Bunglawussi Watch: From “New Presumption of Guilt” to “No Evidence Whatsoever”

Sadiq Khan is the Labour MP for Tooting. Khan, whose parents were Pakistanis, has been on a fact-finding mission to Pakistan. I wonder if he got time in his busy schedule to see any relatives?

He’s worked out why it is that young muslims want to wage jihad in Britain: it’s all because of American foreign policy. His solution? Britain should distance itself from its closest ally, the United States.

There was I, thinking that this kind of anti-American sentiment was supposed to disappear after President Bush left the White House in January. The arrival of the Chosen One, Barack Hussein Obama, was to herald a new dawn. Evidently not, in the case of Sadiq Khan, who is reading straight from the George Galloway “Blame America First” playbook of terrorist appeasement and excuse mongering.

Clearly Khan hates the United States and all it stands for. In and of itself that shouldn’t matter: he is free to hold whatever warped views he likes, even if it gives succour to our enemies who want to turn Britain into a shariah law dominated caliphate. And he wonders why he was bugged by the police.

But Sadiq Khan isn’t free to say whatever he wants to for one simple reason – he is a government minister. He is the Minister for Social Cohesion and yet delights in denigrating the nation of 500,000 people living and working in this country. How, pray, does that help social cohesion?

In attacking US foreign policy, was Sadiq Khan speaking for the British government? If not, he must surely be fired.

Blaney’s Blarney, 12 April 2009

See also “Sadiq Khan: One Man MCB?” at Harry’s Place and “Muslim MP criticizes killing Muslim terrorists” at USS Neverdock.

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Wingeing and whining:

“We have heard from this government before that ‘we are dealing with a very big terrorist plot’ (Student visa link to raids as PM points finger at Pakistan, 10 April). There was the very big ‘ricin plot’ in 2002, with no ricin, plotted by a terrorist ringleader with no ring. (That was just before the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ intervention in Iraq, the WMD being linked by Tony Blair and Colin Powell to the ‘ricin plot’.) There was the plot to bomb Old Trafford in 2004, the evidence apparently being two ticket stubs for different parts of the ground, in the hands of fans of foreign origin.

“Then in February this year there were the high-profile arrests and detentions in the north-west under anti-terrorism laws of nine men on unspecified overseas intelligence linked to a supposed terrorist activities outside Britain. Some were arrested from a convoy taking medicines, computers, toys and such to Gaza – all were innocent. Just as then, on this current occasion no specific plot is identified (despite the wild and denied stories about the Birdcage nightclub and the Trafford Centre).”

“Anyone glancing at your article might suppose that a nasty group of terrorists had already been convicted on the basis of solid evidence. In fact, as I write this, no one has been charged, let alone convicted. It is therefore a matter of serious concern that the prime minister shows such contempt for fair legal process by talking of a ‘very big terrorist plot’.”

Letters in the Guardian, 11 April 2009