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BLACK SHEEP AND BIG BAD WOLVES

Now that Universal Righteous Mugabe Bashing is fully underway and Candy Condi has pointed out Iran's naughtiness: just as a reference point, in the interest of even-handedness, can one of you properly-informed bloggers remind me how many UN resolutions Israel is currently in breach of?

Did those evil Iranians think that they had a right to rattle back at Israel's threats and the US fleet off their coast?

Don't they understand? "All options are on the table".

Newsnight will give them the message (of the Israeli Foreign Office).

"For those getting off the plane from Guantanamo, it's not a tale of waterboarding and solitary confinement but rather the full Betty Ford treatment - personal counselling, new jobs, even help finding a wife. We also talk to a victim of the seventh of July bombings, who thinks this is the right way of dealing with Jihadis."

Perhaps I don't understand the above piece, but it seems to me that there's a lot of talk about resettlement (and even rehabilitation by some snake-oil peddlers) of offenders once they're released. So will you also be asking victims what they think should be done with our rapists, robbers and murderers once they're released?

I didn't think so.

It's dysgenics (and the consequences of too much education) you know.

So USA/Israel warn Iran, Iran warns USA/Israel, Russia warns USA, UK Warn Russia and Zimbabwe but not Iran. Confused?

Imagine this as a soap opera of neighbours on a street where Alf Garnett-meets-Brookside-meets-Eastenders-meets-Dallas where they stand around shouting at each other 'i'm warning you'

bookhimdano (#4) Is it a Jewish thing?

Well, as usual Jeremy's coments were especially biased on the topic of Saudi treatment of Al-Qaeda prisoners. In any case to come to any conclusion it will be needed lot more research. The best comment in my opinion was from the Saudi officials who said that idealogy can only be beaten by another ideology. Just to make it worse it was his guest from US, what she clearly was very keen to tell everybody what she was doing in her time, and all of the sudden it had perfect solution, even though she gave an impresion that she knows very little about Islam when she tried to explain the history of Saudi Arabia. Clearly Jeremy's style is getting out of date, fist of all as result of his biased comments.

Michael Crick was a bit harsh on David Davis I thought as the latter had good intentions.

I would have thought the public were pretty much in agreement with him. The polls did suggest that public opinion has changed fairly dramatically.

For Labour any joy about Tory mavericks must be short-lived as Labour are bombing as it is. Any light they can see at the end of the tunnel is almost certainly the proverbial oncoming train.

Outstanding Jeremy tonight - particularly with Rachael North and Irshad Manji on the reformation of extremists. Very well balanced as both sides of the debate were taken into account.
Hillarious Michael C interviewing the "Chuch of the Militant Elvis Party candidate" - where he told Michael to "save oil, bonk locally," to which he asked "have you been doing a lot of that?" The candidate replied "not yet. Haven't had a chance yet. I've been too tired!" Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

Nice to see the British prison reform system is alive and well in Saudi. Playstations and ping-pong... what next? satellite TV and trips out! I was won over by this report though...am easily swung. Mind you, the Saudis are gonna have to build more prisons because they'll soon all be full!!

Won't be long before you hear the call for bringing back the sword.

Answer to barries question @1: loads ( i am not well informed but you can take that as accurate enough).

I do hope David Icke wins the by-election and exposes the likes of Blair and others that we are ruled by reptilian scallywags with bloodlines reaching back to ancient Egypt....seriously! anybody who is ridiculed by the established media is worthy of investigation. He does some heavy research and his books are an insight...just skip the chapters about the reptiles though.

Well there goes any credibility i may have had but i am a spiritual being, i can handle the laughter and mockery..

Where do i put the apostrophe? I honestly don't think i can deal with all that; am still trying to figure out how to use the wired remote on my betamax for goodness sake!

BETAMAX WISDOM

Cookieducker you wally! We initiates of the Betamax Guild have long known that a cucumber, having a root-two curvature, placed on top of the unit, enables you to discard the corded remote and gain control by thought alone. WHY DO YOU THINK THE SHAPE SHIFTING-LIZARDS OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE PREVENT THEIR SALE?

PS I suppose you want three marks for the answer 'loads'? Right part of speech, correct spelling, and being able to type at 4.21 a.m. Well done - that's a pass.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

When it comes to evaluate a rehabilitate and reform to pacify disoriented youth in Saudi Arabia did Newsnight made enough efforts to get a learned, well-informed and qualified opinion in that particualr specialization?

Perhaps in future better candidates could be considered for their expertise such as Harvard Law Professor Dr. Frank E. Vogel, author of Studies of Saudi Arabia (a study of past and present applications of Islamic law through case-studies of Saudi Arabia); or the author of Changed Identities: Challenges of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia, by Dr. Mai Yamani. By bringing a native Saudi, coming from well-connected family and with unparallel exposure to the language, psyche and dynamics of Saudi society might have truly enriched viewers perception on the topic of discussion.

If you treat a dog badly does it become good or bad? If you treat a ships crew badly does it become good or bad? So do the skill of a dog trainer or ships captain lie in knowing how to get the best out of its subject or the worst?

We lock up jihadi preachers 'merely' for the skill of making people 'bad'. which means we do accept the concept that people can be trained to be good or bad and there might be other preachers who have the skill for making people good. But then there is that word Good again and the western moral relativists don't like it and so will tear down anything that suggests that good is possible in the world and that there might be preachers who can produce it?

So well done the Saudis for spotting that a person is a combination of Justice and injustice and that making people good means increasing and supporting that portion of Justice so that it become greater and so dominates the lesser part of injustice.

If that is not true and there is no power in words to train people why lock up jihadi preachers?

In the context of the Saudi 'rehabilitation' of jihadis feature, I feel the debate about whether we should be 'understanding' or repressive in dealing with terrorists is largely a sterile one. Of course, there is the (cliche alert!) battle for hearts and minds as well as the need for policing/military action.

More worthy of attention, I felt, was the feature's woeful lack of an examination (or even a mention) of Saudi 'efforts' to defeat Islamist terror. It felt like we were watching an embedded journalist being given a state-sponsored tour (which we probably were) but with the journalist raising no questions about how this supposed rehabilitation tallied with the Saudis propagation of Wahabism. This inherent contradiction - which serves to show the Saudi's rehabilitation efforts as a fig-leaf to cover their own complicity in virulent Islamist terror - was only picked up (by Irshad Manji) in the short discussion following the filmed feature.

This lack of any examination of this kind during the video feature seriously undermined its credibility as a true reflection of Saudi's role in jihadi violence.

DREAM-WEAVING

bookhimdano (#13) "If that is not true and there is no power in words to train people why lock up jihadi preachers?"

Containment? Deterrence? Sadly, to the best of my knowledge, the best evidence is that "there is no power in words to train people" - so what we see is just distraction or PR (much needed by Saudi Arabia as others have astutely pointed out), and here in the West, well, job creationism, financial opportunism (a big one that), and erosion of public services (in the context of Offender Management) and I have no idea what they think they're playing at in schools (money making most initiatives, appealing to naive parents etc for votes), the evidence shows that none of it works, that's the truth of the matter. It's all selection, selection, selection ('searchlights'), not education, education, education (buckets).

But it never sinks in, and peole don't look closely at the research (e.g. compare the executive summary at the DfES research website on SEAL in primary schools vs the full report, and see what Ed Balls said - same story for all these environmentalist programmes).