Waning Tolerance?

[Woebot]

A big Graffito has (at last thankfully) replaced Banksy's wretched Pulp Fiction image beside Old Street Roundabout:

It says in 5 foot high script "FUCK AL QUAIDA" in cod wildstyle.

Does this represent anything beyond truculent well-heeled street-artists becoming just slightly more conservative.

I don't know about you but when I got this email asking me to march on Downing Street and express my disgust at Shoot On Sight (even in the light of Jean Charles de Menezes's death) from Stop The War I couldn't believe they were really serious. Did that march really go ahead? It looks like it might have had its date moved! Did anyone even consider joining it?

Islamic Extremism (violent or not) is going to have a devil of a time now its alienated the enormous amount of people who went out and demonstrated against the invasion of Iraq (for the record I wasnt one of those people....)

 

[Woebot]

noting too the recent shift in US policy from GWOT to SAVE...

 

[henrymiller]

how is saying 'fuck al quaeda' conservative? wtf?

 

[henrymiller]

Islamic Extremism (violent or not) is going to have a devil of a time now its alienated the enormous amount of people who went out and demonstrated against the invasion of Iraq (for the record I wasnt one of those people....)

er, again, wtf? i did march, and i was already pretty alienated from islamic extremism thanks but no thanks! it is fully entitled to having a devil of a time, before 7/7, before 9/11.

 

[Omaar]

Err I'd probably march against the 'shoot on sight' policy if I was in the UK.

 

[henrymiller]

i might have, but the march was from the off actually a 'stop the war', bring-our-boys-home march. it exploited the death of an innocent man to make fairly doubtful surmises about the bombings ("if we hadn't invaded iraq, this would never have happened, therefore blair is responsible!").

 

[Buick6]

how is saying 'fuck al quaeda' conservative? wtf?

Exactly. It's the same as saying fuck Adolph Hitler. Al Quaida are simply an extreme-right-wing Islamist group, they've never been anything else. The mind boggles how some people just don't understand this basic concept.

 

[Pearsall]

Exactly. It's the same as saying fuck Adolph Hitler. Al Quaida are simply an extreme-right-wing Islamist group, they've never been anything else. The mind boggles how some people just don't understand this basic concept.

Wrong wrong wrong!

They are simply an anti-imperialist group representing the oppressed of the world that have been pushed into acting by the Je...er, the Zionists. You need to look at the 'root causes', and then you will see how poverty caused by the White Man (and 'international financiers') has led Sheikh Osama to attempt to throw off the chains of his oppression.

[/sarcasm]

 

[Pearsall]

Not that I'm saying Matt takes such an approach, of course.

 

[Buick6]

Wrong wrong wrong!

They are simply an anti-imperialist group representing the oppressed of the world that have been pushed into acting by the Je...er, the Zionists. You need to look at the 'root causes', and then you will see how poverty caused by the White Man (and 'international financiers') has led Sheikh Osama to attempt to throw off the chains of his oppression.

[/sarcasm]

Yeah it's the decadent Gay Jewish lobby in collusion with the Zionist media (even if most of the media is owned by White Protestants) conspiracy - the Oil Shieks are innocent because Capitalism was a Jewish invention, just like Marxism and Psychiatry and all those other 'Western' disgusting ideas

 

[sufi]

i wonder whether only using bombers from "minority communities" was a consciously divisive strategy? if for example a white british convert had been involved how would the bombings effects on "community relations" be affected, and in whose interests would that have been?

...decadent Gay lobby...

yeah i had this conversation yesterday, not with a muslim though,

5 foot high script "FUCK AL QUAIDA" in cod wildstyle

may we have a piccy please ?

 

[Woebot]

may we have a piccy please ?

as luck would have it

 

[Woebot]

how is saying 'fuck al quaeda' conservative? wtf?

sort of baffled by your outraged tone here. leaving ethics aside, within the context of graffiti, isnt such a statement unusually close to the governments line?

 

[henrymiller]

sort of baffled by your outraged tone here. leaving ethics aside, within the context of graffiti, isnt such a statement unusually close to the governments line?

sort of baffled by how much crack you're on. whatkind of tone is appropriate? do you *really* thing being anti-AQ is 'conservative'? why leave the ethics of being mass-murderers aside? AQ may well be government enemies, but they are also enemies of the people. there is nothing in AQ to get behind. unless this is some kind of post-vice 'omg homophobia and anti-semitism is cool' thing, which can go eat a dick.

 

[sufi]

as luck would have it

Thanks Star!

... back on topic....
i think henry is illustrating the kind of kneejerk reaction that is characteristic of these troubled times . there is not meant to be middle ground anymore, no space for ambivalence or neutrality... your either pro-war or anti, & if you disagree with me then your a crackhead

was it bush who said:
"you're either with us or against us"
or was it bin laden???​

the blair government's moves towards this utterly nebulous '3rd way' seem only to have increased & encouraged conservatism (immigration), nimbyism (ASBOs), authoritarianism (ID Cards), militarism (TWOT, GulfWarII)... and all the things we hate,

this current climate really favors crackhead/psychotic/extremist mentality, sometimes it feels like you got to be spychjo to get ahead... even banksyism is on the increase

 

[henrymiller]

bite me, sufi. i've had 4 years to reflect on the fact i don't like AQ. "no space for ambivalence or neutrality"? no, there isn't, really. the real kneejerk reaction is surely woebot's, which is that AQ is not the government, so must have some whiff of radicalism.
perhaps i'm being unfair, but why the 'ambivalence'? what part of blowing civilians up in pursuit of the millennium don't you disapprove of?

 

[henrymiller]

iow, the kneejerk, with-us-or-against-us line says that you can't be anti-AQ and anti-war. this is pish. thinking AQ's line on iraq has anything in common with the principled anti-war feeling demonstrated in london is dangerous nonsense.

 

[sufi]

plenty of space for a multiplicity of kneejerk reactionary movements in the 21st century... a veritable can-can - yours', the bot's, mine, even?

i couldn't say myself that i am wholeheartedly for or against the war, it's too complex a question to answer so simplistically,
the anti-war marchers didn't really address the concerns of the kurds, among others, who wanted rid of Saddam, so that meant that the hawks could write them off as appeasers, unfortunately it's in the interest of the hawks (in both camps) to maintain this duality, as they are the ones running the war.

what do you think of my original question, henry?

wonder whether only using bombers from "minority communities" was a consciously divisive strategy? if for example a white british convert had been involved how would the bombings effects on "community relations" be affected, and in whose interests would that have been?

 

[henrymiller]

yeah, i was ambivalent about the war: i marched against, but mainly because i thought the chances of peace well slim. i don't have a big problem with interventionism per se. but i'm not ambivalent about al-quaeda, i don't see any grey area there.

wonder whether only using bombers from "minority communities" was a consciously divisive strategy? if for example a white british convert had been involved how would the bombings effects on "community relations" be affected, and in whose interests would that have been?

it's a good question. we don't know enough about the bombers yet to say. have any british converts spoken out in favour of the bombings? possibly the bombers, the london ones anyway, felt more 'alienated' by godless brit society than white muslims with deeper roots in england. i don't know. to be honest, the identities of the bombers is good tabloid stuff, but the real story is surely their place in a larger network. i don't think the press would have been any less hostile toward radical islam is the bombers had been white, at any rate.

 

[sufi]

but i'm not ambivalent about al-quaeda

yeah but you can't even spell it, so the taggers are 1 step ahead there, innit!