El Pibe

bloody hell, does he kill gepetto, disney clearly censored that one!!

I guess if it was kidnapping then that's right. If they wandered out and drowned or whatever sue is alleging then it's more akin to leaving a loaded handgun in an unlocked drawer, in which case the blame is certainly there. Not that I have any inkling of what happened, or care, just refining the simile ;)

Ooh blimey. ok, hurrrmm. wooden acting and wooden dreams on his journey towards his oedipal destiny

I'm by and large with you DaveR. I don't think I made my position clear as we got sidetracked into the semantics. I think the insistence that it is terrorism, the readiness to leap to the word serves political agendas of politicians wanting to be more electable, of the hate preachers wanting to be taken seriosuly and of the right wingers wanting to create a climate of fear and segragation in our society. To me this needs to be treated as a criminal matter, just as the 'war on terror' by and large vindicated the islamist philosophy of defence against crusaders, it would have been much more effectively pursued by police forces and security services than by tanks and daisy cutters. I've been saying for ages that Al-Muhajiroun and its 'successors' shouldn't be given the oxygen of publicity, the media have lapped up their grandstanding at every turn making them feel more influential than the very small group of idiots that they are. A small paragraph saying that there was a demonstration at wooton basset would suffice rather than the 6 page spreads in the Daily Mail, playing into their hands. I'm inclined to agree with the earlier article that these chaps' insistence on performance is a direct result of that. I don't think anyone is shrugging as such, but reactions at many levels play into polarisation rather than tolerance. The radicalisers at the universities will now talk of these chaps executions, of the betrayal of the muslim council and its need to dissasociate themselves from the 'true believers'*. Deradicalisation should be played through quiet, boring, solid debate and engagement and this will be more difficult in the climate created by such incidents, again playing into their hands. I don't think anyone really thinks this has nothing to do with Islam, it is esentially the distant eddies of huge climactic shifts in and for the heart of islam itself, but the supposed shrug is really about saying lets not get sucked into having the wrong focus here but lets get quietly on with the job of ensuring that the form of islam that will dominate here is a tolerant inclusive one rather than push it further away from the liberalism into which it has taken root, whilst law enforcement get on with the job of dealing with the inevitable extremists that engagement can't sort out. *not my thoughts obviously, just to clarify

Ziggy Stardust?

Your spirited defence of Catholicism is noble quids, but there's a big difference between a huge global organisation, with power influence and money having a conspiracy to protect itself against heinous crimes and pervert the cause of justice, and individual preachers twisting a faith. For Anjem Choudry, read David Koresh. As I have oft repeated, all religions are essentially exercises in fantasy, and are often used to justify prejudice, hatred and violence. Not even Buddhism, the worlds most unambiguously peaceful philosophy (he never wanted it to be a religion, though inevitably people decided it should be so and deified the poor sod) is free from having dirty just war linen tucked away. Islam has heaped violence in the past and been responsible for great art and learning. Christianity when it held sway definitely managed great art and great violence but we had to throw its shackles off to allow ourselves learning, but we digress. It's always politics quids. Martyrdom, or dying for a cause has always been seen as a noble thing, we honour our 'glorious dead' every year. Where you see medieval stupidity they will see glorious death, hell they even killed a soldier. No one ever thinks they are evil, they always think theyre doing the right thing for the right reasons, it's always the other who is bad. You talk of Baghdad deaths but it was holier than thou, god-fearing marines who declared everyone in Fallujah an enemy combatant just because they hadn't left their homes and killed tens of thousands of people with tanks and depleted uranium and white phosphorus and 1,000lb bombs. Sounds like terrorism to me, and it doesn't even make me angry, imagined if you identified with the victims of this violence. Maybe it's daft of an Englishman of Nigerian heritage to feel the idealism that Islam is a united family (especially given the evidence of schism and sectarian violence) and he needs to take the fight to the enemy in the face of such barbarity, but is it any more insane than any other artificial construct, say national pride or any religiosity of any ilk? It's not an elephant in the room it's so obvious it's hardly worth mentioning. It's just that some people don't want events like this to be a conduit for scapegoating 2 million peaceable constructive citizens of our country whilst others would love it to be the first step to its dissolution and rejection of the society we currently are. You keep coming at this subject but I can never quite get what you want out of it except howling at a perceived guardian shaped moon.

Kane - alien.

Otta, given some of the trials of late, four lions is increasingly looking like a documentary. There is something inherently absurd about it all, but as the London bombs show, bumbling amateurs can cause a great deal of harm. I imagine the arrests are lots of Al-Muhajiroun types who have been 'on the radar'. Probably anyone anime cloudy has spoken to in the last ten years. Did anyone watch my brother the Islamist, it was fascinating and thorough depressing all at once? It was also very four lions. Love autocorrect, Anjem Choudry.

Clearly we all have different ideas of what constitutes terrorist. For me it failed in what surely must be the primary definition, to cause terror. It seems to by and large have been met by indifference*, through grotesque bemusement to lip licking islamophobia/racism. All the rest about political intention, organisation etc is kind of quibbling. *i think djkq is quite right that this comes from having been desensitised over many years, from Vietnam through Yugoslavia and decades of strife in the Middle East. The reality tv thing is quite telling, there's a woman walks casually past it all with her shopping, doesn't even bat an eyelid, obviously thinking it was a drama being filmed or something, hardly surprising given the surreal nature of the events.

The soup dragon

After madrid bombs people were scared, after 9/11 they were scared, after the london bombs more so. I'm afraid this hasn't even made topic for discussion at work today and I saw no furtive glances at fellow commuters this morning. Yes, obviously this man framed his actions within his own warped world view and can be said to be political in origin, but in my head at least the word terrorist defines the actions of a wider organisation with cogent political goals, be it independence, a caliphate or disproportionate repsonse. This is more like the 'white wolf' chap or Anders Breivik, just lashing out at things they hate. Also insistence on the label suggests motives on the part of the labeller, whatever that may be. Cameron's attempt at Churchillian statesmanship in 'crisis' just made me laugh (and sob a little). We will not buckle; ffs; most people will simply see it as some sort of newsgasm of ghoulish entertainment, whilst espousing platitudes of sympathy and carry on with their lives unhindered, or maybe that was just me.

Sir Percy Blakeney aka...?

Peregrin Took - LoTR (as in peregrine/peregrination?) hmm, reckon stacey has it.

That's basically my childhood fantasy right there!!

Mr Spock, part human part vulcan?

Go on woody, all yours, guns and chases remember!

I think woody deserves the win here, plus he might not choose a 19th century american novel!

oh alright Hawkeye from last of the Mohicans (took place during the seven years war) I actually thought about that war earlier but nothing leapt to mind, kicking myself that it was an obvious choice now) ....assuming I'm right.

Hawkeye - 7th test against Australia.

Rene & Edith from Allo Allo. (their callsign was nighthawk)

Oh you get no argument from me on that count maxxi.

The nite owl - the watchmen

Well if you'd bothered listening to his claptrap he didn't see himself as instilling terror but provoking salvation from political tyranny. You don't ask those you're trying to terrorise casually to film you whilst you tell them to overthrow their rulers and bring their troops back home. To believe ones actions can provoke ones desires when they are so profoundly only going to result in imprisonment or death shows a massive disconnect with reality. If they'd wanted to terrorise the populace that could have been achieved. But whatever Lawrence, we've always seen things differently and will continue to.

Hawk the slayer ;)

Not the time or place. We all know that all religions have positive messages, we also know they're full of dubious morals, and we all know that people interpret things how they want to justify their actions. It's not an interesting debate, it's tragically tiresome on a million levels, today has added more tragedy and I don't doubt more ennui for the reactions to come.