A Tangled Web

Danny Bin Laden



Imagine the following scenario and tell me whether or not you think it would be permissible across 'The Pond. A fringe Islamic newspaper in the US carries frequent articles written by Osama Bin Laden. The newspaper in question recently secured funding from the federal government. Nevertheless, it is used by Bin Laden and others to excuse and justify attacks by Al Queda on American and other western targets. Bin Laden's column seeks to justify murder and brutality on the foundation of mere grievance.



Naturally the Americans would not permit the publication of such newsprint on US soil. By contrast, that is exactly what we tolerate here in the United Kingdom. West Belfast is home to a toilet paper of a rag called the Andersonstown News. Its owner, in the full knowledge of his own hypocrisy, recently went cap-in-hand to London to seek funding for his propaganda machine: funding from the same British State his 'newspaper' justifies its raison d'etre in excoriating at every available opportunity. One of its more infamous contributors is former terrorist and Provo-loving interrogator extraordinaire (who now moonlights under the title of 'journalist' to any idiot crazy enough to believe his fascistic outpourings), Danny 'Pestilence' Morrison.

Believe it or not, the Andytown is currently running a piece penned by this abomination highlighting his recollections of the Brighton atrocity of 1984. Using language which does nothing other than show the civilised world just how loathsome republicans really are, Morrison goes through the usual ritual of muddying the waters to excuse the existence of the terrorist group who earned him a living, only to then proceed to customary historical lies and downright inaccuracies, topped off with praise for the IRA and its murderous curriculum vitae.

Morrison invokes the hoary old chestnut of nationalist outrage over the deaths of the Hunger Strikers. Notwithstanding the fact that for every one republican who praised sub-human offal such as Bobby Sands, there are hundreds more who live in a better world thanks to the removal of his execrable presence, Morrison apparently believes that morons who aped the Karen Carpenter approach to dieting - and succeeded - should be somehow commemorated by blowing up guiltless men, women and children. In the cesspit minds of Irish republicans, Brighton represented 'a justified wrath carried out by the IRA.....which put some manners on her (Thatcher) and her colonial power' (the same 'colonial power that Andytown receives financial backing from, lest we forget).

Five people died in the Brighton bombing and scores more were injured. The wife of Sir Norman Tebbit is forced to spend her remaining days in a wheelchair thanks to this 'justified wrath'. Although I have always been a firm advocate of capital punishment, I have never agreed to State executions taking place in public. Having read Morrison's piece, I am willing to make an exception - just as long as I can play the role of a contemporary Albert Pierrepoint.