UPDATE! Below, the Israeli cabinet minister, invited to surrender more land to the Palestinians, asks his BBC interviewer, "Would you hand over half of Britain to someone who keeps on killing you?"
Keep that question in mind as you consider the scenes at the Old Bailey, England's central criminal court, at the sentencing of the two Sarf London jihadists who hacked to death a British soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, on the streets of Woolwich in broad daylight:
Violence broke out in the Old Bailey dock today after Lee Rigby's murderers began hurling abuse at the judge and fighting with prison guards during their sentencing.
Michael Adebolajo, 29, was given a whole-life term, while Michael Adebowale, 22, was jailed for life with a minimum of 45 years - meaning he could be back on the streets by the age of 67.
In extraordinary scenes, the two Muslim extremists yelled 'Allahu Akbar' and 'You (Britain) and America will never be safe' during their sentencing at the court in Central London...
The killers had to be pinned to the ground by nine security guards and Rigby's family began sobbing as they watched the incident in horror, being handed tissues by court staff.
The relatives were forced to get up from their seats, cowering away from the violence which was happening just feet away, according to reporters in court.
As Laura Rosen Cohen comments:
No remorse from the murders, no respect for the court or for the law, and yet the possibility for the jihadist murders of a free life, once again, as "extremist" senior citizens in jolly old London town.
What's interesting is the point at which Messrs Adebolajo and Adebowale decided they'd had enough:
The struggle in the dock was triggered when the killers, both wearing Islamic robes, reacted angrily to comments that Mr Justice Sweeney made about their extremist beliefs.
He told them: 'You each converted to Islam some years ago. Thereafter you were radicalised and each became an extremist, espousing views which, as has been said elsewhere, are a betrayal of Islam.'
At which point the two murderers yelled, "That's a lie!" and "It's not a betrayal of Islam!"
I wouldn't wish to extend my differences with the US judiciary to the judges of the Old Bailey, but I'm inclined to think Messrs Adebolajo and Adebowale have the better of Mr Justice Sweeney on this specific point. Is he really such an expert in Islam that he can expound with confidence on theological betrayal? And, whatever the broader picture, isn't it the case in this particular instance that, rather than converting to Islam and becoming "radicalized" and "extremist", the pair converted to Islam precisely in order to become "radicalized" and "extremist"?
Why does m'lud feel the need to dissemble from the bench? You can smell, as these two blood-soaked goons did, fear and cowardice in these evasions.
**
In his last appearance in these pages, the Israeli Economy Minister, Naftali Bennett, was on the receiving end of a withering put-down for "attacking" John Kerry. Quoth Kerry, with all the dignity a man who goes windsurfing off Nantucket in buttock-hugging yellow lycra can muster:
I have to tell you, my friend, I've been, quote, attacked before - by people using real bullets, not words.
As I commented:
This would be a pretty funny line from the characteristically tin-eared Kerry applied to almost anyone from the Belgian Deputy Tourism Minister on up. But it's especially hilarious directed at Mr Bennett, who's a veteran of two of Israel's toughest special-forces units and could undoubtedly kill the Secretary of State with his bare hands were he minded so to do.
On the BBC the other day Mr Bennett went one better, and gave the impression he could kill his interviewer with his pinkie were he minded to do so. On the occasions I've caught it - usually in hotels in the Middle East and elsewhere - "Hard Talk" rarely lives up to its butch billing, invariably being an attempt to force some hapless foreigner to submit to conventional Guardian pieties. But for once the guest had a snappy comeback:
Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday turned the tables in an interview on BBC's Hard Talk when he asked host Stephen Sackur, "Would you hand over half of Britain to someone who keeps on killing you?"
Oddly enough, in Tower Hamlets, in Bradford, in Birmingham, the United Kingdom is also engaged in trading "land for peace", even if it doesn't quite understand that yet. So too are the French in Clichy-sous-Bois, and the Swedes in Malmö., and the Belgians in Antwerp, and the Austrians and the Germans and the Dutch...
(via the invaluable Scaramouche)
~Thank you to everyone who's swung by the SteynOnline bookstore to support my pushback against Michael E Mann by buying one of our new gift certificates or a copy of my free speech book Lights Out, just released in eBook, so you can get it in America on Nook, or in Canada on Kobo, or Down Under on Kindle, or in any other other permutation. And it all helps my legal offense fund.
How's that going? Well, I had to look something up on the DC courts page the other day, and I was tickled to see that, if you search for my case, Dr Mann's and my designations have subtly evolved:
| MANN PhD, MICHAEL E. | Plaintiff Counter Defendant |
| STEYN, MARK | Defendant Counter Plaintiff |
Yes, indeed. I like the new billing.
~Meanwhile, Robert Tracinski continues his fine series on the closed minds of a rigorously policed "consensus":
The establishment's approach to the scientific debate over global warming is to declare that no such debate exists—and to ruthlessly stamp it out if anyone tries to start one.
That's how we get the Los Angeles Times loftily declaring that it won't even publish letters to the editor that question global warming. That's how we get Michael Mann's lawsuit attempting to make it a legally punishable offense to "question his intellect and reasoning."
That's how we get the appalling petition to spike Charles Krauthammer's Washington Post's column for expressing mere agnosticism about global warming.
It's how we get the New York Times casually suggesting that global warming "deniers" should be stabbed.
And then there is this doozy, from my own backyard: University of Virginia official Thomas Forman II declaring in the student newspaper that global warming skeptics shouldn't even be allowed to speak on campus, because "we should keep our debates out of our science classes..."
The pen is only mightier than the sword if you're free to use it. And Thomas Forman II is not prepared to take the risk of the pen being seen to be mightier than the hockey stick. Mr Tracinski continues:
To see how fanatical this atmosphere of intolerance has become, consider the case of Bjorn Lomborg, who does not even question whether man-made global warming is occurring, but merely argues that it would cost the world far more to stop carbon dioxide emissions than it would to ameliorate the effects of global warming. For this heresy, he had his funding specifically cut off by the Danish government and has had to move into a kind of voluntary exile in Prague. A long profile of Lomborg describes how he has been ostracized merely for questioning the economic and political policies for dealing with global warming. Which is revealing in itself, because it implies that it is the political end result, the campaign to impose massive taxes and restrictions on fossil fuels, that is the fixed assumption to which science must bend.
This is why I treat scientific claims about global warming with such skepticism: I would give them a lot more credence if I thought anyone was allowed to come up with a different answer. As I observed in the Mann vs. Steyn case, if it is a sin to doubt, then there is no science.
Michael Mann and his ilk need a better theory than "Shut up."
