ONE EYED

What is it with the one eye thing? There's Nick Griffin, Abu Hamza, Mullah Omar, also -

an Algerian militant named Mokhtar Belmokhtar, "The One-Eyed." ...(who) for years had run a transnational smuggling and banditry operation from the deserts of northern Mali. The U.S. military believed that after 9-11 Mokhtar was recruiting and arming religious radicals in the area; it wanted to attack his camps. The State Department argued that the intelligence on Mokhtar was not conclusive, and the American embassy in Mali insisted that an air strike on Mokhtar would "radicalize people you don't want to radicalize," according to a U.S. government official in the Sahel.

I thought "radicalizing people you don't want to radicalize," was official US policy now no?

also an interesting piece in the Asian Age:

In London at the Old Bailey, the trial has begun of one Abu Hamza Al Masri. He is accused of inciting other people to murder on racial and religious grounds. In the Crown Court in Leeds, the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, faces charges of inciting people to racial hatred.

Both these characters are notorious...

In both cases I feel that the Crown will fail to convince a jury that the "incitement" did anything more than express an insulting opinion.

Liberal democracies can't afford in today's world to create a crime of political heresy. Insult to religion and to the feelings of groups of people ought to be incorporated, albeit with accompanying debate and protest, as part of the dialectic of freedom.

if you look at the original you'll see I've been very selective in quotation...