The news is all about the killing in Woolwich, as you’d expect.
The reports are all very similar, but there is one line in The Sun that caught my eye as really rather odd.
The men were said to have been of Muslim appearance.
Said by who? Witnesses? The police? Or is it the opinion of Kay Morrison, Harry Haydon and Jo Sayer whose by line is on the article? It’s not in part of the copy quoting witnesses, it dumped twix a Whitehall statement and a sentence about Theresa May convening Cobra (Cobra ffs. They know nothing of these two guys and one man is dead. They had a gun and knives. That is hardly a national emergency). No other major paper carries a statement like it.
How can anyone tell these guys are muslims? They’re certainly hiding their beards well, and those turban things muslims wear have had a major redesign lately.
Thank you The Sun, for helping me identify dangerous muslims. I must remember then, ordinary everyday clothes, equals muslim.
You may see a pattern here, but the Telegraph, Mail, Express and the Sun have no sign of this story as expected.
You won’t be shocked to find the Guardian has it, as does the Independent which, by the way, gets’ a gold star for pointing out more of Goves’ bullshit at the end.
What surprised me, although may not surprise you as I don’t read the paper, is the Mirror doesn’t feature it. I was under the impression the Mirror was a bit of a lefty paper and would’ve been pissing themselves laughing at Gove being called out on his shit-speak.
This is a prime opportunity for the opposition to tear strips out of Gove and try and get him to justify the unsubstantiated bollocks he uses to push through what he calls education ‘reforms’, and what anybody with half a clue as to what actually goes in a class room calls A Fucking Nightmare For All Involved.
It won’t fucking happen though, and Gove will be free to fuck things up by reforming the education system back into the shape it was in the 1950’s.
If you look down the right hand side of this blog, underneath my blogroll, you’ll see a section of links called Campaigns. The first in that list is a pretty image which links to a campaign that ran from about 2007.
It calls for the British government to help the those Iraqis’ that helped the British by being interpreters. Those interpreters put their and their families lifes in danger to help our armed forces. In the eyes of some of their countrymen, and others who sought to influence the course of Iraqs’ future, these interpreters were traiters and were hunted, and beaten and killed. Those Iraqis asked for our help, for refuge. The British government dragged it’s heels and lots of interpreters died.
They deserved to be treated better. Many, many of them didn’t get it.
Although I have added and removed many links from the sidebar since 2007 that one has remained. An important issue that never really got resolved.
The button links to a video (by Bloggerheads) that explains a little about that campaign. It is just as relevant to a new campaign for Afghan interpreters that are facing the same problem after helping our armed forces in their country.
About six years ago, bloggers from across the political spectrum banded together for a campaign to offer asylum to Iraqi interpreters to British armed forces. It was a long and bumpy campaign, and we didn’t get all that we wanted at the time, but it helped to get more Iraqi interpreters into the UK than if we had done nothing.
Now it’s time to revisit the issue, for interpreters who have helped British armed forces in Afghanistan.
The reasons this is the right thing to do are straightforward:
1) These interpreters have helped save the lives of British soldiers in Afghanistan.
2) They put their lives at risk, from extremist elements, to help British forces.
3) If we abandon them, it hurts British peace-keeping missions in the future. Locals will be less willing to help British armed forces in the future if they think they will be abandoned at a later date.
Whether you were for or against the war in Afghanistan, helping Afghani interpreters and their families is the morally righteous course of action. This says nothing about whether Afghanistan was right or wrong – only that these people need help, and should be offered asylum in the UK for their services.