A racist Spitfire?

After Military generals apparently had a go at the BNP’s use of military symbolism in their racist propaganda (i say apparently because they did not mention the BNP by name, although we all know who they meant), Griffin came out saying that “the Spitfire represents the British fighting spirit against Continental totalitarianism” and as such they would not stop using it.

Well, i was wondering whether the BNP would acknowledge pilots from these countries who fought for Britain during the Battle of  Britain; Australia – 32, Barbados – 1, Belgium – 28, Canada – 112, Czechoslovakia – 88, France – 13, Ireland – 10, Jamaica – 1, Newfoundland – 1, New Zealand – 127, Poland – 145, Rhodesia – 3, South Africa – 25, United States – 9.

Do they also acknowledge the effort of the Jamacian pilot who i blogged about a few months back? Or Pilot Officer Mahinder Singh Pujji who came from India to fight in the Battle of Britain who said:

there were other Sikh pilots who readily took off their turbans and put on helmets. But I told them that I didn’t want to because of my religion. So they allowed me to have a special headset with the oxygen mask and microphone that came over the turban.

All of these fought for Britain against a regime going on a racist crusade across Europe. But then it does not look like the BNP would denounce the Nazis as quickly as history and the majority of British people during 1939-1945 [and long afterwards] have:

Nick Griffin:

“Yes, Adolf went a bit too far. His legacy is the biggest problem that the British nationalist movement has to deal with. It just creates a bad image.”

“I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lamp shades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat … I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie and latter witch-hysteria.”

Mark Collett (BNP Director of Publicity)

“Churchill was a fucking cunt who led us into a pointless war with other whites standing up for their race”.

[Reference for above quotes]

What’s interesting is that it appears that Collett believes it was Churchill who led us into war… You’d have thought the ‘defenders’ of the ‘indigenous’ British race would know British history.

…or

Howabout this picture of John Tyndall, the founder of the BNP: link.

Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes – A Short Twentieth Century – MA Level Review

With this work, Hobsbawm tries to guide us through the history of the twentieth century through his own eyes. This, a period of time other commentators have described as the end of history, has otherwise been acknowledged by Hobsbawm as not his specialist area and as such he notes that not only his, but other historians works on the topic would be influenced by their own life experiences during the period.

It is with this introduction to his work that we can catch a glimpse of the direction this book will take. Hobsbawm was an active member of the Communist Party, and as such it would not be naive of us to assume that this book will focus heavily upon the USSR, the development of communism and a constant attack on capitalism – and this is exactly what this work does.

It is interesting to look at the period that Hobsbawm has chosen as his Short Twentieth Century, starting in 1914 with the start of the First World War and ending in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This ensures that the whole work is written in the pretext of the USSR being in existence and the ability to parallel capitalist and liberal democracy throughout the period with communism in the USSR.

Divided into three main sections – Age of Catastrophe (Hobsbawm likes to categorise periods of history into ‘Ages’), The Golden Age and The Landslide.

The first third of the book looks at the two world wars, the rise of communism during this period and to a lesser extent the rise and fall of fascism – both of which have been tied together with a chapter on the crisis of liberal democracy. Hobsbawm brushes aside socialism and social democracy in favour of focusing fully on communism, and especially Soviet, Marxist and Leninist communism – Hobsbawm even goes as far to mentioning the role of Trotsky and Trotskyism in the development of communism only in passing.

Hobsbawm within his introduction to this work correctly makes the point that history should be all encompassing, this means that history should not just focus upon the elites and what did happen, but also upon how decisions and events effected the society as a whole.  It is therefore surprising that this first third of the book is highly a narrative of events and the development of ideology. Hobsbawm notes how the First and Second World Wars were the first truly total wars that effected all aspects of a society (there is room for debate here as a civil war would effect all of a countries society as well), however, he does not examine the extent of the impacts of war upon the people in a country. Take for example the effect of the Luftwaffe’s Blitz upon the peoples of London. There is still a debate here as to whether the war had a unifying impact upon London’s citizens, or whether this united front perpetrated during and after the war was essentially a myth.

But this would go against what the book is really about. Hobsbawm seems to have not gone out with the intention to add to the historiographical debate on twentieth century history – he is, as he mentions, a historian who specialises mainly in nineteenth century history. It is with this context that an examination of the further two sections of the book can be taken. Furthermore, this book is a study of the economical ideological history of the twentieth century, so there is no room for Hobsbawm to talk about world changing events such as the Holocaust, the Civil Rights movement in the US or apartheid in South Africa. Although, perhaps inclusion of events such as the Holocaust would lead Hobsbawm to look at Stalin’s own purges and as such question a Stalinist and Soviet system that Hobsbawm appears to be loyally defending.

The following two parts, The Golden Age and The Landslide are very dependent upon each other in order to piece together Hobsbawm’s train of thought. Whilst the Age of Catastrophe set the background to the later twentieth century, these two parts paint the picture of the state of the world in 1991.

The Golden Age is the period of time, 1950-1975, that Hobsbawm sees as the glorious period of capitalism and also the stability of Soviet communism. Far from living in harmony, both systems – assured of mutually agreed destruction – flourished during this period (this applies mainly to capitalism). The Landslide looks at the beginning of the end of the USSR and communism, the faults of capitalism and the rise of social democracy as an attempt to find the ‘middle way’. As we would have come to expect from Hobsbawm the Landslide begins and ends with the fall and collapse of the USSR as a world power.

Throughout the work, Hobsbawm has attempted to bring into the history of the twentieth century the impact of ideologies on other parts of the world, from Asia to the Far East, to Latin America to the Third World – although it is firstly within Europe and then later in the USA and USSR that key movements and ideologies in the world develop, and it is the combination of these three entities that shape the period. Going back to the Age of Catastrophe, Hobsbawm seems strained to include ‘the rest of the world’ in his chapters, often as a side section towards the end of a chapter. He does pay more attention later in his work to the Third World (Africa) as he devotes whole chapters to this topic.

The other aspect of Hobsbawm’s work is the devotion given to art and culture by assessing art during 1914-1945 and then 1950-1991. Even here however, Hobsbawm cannot get away from his commitment to Avant-garde as he seems to bemoan its demise in the later half of the twentieth century. As this work focuses heavily on ideology and economy, the inclusion of the arts is a rather peculiar one. I have previously mentioned that focusing on economics allows Hobsbawm to sugar over sociological issues such as the Holocaust, but then this narrative of the development of art and culture seems to contradict this.

Hobsbawm also gives attention to the developments in science and technology during the Short Twentieth Century, as even Hobsbawm acknowledges that technology has shaped the world by the date his work was published.

It should be said, that despite his attention to communism (which of course played a huge role in twentieth century politics, economics, culture and society), The Age of Extremes is an extremely good starting point for historians interested in the twentieth century, or for anyone interested in what factors have shaped the world that we currently live in. Although I have only briefly suggested discrepancies in Hobsbawm’s analysis it would be ridiculous for Hobsbawm to try and assess every sociological aspect of the short century in what is already an extensive piece of work. That would be more relevant to multiple volumes. But Hobsbawm’s extensive use of reference material and the powerful construction of the narrative and his arguments are merits to the long career of this esteemed historian.

From Jamaica to Britain; fighting for the mother country in the Second World War

As part of my continued research (i.e. academic reading) I have come across several accounts detailing the experiences of civilians and soldiers fighting on both sides during the Second World War. In a book I have previously mentioned, Forgotten Voices of the Blitz and the Battle for Britain edited by Joshua Levine and taken from the oral archive at the Imperial War Museum, I have come across the following account of one Jamaican’s trip across the Atlantic to fight for Britain, the ‘mother country’, in the RAF. I think this is such an amazing story, it almost reads as the plot outline for a film.

The Jamaican RAF pilot in question is one Flight Lieutenant William Strachan of the 99 Squadron, and here is his story. I hope you enjoy.

We had heard these requests on the radio in Jamaica, coming from Britain, speaking to their large family overseas that they should help to defend the Crown against the German invaders. I’m an 18-year-old, just left school and I had the ambition of getting into the RAF – but it was difficult. The British army were still in Jamaica so I went down with a friend to see them and I told them they I wanted to join the air force. We had difficulty getting past the guard but they sent us for a medical and we were both passed fit. ‘Right, we want to join’, we said, ‘will you send us to England?’ We were laughed out. ‘You find your own way there!’ they said.

I knew if I’d gone to my father and said, ‘I want to go to England’, he’d have completely squashed the idea. As conservative as he was, he inherently suspected Britain and I knew he wouldn’t support the idea.

Wartime rules had been brought in that nobody could leave the island unless they had didn’t owe the government any income tax and didn’t have a criminal record. Because I was 18, just left school, I had no income and no criminal record so that was no problem. Still, how was I going to travel? I had no money so I went round all the shipping companies -  they were all run by Englishmen, white men – and I said, ‘Can you give me free passage to England?’ I’d been listening to the propaganda on the radio sating how everybody was loyal to the crown but none of them were interested until I went to Jamaica Fruit Shipping Company, major shippers of bananas to Britain. They had a number of boars coming out from Britain with middle-class white people who were fleeing from the war to the colonies for safe haven and I was able to persuade the management to take me. Nobody was going from the Caribbean to Britain but they told me that I might have to pay for it. The full price was about £45 and i paid £15. I didn’t have that so I had to sell my bicycle and my saxophone and I got about £17 for them. So I got on a ship and left Jamaica with £2 10s in my possession and a small case with one change of clothes. That’s how I came to Britain.

On this ship – a vast luxury passenger ship – I was the only passenger. I was given a first-class cabin which was rather fortunate, right next to the captain, but that was for their convenience, to save opening up lot of the cabins and having cleaners and things. I ate with the captain which was regarded as quite an honour in those days. Normally those ships would have deck quoits and swimming pools, but those facilities weren’t opened up so I spent my time smashing tin cans, saving metal for the war effort. The trip usually took just over two weeks in those days but it took a month because they had to do the zigzag route because of the U-boats in the Atlantic. We arrived at Bristol. I remember the train station. A porter came towards me in his uniform. ‘Your case, sir,’ he said and I saluted him. I thought he was a bloody admiral in his uniform. I didn’t dare thing that he would take my case. ‘No, sir!’ I said.

I got on the train to Paddington. The ticket was about thirty shillings and wartime England was dark. There was a blackout. The only place I’d heard of to stay was the YMCA on Tottenham Court Road – every West Indian that I’d ever met seemed to go there – so I took a taxi from Paddington, spending six shillings out of my fifteen. It was Saturday night, wartime, places were boarded up, wardens and Local Defence Volunteers walking round the place. I was so tired I went to bed. Come the Sunday morning, I went across to the YWCA to meet some people there. I met a lady there who was a Jewish refugee. It was the first I’d heard about these things from Germany. I went out with her for the Sunday evening and she told me what she was fleeing from and all that sort of thing.

On Monday morning, how do I get into the RAF? I’ve got no money, no connections, nobody. After great difficulty I found that the Air Ministry was at a place called Adastral House which was at the foot of Aldwych. So I went along to Adastral House and I spoke to the guard who I now know was a corporal. I said to him, ‘I want to join the air force.’ I’ll never forget this. He said to me, ‘Piss off.’ Here am I dressed in rather lightweight colonial stuff in March – I think he thought I was drunk or a lunatic. I persisted and as he tried to get away, a sergeant came along, and asked what was going on and I tried to tell him. He said ‘You don’t join the air force here, you’re trying to take the mickey out of us! This is the head office of the Air Ministry!’ But in my logic at that period, where else do you join the air force but at the Air Ministry? I didn’t even know about recruiting stations. So I persisted in my arguments with this sergeant and he said, ‘Where do you come from?’ and I  said, ‘Kingston.’ He said, ‘There’s a recruiting station at Kingston down in Surrey,’ and I said, ‘I don’t come from Surrey! I come from Jamaica!’ He didn’t know where Jamaica was. As he stood there quite mystified, a Hooray Henry type young officer came past and heard the argument. He said, ‘Oh you’re from Jamaica. One of our colonial friends. Welcome! I did geography at university and I’ve always been impressed with you West Africans. Come in!’ And this to his supreme ignorance I was dragged in. This bloke was a pilot officer, the lowest officer but he was above the sergeant. And thanks to his intervention, he took me in and I was taken up and saw a much higher rank, a flight lieutenant. I had to go through this story in much more detail and he really satisfied himself of its truth. And then they sent me for a medical at Euston.

I went there in the afternoon. I was told to stand in a room, ‘Get all your clothes off because you’re going to be medically examined.’ I was shivering and freezing. I’d only been in England for 48 hours. They examined me and found me fully fit. The doctor said, ‘Right now you can go home and we’ll call you up when we can take you in.’ I had to explain that I had no money and going home was very difficult. That took another period of argument but by about nine or ten o’clock I was on the train to Blackpool recruiting unit. I’d managed to break all regulations – to get recruited after 48 hours in this bloody country. I was joined up in 4 Elementary Flying Training School. On the Tuesday morning, I was in the RAF, in uniform, kitted out, in a group of 50 strange Englishmen. I was the only coloured person from the colonies. I was very proud of what I’d achieved.

And then these English people said, ‘You’re mad! You’re a bloody fool! If we’d been in Jamaica, we’d still be there now! What an idiot!’ It destroyed all my ideals of what I believed the whole thing was about. I was so proud of what I’d achieved and they said, ‘We’d do anything to get away from the bloody war and you say you come all this way and you tell us that story.’ They thought it was completely weird.

The corporal in charge of us was an ex-Bertram Mills clown. He was extremely gymnastic and fit and he looked at us in the traditional way a corporal looks at a bunch of new recruits and he said, ‘Now I want you all running on the spot.’ These blokes creaked into action. And then he looked at me and said, ‘Right, I’m making  you my deputy. Darkie, come over here!’ I’d never been called ‘darkie’ in my life before. I was shattered because it was a term of contempt. He said, ‘Darkie, you are in charge of the squad!’ I had conflict in my minds. I was annoyed I was called ‘darkie’ but my chest swelled out because I was regarded as a man fit to be promoted, second airman in the RAF.

We should never forget all those who fought against and died as a result of fascism during the first half of the twentifth century and we should never forget what they were fighting against and what they were fighting for. Remember to support the troops even if you don’t support the war.

The Battle of Britain (1940)

The Battle of Britain was ‘won’ by Britain due to a few interdependable factors.

The first was Britain’s eye in the sky, RDF (Radio Direction Finding), or what the Americanised English language describes as Radar. RDF was a fantastic defensive weapon during the war as it allowed Britain to keep an eye on what Luftwaffe squadrons were doing over the sea and what direction they were taking (once German planes made it mainland RDF was less effective and instead the British eye in the sky relied people on the ground to report enemy movements) this help Britain plan for enemy attack and mobilise a more effective defence.

The second was the coupling of the Spitfire and the Hurricane planes. The Spitfire was used primarily as a nimble fighter plane against the Luftwaffe’s other fighter planes. The Hurricane was used effectively against the German bombers as it wasn’t as effective as the Spitfire at fighting German fighters.

These two factors were at the route of Goering’s two biggest mistakes when tactically planning the German attack.

One; Goering was encouraged to attack the RDF stations- it should be noted that although the German’s had a vague idea of the existence of RDF and it’s use, there existence was still not wholly accepted as plausible by German leaders. For a short period in 1940 the Luftwaffe attacked these stations however, destroying some such as the one on Ventnor (Isle of Wight) and putting them out of commission for days, weeks at a time. To counter this in some cases, such as at Angmering  Park, where a RDF was completely wiped out a MB1 transmitter was set up that sent the same signal as the RDF into the air leading the Germans to think that hadn’t knocked the RDF out.

As Goering felt that it was pointless attacking what he saw as small defensive units and with the apparent ineffectiveness of knocking many of these of the map, it was decided to ignore these RDF stations (not fully understanding their importance to Britain) and again fully focus on the destruction of the RAF.

Two; Goering wanted the German fighter planes (such as the Messerschmitt 109 and Messerschmitt 110) to protect the bombers (Heinkel 111’s and Junkers 88 for example). To do this the aim was to reduce the fighter’s speeds to that of the bombers to keep them as one tight unit. Bombers were susceptible to British attacks because of the Hurricane’s greater speed and manoeuvrability over them. This limited the effectiveness of the German fighters who were themselves more susceptible to attacks from Spitfires because they were told to fly at reduced speeds and which gave the Spitfire the edge in ambushing them.

There are of course other factors leading to the British ‘victory’. For example, the aim of the German attack was to wipe out Fighter Command and the RAF. If this was done then invasion would be made possible as the Germans would have had a clear path (baring the Royal Navy) across the Channel. However, instead of putting hundreds of RAF planes into the air at a time, it was decided by Hugh Dowding, commander of RAF Fighter Command, to only send small batches of planes in the air. Thus situations occurred where there were 4-20 British planes against 200+ German planes.  This allowed a continuous flow of British planes to be able to take off into the air at any one time- aiding defense. It also helped lower the number of downed British planes and allowed a more robust yet jagged machine line flow of new planes to come out of manufacture to easily replace the downed planes.

Regardless, towards the end of the Battle of Britain the RAF was in dire straits. The Luftwaffe attack on the airfields made many redundant and the inexperience of new fighter pilots was taking its toll. If the Germans continued the war in the air then they would had wiped out the RAF. However- and there are several stories as to why this occurred ranging from Churchill becoming more ruthless and sacrificing huge chunks of the population in major British cities, to a lone Junker 88 dropping a few desperate bombs on London – the Battle of Britain ended the moment the RAF bombed Berlin. This led Hitler to counter attack by moving the focus of Luftwaffe attack from the airfields and to the major population centres- like London. What followed had such a huge cost and effect upon the civilian population and city infrastructure, but in reality it saved Britain from what seemed inevitable invasion.

Historical readings from today… and the death penalty

Today I started my preliminary reading for my Master’s dissertation, my chosen topic; to what extent did the Second World War help develop a notion of Britishness (throw into that the question of race during early 1940’s Britain). So the first book I pick up to read is: Forgotten Voices, stories of the Blitz and Battle of Britain. The Forgotten Voice’s series is a fantastic couple of books that take oral testimonies of those who fought or lived in the war and put’s them into chronological order without historical analysis (well, this point can be debated as only extracts of oral testimonies are selected and it could be argued that the author only selected those testimonies that can be moulded around his own view point).

The point of my reading (not just out of interest) was to try to piece together some ideas of what British people during the war thought of their country and some common characteristics of national culture during the war. I have already done some reading into this- Paul Ward and Britishness since 1860 where he claims many West Indians who fought in the British army called their post-war children Winston out of patriotic support. Also Tom Harrisson’s Mass Observation archive has bought up such classics as ‘I don’t consider myself British, [I consider the Scots and Welsh as a different race] but I would die to defend Britain [and my Scottish, Welsh neighbours]‘.

From my brief reading I have discovered that the whole British identity could be summarised by two things: tea (that old Chinese import) and common decency. One story talks about how during the blitz a father lost his child through decapitation, he held his child’s body stroking it and saying ‘So this is how you went, Jimmy’, he then got up and thanked a stranger on the street for handing him a mug of tea. More obscure forms of common decency came during the vacation of Dunkirk. One example is that many French and British soldiers were shot by their own side, without hesitation, because they tried to barge into the queues for the boats (that’s right, during the evacuation of Dunkirk when the German’s were bombarding the troops you were expected to form an orderly queue while waiting to get onto a boat and in some cases wear full clean uniform and have a shave).

Digressing from my reading, some thoughts on the death penalty came into my mind today. I would like to point out first that I do lose a lot of respect for people when they make the uneducated statement that we should bring back the death penalty, even if it were for only the most serious of crimes. These thoughts centred around the obvious- if the death penalty were a deterrent then why are crimes still committed in places that still have the death penalty. Then onto the notion that if the death penalty were the most righteous form of justice, then why do some killers kill themselves before they are caught? As a matter of fact- why did Hitler kill himself before he was caught, even though the Allies would had killed him in the end anyway? Are the majority of these people acting through the will of remorse, regret and justice? I think not.

The Biggest Open Air Prison In The World

For those of you who have had the grace of hearing my baby/vegetarian analogy, you know that my reasoning arguments are often crude and simplistic. But that won’t stop me as here is another one:

If you and your family were under house arrest (could not communicate with anyone outside or even go outside) by a group of people who don’t have political power over you, and who only passed through to your family one meal per day, would you do something? If in your house you had a gun, would you or someone else in your family use this gun to try and end this situation?

Well this is one way of looking at the situation in Gaza.

I know this is a simplistic way of looking at things, and there are far more complex issues involved, but essentially the rocket attacks on Israel via Gaza are partly a reaction to Israeli control of Gaza and the severe economic and humanitarian sanctions imposed on the Palestinian people in Gaza by Israel- just because Israel does not like the democratically elected Hamas government (who admittedly can be more than a tad extreme).

Israel of course has a right to defend itself against these rocket attacks, but the scale to which they have reacted in recent weeks is sickening, but sadly not unexpected, Israel was born out of aggression, fear and genocide.

The blockade of Gaza by Israel has lead to the description of the biggest open air prison being suggested of Gaza. By road, air and sea Israel controls all imports into the country (apart from those that are smuggled), which include food, electricity and aid. There are numerous reports of Israel cutting off all food and energy imports into Gaza for days on end.

So if you were in Gaza would you sit back and say ‘fair play to Israel, they don’t like the government we’ve elected so they have every right to cause untold disruption and chaos in what should be my home country…’ Na, it does not work like that. When you’re put in intolerable positions where not just your own, but your family’s, your friend’s, your community’s and everyone around you’s life is in danger you react, you try and stop it, you try and make things better.

So in a way I empathise with the rocket attacks. NO, WAIT. I didn’t say I agree with the attacks, I just said I empathise- I can understand why they launch rockets into Israel. But then again I empathise with Israel’s right to defend its citizens, even though they bought it on themselves. Yet this is where the catch 22 situation comes into play. Without the hindsight of the complete withdrawal of the Israeli blockade, how do we know attacks against Israel will stop?

I believe the first step in resolving this situation is for America to pull its arse out of where ever it has been sticking it and actually stop supporting Israel in the way it does. America needs to say to Israel ‘now come on, now you’re just being stupid’. Then America and the UN need to send troops there, not to fight the Israeli forces but to create a bit of stability among the borders by controlling them and what goes in/out of Gaza. This force would of course need to be unbiased- something that would never happen with America’s current support of Israel. Then, we need three states. The old two state solution is far far away, not least because Gaza and the West Bank are not connected, but they are now so politically diverse considering the West Bank being under Fatah control and Gaza experiencing what it is currently experiencing (bombing, attacking and destroying Gaza will only radicalise those living in Gaza even more)

Yet this is not going to happen anytime soon. With all the hope of change Obama’s victory in America bought with it, he has only managed to say nothing but that there is no point in having two voices come out of America about the situation. Maybe this means he will differ from what Bush has recently said (Bush bumming Israel) and he doesn’t want to polarise American attitudes. Maybe it is because a huge majority of America is pro-Israel in this war and Obama doesn’t want to get off o the wrong foot. Or, he agrees with Bush and Israel…

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pro-Palestine, pro-Israel, pro-peace

English Fundamentalism

I have just been reading an interesting article on the Guardian website about the documentary film maker Sean Langan who has just recently been released by the Taliban after 3 months.

I would like to quote Langan in relation to his only glimpse of the outside world- a small hole in the wall of his ‘cell’ that was embraced with a view of an apricot tree; “It kept me going, thinking about the outside world and English values that could be lost, like tea and sympathy and tolerance and basic humanity.”

This is a man who has been locked up and psychologically tortured for 3 months, yet he still acknowledges basic English principles: sympathy, tolerance and basic humanity, and the fear that his situation could make him abandon them. It is a shame that a majority of English people are willing to throw these principles away when they are in the warmth, comfort and safety of their own homes and there is the slightest threat of a terrorist attack or they see a group of Polish workers on the way to work.

The article also led me to view the arrogance of those fighting the British in Afghanistan in their views of the West; “Mr C asked me once if it was true that western women married frogs. He had seen a children’s fairytale and believed that it was true.” This is not something confined to just a minority in Afghanistan. The rise in Islamophobia is fuelled by the fear and belief that all Muslim’s want to do is destroy ‘Western values’ and end British lives. [I put commas around Western values, as i believe a majority of those in power in both Britain and America have no dignified values at all]. In reality, this belief is the upside-down version of the truth. In reality, the majority of those who follow the Islamic faith pose no harm to the West at all. There is however a very small minority of Islamic Fundamentalists who appear to want to (i say appear because really the 9/11 attack was not against the West but an attempt to polarise the people in the Middle East into either fundamentalism or secularism- helped afterwards by America’s War on ‘Error).

Johann Hari wrote a brilliant piece on the latest Big Brother and how fundamental and secularist Islam is clashing within the Big Brother house. The point of the article is to explain the reality of the current situation. Islam is not about killing as many people who disagree with you as possible, but at the same time, there are fundamentalists who believe it is. This debate tends to be forgotten by the right-wing media, which wrongly portrays Muslims as a threat. Hari suggests that this clash is finally an example of proper reality television. There are many other aspects of Hari’s article that i could write on, yet to grasp the context of the debate you should read it yourself.

Judging by how some people are reacting to the threat posed by Fundamental Islam and their over the top reactions to immigration into this country, i would suggest that there is a growing sense of English (British) Fundamentalism growing. If they think that all Muslims are Fundamentalists, then it is safe to say that these English Fundamentalists are just as bad as the Islamic Fundamentalists they are afraid of.

To view the Guardian’s article on Langan, click here.

To view the Johann Hari article, click here.

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On a completely separate topic, here is another Langan quote; “I am alive. And I’ve realised that freedom is the air we breathe.” Out of all the things i could say, all i will say is that if the air we breathe is true freedom, then irresponsible oil companies and Governments are clutching onto not only our freedoms, but the freedoms of the next generation, and the generation after that, and the generation after that, and on and on. Why, therefore, aren’t more people fighting for our own freedoms if not the freedoms of others?

‘To try to change the world I will plot and scheme’

In my opinion, the only justifiable war (in 99.99% of cases) is a defensive war.

In my opinion, a war unites large proportions of the populations of the nations involved.

In my opinion, we- human beings- are wrongly and sadly divided. By race, nationality, politics, economics etc.

Therefore, in my opinion, to unite the world in the bounds of togetherness, we need to be attacked by an intergalactic alien force.

Of course after a few years i will join Friends of the Aliens, and claim that the aliens are misunderstood and campaign against the war [it's called sarcasm]… But by that time humanity will be exactly that, humanity, united together by the common knowledge of just being human, and not divided by petty concerns as the language you speak or the colour of your skin.

So come on you aliens; come and ‘av a go if ya think ya ‘ard enuf!!