Nomadologist said:
you think it'll change europe's mind about the war if this keeps up?
That it coincided with Blair's appointment (by the US-dominated Quartet group) as Middle East 'peace envoy' (applauded by Israel's Zionists), should be of concern to those still desperate to rationalise justifications for the illegal invasion ond occupation of Iraq that I assume you are here calling "the war." As the majority of Europe's population, as with that of the rest of the world, have consistently been opposed to that war, even before it started, by "Europe's Mind" you actually mean - essentially - the current Gordon Brown-led UK Government, this its first acid-test of foreign policy commitments: as we've just witnessed in their predictably PR-reactionary response to this - by comparison to the hundreds of attacks and air strikes against Iraqis every day - non-event ("the public must be more vigilent" instead of "our policies are directly provoking these desperate acts") that 'mind' continues to be an extension of, controlled by, the current US Adminsitration, and so, what will change is that Brown's Britain will yet further isolate itself from the rest of Europe, and even more so from the Arab and Muslim world. [Mind you, at first I thought it was due to some bungling, drunken incompetents on a mad Laddish joyride as an over-reaction to the also coincidental introduction of the smoking ban in England ... ]
hucks said:
For the record, most of the people I've chatted to over the last 24 hours are much more of Mistersloane's view than Martin's. Laughing it off. The sense is that this is the IRA in the 70s-90s again. Which, granted, was minimal fun, but it wasn't A THREAT TO OUR WAY OF LIFE, which is how today's papers would have it.
Fun? For the circa 6 million Irish residents in Britain, the most discriminated-against minority grouping, during that whole period, for whom the IRA campaign in England was used by "our way of lifers" to legitimate the most sickening racial apartheid and oppression, that description might be subject to challenge. So I'm not so sure that the word 'fun' was, as a result, included in their political evaluations. Did your anecdotal straw poll include any of Britain's 2 million Muslims, per chance, or does 'our way of life' refer exclusively to that phantasmatically beleaguered minority we call WASPS?