I am a great fan of the internet, it gives me instant access to a great deal of information and enables me to share my views on various matters with other people all over the world, it is probably the best thing that has happened to communication since the discovery of the electro magnetic wave.

But the great freedom of expression that enables me to publish this post is also available to fraudsters and extremists and allows the spreading of lies and propaganda without any accountability. You can read here about my catches but you have no way of authenticating what I write. I could be anyone in the world and although I do publish my telephone number, I could be practicing a great deception for my own purposes.

The dangers of this were brought home to me this week when I received a circular email from a friend for whom I have a great deal of respect.

Do you agree ?

Hit the nail on the head!

An incident occurred in a supermarket recently, when the following was witnessed:

A Muslim woman dressed in a Burkha (A black gown & face mask) was standing with her shopping in a queue at the checkout.

When it was her turn to be served, and as she reached the cashier, she made a loud remark about the English Flag lapel pin, which the female cashier was wearing on her blouse.

The cashier reached up and touched the pin and said, ‘Yes, I always wear it proudly. My son serves abroad with the forces and I wear it for him’.

The Muslim woman then asked the cashier when she was going to stop bombing and killing her countrymen, explaining that she was Iraqi.

At that point, a Gentleman standing in the queue stepped forward, and interrupted with a calm and gentle voice, and said to the Iraqi woman:

‘Excuse me, but hundreds of thousands of men and women, just like this ladies son have fought and sacrificed their lives so that people just like YOU can stand here, in England , which is MY country and allow you to blatantly accuse an innocent check-out cashier of bombing YOUR countrymen’.

‘It is my belief that if you were allowed to be as outspoken as that in Iraq , which you claim to be YOUR country, then we wouldn’t need to be fighting there today’.

‘However - now that you have learned how to speak out and criticise the English people who have afforded you the protection of MY country, I will gladly pay the cost of a ticket to help you pay your way back to Iraq ‘.

‘When you get there, and if you manage to survive for being as outspoken as what you are here in England , then you should be able to help straighten out the mess which YOUR Iraqi countrymen have got you into in the first place, which appears to be the reason that you have come to MY country to avoid.’

Apparently the queue cheered and applauded.

IF YOU AGREE… Pass this on to all of your proud English friends..
I just did……………!!!

Support Our Troops.

It took me a two or three days to take in all the inferences of this story and I read it a couple of times before I truly realised what a nasty piece of fiction it most definitely was. The cynical old copper in me recognised the elements of a made up story, it was too perfect and totally unattributable [1].

No mention was made of where or when it happened, no witnesses were named, it read like the old style “voluntary statements” attributed to suspects in the bad old days of the sixties by inexperienced young coppers. Weller of the yard will know what I mean!

I took a great deal of care in composing the following email in reply and I hope the people that read it will think more carefuly about the things they read, receive and forward on the web.

I have read this with some dismay, not expecting to receive such racist drivel from someone I respect as much as I do you.

The dialogue is too perfect to be true, no names or locations are mentioned and when, in this sort of discussion, was one speaker able to deliver such a precise monologue without interuption or abuse?

This has obviously been contrived, either wholly or in part just to encourage the racial distrust that is genetically programmed into each and every one of us but which, as civilised adults, we should strive to suppress. Even if it were true and the poor woman was misguided enough to believe her statement, what purpose is to be gained by broadcasting it on the internet, other than to foster racial hatred, thereby playing into the hands of the extremists on both sides?

This wonderful country of ours has always been a haven for migrants of one form or another, be they, as in our distant past, invaders or more recently as refugees. Over time they have been absorbed into this great nation of ours and have often been a great benefit, we have always been a nation of mongerels, absorbing the ideas and cultures of our guests and we have become stronger because of it.

Of course it is tragic that our forces are being killed in Afganistan and Iraq and as an ex regular soldier I feel the loss more than most but this is something to be taken up with the politicians and not held against those who have sought sanctuary in our country to escape from this violence.

I also served as a police officer in some of the most racially diverse areas of London, I am aware of the problems these people face and the vulnerability they suffer as strangers in a strange country having lost so much. This sort of story only fosters that feeling of isolation and may encourage beliefs such as those attributed to the Iraqi woman in this piece.

This sort of propaganda was one of the ways that hatred of the Jews was encouraged in pre war Germany and that resulted in the Holocaust.

I will always support our soldiers abroad but fostering racial distrust can only make their job more difficult and I will not be passing this on to anyone.

Martin

Someone once said that all that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

Remember before you pass any of these stories on to your friends that credibility is like virginity - it can only be lost once.

[1] This story has been seen in various forms on the internet for many a year, try searching for any part of the text, excluding the home nation since it is “reported” variously as stemming from the wearing of English, Scottish and British, Australian and undoubtedly other country flags.

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