Al Qaeda's failed Eurovision attack; Reason notices.

Image: ‘Jedward’; you would have to be piss weak to see them as a threat.

Nick Gillespie from Reason has written on a failed al Qaeda plot to kill Irish pop artists ‘Jedward’ and wreak havoc at the Eurovision song contest. It is unusual for the hard line libertarian media to notice such events but in this case, kudos to Nick.

There is a fair possibility that the failure of the plot was due to some extent as stated, to the disorganization of Al Qaeda itself. On the other hand, good intelligence probably played a part, and it is also possible that local populations in places like Azerbaijan are sick and tired of these weirdo’s in their midst and are reporting them to authorities.

Radical Islam tends to be outraged by popular music, claiming it’s ‘ungodly’ and distracts the faithful from their religious observances. What they are really afraid of is that the mass appeal of Western music, which is difficult to block given modern electronic devices, will bring the appeal of our lifestyles to the young.

Authoritarian clerics will lose their influence. This point has been raised here on a number of occasions. Gillespie has commented. It will be people like Jedward who liberate the Arab world because it’s this kind of pop craziness where you could be whatever you want to be, even if you’re from Ireland.

Perhaps this clip is appropriate:


From the Irish Times:

Forty people linked to Al-Qaeda have been arrested over a plot to kill Jedward at the Eurovision song contest.

Security services in host city Azerbaijan also recovered a major arms cache in the operation in which a number of key personnel and property were also targets, including Azeri President Ilham Aliyeve, the £100million Baku Crystal Hal and other major hotels which housed acts and officials connected to the song contest.

Azerbaijan has been targeted in a number of terror plots in recent months and Eurovision bosses confirmed they had spent hours devising a detailed emergency strategy in the event of an attack.

A police statement said: “The armed group set itelf the aim of mounting terror attacks, creating a mood of powerlessness and lawlessness, sowing ethnic and religious enmity and damaging Azerbaijan’s international image.”

Had these fascists been successful they would have probably have done incredible damage to their own side. Mass killings of singers, audiences, and the destruction of the venue would have filled the liberal entertainment industry, fans, and probably the liberal media with revulsion.

This in turn might have caused reporters to take their blinkers off and start noticing things like honour killings, stonings, beheadings, genital mutilation, and any number of other ‘cultural practices’ they seem to miss at present.