitimacy but rationale".
I only just wish Steyn might have added something about Brits like 'Tommy Robinson (a British resistance fighter, fighting within the No-Go-Zones of his Country.) On May 12th-4 a.m.-Robinson was rousted and arrested at his home and hauled off to prison for daring to video report on the Ring of the Jihadi-Child-Sex-Predator's Court Hearings in Canterbury, England.
While Steyn rightly portrays the usual "Carrying On" after this horrific terrorist attack on little girls, 'enjoying life' with their beloved idol, there actually has been an insidious response created by the British governing class, a showy, forceful takedown of any Brit who directly defiantly meets the eyes of both 'vulgar jihadists' and the governing terror apologists.
Hey Mark, if given a chance to question Robinson, I hope you'd have received a more majestic and plain-speaking 'F**k Carrying On!'
Mark, Your article was so good I put it on my facebook. It will no doubt annoy a few corbynistas but overall you have said what needs to be said and very eloquently too. Its not enough to light candles.
After 9/11, I remember George W. Bush telling us to go about our lives, go to work, etc. or the terrorists win. That act of defiance sounded pretty good at the time. Nearly 16 years and dozens of attacks later, we are still hearing that same advice from governmental leaders. Defiance without action is getting more of us killed every day. This is the one thing government is actually supposed to do, and it chooses to be impotent.
Thank you for your perspective, Mark. By the way, I'm seeing the term "Known Wolf" cropping up in articles all over the place. I hope the authors know who coined it.
Mark, you are so on the money, why won't they listen to you? The answer seems simple enough: No courage!
Mark, you say that immigration has been all but absent in the UK election campaign. I'm curious as to why you say that. It is being widely billed as the BREXIT election and Mrs May has promoted it as such in that a decisive parliamentary majority will strengthen her negotiating stance with Brussels. One of, if not the key, main factors in the BREXIT victory was immigration. In that sense then it has been front and centre of the campaign.
Ian, the topic of immigration is mostly debated by the political parties in economic, rather than cultural, terms. There is no major party that has a word to say about immigration from an Islamic source. The fact that the Conservatives are seen as the standard bearers for reduced immigration when they have singularly failed to deliver it indicates that no-one's heart is in it in Westminster. When the cultural effect of mass immigration is addressed, politicians talk about the unsettling effect of mass immigration on local communities, as though one Johnny foreigner is as unsettling as the next to the awful white trash whose vote they crave. You would know they were actually serious about doing something if they picked up on the fact that the brethren of the religion of peace have unsettled and unnerved us a whole deal more than, say, the Buddhists.
David, I agree with your general assessment of the record of the political establishment on the issue and its accompanying denialist narrative. Brexit emphasised the disconnect between the consensus at Westminster and the electorate. Theresa May recently stated that she intends to take the UK out of the EU single market, a condition of membership being the allowance of the free movement of peoples throughout its jurisdiction. Fortunately the UK didn't sign up to Schengan and now, hopefully very soon, with our departure from the EU we can assert independent control of immigration. We've yet to see how that will pan out but at least the process is moving in the right direction. I like to think that this will be a case, as Milton Freidman observed, of the wrong people being forced to do the right thing. Incidentally, the opinion polls notwithstanding, UKIP and certainly Nigel Farage have not gone away. Nigel has been very vocal about Islamic extremism in our midst and no doubt will continue to be so. As we've seen, his views seem to have a tendency to catch on!
To David, Ian, et al
I am a Brexiteer presently visiting relatives in South Carolina, soon to be returning to the UK in time to vote in the GE.
I see Brexit as our one last forlorn hope to regain some control of our Country. Not sure the Tories have the balls to pull it off to my satisfaction but at the moment they are the only chance we have. If and when we do finally leave, hopefully without free movement of people (still not sure that will happen), then what? You have all concurred with my doubts as to the ability and willingness of the ruling class to address the danger in our midst. So who do we turn to?
Trump made all the right noises here and the majority of people in this State voted for him, but I can already feel the frustration of the voters that the Establishment is putting blocks in the road to stop him at every move, so now they are already saying if not Trump then who?
I feel the same way, Tuesday next I will shuffle through an x ray screen shoe less with all the other ethnicities and religions because of one group of people. It is now a way of life we have come to accept as normal - why?
I remember reading an article about the attack on Parliament a few months back. The writer told us all to rest easy because "the system had worked." What he meant by that was that the attacker had not been able to enter and do any damage to Parliament. What seemed to be totally lost on the writer was that the system hadn't "worked" for the people who were run over on the bridge or for the guard who'd been stabbed. But that's the problem. For our elites, the system "working" means that only us regular folks get stabbed, shot, beheaded, blown up or run over. So long as Ms. May, Mr. Holland and Ms. Merkel are clear of the carnage, the rest of us can just get on with it.
Very, very well stated, in an ironically tragic manner. Will no one other than Mark say what needs to be said? Will no else advocate to block the entirely predictable results of importing millions of adherents of a death cult clothed in the trappings of religion?
This is the Katie Hopkins article mentioned by David Sharp:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4534016/Katie-Hopkins-Manchester-Arena-terrorist-attack.html
Wow. What a relief to see a logical emotional response - in print. If only it were followed by galvanized action by our betters.
Too bad that in the article he never spelled out the solution. I guess that would have landed him in jail. Sorry, I meant gaol.
How can these "leaders" be so blind? Jihadi Joe says, "We mean to convert you or kill you or enslave you," and western high muckety-mucks caution us not to believe them, even as the blood runs in the streets. I'm afraid we may be doomed.
Speaking of the "Dangerous Woman", I remember when her claim to fame was that she licked a tray of donuts on camera and put them back on the shelf. Dangerous indeed.
It's very strange time to be alive. I couldn't have imagined 20 or 30 years ago that I would bear witness to the suicide of the society in which I live.
How does anyone reconcile the "religion of peace" with these terrorist bombings that keep occurring? We're in a slow crawl towards remaking our Western nations homes to nations of Islam. We have two contrasting versions of what peace looks like now: our heads and our blood on our pavements, or the extermination of this ideology and its perpetrators. Trump is right, the goal is the extinction of every last jihadist. He has the courage to say it and is maligned in his own country for stating the truth. There is no solution that will eliminate this ideology totally without the abolition of mosques which hide these killers and the Sharia courts which exist in the Western countries. PM May could start there. As far as returning jihadis from the Middle East, they could be detained at the airport terminals when they return to the UK. That would be another good first step.
Sorry Mark - there is real anger in the UK this morning, not at the terrorists but at Katie Hopkins for a few ill chosen words in a tweet. Forget the bombers lets get the real enemy - a right wing journalist. She has now been reported to the police who, no doubt will be happy to spend more time and resources investigating her than the real enemy.
Your comments on previous controls on suspected IRA reflects part of my rant this morning as to why people on terrorists watch lists should not have some kind of controls placed on their movements. However on reflection in the current climate the likes of you, Katie as above, and most probably me would be the first to be on any current PC control list.
David Sharp
The childless leaders of the EU, May included, are clueless. But not blameless.
The big question now is whether there are enough Americans paying attention, or are we frogs in a kettle content to let the water come to a very slow boil?
Mark, your analysis, as usual, is so tragically correct. You are right about another aspect of this particular murder. As you keep saying, one of the most dangerous places in the world these days is the line outside the local security perimeter. The reports this morning are that this concert had plenty of 'security,' but the attacker never passed though it. He waited for the event to end and then killed the innocent as they congregated on their way out. The only defensible security perimeter is the national border. Once a jihadi crosses that line, no set of internal barricades or checkpoints is going to stop him.
A brilliant summation as usual, Mark, and possibly your best yet.
Meanwhile, the one man who stood up and dared suggest that maybe, just maybe we should have a bit of a rethink of our current immigration policy "until we understand what the hell is going on" is characterized as being racist, xenophobic, mentally unbalanced, and altogether unfit for the office he now holds.
The carnage itself is depressing enough. Feeling as though we've all collectively fallen into some sort of bizarre upside-down parallel universe makes it doubly so.
May your lone "voice in the desert" find a 'vibrato' echo chamber...
in watership down, the wandering rabbits run into a warren of fat, shiny bunnies near a farm, where the farmer makes sure they are fed, so he can snare a couple now and then.....it is forbidden to notice when any particular rabbit disappears, and you will be beaten to death if you insist on asking "where is so-and-so?".....starting to sound a little familiar............
"carry on" movies!!!!!....loved them and miss them......
The passivity of Europeans in the face of the worst provocations is an amazing thing to see. It is clearly a trained response. 'Broken' horses.
I recall the scene in Saving Private Ryan (and copied in other movies since), where the Wehrmacht soldier is slowly driving the knife into the American's chest, all the while saying 'Sh sh sh sh . . . .quiet . . . ."
Sorry for second post. In a more innocent age, the Times used to have a regular entry in the Letters page, for the first cuckoo in spring. I think nowadays its the first "Muslims fear backlash..." story. My entry for this year -surely a winner! - is from Newsweek @ 16:47 BSP 23/5/17 http://www.newsweek.com/muslims-manchester-fear-reprisals-isis-claims-responsibility-concert-attack-614159
Dear Mark,
When I first saw the "Dangerous Woman" headline to your piece I assumed you were referring to Theresa May, who quite likely allowed about one million Muslims into the UK during her time as Home Secretary. Rather than being a "bloody difficult woman" as Ken Clarke suggested, she's "bloody useless".
She was also responsible for banning Robert Spencer from the UK, someone who should be conducting seminars and training for senior Police officers on a regular basis if there was any trace of common sense left in the government.
Shredded 8 year old girls won't be taken seriously by the ruling Eloi either. So the Islam terrorists will move on to what, exactly. Maternity wards? That would merely serve to complete the SJW Post-Modernist Feminist circle with Islam-assisted post-birth abortions. So, the reaction will prolly move from "meh" to "huzzah".
Another trenchant piece. After yesterday's atrocity, instead of us all drifting about singing "Imagine", what about looking at the ideology that spurs "suicide" terrorism? This excellent article (yes, I know its from HuffPo!) examines it. We need senior Muslims to challenge Koranic interpretations that suggest you'll go straight to paradise if you die during Jihad. (Over to you, Sadiq Khan?) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dying-to-go-to-heaven-what-the-heavens-gate-suicides_us_58d56e6ce4b06c3d3d3e6d71?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003
That is a smart article, but I wonder if the author understands the minefield he's just entered?
I am toying with the idea of trucking a piano to Piccadilly Gardens in Manc and giving a rousing rendition of "Onward Christian Soldiers" to offer a a bit of variety to the usual John Lennon (how's *his* retirement going, by the way?) bollocks. Anybody else up for it?
The idea of Islamic reform from within is attractive to the decadent lover of the status quo, because it means he does not have to fret over being culturally insensitive in dealing with the issue directly. But jihad is not an in-house problem for Islam: the infidel has to take some ownership of its resolution. So as an infidel, I'm in favour of direct action rather than outsourcing to "moderate" Muslims. That sounds like putting our trust in a bunch of people who believe in various degrees of sanction for apostasy, Judaism, homosexuality, wine appreciation and music-making, but would like to get into a Koranic interpretation debate with the ISIS boys over whether Allah wanted his soldiers to have a fighting chance of survival as they hack down the infidel. And if we find our imam to propagate the version of Islam that the infidel would love all Muslims to subscribe to, how much credibility will he have with the type of person we are at war with? If moderate Islam cannot sufficiently distinguish itself from the people we should be fighting a cultural war with (e.g. different name, different temples, different attitude to Israel) then the whole religion should be treated as one indistinguishable whole and proscribed from within our borders until the war is over.
Mark, thank you for carrying on exactly as before. Your commentary is more essential than ever.
The British people "carried on" in WW2 too. The difference is that the RAF was bombing the s#!t out of Germany at the same time.