Christian Zionism promoting Islamophobia in US

It is found mainly in the bible belt region of the United States, from the south to the midwest.

“The growing movement of Islamophobia in the United States is a troubling phenomenon for many. But the factors contributing to it are less well-known. Experts say one of these factors is Christian Zionism.” 

The zealous efforts of evangelical Christians has spurred more publicly discussed subjects such as their anti-abortion and anti-evolution campaigns.

But a lesser discussed issue is their often anti-Islamic views, which experts state correlate with their support for Israel.

Christian Zionists are believed to number around 40 or 50 million in the United States.

The movement’s support for Israel derives from a desire for the return of Jesus on earth, which many Christian Zionists say can only happen if Jews are returned to the Holy Land.

Therefore, supporting Israel is a necessary part to many Christian Zionists’ faith. This has led well-known evangelical leaders, like John Hagee and Pat Robertson, to label those opposed to Israeli policies as enemies.

Analysts say this ideology has made its way into the US government, and has been influencing US policy, most recently with their opposition to Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary.

Christian Zionists have also supported the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and have called for a war with Iran.

(Source / 20.02.2013)

Jewish settlers storm Aqsa mosque

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– Jewish settlers accompanied by media crews stormed the holy Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem on Sunday to shoot a film on their alleged temple under heavy police protection.

Local sources said that Sheikh Azam Salhab, the director of the Awkaf department, contacted the commander of the police force responsible for security of the holy compound to ask him to get those fanatics out of the Aqsa.

They said, however, that the commander rather ordered the Aqsa guards to keep a distance of 100 meters away from the settlers and the TV crews.

One of the guards said that the storming started in the early morning in the form of small groups that entered the site one after the other.

He said that the settlers toured a number of plazas inside the Haram Al-Sharif while other witnesses said they saw the settlers trying to offer Talmudic rituals.

(Source / 11.02.2013)

All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 94% that Aren’t

 

CNN recently published an article entitled Study: Threat of Muslim-American terrorism in U.S. exaggerated; according to a study released by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “the terrorist threat posed by radicalized Muslim-Americans has been exaggerated.”

Yet, Americans continue to live in mortal fear of radical Islam, a fear propagated and inflamed by right wing Islamophobes.  If one follows the cable news networks, it seems as if all terrorists are Muslims.  It has even become axiomatic in some circles to chant: “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but nearly all terrorists are Muslims.” Muslims and their “leftist dhimmi allies” respond feebly, mentioning Waco as the one counter example, unwittingly affirming the belief that “nearly all terrorists are Muslims.”

But perception is not reality.  The data simply does not support such a hasty conclusion.  On the FBI’s official website, there exists a chronological list of all terrorist attacks committed on U.S. soil from the year 1980 all the way to 2005.  That list can be accessed here (scroll down all the way to the bottom).

Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Soil by Group, From 1980 to 2005, According to FBI Database

According to this data, there were more Jewish acts of terrorism within the United States than Islamic (7% vs 6%).  These radical Jews committed acts of terrorism in the name of their religion.  These were not terrorists who happened to be Jews; rather, they were extremist Jews who committed acts of terrorism based on their religious passions, just like Al-Qaeda and company.

Yet notice the disparity in media coverage between the two.  It would indeed be very interesting to construct a corresponding pie chart that depicted the level of media coverage of each group.  The reason that Muslim apologists and their “leftist dhimmi allies” cannot recall another non-Islamic act of terrorism other than Waco is due to the fact that the media gives menial (if any) coverage to such events.  If a terrorist attack does not fit the “Islam is the perennial and existential threat of our times” narrative, it is simply not paid much attention to, which in a circuitous manner reinforces and “proves” the preconceived narrative.  It is to such an extent that the average American cannot remember any Jewish or Latino terrorist; why should he when he has never even heard of the Jewish Defense League or the Ejercito Popular Boricua Macheteros?  Surely what he does not know does not exist!

The Islamophobes claim that Islam is intrinsically a terrorist religion.  The proof?  Well, just about every terrorist attack is Islamic, they retort.  Unfortunately for them, that’s not quite true.  More like six percent.  Using their defunct logic, these right wingers ought now to conclude that nearly all acts of terrorism are committed by Latinos (or Jews).  Let them dare say it…they couldn’t; it would be political and social suicide to say such a thing. Most Americans would shut down such talk as bigoted; yet, similar statements continue to be said of Islam, without any repercussions.

The Islamophobes live in a fantasy world where everyone is supposedly too “politically correct” to criticize Islam and Muslims.  Yet, the reality is the exact opposite: you can get away with saying anything against the crescent.  Can you imagine the reaction if I said that Latinos should be profiled because after all they are the ones who commit the most terrorism in the country?  (For the record: I don’t believe in such profiling, because I am–unlike the right wing nutters–a believer in American ideals.)

The moral of the story is that Americans ought to calm down when it comes to Islamic terrorism.  Right wingers always live in mortal fear–or rather, they try to make you feel that way.  In fact, Pamela Geller (the queen of internet Islamophobia) literally said her mission was to “scare the bejeezus outta ya.” Don’t be fooled, and don’t be a wuss.  You don’t live in constant fear of radicalized Latinos (unless you’re Lou Dobbs), even though they commit seven times more acts of terrorism than Muslims in America.  Why then are you wetting yourself over Islamic radicals?  In the words of Cenk Uygur: you’re at a ten when you need to be at a four.  Nobody is saying that Islamic terrorism is not a matter of concern, but it’s grossly exaggerated.

Related Posts:

Europol report: All terrorists are Muslims…Except the 99.6% that aren’t

RAND report: Threat of homegrown jihadism exaggerated, Zero U.S. civilians killed since 9/11

Update:

A reader by the name of Dima added:

The FBI Terrorism Report shows…[that] the highest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. by region (90) took place in Puerto Rico.

Second Update:

An Islamophobe commented on this article, saying that the statistics are flawed because the FBI included small acts such as “stealing rats from a lab” as an act of terrorism.  Of course, this is patently false.  Here is a breakdown of the terrorist attacks by type (the pie chart is from the FBI’s official website and can be accessed here):

Terrorism by Event, From 1980 to 2005, According to FBI Database

(20 January 2010 / Source / 10.02.2013)

Mali Forces Execute Devout Muslim Students

BAMAKO – Students with a particularly devout Muslim appearance in northern Mali are facing summary execution by Malian forces as French troops continue their airstrikes against Islamist rebels.

“I heard one of them say, ‘For the sake of God, don’t kill me. I’m not the enemy, I’m just a student of the Qur’an,’” an eyewitness, who wanted to remain anonymous, told BBC Newsnight on Thursday, January 31.

“But one of the military guys said, ‘Don’t listen to them, they’re infiltrators’. They discussed what to do, then one said, ‘Fire!’ and they shot all three of them.

The anonymous eyewitness confirmed that he saw three Muslim students shot dead in a public place because they failed to show identity papers.“They dragged them by their feet and threw them into a well.”

He added that the three men had their hands tied behind their backs and they were made to kneel on a patch of waste ground.

The following day he says he saw two more suspects – an old man and his son – shot in similar fashion.

The BBC found bloodstains on three wells in the area, confirming reports about throwing the dead bodies in the wells.

What appeared to be human bodies were clearly visible at the bottom of one, the BBC said.

France has deployed more than 3,500 ground forces in a lightning three-week campaign that has wrested control of northern Mali’s towns from Islamist rebels in the north.

They said the troops targeted light-skinned Arab and Tuareg ethnic groups associated with the rebels.

Muslim students of the Qur’an and others with a particularly devout Muslim appearance also fear they may now be singled out for attack.

A student in the town of Mopti, Muhammad Barry, said he and others were now afraid to study the Koran outdoors for fear they might be arrested.

But he insisted that he and most other pious Muslims had no sympathy with the Islamist rebels.

Abuses

The new revelations came as human rights groups said on Friday that the French-led offensive against Islamists in Mali had led to civilian deaths in airstrikes and ethnic reprisals by Malian troops.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, however, cited eyewitness reports of extrajudicial killings by Malian government soldiers of dozens of civilians in the central towns of Sevare and Konna.

“Neither the Malians nor the French took the required precautions to avoid hitting civilian targets,” Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty’s lead researcher for West Africa, told a news conference in Bamako, Reuters reported on Friday, February 1.

“We’ve asked France and authorities in Bamako to open an independent investigation.”

US-based Human Rights Watch cited evidence that Malian soldiers executed at least 13 people suspected of collaborating with the Islamist rebels and forcibly ‘disappeared’ five others in Konna and the garrison town of Sevare, also in central Mali.

“Malian authorities have turned a blind eye to these very disturbing crimes,” said Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“The Malian government should take immediate steps to investigate these abuses and bring those responsible to justice, irrespective of rank.”

Mali, once regarded as a fine example of African democracy, collapsed into chaos after soldiers toppled the president in March, leaving a power vacuum in the north that enabled rebels to take control of nearly two-thirds of the country.

Muslims make up more than 90 percent of Mali’s nearly 12 million population.

The UN said an estimated 30,000 people had fled the latest fighting in Mali, joining more than 200,000 already displaced.

(www.onislam.net / 06.02.2013)

French mosque vandalized with anti-Islam graffiti

Vandals have targeted a French mosque in a graffiti attack, tagging the worship center with swastikas and anti-Islam slogans, officials said earlier today.

The attack was discovered by worshippers arriving for morning prayers at the mosque in Ozoir-La-Ferriere, a small town 35 kilometers east of Paris.

Photographs of the mosque show at least two swastikas painted on the facade, as well as an explicit anti-Islam slogan and “Long Live Gaul,” the ancient Roman-era name for France. Police were investigating the incident.

In the eastern city of Besançon, two mosques were also vandalized with a Star of David – commonly used by the Nazis to identify Jews.

Sources close to the inquiry, however, cautioned that the vandalism was not necessarily triggered by anti-Islam sentiment and said investigators were looking at several leads, including whether it was carried out by an unhappy worshipper.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls condemned the attacks “with the utmost severity” and called them “foul and hateful.” According to statistics from an Islamic monitoring organization, 201 anti-Islam attacks were recorded in France last year, up 28 percent on 2011.

(www.hurriyetdailynews.com / 03.02.2013)

Prince Harry: I killed Muslims to protect my people

Britain’s Prince Harry prepares his Apache helicopter prior to a training mission in the US.

” Take a life to save a life, that’s what we revolve around.”

Upon returning from his five-month tour of duty in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand Province, the third in line to the British throne, Prince Harry, says he killed Muslims to protect his people.

“Take a life to save a life, that’s what we revolve around,” Harry said.

It is not clear how many people Prince Harry has killed during the Helmand tour, but he has confirmed responsibility for killings.

“If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game,” he said.

Prince Harry, who served as co-pilot gunner, compared killing people from an Apache helicopter to playing video games and described his job as a “joy.”

“It’s a joy for me because I’m one of those people that loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful,” he said.

The 28-year-old prince was deployed to serve a 20-week mission with NATO forces in Afghanistan shortly after his scandalous nude pictures at a hotel in Las Vegas were published on the Internet, making headlines worldwide.

According to the website icasualties.org, a total of 3,257 US-led troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2001, when the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror.

The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but insecurity continues to rise across the country, despite the presence of thousands of US-led troops.

Hundreds of foreign soldiers were killed in the war-torn country in 2012 alone.

(www.presstv.ir / 02.02.2013)

Halal pies and pasties given to Muslim prisoners found to contain PORK in latest meat contamination scandal

• Prison meat supplier suspended immediately after traces of pork DNA found
• Retailers summoned to urgent meeting by Food Standards Agency
• Justice minister labels scandal ‘unacceptable’

The Ministry of Justice has suspended a prison meat supplier after it was discovered that Halal pies and pasties may have contained traces of pork DNA.

The meat had been sourced from a properly Halal certificated caterer, however an investigation showed that the products could have contained traces of non-Halal meat, including pork.

The consumption of pork is forbidden under Islamic law, and all of the contaminated products have been withdrawn with immediate effect, the Ministry said.

Chopped: Meat supplied to prisons by a Halal caterer (not pictured) may have contained traces of pork DNA. The meat is not supplied by butchers such as this man as it is forbidden under Islamic law

The scandal comes in the wake of traces of horse DNA being found in burgers on sale to the public.

As a result major food retailers and suppliers have been summoned to an urgent meeting following the spate of mis-labelled or contaminated food products reaching families.

Yesterday the Food Standards Agency (FSA) ordered food companies to a conference on Monday following a number of recent cases that have shaken consumer confidence in food labelling.

‘People have a right to expect that the food they are eating is correctly described,’ said a spokesman.

‘It is the responsibility of food businesses to ensure the food they sell contains what it says on the label.

Slammed: Justice minister Jeremy Wright has labelled the scandal over Halal prison food as ‘unacceptable’, and said that the Prison Service would investigate

‘We are considering, with relevant local authorities, whether legal action is appropriate following the investigation.’

The meeting has been organised to establish what has been happening, and what the next steps should be.

The Prison Service has also launched an investigation after a number of Halal meat pies and pasties supplied to jails were found to contain traces of pork DNA.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said that following the discovery of non-Halal meat and the traces of pork, all prisons had been informed, as well as the FSA, before steps were taken to suspend the relevant supplier, which has not been named.

‘All prisons have been informed about this very regrettable incident and we reported this issue to the Food Standards Agency immediately,” he said.

‘We are taking immediate steps to suspend the contract with the relevant subcontractor.’

The FSA added that the local authority where the supplier is based was investigating how the contamination came about and whether products have been distributed elsewhere in the UK.

Justice minister Jeremy Wright slammed the prison food scandal and offered his support to those affected by the blunder.

‘This is an absolutely unacceptable situation, and one which we regret greatly,’ he said.

‘Clearly this must be distressing for those affected and they can be reassured we are doing everything we can to resolve the situation.

‘The Prison Service is investigating this as a matter of urgency.’

The Prison Reform Trust said that it welcomed the immediate apology and investigation.

Director Juliet Lyon said: ‘This is not a matter of dietary preference but of Islamic law.

‘There are clear hospital and prison rules that Halal meat must be on the menu.

Admitted: Burger King says it had been selling burgers containing horse DNA and had dropped the Irish supplier Silvercrest, which also supplied Tesco, Asda and The Co-Op

‘This lapse will have offended and distressed high numbers of Muslim prisoners and their families so apologising, suspending the supplier and investigating the incident are the right steps for the Ministry of Justice to take.’

The revelation follows the recent scandal over horsemeat contamination.

On Thursday Burger King admitted that it had been selling burgers containing horsemeat and  dropped the Irish food processing plant which had supplied the products contaminated with horse DNA.

The contaminated burgers were made by the Irish-based processing company, Silvercrest, which is part of the ABP Foods Group.

The same company also made tainted burgers for Tesco, Asda and the Co-op, among others.

 

Dropped: Tesco, Aldi and the ‘Co-op’ have dropped Irish supplier Silvercrest Foods after horse was DNA found in frozen burgers produced at the plant

Aldi said that a sample of its frozen Oakhurst Beefburgers showed up positive for 0.1per cent horse DNA, while its Oakhurst Beef Quarter Pounders were 0.1per cent equine and 0.1per cent pork.

The company withdrew all of its frozen burgers from UK stores when the scandal first erupted two weeks ago as a precaution.

Also on Thursday, Aldi admitted for the first time that burgers sold through its UK stores were probably contaminated with traces of horse meat.

Its burgers were made by a British supplier, Dalepack, which is based in Richmond, north Yorkshire.

The same company manufactured burgers for Iceland, which has also admitted to finding horse meat in products sold to families in this country.

Dalepack also makes burgers for Waitrose and Sainsbury’s, which both insist that their burgers are clear of contamination.

(www.dailymail.co.uk / 02.02.2013)

The Hidden Genocide

 

Earlier this year a Buddhist woman was raped and murdered in western Myanmar. The authorities charged three Muslim men. A week later, 10 Muslims were murdered in a revenge attack. What happened next was hidden from the outside world. Bloodshed pitted Buddhists against minority Rohingya Muslims. Many Rohingya fled their homes, which were burned down in what they said was a deliberate attempt by the predominantly Buddhist government to drive them out of the country. “They were shooting and we were also fighting. The fields were filled with bodies and soaked with blood,” says Mohammed Islam, who fled with his family to Bangladesh. There are 400,000 Rohingya languishing in Bangladesh. For more than three decades, waves of refugees have fled Myanmar. But the government of Bangladesh considers the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants, as does the government of Myanmar. They have no legal rights and nowhere to go. This is a story of a people fleeing the land where they were born, of a people deprived of citizenship in their homeland. It is the story of the Rohingya of western Myanmar, whose very existence as a people is denied. Professor William Schabas, the former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, says: “When you see measures preventing births, trying to deny the identity of the people, hoping to see that they really are eventually, that they no longer exist; denying their history, denying the legitimacy of their right to live where they live, these are all warning signs that mean it’s not frivolous to envisage the use of the term genocide.” (www.aljazeera.com / 30.01.2013)

Israel president demands crackdown on racism in football

Shimon Peres calls for ‘determined stance’ after Beitar Jerusalem fans protest against plan to sign Muslim players

Israel’s president Shimon Peres has told the national football association ‘racism has struck the Jewish people harder than any other nation’.

Israel‘s president, Shimon Peres, has called on the country’s football authorities to clamp down on racism after Beitar Jerusalem fans protested against the club’s intention to sign two Muslim players.

Fans of the club, which has never hired an Israeli-Arab or Muslim player, raised a banner at a match at the city’s Teddy stadium on Saturday reading “Beitar pure forever”.

Peres wrote to the Israel Football Association on Tuesday: “Racism has struck the Jewish people harder than any other nation in the world … the entire country is shocked by this phenomenon and will never agree to come to terms with it.” He called for the chairman to take a “determined stance” on racism in football.

The club’s owner, Arcadi Gaydamak, said he would sign the two players from Terek Grozny, a Chechnyan Russian premier league team, despite the protest. Other Israeli clubs have, or have had, Arab and Muslim players.

Beitar fans are renowned for racist activity. In March hundreds went on a rampage at a shopping centre after a match and abused and assaulted Palestinian staff and customers. Police made no arrests.

One fan, a member of the notorious La Familia, told the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth: “I’m a racist. I hate Arabs, and we made the banner so that people would realise that they can’t bring Arab players to Beitar. If they bring in Muslims, the fans will burn down the club. That can’t happen. Arabs and Beitar Jerusalem don’t mix.”

The former prime minister Ehud Olmert, a Beitar fan for more than 40 years, said he would no longer attend matches because of fans’ behaviour. “Ultimately, this is a matter that concerns all of us. Either we remove this group of racists from our field and cut it off from the team, or we are all like them. Until that happens, I will not go to games,” he wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth.

Beitar is scheduled to play Maccabi Umm al-Fahm, a team from an Israeli-Arab town in northern Israel, in Jerusalem on Tuesday evening. Hundreds of extra police will be on duty during the game amid fears of racist violence.

(www.guardian.co.uk / 29.01.2013)

Britain goes to war with yet another Muslim country. Time to repeat: not in our name

It is the responsibility of all of us to scrutinise what our governments do in our name; if we cannot learn that from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, then it is hopeless.

British warplane loading up to go to Mali.

No scrutiny, no build-up, no parliamentary vote, not even a softening-up exercise. Britain is now involved in yet another military conflict in a Muslim land, or so we have been informed. British aircraft are flying to Mali while France bombs the country, arguing that Islamist militia must be driven back to save Europe from the creation of a “terrorist state”.

Amnesty International and West Africa experts warned of the potential disaster of foreign military intervention; the bombs raining on the Malian towns of Konna, Léré and Douentza suggest they have been definitively ignored.

Mali’s current agony has only just emerged in our headlines, but the roots go back generations.

Like the other Western colonial powers that invaded and conquered Africa from the 19th century onwards, France used tactics of divide-and-rule in Mali, leading to entrenched bitterness between the nomadic Tuareg people – the base of the current revolt – and other communities in Mali.

To some Westerners, this is a distant past to be ignored, moved on from, and certainly not used to preclude noble interventions; but the consequences are still being felt on a daily basis. Initially, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, suggested its colonial legacy ruled out a France-led intervention; its sudden involvement is far more rapid than expected.

But this intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship had consequences that Western intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine. Tuaregs – who traditionally hailed from northern Mali – made up a large portion of his army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland: sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in post-Gaddafi Libya, an uncomfortable fact largely ignored by the Western media.

Awash with weapons from Libya’s own turmoil, armed Tuaregs saw an opening for their long-standing dream for national self-determination. As the rebellion spread, the democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Touré was deposed in a military coup and – despite allowing a transitional civilian-led government to take power – the army retains its dominance.

There can certainly be no sympathy for the militia now fighting the Malian  government. Originally, it was the secular  nationalists of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad who led the uprising; they have now been pushed aside by Islamist jihadists with a speed that has shocked foreign analysts. Rather than achieving an independent Tuareg state, they have far more sweeping ambitions, linking up with similar groups based in northern Nigeria. Amnesty International reports horrendous atrocities: amputations, sexual violence, the use of child soldiers, and rampant extra-judicial executions.

But don’t fall for a narrative so often pushed by the Western media: a perverse oversimplification of good fighting evil, just as we have seen imposed on Syria’s brutal civil war. Amnesty reports brutality on the part of Malian government forces, too. When the conflict originally exploded, Tuaregs were arrested, tortured, bombed and killed by the security forces, “apparently only on ethnic grounds”, Amnesty says.

Last July, 80 inmates arrested by the army were stripped to their underwear, jammed into a 5sqm cell; cigarettes were burnt into their bodies; and they were forced to sodomise each other. Back in September 2012, 16 Muslim preachers belonging to the Dawa group were rounded up at a checkpoint and summarily executed by the army. These are acts committed by those who are now our allies.

When the UN Security Council unanimously paved the way for military force to be used at some point last month, experts made clear warnings that must still be listened to. The International Crisis Group urged a focus on a diplomatic solution to restore stability, arguing that intervention could exacerbate a growing inter-ethnic conflict. Amnesty warned that “an international armed intervention is likely to increase the scale of human-rights violations we are already seeing in this conflict”.

Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, has argued that past wars show that “once started, they can take alarming directions, have very destructive results, and often enhance the very movements they are designed to counter”.

It is conceivable that this intervention could – for a time – achieve its goals of pushing back the Islamist militias, and shore up Mali’s government. But the Libyan war was seen as a success, too; and here we are now engaging with its catastrophic blowback. In Afghanistan, Western forces remain engaged in a never-ending war which has already helped destabilised Pakistan, leading to drone attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians and unleashed further chaos. The price of Western interventions may often be ignored by our media, but it is still paid nonetheless.

Western intervention led by France, supported by Britain and with possible US drone attacks on the way will undoubtedly fuel the narrative of radical Islamist groups. As Professor Rogers puts it to me, it will be portrayed as “one more example of an assault on Islam”. With the speed and reach of modern forms of communication, radical groups in Western Africa and beyond will use this escalating war as evidence of another front opened against Muslims.

It is disturbing – to say the least – how Cameron has led Britain into Mali’s conflict without even a pretence at consultation. Troops will not be sent, we are told; but the term “mission creep” exists for a reason, and an escalation could surely trigger deeper British involvement. The West has a terrible record of aligning itself with the most dubious of allies: the side we have picked are far from human-rights-loving democrats.

But the consequences could be more profound. As well as spreading further chaos in the region – just as the Libyan war did – France has already put potential terrorist targets on alert, and its allies must be at risk, too. It is the responsibility of all of us to scrutinise what our governments do in our name; if we cannot learn that from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, then it is hopeless.

(stopwar.org.uk / 15.01.2013)