[…]The info mentioned in the article is some of the best available […]………

Unlike Mr Umunna, I really am descended from slaves and, unlike Mr Umunna, I’m not asking for an apology from anyone for Britain’s treatment of my ancestors or for any supposed contemporary legacy of the slave trade.

While my “community” isn’t in the least troubled by the supposedly still-persisting “effects of slavery” and while vapid identity politics sicken me, I am angry that it is extraordinarily difficult for people from working-class or disadvantaged backgrounds, regardless of their ancestry (as if that matters at all), to become elected representatives—especially representatives of the Labour Party.

So, unlike Mr Umunna, I believe that contributing to the exclusion of the less well-off from public office by means of a system of unpaid apprenticeships in one of the most expensive cities to live in in the World is a rather more significant problem in Britain today and rather more deserving of apology from those sustaining it than the slave trade.

Also, part of me was too pre-occupied with the unfeasibility of having that many Predators in the sky at once, so close to each other, doing such moves.

Still… at least it was better than Forrest Gump, but then what isn’t?

I’m also against deleting tweets unless they’re full-blooded mistakes (typos, factual errors) and I’m not keen on leaps to judgement on them either - I say things that I’d probably say differently on reflection. Tweets are sometimes a sort of expression of the Freudian Id - think-say-reflect - in that order.

There’s a difference between this and an article-for-publication.

Anyhoo, all of this brings Harry Lime to mind - the little dots seen from the big wheel. Squash em? No-one’ll know. So do we squash them?

We do know that opportunistic demagogues will respond to some actions in particular ways with terrible consequences for innocent bystanders.

Would I burn a Koran knowing this? I don’t think I would. Would I burn a Koran if I didn’t know it? Probably not, but I’d be slightly more likely to do so.

And should someone who does so *for personal advancement* having been told about the likely consequences be immune from criticism?

I think not.

You misunderstand me, which is largely my fault. Pootergeek knows that I live in NI and have a Northern Irish family, but I should perhaps have mentioned that for the benefit of anyone else reading. I should also probably avoid commenting on such issues when I’ve had as little sleep as I have lately. Still, I’m here now, so may as well keep digging.

A couple of things. I’m sure Afghanistan is full to the brim of good honest friendly kind hospitable people. Most places are, frankly. Ireland certainly was during the Troubles. And yet the Troubles still happened. A predominant culture is not usually defined by a majority.

Secondly, the Peace Process is largely based on not antagonising people. So, for instance, don’t go walking down the Falls wearing a Union Jack bowler hat singing “God Save The Queen” in an RP accent. If you were to do so, you would be regarded by most Irish people as being, to a greater or lesser extent, responsible for what would happen to you. Like I said, the whole train of thought was triggered by a (Northern Irish non-violent) friend of mine saying that Jones was to blame for the deaths just as anyone who burned certain effigies in Belfast would be responsible for the violence that would inevitably follow. Thinking that way – that people who express opinions are responsible for the violence of people who disagree with those opinions – is a large part of the reason why the Troubles happened.

Finally, I’d’ve put the whole thing in the past tense and pointed out that marked changes in that sort of attitude are big part of the reason why the Troubles ended, except that the Newry bomb nearly got me. Call me a cynic.

Imagine that a Georgia sharecropper’s wife had been lynched because the Klan had heard (correctly) that her husband had stood in his own backyard and cursed a Bible before burning it.

Imagine that you had quickly dashed off a badly phrased note about this murder in your anger at the new widower’s stupid provocation and rhetoric and it contained the phrase

“lessons for blacks about why respect matters”

Everything in your comment above would have been equally applicable to this situation—and would have had equal mitigating power.

I suppose it’s a risk of the Twitter format that things are taken out of context. I certainly don’t, as you seem to imply, share the views of Steffan de Mistura that Afghans are not to blame for the murders - of course the murderers are to blame, and not to be excused on the basis of any insult they perceived to their religion.

I also agree with you that freedom of speech is essential, and I don’t think that Pastor Jones should have been banned from doing what he did, or that there should be laws against it.

I do think that he’s not immune from criticism, though, just because he’s exercising his rights. There are plenty of ways to exercise your rights that are irresponsible or open to criticism - and you can criticise without implying that things should be banned.

I also think that, without saying foreigners are animals or automata, that there was a connexion between his act and what happened.

Perhaps multiculturalism and respect are too loaded for them to have been right in this context - my wish is that the fear and hatred of the other that Pastor Jones expressed should die out, not that it should be banned. The current political debate in Europe, and the rise of the EDL came to mind, which is probably why multiculturalism etc did as well. I’m not talking about some technical term or a political concept, just the idea that people should be treated equally as citizens with equal rights, and not (though for clarity, I wouldn’t ban it) unfairly branded as an evil and malicious presence in society on the basis of their faith.

As for deleting the tweet, well, it is what it is - a quick dashing-off of an instant, badly phrased thought,but with no wider motive or theory behind it than a stab of anger at the extreme right’s stupid provocations and rhetoric (which, for clarity, I criticise but don’t believe should banned).

What it isn’t is a statement of philosophy, or a worked-up thought-through world view, and I don’t mean it to be, either for me or the organisation I represent.

It’s the question everyone asks of politicians - do you stand by your words? And my answer in this case is, not particularly - I wasn’t writing them with that much care. I stand by my sentiment, that the world would be a better place if extremists like Pastor Jones didn’t feel the need to do what e did (and of course if people didn’t riot and murder others, which I think goes without saying).

But however that tweet read, I don’t hold the views you associate me with in this post.

Do we? Thanks for letting me know. There was me thinking that actually we had decisively and repeated rejected that at the ballot box and everywhere else.

But maybe I am wrong, it’s the knuckle draggers who represent the “predominant culture” after all.

But then it struck me that more important than the differences is the similarity. The fact that the Irish have a predominant culture of believing that its your own fault you got kneecapped because you spoke your mind, or spoke to the wrong person, or walked through the wrong bit of town, or had the wrong ancestors, shows that they’re as bad and uncivilised as Afghans, not that Afghans are as good and civilised as the Irish.

I thought it was pretty clear at the time that this was a large part of the reason why Bush went into Iraq. The WMD stuff was more Blair’s preoccupation – because Blair believes you shouldn’t do anything without getting the UN on side and so had to try and convince the UN on purely legalistic grounds regarding the breaking of UN resolutions. So Bush had to spend over a year talking about WMD in order to keep Blair on side. But go back and read the coverage from just after 9/11, and you see that Bush made the decision to take out Saddam before any of this stuff about WMD started appearing.

That aside, I still don’t believe we were lied to. Bush announced the invasion of Iraq a full fifteen months before it started, and most of those fifteen months were spent talking about WMDs. If the police raided a drug dealer’s house fifteen months after warning him they were going to, they wouldn’t find any contraband there either.

I also don’t care if we were lied to. I don’t know who started this modern notion that the Government’s supposed to share all its foreign intelligence secrets with the public, but it’s ridiculous. Until there’s some way for the Prime Minister to accurately identify every loyal and trustworthy British subject and have a quiet word with them and them only, safe in the knowledge that none of it will go any further, we’re going to get lied to about military intelligence. This is good and right.