Links - 2nd February 2020 (1) (London Bridge Attack)

London Bridge attack: police identify convicted terrorist who murdered two victims - "Boris Johnson has condemned the early release of criminals after it emerged that the man who carried out the latest London Bridge terror attack was a convicted Islamist who had been freed from prison on an electronic tag.Two people were murdered and at least three more seriously injured, when the suspected jihadist, wearing a fake suicide vest, went on a rampage at a criminal justice seminar he was attending... the attacker - who is not thought to be from London - was known to the security services and had terrorist connections as well as a conviction... When Khan was sentenced in 2012, Mr Justice Wilkie said he was a "serious jihadist" who should not be released while he remained a threat to the public."

Bridge bystander helped stop suspect with Narwhal tusk - "Witness Amy Coop tweeted that she was with the man at Fishmongers Hall when attack occurred shortly before 2 p.m.“A guy who was with us at Fishmongers Hall took a 5’ narwhal tusk from the wall and went out to confront the attacker,” she wrote. “You can see him standing over the man (with what looks like a white pole) in the video.”"

Liberal Professors’ Deadly Delusions About Curing Terrorists - "a convicted jihadi is invited to a special workshop to share with the students his personal truth and speak to the profound traumas he has experienced at the hands of the British criminal justice state. The audience listens patiently to his sad tale, empathizing with his plight as he recounts the challenges of living as a devout Muslim in a deeply Islamophobic society. In return, he goes on a terrorist rampage, a mere two hours after a group discussion on marginalized voices in neoliberal societies... What does criminological and educational theory have to instruct us about men like Usman Khan? Having taught criminological theory for many years, I can attest that it has very little to teach us about such individuals, other than a sort of negative (liberal) wisdom: Don’t stigmatize; don’t judge; don’t label. It tells us that moral character is a bourgeois fiction or social construct, that prison is inhumane, and that offenders should be given a second chance and helped, given the supposedly systemic obstacles that so many have faced. And it has next to nothing to say about the criminal justice response to a category of person who believes that anyone who doesn’t follow the literal word of God, as set out in their favored religious texts, should be ritually slaughtered... clearly not everyone is a suitable candidate for such a course. And some will no doubt be highly unsuitable: notably, pedophiles, rapists, and recently convicted terrorists. Quite what Khan was doing anywhere near the Learning Together program is unclear, and the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge will need to account for this and much else to do with their program.The bigger question raised by Khan, who was killed by police as he fled the scene of his attack, is about redemption and whether it’s either right or prudent to give convicted terrorists a second chance. I do not think I’m exaggerating when I say that the consensus among my liberal criminology colleagues both in Britain and the United Sates is that everyone should be given a second chance, especially Muslim males who may have had limited life chances to begin with. I have some degree of sympathy for this view, but it needs to be massively tempered with a keen sense of not just what is right but also what is prudent. And prudence dictates that we have prisons, and that some offenders, because of the magnitude of the wrongs they have committed or because of the threat they pose, should never be allowed to leave them, and that the most serious offenders who are permitted to leave after they have served their sentences should be subject to the most scrupulous review and oversight.Khan was beyond the pale and he should never have been at liberty to walk the streets, much less to share his truth: He served less than half his custodial sentence and then went on to slay those who saw the best in him. If this doesn’t make him beyond the pale, then there is no such thing as beyond the pale... There is a certain type of liberal-leftist, however, for whom the business of striking a balance between the rights of the offender and the common good of security will always be stacked in favor of the offender, so inflamed are they by the principled and purifying passion for defending the rights of the underdog. Satirists might hope to satirize them for this—for their idealism and detachment from harsh realities. But on Friday, reality intervened and delivered the harshest of all judgements."

Six of Usman Khan's fellow jihadist plotters have ALSO been freed - "Six of the eight terrorist plotters who were jailed along with London Bridge attacker Usman Khan in 2012 have also been freed from prison, it has emerged.   The nine jihadists were members of an al-Qaeda-inspired cell which plotted to blow up the London Stock Exchange and kill Boris Johnson.   One is still in prison, another was convicted for a further terror plot and Khan is dead - leaving six back on the streets, it is believed.   Three of the nine - Khan, Mohammad Shahjahan and Nazam Hussein - were initially handed indefinite prison terms, but the trio won an appeal in 2013 which changed them to fixed sentences."

Terrorist won appeal after claiming prison sentence was 'too long' - "London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan successful won an appeal against an indeterminate sentence for terrorism offences after complaining his prison sentence was too long.Khan, along with a number of others, was jailed in 2012 for plotting schemes including blowing up the London Stock Exchange... Following Friday's attack, the Parole Board said Khan had been released automatically."

Britain is country worst affected by terrorism in EU, study reveals - "The Global Terrorism Index puts the UK in the top 30 of the world’s 168 nations, ahead of France, Germany, Belgium and Spain as well as Sri Lanka, Iran, Russia and Israel... groups like Isil understood the importance of appealing to women and had been “very skilful” in doing so by tailoring their messages to them.These included “messages of female empowerment and agency” to entice Western women to the conflict zone with almost 7,000 travelling to Iraq and Syria. “Women were not simply portrayed as mothers and wives, but as agents of change in creating and shaping the global caliphate”"
Being ahead of Israel is no easy task

Toby Young on Twitter - "Man said something “offensive” on social media
Progressive left: Hound him, get him fired, cast him into outer darkness.
Man is convicted of terror plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
Progressive Left: Give him a second chance."

Piers Morgan on Twitter - "I have just watched 2 seperate videos of the shooting on London Bridge and I have to tell you that I am very troubled by what I have seen. The guy is lying there motionless on the floor, and the policeman just shoots him dead. That is not bravery, that's an extra-judicial murder."
"Were you as ‘very troubled’ by the fact he’d just murdered two people & was wearing a suicide vest that nobody could tell was fake?"

The politics of grief - "The Guardian has reached a new low this morning. It hasn’t only weaponised the grief of David Merritt, whose son Jack was murdered in the Islamist terror attack on London Bridge on Friday – it has sensationalised it... the aim of the Guardian’s sensationalised grief is to make the case for greater leniency for terrorists and to silence anyone who takes the opposing view that we need stiffer sentences and harsher punishments... Incapable of winning public support, in particular working-class support, for their agenda of Islamist apologism and moral cowardice, the degraded left instead uses a father’s grief to force their ideas through. ‘Disagree with me and you are insulting a grieving family’, is the disgraceful, censorious message of this morbid politics.  The irony in all of this is that even as the liberal media and the middle-class left exploit grief to condemn the tabloid newspapers, they themselves adopt the tabloid style. In the past, it tended to be the right-leaning tabloid press that weaponised grief, especially parental grief, to push a political agenda... There is, sadly, something a little strange about Mr Merritt’s Guardian article. It avoids the words murder and terrorism. It refers only to ‘Jack’s death’ and to ‘the tragic incident of Friday 29 November’ – as if Jack died in an accident. But he didn’t. This fine, principled young man was killed in an Islamist terror attack, just as scores of people, including children, were in 2017, too. And just as hundreds of people have been across Europe over the past five years... it seems odd that Mr Merritt and the leftists marshalling his pain into public life should refer to the London Bridge terrorist attack as a mere incident while referring to tabloid coverage as an ‘agenda of hate’. This is moral inversion. One could be forgiven for thinking that the true hatred from this affair is coming from mere newspapers rather than from an Islamist ideology that openly advocates the slaughter of innocents and the degradation of Western society. Apparently, it is people’s anger over terrorism that is hateful, more so than the terrorism itself. People must have the right to push back against this odd idea without being told that they are disrespecting grieving families."

David Merritt on Twitter - "POLITICAL TWEET WARNING: Jack Merritt, who lived in a Con held Con/Lib marginal, but who was a natural Labour supporter, was intending to vote tactically next week. We will follow suit. For the sake of our public services, whatever you think of Swinson or Corbyn, vote anti-Tory️"
Politicising tragedy is good when you agree with it

Brendan O'Neill - "How can people say “Don’t politicise the London Bridge attack”? Islamist terrorism is political. The slaughter of nearly 500 people in Europe by Islamist terrorists over the past five years is political. The mass murder of 87 people in Nice who were celebrating the birth of French democracy is political. The assassination of Jewish children at a school in Toulouse is political. The bombing of 21 young people at Manchester Arena by a young man whose family was given asylum in the UK is political. And the killings on London Bridge by a man who had served only eight years for plotting all-out holy war in the UK is political. When people say “Don’t politicise it”, what they really mean is “Don't talk about it”. Censorship under the guise of sensitivity."

Brendan O'Neill - "There is something really disturbing in the discussion of the London Bridge attack. When there’s an act of far-right terrorism, the liberal elite calls it by its name and demands tough measures to deal with it. This is fascism, they say, again and again, and we need censorship and social control to defeat it — censorship of alt-right hotheads and tabloid newspapers, and social control of any organisation that exhibits anti-immigration sentiments. But after London Bridge, as in the wake of all Islamist terror attacks, they do the precise opposite. They never name the ideology behind the attack — it’s always just an “incident” or an “attack” or “terrorism”, never Islamist terrorism. And they are openly arguing against any kind of draconian response to London Bridge. In fact they insist that these terrorists need our help. They need ”deradicalisation support” and even “mental-health support”. In short, they need therapy.  Where the far-right terrorist is seen as a conscious and willing propagator of evil, the Islamist terrorist is treated as hapless being, almost as a victim, a passive creature who has been “radicalised” — ie, infected — by others. Where there is hatred and opposition to far-right terrorists, there is *sympathy* for Islamists, even though they have caused far greater destruction in Europe over the past decade than the far right has. Nothing better captures the moral exhaustion of the liberal elite than the fact they feel sorry for people who despise them and who want to destroy their society and its values."

The Alt-Centrist - Posts - "Jack Merritt, a victim of the London Bridge Attack wrote his Master's thesis on minority representation in Criminology.The tragic irony is like a real life episode of Black Mirror."

Lily Martin - "When the Christchurch massacre happened, we were told that online right-wing radicalisation was the cause and needed to be stopped. The result was a tightening of free speech on social media platforms.Will we see a similar crackdown on the source of radicalisation of these and 1000’s of men like them? "

Most programmes to stop radicalisation are failing | News | The Times - "More than 95 per cent of deradicalisation programmes are ineffective, according to a study commissioned by the Home Office that raises questions about the government’s Prevent programme... only two programmes were effective and that some projects were counterproductive. Some participants said that they restricted their freedom of speech. Until the BIT study, the 33 projects claimed a success rate of more than 90 per cent because they evaluated themselves... Researchers concluded that one intervention programme in schools was ineffective because it used a prescriptive curriculum that adopted the same approach whether addressing a predominantly Muslim or white British classroom.  According to Police Professional, the study concluded that facilitators were uncomfortable dealing with sensitive topics and would often refuse to engage if they were brought up. BIT found that teachers in particular were afraid to bring up matters of race and religion with their students without appearing discriminatory, often causing them to refuse to talk about these topics entirely. Other schemes placed too much emphasis on subjects of offence and Islamophobia which prompted some Muslim participants to report a reduction in their support for freedom of speech... One of the successful projects focused the arguments on extremism against religious texts, which increased the respect of participants for the programme. The second successful approach did not shy away from difficult topics and refused to shame pupils for their views."